COMMITMENT by Marie Sheppard Williams
The first time that my father went to a hospital – hey, a psych ward: why shouldn’t you know? – I was eight years old.
There had been a lot of nighttime screaming and whispering for a long time and then there was my Daddy getting into his bed and staying there and not moving and not talking and not eating and then there was my mother calling The Guardian, and The Guardian calling Dr. Dumas.
And then my Daddy went away.
It was for a month that first time. It was at the Veterans’ Hospital in Minneapolis. My mother had to sign papers.
Our dog, Guppo, stood by the back door where my father had last been seen and where his black overcoat hung. Guppo cried for a whole month and would not leave her station by the door.
I was in Brownies then. My Brownie troop leader was Mrs. Dagenhart. I loved Mrs. Dagenhart. She always told me that I was doing a really good job: whatever it was, embroidery – I learned the featherstitch from Mrs. Dagenhart – or maybe cooking: sometimes we made Jell-O, once we made Rice Krispies bars. Yes, honestly, Rice Krispies have been around that long.
My Daddy went to the hospital, I told Mrs. Dagenhart.
He has to stay there for a whole month.
My goodness, said Mrs. Dagenhart. A whole month! He must be very sick. What does he have?
Going to a hospital was a very big deal in those days, you have to understand this. Nobody went to a hospital for anything but a Very Bad Sickness.
He had a Nervous Breakdown, I said proudly.
Hey, what did I know? A Big Deal was a Big Deal. I had few claims to fame in those days.
He worked too hard, and that’s what happened.
Yes, I see, said Mrs. Dagenhart. Your father is a war veteran, isn’t he?
Yes, I said.
Girls! Girls! Mrs. D. called to the other Brownies in my troop. Joan’s father is sick, she said. He is in the hospital. This is a very sad thing, so we must be extra nice to Joan.
I don’t recall whether they were extra nice or not. I suppose some were and some weren’t: the way it always is.
That was the first time. When he came back, Guppo was still by the door waiting, and she was overjoyed to see him, she jumped on him and slobbered and woofed.
At least the dog is glad to see me, Daddy said.
Well, the rest of us kind of hung back. We were a little nervous. Who would we get back? The yelling terrible Daddy or the wonderful kind funny Daddy?
We’re all glad to see you, Arden, my mother said softly.
Yes, we’re all glad! we chorused, the three of us. Arden Junior ran up and hugged him. Arden always was braver – or dumber – than the rest of us.
I’m g-glad to s-s-see you, Daddy, he said. Arden had begun to stutter by that time.
Our Daddy hugged him and looked over him at the rest of us. It’s going to be different now, he said to us. To Mama. I’m well now. Everything is going to be fine now.
We wanted to believe, of course we did. We all raced in and got our share of hugs and clamored and laughed and shouted.
Joan! Sonny! David! my mother said, above the bedlam.
Daddy still has to be quiet for a while. We have to be quiet around Daddy for a while.
Arden, do you want to lie down before dinner? she said.
He smiled at her, this sad smile. Why, yes, Elizabeth, he said, I think I would like that.
So that was the way it was, and was going to be. That was the beginning of what I learned many years later to call Walking on Eggs.
But my mother made her wonderful crispy baked pork chops for supper, to celebrate our father’s return from the nuthouse, and that made it all a little better. As long as there were pork chops in the world, things were pretty good. At least fair.
My mother always did whatever she could. Always.
So that was the start of it. My father was in and out of hospitals for the next six years after that, usually for a month, sometimes longer. When he got back each time he was our real Dad for a while. He would get up in the morning and go to work and come home from work, and when he was home he thought of wonderful things to do. Lots of contests: a yoyo contest which lasted all one winter, a marbles competition, top-spinning, table tennis, badminton.
Always a competition.
Why do they have to compete against each other, Arden? my mother said. Why can’t they just play?
Why, Elizabeth, it’s the way of the world, he said.
But you can love a game for its own sake, can’t you? she said.
Certainly you can, Elizabeth, he said. You can do that too.
I am killing two birds with one stone here, he said.
I don’t know how it worked, but we all learned to love the competition and we also learned to love the games. The competition, however, was not against each other. For me, anyway. For me it was always against myself – to see how good I could be.
Some of us were good at one thing and some at another.
I was terrific at table tennis and top-spinning.
I never could do yoyo. Arden Junior was great at yoyo.
He still is.
I can’t do tops any more.
But I bet I could get it back if I could find that kind of a top. Any more.
Wow, look at that top go! my father shouted. In the kitchen. The kitchen was the only room we were allowed to spin our tops on. Well, the wood floors in the other rooms would be scarred, of course, because the tops were those tapered wooden ones with metal tips. You wrapped a special string around the top from the metal tip, around and around, a careful flat lay, the wrapping was absolutely critical, and then you tossed the top on the floor and whipped the string off it with a quick gesture of your whole arm and when the top hit the floor it was spinning like mad and when you did that throw and the arm gesture just right, very fast, that top would spin for a long long time.
When it started to wobble, there was still some time left in it, but basically you knew the jig was up. Soon the top would spin out of control and then it would fall.
So with our Daddy. The yelling and whispering would start one night, and then we would know – I would know, I have never asked my brothers if they heard the night screaming, I have never to this day dared to ask – I would know that in a while, weeks or months, our Dad would be gone again.
I learned not to tell about it after that first time; I learned that it was not something to be proud of, the fact that my father had “nervous breakdowns.”
I learned to keep secrets. Our house became a house of secrets.
When I was maybe fourteen there was an especially bad time. The night voices had gone on for a very long time. One night I heard my father cry and beg my mother: Elizabeth, please don’t send me back! Please don’t send me back! Please!
You don’t know how terrible it is, Elizabeth. . . .
If you knew how terrible it is, you wouldn’t do it, Elizabeth.
You’re a kind woman, I know you are. . . .
Then: soft voice answering: soft, soft, shh. . . .
The shock treatments are so bad, Elizabeth. . . .
Please . . . look, I am kneeling to you . . . please. Elizabeth. . . .
I got up. I went on quiet bare feet to the living room door, pushed it open a tiny crack, making no noise.
Sure enough, there he was, my Daddy, on his knees to my Mama, his hands grasping her hands: Please, Elizabeth, please promise me you won’t. . ..
And I heard this: I promise, Arden. . . .
I promise.
So then it was up to me, the way I saw it. If my mother wouldn’t do it, then I would.
I made my heart hard. Well, it didn’t take much. By that time, the good feelings I had for my father were all overlaid by the bad feelings.
I called The Guardian. Hey, I knew how this worked. How often had I heard: Call The Guardian! Call Jerry!
I didn’t even know his last name. I got it from my mother.
Hoaglund, she said. He’s got an office in Camden. Why do you want to know?
Camden! That was only a couple of miles, walking distance.
No reason, I said. Lied. I just wanted to know.
I felt very adult. I felt that my mother had abdicated and that I was now in charge. I had to take care of us.
I called from a telephone at school.
Made an appointment.
Walked there, walked in.
Me. I was in charge. I felt my heart hard and strong inside of me.
I can do it, I thought.
No.
I wanted to do it, I wanted to hurt him, please, please was not going to do it for me, I was not my soft-hearted mother.
I hated her too.
I hated him.
Maybe I hated everybody.
I felt like a walking, blazing pillar of hate.
Oh. Hate felt so good, so strengthening.
I felt strong. Like a savior.
I was going to save us all.
The Guardian set up a hearing with a judge, and I went to it, alone. Well – the Guardian came too, of course, but no other person in my family. It was the first big thing I’d ever done for which I felt absolutely on my own.
But I knew I could do it.
Our case was called.
The judge sat at a tall bench – I had been told that it was called The Bench – and there was a tall wooden counter in front of him.
My memory of this is that I sat on a high stool in front of him. My memory could be wrong. In fact, my mother, before she died, swore that this never happened, that I imagined all of this, that she would never have made a fourteen-year-old girl commit her own father to a mental hospital.
Maybe I did imagine it. Maybe it didn’t happen. I remember it though, and just this way: with the high stool in front of the bench.
Do you swear, etc.?
Yes, I do.
The judge leaned down toward me and spoke. His voice was kind.
Did your father ever hit you, Joan? he asked.
No, sir, I said.
Are you afraid of your father?
Yes.
Do you think he could hurt you, or your brothers?
Yes, sir.
Patty White was my friend in the 7th grade at Patrick Henry High School. Maybe the 8th grade. Junior high, anyway.
I call her “friend,” but actually she was just the best I could do. Who would want me? – I was skinny, smart, a teacher’s pet; I was sick much of the time; I ran around with a snotty nose and a soiled handkerchief; I was shy and scared and clumsy.
Patty was the daughter of the only really rich family in our class; she lived with her Mom and Dad and some brothers in a big white house with honest-to-God pillars on Memorial Drive.
She was – maybe because she was rich – a pariah as surely as I was.
Nobody in my whole life has ever been meaner to me than Patty.
On our tenth high school reunion I got pretty smashed and I spied her sitting alone at a table. I sat down. Hi, Patty, I said.
Slurred.
Joan! she said.
Patty, I said, carefully; I wanted to get this right: I hated you when we were kids and I still do.
Fulfilling how many high school fantasies?
I got up, picked up my glass, and walked away.
I’m not proud of this, but it did happen, and I figure you should know it all, good and bad.
One day after school – this must have been just a short time before I talked to the judge sitting on the high stool in his courtroom – I went over to Patty’s house with her. We did whatever we did in those days, talked mostly I imagine, and then Patty asked me to stay for supper.
Mom! she called out. Can Joan stay for supper?
Surely, said her mother: Mrs. Nice, overweight, beautifully dressed, always, the apple of Mr. Nice’s eye. I was unspeakably jealous.
I’ll have to call home and ask, I said.
Okay, said Patty. Here’s the phone: and she led me into the front hall with the wood floors and the beautiful carpet and wide stairs leading up to the second floor where all the bedrooms were.
Nobody had phone extensions in those days. Hey. Lots of people didn’t have phones at all.
And I guess some people even today don’t. My therapist, Mary Temple, says a lot of the people she sees don’t have phones. The more things change, etc. There are still the Haves and the Have Nots.
(Of course I have a therapist. You didn’t think I got over all this by myself, did you?) (Insofar as I can be said to be over it.)
I dialed our phone number. I can remember it to this day: Hyland 4881. My father answered the phone. He was so drunk he could hardly talk.
Hey, Dad, I said.
He started screaming at me. Little whore! Bitch! Crazy bitch! Daughter of a bitch!
I hung up.
I got the wrong number, I told Patty.
It was like my brain was working at lightning speed. I guess I was doing what they call “damage control” now.
I dialed Hyland 4881 again.
Hi, Dad, I said.
Listened to him rave for a minute.
Then: Okay, Dad, I said. I’ll come home.
Hung up.
My Dad says I have to come home, I said to Patty. He says he needs me to watch my little brother.
I thought I heard yelling over the phone, said Patty.
You must have been mistaken, I said.
When I got home, my father was drunker than I’d ever seen him before. He was crawling around on the kitchen floor with a big butcher knife clenched between his teeth.
Like the rose in Carmen’s teeth.
I actually thought that.
How strange the mind is.
What strange things it does.
Oh.
I am just scribbling now. I am writing anything to put off telling you the rest.
I want to tell you, but it is so hard. Have you ever lived in a house of secrets? To tell the secrets feels impossible, it feels like you will die or be killed if you tell.
My little brother David was there. Mama and Arden were gone.
Dave was trying to reason with Dad. I thought David was in danger. I honestly did. I was maybe thirteen or fourteen so Dave was maybe seven.
I grabbed him and pulled him into the living room and then into my bedroom. I shoved him into my closet where my grandma’s quilt made a soft mound on the floor.
Stay there, I said.
Don’t come out until I say it’s okay.
I went back to the kitchen to face our father.
I truly felt that someone was going to be killed here, and I wanted that someone to be me.
This sounds like bravery, but I have to be honest here: I have to tell you that there was a large component of jealousy in what was going on. If someone was going to have the honor of being killed by our father, it wasn’t going to be Davey, the favorite.
No.
For once I was going to be chosen ahead of Dave.
My father was still on his knees in the kitchen. He took the knife out of his mouth for a second.
Where’s Davey? he screamed.
Gone! I shouted back.
He tried to stand. Failed. Fell back. He put the knife back between his teeth and pulled himself upright holding on to the handle of the icebox.
I’m going back there, he yelled, with the knife in his hand now, waving it.
Where? I yelled back.
I’m going to kill that cocksucker.
Who?
Hey, what did it matter who? My father was bent on killing someone. That was clear.
I grabbed the knife out of his hand.
I aimed it at his throat. I think I meant to kill him, but I didn’t. My aim was bad, I missed my target.
He caught my right arm, and my left. We stood there for a second, in a strange dance. I can remember that second absolutely.
Suddenly his voice was clear: this can happen, you know. Shock can make you sober.
I know you want to kill me, he said.
But you can’t.
I am stronger than you.
I will always be stronger than you.
You will never be able to kill me.
He twisted my arm until the knife fell out of my hand and clattered on the kitchen floor.
I asked Davey, fifty years later, sixty, if he remembered this.
Yes, he said.
At the time, I thought it was kind of fun.
I liked being in your closet.
The quilt was nice and soft.
I think I went to sleep.
Our father would never have hurt David. Never. I had to know that. I believe this much: that I thought one of us would be killed. I wanted that one to be me. If I couldn’t be loved by our Daddy as I wanted to be, I could at least be killed by him.
I could at least have that recognition.
See? Greek tragedy is still happening. In, admittedly, smaller situations.
Elektra lives.
Honest to God.
I am appalled and stunned by the melodrama here. But I am also laughing.
It was my mother who taught me to laugh.
I called your number after you left, Patty told me the next day. I got your Dad. I think he was drunk, Joan, he was yelling and swearing. . . .
You must have got a wrong number too, I said.
My father was perfectly fine when I got home. He just needed me to take care of David.
A tiny flicker of uncertainty went across Patty’s face.
It was enough. I was safe for now.
Sitting in front of the judge’s bench, I wondered: does having your arm twisted count as hitting?
On the whole, I thought not.
Has your father ever hit you, Joan?
No, sir.
Did I really want him to die? Oh, yes, I think so. Did I want to kill him? I’m not as sure about that.
They sent the sheriff to our house to get my father and take him to the hospital; I suppose they had to do that because neither my father nor my mother was cooperating on this one, and they had a court order.
I heard the sheriff come, but I stayed in my room with the door locked.
Yes, I had a key for my door. I had begged and pleaded for it and finally they got me one – one of those big old-fashioned keys about three inches long. I can still feel the weight of it in my fingers, I can still feel the pride of having it.
I didn’t need it to feel safe, you know; that was not the point; I needed it to feel alone, to be alone.
I sat on the floor by the window in my bedroom, and I played with a set of colored wooden blocks left over from somebody’s childhood.
Maybe they were Dave’s blocks. Kids were kids longer in those days.
I heard the voices: my mother’s, my father’s, the stranger’s.
The sheriff?
Had to be.
Come on along now, Mr. Shepherd.
I put a block on top of another block.
Let me say goodbye to my kids. . . .
I put another block on, and then began to build up the sides. I wanted this tower to be strong.
Dolly?
A voice at my door.
A light knock.
I stayed as still as a mouse.
Mousie. That was another one of his names for me.
Dolly? Just come to the door?
I stayed quiet.
Please, Dolly? Let me say goodbye?
Quiet. Not a sound.
I made my heart very hard, very clear. I hardly breathed.
I know what you did, Dolly, and I want you to know that I think you did the right thing. I think you were completely justified.
Oh.
Come on now, Mr. Shepherd. We have to go.
Footsteps going away.
A screen door slamming.
I put another block on top of my tower. A blue one this time. Then a red one.
A yellow one.
Too much.
The tower fell.
I bent over the fallen blocks and pressed my face against them until they cut into my skin. The pain was a dam against another pain that was just starting, was just beginning to come.
Marie Sheppard Williams is the author of two short story collections, The Worldwide Church of the Handicapped (Coffee House Press) and The Weekend Girl (Folio Bookworks). Williams is the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and a Wolf Pen Fellowship sponsored by the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Williams is a frequent contributor to Alaska Quarterly Review.