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A Violation of Space

By day I have a teaching position at a small parochial school. I have only mountains of book reports and pot-
bellied parents to deal with, There are few problems. It is only the night, the overpowering darkness split by
moonlight, that I find unbearable. Unlike those peaceful, pleasantly dressed women one so often sees advertising
mattresses, I travel the length and width of the dark suspended between the images which exist in my mind and
the shadows which, like so many flickering flames, dance upon the walls of my room.

If I dream, it is almost always interupted by the annoying ring of a telephone. It is a call that I cannot answer.
I remember that I do not own a phone and that the annoying sound is merely the morning alarm reminding me
t~at I have spent another night shaking. Hot then cold then hot again. Night surrenders gradually to dawn, and

Yl.Helidrianmg tCo otuhnetyli.ghIt,usIesdtirto. be able to see it in my mind's ~ye, rather vividly in f~ct, but time has written over it all
wlth a very fine black pen and now I do not remember It as well as I once did. The faces of people and their
echoing laughter all seem to blur as one. What are they laughing at? I don't remember. All those faces, so many

faces, all close enough to touch. But I cannot touch them.
We moved to Tennessee when I was fourteen, around the time when I was starting to wear tight jeans, and just

after the death of my mother. My father, one of those legendary traveling salesmen, seemed to have a better
understanding of his vacuum cleaners than the people he sold them to. He was somewhere in the mid-west the
night I found her sprawled across her bed in an angry, uncomfortable position, several empty bottles of
Sominex defining her stillness. She did not answer me when I asked if I could go to the school dance on Friday. I
had repeated my question, stupidly, over and over again, a moronic smile slowly possessing my lips before I
realized why she did not answer. I looked towards the ceiling, towards the wall, through windowpanes streaked
with dust and bird droppings. "Saturday," I remembered her saying, "Saturday'y0u and I will have to get your
father to help us clean these dirty things." She was close enough to touch. I might have touched her. At that
moment, I knew that time was of little or no consequence to anyone and least of all to my mother.

Dad flew home fast enough all right, but remained a distant god-like figure. A neighbor had driven us to the air-
port so that we could meet him. My brothers Bobby and Bruce, and my older sister Suzanne and I ran to him, full
of misplaced trust. I can still see myself, wearing a new dress which would have made me look older if my dark
brown, unkept hair had not been so childishly held by loose rubberbands. I raced towards him-as if I could not
~ove fast enough, afraid that I would miss him. We all seemed to collide wit? him at the same time screaming

Daddy! Daddy! Daddy". My father's hands shook when he brushed the hair from little Bruce's eyes, but he

neNveor ocnrieedre. mIemstbilelreredmemmybebrirththdaaty. the summer that we moved. Dad had chosen a small town in Tennessee so that
he would be able to work from an office and not have to ~ravel so much. He spoke to us as if we were sitting in the
back row of our church listening to a sermon that we neither clearly understood nor cared about, telling us that we
would soon be living in a nice house where we could start to be a real family. His smile was an awkward one for he
se~dom found anything amusing, and was not accus~omed to. smiling. He made us imagi?-e a place revolving with
pnm cottages arranged in rows, each one neatly pam ted white, brown, or tan, and sportmg yards surrounded by
handsome picket fences interupted only by beautifully paved sidewalks. My father filled us with hope, but a hope
which remained as elusive and unfulfilled .as a mirage. I loved him-even after I had learned to hate him.

When we prepared to transport sixteen years of life from one place to another, I was told that I would have to
le~ve my pet, an old alley cat named Tomale, behind. No matter what I said, I knew that Tomale was no longer
mme. Hugging my cat to my chest, I called my father a name-a word I had heard many times before but had
never known the full force of until that moment. I called my father a bastard. Then, with one hand I had lashed
o~t, intending to strike him. Instead, I let the arm fall, limp and useless as a moth fluttering before a light, to my

sids,
"You! Just like your mother. Always telling me what to do."
His hand wrested an explosion from by body. With one fluid motion I lay on the kitchen floor, dazen and

stranded, as if I were the last brown leaf drifting through a winter twilight. When my father's voice broke
through the thick cloud of anger still surrounding me, I was not able to tell if the tone was apologetic or still tinged

wiIthwfarsosnt.umb for days afterward and number still, when we were finally packed and ready to go. Playing all sorts
of portable metallic games helped ease the boredom of the long car ride. Sometimes we sang. My father was
always invited to join us, but he never chose to. Instead, he sat talking quietly to my sister in the front seat of the

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