Snyder got the car to a full stop. I opened the driver’s-side door and dragged him right out onto the dirt. He was bigger than me but I was angrier, and faster. I pulled him to his feet so that just before I slammed my elbow into him he could see my face. I heard as well as felt the elbow drive directly into his left ear. By the time I whirled around to swing a closed fist into his nose, the ear itself as well as all the flesh around it was already swelling. Snyder and I had often fought but we had never fought like this. Before this, whenever we got near to anything that could lead to a broken nose, our mother could feel it happening. She’d materialize out of nowhere and she’d come to Snyder’s defense. A young lady controlled her feelings, she’d say. You should be ashamed! Look at yourself, she’d say, as if a good clear view of myself could be enough to stop the kind of feeling that had me between its thumb and forefinger.
On this occasion, no parent was there to come save his bacon. Snyder and I fell away from each other, me satisfied for a full eight seconds or so before a darker feeling took over and I felt terrified by what I’d done to him; by what I’d felt when I was doing it. Boppit lay on the ground at our feet. I don’t know what was in Snyder’s mind, but he backed away from me and headed into the backyard, holding his ear with one hand and his nose with the other. If I could have disembodied myself, been me and not-me, I’d have backed away from myself too.
Watching him retreat I had a black tar-blot kind of feeling, like I was behind his eyes instead of mine, walking unsteadily away with blood running down my face. I spun away and ran into the house, up to my bedroom on the second floor, where I propped myself in the windowsill overlooking the vegetable garden. I heard the kitchen door slam and looked down and there was my mother with a washcloth, following Snyder, sitting beside him and handing it to him, talking softly. He held the washcloth against his nose. I saw her put her arm around him. I thought, One of us has to say what happened to Mr. Boppit. One of us has to tell Mom and take her to his body in the driveway. I was breathing as though I’d just run a mile, fast.
Snyder’s hand slowly dropped away from his face. The next day his nose would start to change colors, maybe to brown and purple. In about three days it would shift to green. His ear would swell to three times its normal size. His head drooped down and his whole body sagged. My throat closed. All along I’d thought I was desperate to see Snyder feel as bad as he looked right now, but here I was discovering that I hadn’t had any idea what I wanted. Poor Snyder, I thought. Poor Mr. Boppit.
Mom left him. She climbed the stairs, walked into my room, and found me looking down at Snyder. “My, my,” she said, tilting my head to get a clear view of me. I had a few swollen places of my own, which I saw her taking note of and deciding not to talk about. She reached out a hand to touch me though and said, “Well, I guess you’ll clean up all right by your wedding day.” I pulled my head away, which surprised her. Hurt her, I’ll bet. That made me satisfied for the briefest little moment before it made me ashamed and sad. She stood studying me for a while before she went to the window to look down.
“Neave,” she said finally, “I feel like I need to warn you about yourself. You think I don’t know, but I do, because I was like you. When I married your father, I was a person with real high highs and real low lows. Some days I see you dancing with that dog in the backyard when you think nobody’s looking, or getting silly with Lilly and I know you’ve got the highs. An hour later I see you in some rage about some nothing little thing Snyder might have done, clinging to a grudge like it was a life raft.”
“They’re not ‘nothing little things.’” I admit I sounded sullen.
“See? Exactly like that. If you could see yourself. Don’t get comfortable with a grudge. Don’t be the eternally aggrieved.”
“I’m not!”
“You’re sixteen years old and it’s time you listened to me say it. Happy women aren’t like that, Neave. They understand that others depend on them and they shape themselves to others. You’re just going to make yourself unhappy by insisting on your own way. Smart women don’t do that. I can see resentment on your face right this minute, and I’ve got some news for you—resentment is the poison we drink ourselves, hoping it will make the other fellow die. You’re going to have to start damping yourself down. You’ll do yourself mischief if you don’t. You’ll end up alone. You’ll be too hard to love.”
She wasn’t looking at me while she talked. She stood by the window and looked down at Snyder and I understood when she got to the part about damping down that these were not words she was going to say to my brother. But neither would she be saying them to my sisters. Jane and Lilly would never be found sitting on a bed in the late afternoon covered in dirt and blood. That was more my role in the family.
“Maybe facing up to your own nature wouldn’t make such a difference if you were beautiful, but it won’t help to sugarcoat the situation, because the fact is, that’s not the case,” she went on. “No matter, really. We all just work with what we have and that’s not tragic. Pretty girls lean on their looks so much they end up more stupid than God made them to begin with. Better to be on the sidelines watching. It’s a blessing to you even if it doesn’t feel like one now. But if you don’t want to end up alone, you’ll have to rein in a bit of what you are. Sweeten yourself. Do you understand me?”
I have thought that if my mother had touched me or looked at me when she said these things that I would have received them very differently. It wouldn’t have burned so much. There would be no record shards at the back of my closet. Just the feel of her hip against mine would have cooled the bad news about my future, but she stood apart. Of course, I have also thought, if a child whipped her head away from your hand the last time you tried to touch her when she was in an agitated state, you’d hesitate to touch her the next time. Here I was in the next time, and we stood ten feet apart with her looking out the window and me looking at her and it could have been different but it wasn’t. She left me there to consider myself. That’s the expression she used.
I considered myself right into a state where I wondered if my feelings could kill me. It felt like they would, so I guessed maybe she was right about the work that lay ahead of me. There was never going to be a way out of it. I would be alone.
I got up. I peered out at Snyder, who had pulled himself together. I saw Mom go into the yard again with a new washcloth wound around some ice. They talked quietly while he held the ice against his ear. Standing there with Snyder in my sights I felt the purest most overwhelming hatred I had ever suffered in my life.
I was afraid for myself then.
*