The entire night went dead for me at just the moment he said that. Just like in the movies, the sounds of my mother yelling for me and the pounding on the door turned slow, like a record playing on the wrong speed. It was as if my mouth opened and unseen forces sucked my cry for help right out of my mouth. I didn’t make a sound, didn’t even breathe, until finally the policeman gave up and left, thinking Bill had left with me. After they left, we climbed back down off the roof and it was all over. The rest of the night doesn’t figure as prominently in my memory, it’s shrouded in the years and I couldn’t tell you with any degree of certainty what happened afterward.
Of course, it’s that one moment in time that I’ve carried with me, when I made the choice to keep my mouth shut. In my mind, it’s like a diorama, something built for educational purposes, the little figure of the girl on the roof, the figures at the front door, tiny fake trees that could be moved around, the to-scale police car with real lights. And it was an education of sorts; I know the lessons I learned that night were many.
The first lesson I learned was not taught by Bill. It was taught by the mosquito after mosquito that I could hear getting fried to death by the neighbor’s bug zapper. It was to stay away from the light—be wary of things that might look beautiful. I learned not to trust kindness or things that came easily to me; and as many things came easily to me then (academics, sports) I learned to distrust the very things I was good at.
I became always alert to exits. I passively allowed concrete blocks to be tied to my legs rather than rock the boat because I knew a loose knot when I saw one.
Sometimes I think I might have been better off if I had yelled that night and he had thrown me off the roof, as I’m sure that would have been his next move. Maybe I’d have had as many lives as a cat. Break or roll, it would have all been decided that night, instead of my dragging this behind me all these years. Wherever I go, that time in that house tracks me, like I’ve got a homing device around my ankle.
Ultimately, however, the most important lesson I learned was triggered the second he said, “You know better than to say anything,” and I could swear I heard it that night in my head, narrated in the minute like a voiceover in a film:
All you have, girl, is the truth of this very moment. This grown man’s hand on your wrist, your memorization of the patterns of stars frozen above you, your spotless certainty that you know, even at 10 years old, just what to do to avoid being thrown off a roof. You know exactly what you need to do to survive this here. This now.
