When my spirits and the Mighty B gang up on me, it is never cute. Ugh. Remembering times when I also felt corrupted is the Mighty B’s suggestion. I need to remember that I am not diminished by the acts of others, no matter what I tell myself. Not everyone gets rescued. I did. I am lucky. As much as I have believed over the years that I was somehow polluted, I have always had someone to extend their hand to me and believe that I am worth caring for. When I do this work, I can feel South embracing me.
You see, I have a ghost. Maybe he is more of an ancestor, but he isn’t the Mighty Dead of the Tradition, nor is he related to me by blood. One thing is certain, and that is that Kees didn’t leave entirely when he passed. Often he comes to me in dreams and we sit in his great room on the bean bag chairs, or by leaving little objects that remind me of him. When I find an object, I put it under my pillow and I will usually dream of him. I have seen him in the mirror behind me a few times, as well. The way he communicates with me is through charades and the ABBA’s Greatest Hits album. He holds up one or two fingers to indicate disk 1 or disk 2. Then he indicates on his fingers which song he wants me to listen to. When he appears, Kees is always wearing his big floppy poet shirt and his tall boots, his long blond hair in a ponytail or braid. This was his cruising outfit. It always made me laugh and call him “butt pirate.” He wasn’t clear on what that meant at first, but he eventually figured it out and said that I had a nasty mouth. Even he began to call this his butt pirate look, and it became an inside joke with us.
I met Kees in the dime store I was working at. He had stopped to run in to get binder clips on his way to a meeting. He wasn’t exactly sure what the English words were for some office supplies. How nice of TG&Y to have a salesperson who spoke Nederlands just for him! He never questioned what a weird coincidence that was. He left his car running out front, and I told him if he wanted to keep it he needed to go park like the rest of the world. He completely assumed that no one would touch it. Entitlement is a precious thing, that’s for sure. He decided that I was to be his sidekick for the time he was here. I got to go to fancy dinners and concerts and long fun rides in his Audi. When I went to the Netherlands the first time to visit my boyfriend, Rikard, I took the bus to Rotterdam to visit Kees. We had a great time, but my boyfriend was so jealous that he felt he needed to come get me and meet Kees.
I’m stalling. I realize that I don’t know how to tell this story. It’s easier to talk about Kees. How do I tell this story about what happened to me in Appingedam a year later? I can’t even imagine that it is real. I have never really forgiven my parents for tossing me out so that I would not sully their reputation in the church. I left the country because I was so angry at them and went to live with my boyfriend in the Netherlands, who supposedly wanted to marry me. Unfortunately, he had fallen in love with his best friend’s girlfriend, so when I arrived to stay there, he felt trapped and angry. How do I tell this story of how his drinking over this awful situation made everything so much worse? I spent a lot of time hiding at his parents’ house. How do I tell a story about how my first time having sex was punishment for calling him on the truth about his feelings for Anneke? How he laughed at me for caring that I was a virgin? My parents had made sure that I knew that I was only worth some sense of purity that I could sell to the highest bidder. I felt I was alone in the world and felt as if no one wanted me. My boyfriend, my parents, had just disposed of me. It wasn’t true, but it was how I felt. Rikard’s parents and younger siblings loved me. And of course, Kees. I never told Kees about how Rikard raped me that first time. Or how that I felt once I was ruined, that it didn’t matter anymore, so I just took up my place in the bed next to him and tried to duck when he got angry. Growing up with violent parents had prepared me well to be the partner of a man who would continue the violence. Kees would just always say, “you know you can tell me anything, rignt? You know I would do anything for you, yes?”
It’s not like it was all bad, and at times Rikard was gentle and romantic. I had some wonderful times with my friends, and adventures like riding on an ice boat and going to Germany for Christmas. It’s true that they lost me. My friends ran up to some German soldiers and yelled “Ik wil mijn fiets compt!” It’s a joke from WWII, and means “I want my bike back,” a reference to the Germans melting down all the bicycles in Holland to make ammunition. The Soldiers chased them off, but I didn’t know what was going on. Luckily the soldiers were kind and just took me off for a night on the town and then left me at the post office when they left to go home. Times I spent with Rikard’s family were so very dear, including building a wooden shoe out of a rowboat so we could put his sister’s bike in it. Because all Christmas presents must fit in a shoe.
I especially don’t know how to tell this part of the story. I don’t know how to tell it because my memory is spotty and my disbelief so profound that I couldn’t believe it was happening. No one should have to live in that place, and especially a lost 17-year-old. Can I tell you about the part where Rikard wanted me gone? Like really gone. He lost me in a card game to a Surinamese merchant marine. I was in my room because I was not up for being at a loud party, but Rikard was yelling for me to come help make snacks and get people drinks. That was when I met this man whose name I have never known. I know a lot about him, though. Like his birthmark on his hip, and what he smells like. I know what he feels like inside of me. I know he was shorter than me and was smooth and muscular. I know how it felt when he landed a punch on my cheek and everything went white, and what it also feels like to give up and stop fighting. I know he was strong and I thought I would smother in the pillow. I know what it feels like to have a cigarette put out on my shoulder. It’s never what you think it will feel like. Punches don’t feel like a crack or a bam. They sound like something dull and squishy, and try as you might to keep fighting, you have to stop and find your breath again. I know what it feels like to tear inside and pray not to bleed to death, to be covered in blood and piss and shit and cum and tears and snot and hate. I know what fear tastes like.
But I also know what it feels like to realize the bar in the bedframe is loose. And how when you start swinging that bar you cannot stop swinging it until the person you are swinging it at is unconscious or dead. I know what it sounds like to hear a chorus of angels tell me to wake the fuck up and fight. And to look at my hands become weird blue light as I just become motion and destiny. I knew in that moment what it felt like to want to live. For a brief second, I felt like I did when I used to sing to the stars. I watched him slip, and in a moment that I see over and over, I see him grab for the railing of the stairs. And as if it were disembodied, I see my hand bring the bar down hard on his hand. I see his dark eyes look up at me, the first acknowledgment that I was a person. And I swung the bar at him as hard as I could. Even now, I think you will think I am evil for having done this thing, for having looked in his eyes and made sure he tumbled.
I stood at the top of the stairs, everything was still. People were staring at me, and I went quietly to my room. The other people scattered, I knew the police would arrive soon. I felt like I was far away and shaking. I packed my bags and couldn’t find my shoe. I left with only one shoe and went to the bus stop to wait for the night bus. I locked eyes with Rikard’s brother Rudy as I stood by the canal. He was trying to get back to the house after being at the bar. We stared at each other for a full minute, and then I slipped away, amid all the fuss. People in little towns never stop you on your way. They are all much too curious about what happened. I got on the bus and left, in the middle of the night, in the cold, with one shoe. And I never saw Appingedam again.
In the dark, I made my way to Kees. He was the only beacon of light in my broken mind. I only knew I needed to be with him in the moment when I had nowhere to go. There were only two of us on the bus at that time of night. I went to him, an unwanted piece of refuse, flotsam and jetsam, a 17-year-old with a cracked cheekbone and one shoe, leaking my liquid horror story into my dress and scarf. Now I dream of my dead Kees, who holds up fingers to tell me which songs to listen to on the ABBA greatest hits album, still trying to help me find my way. I always dream of him when I can’t fight anymore. There is this truth, that people will love you for letting them catch you. I landed in his arms.
Maybe what leaks out of this wound isn’t pollution. Maybe it is grief. It could be cleansing, the draining of the last dregs of a poison I have carried in my flesh for years. If so, then I say let this flow out of me. I still have to answer that question of if I want this love in my life. And I do. I have to take a deep breath when I say this. It feels like a whisper, a hope I don’t dare to have. South seems pleased. “Dare,” he says.
Seyewailo 