When I was eleven, my dad gave me my first flying lesson.
I was a dreamy child.
I could stare into the fleece clouds and blue skies
and travel with them between lunch and supper.
If asked, I couldn#8217;t say where I had been exactly.
One late afternoon, I had been watching a spider
mend its web in the wind.
My father had been in his workshop.
You could hear his expletives explode from the open door.
He hated when anything went wrong.
He had a Manichean view that the world was against him.
We tried to avoid him then.
We had a sixth sense of skirting his erratic anger.
But today, I was detained by repairings of a tidy spider.
He saw me.
His anger had an object.
I saw my error and tried to edge away.
Too late! He called me to him.
His left hand gouged my clavicle in a deepening claw.
He loved interrogations. His face twisted in a sneer.
He asked what I was doing.
I told him. He laughed, #8220;Spiders!#8221;
He talked close to my face.
I could smell his lunch and nervous stomach.
I backed away. He pushed forward.
This set the rhythm for our dance.
We turned in a small circle.
Then he reached and grabbed my left leg and arm.
He twirled me, round and round.
I was getting dizzy, but I could see the look on his face.
There was a maniacal glee.
We whirled through his past, his gorge.
He knew he was hurting me, toying with me.
It reminded me of the times at the county fair.
He would ply me with food and take me on all the dizzying rides.
He would laugh and laugh like a demented clown.
I always threw up. I knew it disappointed him.
No one could fly like him.
He had wings from the U.S. Navy to prove it.
I saw another look on his face as he spun me, one of wonder.
Round and round and round, the speed and pull increased.
I knew, instinctively, he would let me go to see what would happen.
It was the bully in him, born of being bullied.
I flew with surprise, uncomprehending his cruelty.
I fell and my breath was forced out me.
I thought I was paralyzed, staring blankly up at the sky.
My father ran around the side of the garage.
Where could he run to after this?
How had it come to this?
He had given up all rights.
In one instant I disavowed his world.
But he did coming running back.
He knelt over me.
I waited, trying to catch my breath.
His breath was close, smelling of sour stomach.
He leaned close without touching me,
whispered a few words and left.
I lay in the grass.
The clouds and blue sky shrank above.
His words came to me after a time, well after he left.
His tone was threatening and pleading with restrained tears like a child.
#8220;Don#8217;t tell your mother! Don#8217;t tell!#8221;
As if my silence would alter his life.
Because you see, she was figuratively his mother, too.
He had never left home.
