Nichole Davies
The best stories are the ones that hurt. We laugh at the funny ones, smile with the happy ones, but we remember the ones that remind us the world is red. Of all the people who read Jane Eyre, only a few could tell you how she decided to marry the man, but most could certainly tell you where the fire happened and who started it. There’s a problem though. Sometimes the stories are too bright, too red, too close to ourselves. We can remember Bertha’s terrible story, but can we remember our own fires? I remember some really bad stories. I remember the story of Kronos eating his own children. I remember the story of Hitler. I remember the story of my classmate breaking his leg, but I don’t remember that I was one of the students who watched it. Watched it shatter under a snowman that had turned to ice, falling on him when he ran into it by accident. He walked with a limp for the rest of the time I knew him. Stories that red, they leave prints we can’t see. I don’t like sledding. I don’t like icy hills. I’m afraid of snowmen.
The fourth grade is a red story. I was in extended studies, a class built for students who are advanced in “outside the box” thinking. The class would join every day for two hours with a special teacher, and only a select few students were included, two boys and myself. We worked together on group projects. We learned about big issues like race and economics, just at a smaller scale, so we could understand.
My teacher in our regular class, Mr. Matter, always treated the boys a little differently when we got back to the regular classroom. They were part of a small group he would take from the regular students to do advanced math within his classroom. Even though I was very good at math and had been placed into extended studies for both math and reading, he didn’t include me in this other group. Nor in the special group he had for reading. Slowly I began to fail the fourth grade.
“Rusty, there’s no reason she should be failing. How do you fail in the fourth grade? Don’t they mostly get participation anyways?”
My mother’s voice drifted up the stairs to the bathroom where I sat on the toilet, trying not to breathe too loud. This was the spot I sat many nights throughout my childhood. Curled up on the fussy blue seat cover, pretending to still be in my bedroom down the hallway. My house was built for a family of six, but by the time I reached an age to remember things in detail, all my siblings had gone to school, gotten married, had children, and my parents continued their squandering. Completely unaware of the way their voices echoed through the empty and hollow floors. Passing judgment, discussing parenting styles, plans of action, as if their nine-year-old could not hear their arguments blaring through her dreams. So, I’m pretty sure that this was their conversation, though I don’t really remember. I just know what most arguments sounded like and the topic they were discussing on this night: me, my grades, my teacher, my behavior.
“I don’t know! I don’t know!”
I imagine my father throwing up his hands or collapsing into a chair only to stand as if to salute an officer walking by, actions he still makes when frustrated.
“We’re going to have to talk to her teacher more. There must be something more he’s not saying. She can’t just go from the smartest kid in the room to the dumbest.” My mother’s shrill voice is the thing I remember the most, and its echoes only get faster in my memories. I don’t know what it sounded like when she would give me a kiss or put me to bed. Those things are too nice to be included in the red stories.
They argued for some time.
My mother tells me now, “You were always so independent. People say girls get bad when they’re seventeen. You got bad at ten.” Well, I was worse at seventeen. Dating a skater boy, smoking, skipping class, never cleaning my room, losing my grades on purpose, drinking my dad’s beer, and showing up to youth group drunk. I lost my sweet memories of my mother. They darken under the infrared lights of arguments and petty fights. All of which started in the fourth grade, but one hides them under the brightest red you can light without accidentally forcing yourself to forget. I don’t remember what the actual argument was about. I just remember standing in front of the sink.
It’s dark outside. Mornings during Montana winters are always dark. It’s slowly brightening to a rich blue. The horizon blending musty orange onto the blackened silhouettes of pine trees.
Inside the kitchen window a mother fights with a stout child. Trying to get her out the door to school, but it’s a bad day. Some days she wakes up hoping to manage breakfast well. To get protein into the little body, some water and send her on her way, but most days the simplest things are the hardest. Just like most children her daughter is picky, only liking burnt scrambled eggs or oatmeal. Water is gross and milk is too milky. Today is one of the worst days. The girl’s socks are different colors, her hair is matted because she won’t brush it, and they are late.
“I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!” Angry tears cloud the little girl’s vision and she stomps her foot hard with each “I.” She’s been acting up this year worse than any of the mother’s other kids.
“Shut up!” They never spank their kids, but this time anger gets the better of her, and she reaches over and pops the girl on the ear.
The stomping abruptly pauses. Her eyes widen with the child’s, and they stare at each other for a moment. Mother and daughter freeze until she, the mother, gives, shaking herself from the surprise. “Now there, let’s go to school. No more arguing. I’m sorry I hit you.” She grabs the purple backpack off the wooden chair and pushes the curly head out the door into the car.
Silence is the backdrop to small sniffles. The mother gently rubs the girl’s back while they drive.
“I’m sorry, baby. Mommy should not have done that.”
The girl’s sniffles grow to full-blown sobbing, and the car stops. The mother has pulled over and is wrapping the little body in a hug. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mommy.”
When I got to school that morning Mr. Matter noticed my red eyes and called on me for a question. When I couldn’t answer without crying, he pulled me out of the classroom and asked me what was wrong. Here’s where red blinds me. I see only in the darkroom on photographic film.
Teachers are mandatory reporters. That’s very important and helps lots of children, but this time all it did was make it harder to fix the real problem: the teacher. Child protective services were called on my mother. My parents tell me they were able to prove that nothing happened, that they were not abusive. I find light ruined flashes of spending the whole day talking to new adults in fancy clothes who asked me questions about my mom: like, would I want to see her in jail? How would that make me feel? Do I love my mother? Was she super busy? Was I afraid of her?
Fear echoes back in answer. Why would my mom go to jail? She hadn’t done anything but scare me; it didn’t even hurt. Who are you? You don’t seem like a safe adult. I want to tell my mom palomino. NO you do not get to know what that means. (It was our safe word with strangers.) Yes she’s busy, she works a lot. Daddy takes care of me when she’s on mission trips. Why are you twisting my answers?
When I was finally released back to my parents, I’m told, I was very scared and crying. I thought I had sent my mother to jail and I would never see her again.
Sometime later my parents figured out that my teacher had been bullying me. Apparently I confessed the next day or the next week that he treated me differently in class. He used my assignments as examples of what not to do. He excluded me from groups my friends were in and would often call me dumb in front of the class.
Once we were playing Scrabble, I told them, and I asked for help. He came over and found a word I couldn’t see right away. This is the only memory that develops clearly: he said, “Are you stupid? There’s a word right there! If you can’t see that, how can you say you belong in the extended class?”
***
Sometimes even the red stories are ones we forget. They are too much, too hurtful, too red, and we hide them in our memories. Hide them from even ourselves. Hide them and forget them on purpose without even realizing we have done so. Our minds try to protect us. I don’t actually remember telling my parents what happened. I don’t remember every instance. I don’t remember my father coming to class to watch Mr. Matter teach and discovering the way he treated every girl differently from the boys, but because I was in the “smart class,” I got the worst of it. I don’t remember every bad thing that happened. I just remember what others said and the small pictures that my mind has accidentally let leak through. Like my extended teacher telling my parents they needed to provide real proof and she would help them find it. Like my friends holding me after he’d throw my homework in the trash.
Sometimes the red is too bright for the people it happens to, but it does leave behind the foggy, half-developed prints. To this day, I hate math. I don’t like Scrabble. I’m afraid of adult men. Maybe we remember Bertha’s fire story, but if she could answer, would she remember enough to tell us exactly what happened? Or, would she only be able to see the prints of the past in her behavior?
Nichole Davies grew up in Billings, Montana as a youth leader’s daughter turned wild. She enjoys plants. home aquariums, disobeying rules, and learning about oddities like Bigfoot or the ghost in her family home. Her work can be found in publications such as Asterium, The Rocky Mountain Review, Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Allegheny Review, and FeverDream Magazine.
The Rocky Mountain Review 