Page 1 of And Still Her Voice
CHAPTER 1
The Bloody Knife
I stabbed my dad Easter Sunday, 1967, the day Jesus rose from the dead so that we might live forever. At least I thought so, not that I ever had it in me to kill him, or anyone. Plus, I didn’t mean to.
Decades later, I still feel the knife, heavy in my hand and stained with his blood, his shocked face, the whites of his watery eyes, salmon pink now, the irises camouflaging into a metal grey, a look like he couldn’t believe me capable of such an act. The whole scene would haunt me until the day I died which, at the time—because of the whole Jesus resurrection and my grandmother’s transfer to me of her consciousness—I believed meant for eternity.
Even now, I sense the vibrations of Grandma Phoebe’s cigarette-raspy voice rattling inside my young head with every step I take. And by voice, I mean, sometimes it’s something morethought-like, other times it’s literally out loud and I have to be careful not to be around anyone who might think I’m some looney kid talking to an imaginary rabbit. Grandma’s emotions come in an aura of different colors. “Anna, go back home,” she says in an anger-tinged mauve, a color that tastes like cigarettes. I hum out loud trying to drown her out, but still her tone cauterizes my brain and I think I can almost smell it. “Darling, he’ll be fine,” she says in a soothing green, tasting of menthol cough drops.
Except, I’d seen all the blood. How could he be fine? I wouldn’t be going back, even if I stayed out past sundown in this part of Glendale’s all white community, where, according to my father, a “darkie” could still get lynched should she be out after the sun slips behind the dusky Verdugo’s. Half Mexican on my mother’s side, but also cloaked in Dad’s whiteness, the last thing I worried about at the moment was passing.
Looking back, I see my sixteen-year old withered self, twigs for arms and legs elongated in the shadows over the moonlit asphalt. Cold, sallow skin, darkness circling, fever-shined, hazel-green eyes, I’m too dizzy and weak to move, yet I’m a survivor filled with adrenaline from a lethal combination of fear and rage as I push myself on the run of my life. Knife strapped to my leg, guitar bouncing on my back, wild auburn hair flying behind me as the sound of sirens gets closer. Except, I’m not alone.
***
There’d be no outrunning my looming migraine, much less Grandma, a royal pain in the cabeza who’d also hitched along for the ride.If you had a bodyof your own, maybe I would’ve stabbed you, instead.Every step I took down the street felt like a hammer to my skull. My period usually brought on the headaches, also leading to memory lapses, but since I’d lost my baby fat andmy boobs, I hadn’t had a period in a while. So, now headaches were a signal I needed to eat.
I slowed down.Am Ihaving a heart attack?The metallic taste of blood rose up from my heart beating louder than the sounds of the emergency vehicles blaring up Cañada Boulevard. Some nosy neighbor must have called again. After a bit, I stopped to catch my breath. Hands planted on my knees, pulse-pounding and panting; I became disoriented. Under the zigzag lights beaming from the Glendale swastika-designed streetlamps, my eyes throbbed as I tried to focus on my watch. The wiggly little hands pointed to just past midnight. I looked up to see that I’d only made it as far as the park near our house. Verdugo Park where just yesterday, after the anti-Nazi protest, the community had held its annual Easter egg hunt complete with a giant Easter Bunny whom I knew to be our old pro-Nazi neighbor, Mr. Krüger. I’d recognized his voice when he talked to Dad about how our neighbors the Blumenthal’s people had killed Jesus. Mom hated Dad hanging around someone who’d “killed the Jews.” “Who next?” she’d ask. “The Mexicans?”
Through the moon’s muddled reflection on the stagnant puddles, I could see I’d escaped home still in my pink nightgown underneath the white sweater I’d worn to Mass earlier. When will it all stop? Carrying my pillowcase like a knapsack on my back, I’d had enough sense to stuff it with a change of clothes and my diary. I wasn’t your normal sixteen-year-old so definitely I’d die—irony of ironies—if I were to leave behind my crazy thoughts for anyone to read. Morbid stuff like:I’ve been wearing sadnesslike my heavy sweater for a long time. Being terrifiedonly interrupts the ongoing unhappiness. I hate my parents. Iwish I were dead.
I cut through the park, head throbbing, tears streaming down my cheeks, my gown getting bunched up between freshly shaved thighs. Slowing to reach down and fix myself, I realizedI’d at least had the sense to pull on a pair of thick knee-socks, good for hiding things like money and the six-inch Bowie knife, the one I’d used to—to stab my father.I stabbed Dad! But, how could I?
Under a labyrinth of leafy shadows, I weaved through the sycamores, squirrels taking cover as I recited out loud the Act of Contrition.Oh my God, I am heartily sorry forhaving offended Thee, and I detest all my sins becauseof Thy just punishment . . .
My shoespunished worse than any Catholic penance, as if my feet wept the Hail Mary Janes through the three teardrops cut out of the leather sides. I shouldn’t have put the white patent leather Sunday shoes I’d worn for Mass earlier back on, except I only owned one other pair of sneakers which would have been better to run in, but obviously I wasn’t thinking so straight. Who could think straight after doing what I’d done?I firmly resolve, with thehelp of Thy grace, to sin no more and avoidthe near occasion of sin.The sin in my heart rushed up and ran away from my eyes. I wiped my tears with my sleeve.
Deep in the belly of the park, sirens blared far away. Squaring my shoulders, I lifted my chin and took off until I got to the edge of the mossy arroyo.
And still her voice, burbling like the creek, the liquid sound rushing up through the loops and whirls against the dark snail-shaped spirals in the walls of my inner ear. “We’re okay.” The water babbling over the polished pebbles sounded soothing, hypnotic, but then even over gurgling, there’d be no drowning out the voice in my head, a drone, neither young nor old, just timeless; neither high nor low, just sort of neutral like the murmur of a hornet, unless she had something to prove which was pretty much all the time. She’d say I needed shaping and fine-tuning as if I were her stupid piano or my guitar.We’re okay? Oh, I’m so damn tiredof we.
“Turn around, Anna. He was drunk,” Grandma muttered without emotion, as if being tanked excused everything. “Darling, he was angry with me, not you.”
Dad had been pretty pissed with his mother for a long time. Even before I ever came into this world. “Yeah, so why am I always the one to suffer?” I massaged my thumping temples as a withered sycamore leaf drifted down the creek. I wished I could hop on and sail down to the ocean.
“You’re not the only one,” she said as if that was any consolation.
“But Iamthe only onewho killed him.” The leaf stuck to a river stone. “With my hands.”
“Oh darling, you didn’t kill him.”
“What? How do you know? Now, you’re psychic?”
“I just know he isn’t dead—at least, not yet.”
“Not yet? Like I should turn around and risk spending the rest of my life in jail? And then I’d surely be stuck behind bars with you.”
“You do have a point, my dear.”
My molars clamped together. Unfortunately, there’d be no escaping the voice and she wasn’t about to butt out now.
“He hates me, not you,” Grandma said.
“And he was angry with you, so why should I give a fuck!?” I stopped again to catch my breath. “So, what’s your plan, Grandma?”
“It’s a dangerous world out there.” I could just imagine her checking her luminously painted nails. “You’ll get hurt.”
“Like you care. Like I haven’t been hurt enough at home,” I snapped back, dashing through the park like a scared coyote escaping a hillside fire.
