BACK
HER HANDS THE HOOVES
anne germanacos
When he arrived, he was invisible. The other prisoners were so big that for
one of them to take him on would’ve been a joke. He was invisible to them
and then, overnight, something changed. He was their friend, or a kind of
friend—protected, anyway.
He’s doing everything he can to keep his desperation from turning to despair
so that he can get back to his daughter. He loves her like nothing else.
Lean a Little Farther
Upstairs in a white brownstone on a side street, she trots horses across
intricate paths she makes as she goes, her hands the hooves.
In the window seat, all the animals come to life.
Sylvester, Ronnie, Alanca, Fire Brigade. Hester and her many (nameless)
children. Prater, Ninci, Adoraba. Terror. Inkwell. Scallop.
Her mother says: Lean a little farther. Don’t you see that bit of green?
Rain
She dances the horses and zebras in a sort of march, while the new-husband,
the not-father and her mother make a symphony of noise. She dances the
animals across the red silk-covered daybed onto the windowsill where, if
they’d hook their forehooves onto the molding and lean against the window,
they could see the park.
They’re all dying to get to the park, but it’s raining again.
Stealing
The father (hers) is always left out. It’s because of what’s inexplicable, a
word belonging to her mother but sometimes stolen for her own use.
Yes, she steals. But stealing doesn’t make her dangerous: that’s what her
father is. A kind of thief.
Her mother buys coats, heavy winter coats, more than she needs, more than
she can afford. That winter.
*
He knows it’s mad to say but sometimes, here, he feels safer than he’s been
ever before in his life. Is it Hyram’s huge body shielding him? Or the belief
that Hyram’s body could act to shield him? Or the relief from the daily grind,
the struggle to earn a living and keep the ghosts from clogging up his
hearing, his sight?
The ghosts are real now: James, Croc, Adaman. And every other nameless
convict with thick tattooed biceps.
*
He’s balanced between his desire to get his life back and the knowledge that
he’s paying for his sins. Post-release, he’ll face a wreck of a life, a no-life. A
man with several degrees that mean little in light of this incarceration.
Shopping
The rain stops; her mother calls her down to go out shopping.
Outside, the sun shines rainbows through droplets hanging from the leaves.
Her mother never takes her by the hand but does now, probably because of
the new-husband, the not-father and the other children (all girls, like her),
the daughters and not-really-sisters but anyway.
Her mother’s hand is mixed in with hers for a few seconds of warmth as they
walk together in the street that is recovering from the light rain. She loves
the sky’s recovery and without knowing why calls it bliss.
Amongst the Dresses
She’s too tall now to go amongst the dresses the way she used to, a small
animal in a forest of pinks and blues, but she does anyway, sloughing off
height by hunching. The dresses always smell the same, chemical and clean,
and occasionally a mother’s perfume. She’s hardly eager for a dress, but still.
The phone in her mother’s purse rings.
It’s him, the new husband. His daughters (not her sisters) are wild. The
phone changes her mother’s look, makes lines appear. This isn’t the mother
she likes to see, but it’s the one she’s grown used to. This must be how the
marriage is going.
Safer?
His house, her money. Their car? The one they really don’t need, but have
anyway. Her mother drives it around, fast as a taxi but safer.
“Marisa?”
What about this dress?
No dresses, Mom.
How about a skirt?
Only if it comes with pink boots.
Her mother scrunches her brow in a different aura and Marisa knows she’ll
walk out with what she wants.
*
He’s always worked with his mind, not his hands. Until now, his battles have
been domestic.
Domesticated? Hardly. Why had he done what he did? And when would his
daughter find out? And what would she do when she did?
He was lucky: his daughter’s mother had remained his friend. They agreed
that her heart was in the right place; they didn’t want to disturb it.
Their own hearts were generally in pieces, over their daughter if not each
other and a million other things. The scheme of the world and trying to get
things under control. The people who love you and what you want from your
life. Wanting and taking and that girl was young but she’d told him she was
eighteen. His fault for not asking for proof. But who ever does?
Glow-in-the-Dark
She’s not the one who finds the bottle in the drawer at home: it’s Slow-Poke,
her glow-in-the-dark turtle. Seeking his pearly cast, she touches cool glass
then asks his opinion.
“Should I look?”
The Bottle
She, not the turtle, tells her mother about the bottle. Her mother tells the
other mother and the fathers, including the one who’s hers (and hers only):
the one she keeps a secret.
Clear Liquid
The sisters are in trouble. They know better than to hurt her with their hands
and feet, but they hurt her just the same, turning their backs. She’s only ten.
She still plays with stuffed animals, for Christ’s sake.
They’re redoing their nails in ghostly shades, not listening. One’s hair is
indigo, the other’s is pink.
The Horses Maraud
The horses maraud. The humpbacked camels thirst. Her unicorns, all six of
them, stand in a circle, keeping things out.
Green Hair
One day, she’ll make her hair green, but to be like the friendly dragon, not
them.
Murder
What would the animals do without her? The thought kills them. In less than
a split second, they’re murdered.
*
Has he ever molested her or thought of doing so? There’s a time when he’s
tortured by the thought of it. Not the images of it, nothing real, but simply
the awareness of what he’s done and the impossibility of undoing it. Time in
jail isn’t undoing anything. What’s done is done.
*
He gives his food away, or eats it, depending on the value he gives that day
to his influence on his daughter’s life. Worthless—he doesn’t eat. Of some
value (he’s her father, after all), he eats to keep flesh on his bones.
Does he confuse the daughter and the girl? Or merely suspect himself of
doing so?
*
He hasn’t seen her in four years.
She’s mixed up in his mind—a creature across the years. Her baby self and
her first adult tooth and buying shoes and crawling, walking, and that phone
call when he was forced to tell her part of the truth.
He’s nothing but she’s something. Maybe his nothing will be transformed
from the nothing of trash to the nothing that leaves room for the something
that, with patience, will one day arrive.
He finds himself religious. How else to skewer time? It’s ancient and simple,
what comes just before logic. He lets himself be hung there, as if by a thread.
Now
Without the animals, she lives in fear, knowing it’ll last until long after the
girls, who will never be her sisters, leave for boarding school, then college,
and eventually, other countries.
By then, she’ll be leaving, too; her mother won’t care what she wears. What
remains invisible always, off in the distance, is the possibility of a father.
(c) 2008 by Anne Germanacos