I hear—more than feel—my body hit the wall. The hand that belongs to my mother’s husband grips the back of my neck and propels me into the painted sheetrock. He takes a firmer grip. Face and wall collide. I am thirteen, and a third his size. I want to raise my hands, to put them between him and me, or between me and the wall, but they fall uselessly at my side. He grabs my left wrist, twists it behind me. I hear—more than feel—one part of my shoulder tear away from the other, though the blinding flash of light tells me that, somewhere, I hurt.
A noun names a person, place, thing, or idea. I am a thing.
The flash of light behind my eyes is stark, white, like the summer heat outside the window. Over his breathing, the grunt of his effort, I hear singing, a mockingbird. The neighbor’s lawnmower putts up and down the boundary between our back yards. I hear myself whimper, not because I feel pain but because I cannot see his face, and I do not know when, this time, he will stop. If he will stop.
My mother stands in the doorway to the room. Her hand is on her hip. I reach toward her with my right hand, wanting her to touch me, to touch him, to stop this. I think she draws away. I know that my nails scrape the hard wood of the doorframe. Her voice, cold, slides in from somewhere, miles away from either of us.
“Hit her again.”
He does.
A noun names an idea. One idea: That my mother will protect me from the rage of this man she has married. An idea is still a noun, even if it is not true.
A noun names a person. The pain that remains in my shoulder seems to have a life of its own. I name it “Fred.”
A noun names a place. High school is a noun. It is a place where I can sleep and be safe for a while. Church is a noun. It is a place where my mother and sister and I sit—without her husband—and pretend that nothing is wrong in the house where we all live, like trapped animals, together.
Except.
One night, one of the girls in Wednesday night Bible study accidentally bumps my shoulder. My knees buckle but I hold my breath and will myself impervious. I am fourteen now; Fred and I know this routine. I take a deep breath. I tell the girl I am fine.
Behind the girl is her mother, who touches her hand to the small of my back and says, “I just need to see about you” in a voice of such gentleness that I cannot stop myself from moving toward her. She guides me into the restroom, where I watch her face change from pink to gray to white as she peers around my collar, lifts my blouse and then my skirt. With each motion she says, “I’m so sorry. I won’t hurt you.” I know what she sees on my arms and legs: new, livid purple and blue welts; faded yellow and brown and greenish stripes; round bruises on the back of my neck, the size and shape of fingers.
She touches my left arm; I try to pull away then stop, drop my chin onto my chest, mouth open, to quell the wave of nausea. She places wet paper towels on my forehead and the back of my neck.
“How would you like to spend the night at my house?”
A noun names a place. House is a noun. A house is where people live. A house is where people get hurt. I shake my head. My mother will never agree. Our business is our business. Her husband will be livid. He… no.
“No.”
I wonder what this woman’s house looks like.
I remember her hands, where her palms touch my skin feels cool. I am sure I shake my head, no no no. The hell there will be to pay if my mother finds out. A hotter hell if she tells her husband. How long are we there in the small bathroom? Probably only a few minutes, but it feels longer as I lean, cow-dumb, into her tenderness.
We leave the bathroom. My mother is nowhere to be seen. I follow the woman and her daughter to their car, and I spend the night at their house. I have no idea what she says to my mother. The next morning, the woman and her husband ask if I would like to live with them. A different place. With different persons. Where I might not be a thing.
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
* * *
I am five when I begin first grade. I love book time, where I am the fastest reader, and hate recess, where I am the playground’s slowest and smallest, the target of the class bully. In second grade, my high-school-age neighbor sits next to me on the school bus and coaches me on how to defend myself. To repay her, I read her biology textbook aloud to her on the long ride into town. In social studies, I am mesmerized by geography, by the coded lines and symbols on maps. I imagine myself a bird—regal hawk? sturdy robin?—swooping over a bird’s-eye view of the landscape, riding invisible currents, first over mysterious land, then over limitless sea.
As my teacher’s agitation grows, I add but refuse to subtract. I do not understand the removal as symbolic and thus fear that the thing in question—apples, oranges, cookies, boys, girls—will disappear if I “take away” as ordered. My teacher is relieved when I finally, after weeks of resistance, take eight away from twelve and write the four, clear and sharp cornered, below the line. Though she warns my mother and father—he is still alive then—that I “might not” be very bright.
After school, as I perch in the pecan tree just east of our house, I explore the landscape of language, the adding and subtracting of words and phrases. I don’t read—I gobble, slurp, gulp. I dive headlong into whatever book I can get my hands on. Every Beverly Cleary dog-and-girl adventure. Harriet the Spy, Pippi Longstocking, Louisa May Alcott, and the entire Little House series. Collections of sing-song poetry. The red-lettered King James Bible that my grandparents gave me when I learned to read. Science books on dinosaurs, trees, horses, and reptiles. On the bus, I steadily make my way through my neighbor’s biology textbook, complete with intriguing diagrams of body parts below the waist, the region my grandmother refers to mysteriously as “down there.”
My grandparents refer to my elementary school as “grammar school,” a label I’ve always thought funny because I have no recall of learning grammar, the systems and structures of language. But because I read so much, I begin to absorb its DNA, the rules for making new word-life—inflection, syntax, word forms—even though I am not yet conscious of grammar as the means to combine all those words in all those ways to make story and sermon, saga and snake tale.
* * *
After we begin living with my mother’s new husband, after my father dies, I learn some new nouns: weed, speed, liquor, barbs, hash, Camel. I’m sure my English class studies grammar, but I don’t remember—not because my teachers are ineffective but because I am, as they say, impaired. Routine can be an adjective, but for me it is a noun: speed in the morning to lever myself out of bed, barbs at night to undo the speed and sag into a few hours of sleep. Creative combinations of alcohol and weed spackle the spaces in between. They allow me to tell people—and perhaps myself—that I am fine. They make the bruises hurt less. They help me forget, at least until the next time, the look on my mother’s face, as she looks away. My friend Jodi shows me how to carefully remove tobacco from a Camel and replace the tobacco with hash. A Camelash? A Hashamel? I hate the taste, whatever we call them, and cough until my eyes and nose stream. But they let me forget some other nouns for a while: Fred. Fear.
* * *
The woman who decodes the person-thing-idea of my body that night in the church restroom becomes my legal guardian. After the court hearing, my sister places her hands, palms down, squarely against my chest and shoves me as hard as she can. She says she hates me, never wants to see or speak to me again; I have shamed and betrayed us, talking about our business to outsiders. She neatly sidesteps the fact that she moved out of the house before I did—and talked plenty about why.
After the hearing, my mother calls me once, spits into the phone that I have ruined her marriage and destroyed her family. I don’t believe her, but I still feel guilty.
* * *
In a sentence, a noun can function as subject or object. Subject: a noun that performs an action or is described. Object: a noun that follows or receives the action of the verb or identifies the result of the action.
The man strikes the girl. Object.
The girl picks herself up, walks into a new life. Subject.
* * *
When my guardians ask me if I have used drugs or alcohol, I say, “Some.” A pronoun. A word that substitutes for a noun. In this case, an indefinite pronoun, which allows me to answer and not answer, at the same time. I don’t want to lie, but I am afraid that the definite truth will make them send me away.
And it is the truth, to a point. At my mother’s house, I take the drugs to function, to calm Fred, to sleep, to feel like a subject in control of the syntax of my life, not just the object receiving someone else’s actions. Unlike my classmates who play pharmaceutical roulette to find the edgiest high, I derive no wild pleasure from my substances. I welcome the energy uptick from the small, white tabs of speed, the sense that if I get upright and in motion, I can figure out a way to navigate the day. I shudder at the taste of liquor, hold my breath while sipping cheap, yeasty beer from a bottle snugged in a brown bag. They don’t make the pain go away. They do warm the icy spot that takes up so much space in my chest. At night, as I slide down the dark cliff toward sleep, I know that, for a short time at least, I will be free from feeling anything at all.
* * *
My new family applauds my new life as subject—clean and sober, in charge, neatly picking up the new person in a new place. Rebirth. Do we have any idea what we are getting into? None. Both a pronoun (not one) and an adverb (in no way, not at all). The shakes and the sweats, the endlessly itchy skin, and the “dreams” of a room crawling with spiders are (I know now) symptoms of do-it-yourself drug and alcohol withdrawal. During those first nights, as the rest of my new family sleeps, I sweat, shiver, and pace. My shoulder crackles and throbs. I scratch the spiders off my arms and when I am ready to scream, I put a pillow over my mouth and count to ten, to twenty, to one hundred. Addition, not subtraction. I wonder if saying “yes” to a new life as subject is really such a great idea. As object, life had a familiar rhythm that was perversely comforting. In this new life, people look me in the eye and ask me how I feel. I am expected to show up at the dinner table and converse. Each day seems to last three and each night stretches into eternity. And what then? What person, place, or thing lies beyond? While everyone else sleeps I stand at the window, watching the moon wax into full and cross the night sky.
One night about three weeks after I move in, I feel suddenly boneless, so exhausted I can barely climb into bed. I sleep deeply and without dreams. I wake as the sun is rising. I shower, pull on a t-shirt. It slides over my skin, tweaking the scabs on my arms. I look in the mirror, see a cascade of curly hair, deep under-eye circles, a pale, taut face. A person—me. A place—a new home. An idea—I might be safe here. A thing—family? I go downstairs. My stomach growls so loudly that I stop still, waiting for someone to thunder “Who the hell is making all that noise?” My new parents don’t say that. They say, “Are you hungry?” My stomach roars yes before I can reply. They smile, fill my plate with soft scrambled eggs and toast.
* * *
A collective noun is a singular form that denotes a group. Examples: team, crowd, jury, audience, family, class, flock. The team plays, using its collective strength, which is mightier than its individual talents. The museum crowd moves from exhibit to exhibit. The jury decides that a mother is no mother after all. The audience gasps at the same time, riding along on the communal emotion that ripples and surges between couples, rows, sections, that sometimes does not fade until long after the movie is over. The family quietly includes a girl in its life, gives her chores, clean clothes, warm food, and a hug at bedtime. The class looks at the new girl in curious anticipation. The flock of blackbirds kiting by her window rises and falls, turns in midair, as if each bird is attached to its multitude of neighbors by a small, exquisitely tuned string, as if they all are one.
Abstract nouns refer to concepts; concrete nouns refer to things perceived by the senses. My new school about a mile from my guardian’s house is concrete, literally, with that bland institutional flooring shared by schools, hospitals, and prisons. A bell clangs. The concrete and tile hallways surge with students, who stomp and yell and then miraculously disappear through narrow doorways just as another bell rings. I try to count them then stop, my head spinning. Many wear faded jeans and t-shirts. Some of the girls sport short, tight skirts sandwiched between tall leather boots and frilly, scoop-neck tops. A few are swallowed by oversize football jerseys. A lone male student centers his wide striped necktie over his button-down shirt. I notice that no one speaks to him as everyone clatters through the halls.
More concepts: awkwardness. Loneliness. I am the new kid entering a new school in the middle of the term. All those people move in small, connected groups through the hallways, but I know no one and no one knows me. Collective, minus one. Two, if you count the kid in the tie. Alliances and partnerships have been established well before I arrive. Everywhere I go I feel as if hundreds of eyes are following me. One new girl, both concept and count.
I try to decipher the hierarchy of the student body as they flow by, to see where I might fit in: thick-necked guy stuffed into an Izod shirt: jock. By his side, a pale blonde girl admiring both the guy and her glittering nails: cheerleader. Gaggle of beret-topped kids hollering “Mais OUI!”: French Club. I wonder if they can read me as well: “Ward of the court.” “Girl whose mother won’t protect her.” Or maybe just “Trouble.”
My assigned guidance counselor clearly falls into the latter category. I wait while he reads my file. He wrinkles his nose. He sighs. I know what he sees: uneven grades, many absences. He “sincerely hopes” I will not cause any trouble in his school (possessive pronoun: belonging to him, not me). He is certain that I will “make better choices this time” (adjective: of superior quality; more virtuous, obviously not me). He seems to be waiting for me to say something. When I do not, he slaps the file on his desk, says, “Well then, come along,” and escorts me to my second-period class.
* * *
A noun is a place. All the other students have snagged seats close to the back of the room. I get a front-row seat, all to myself. What I perceive with my senses: I see the orange ball of early-winter sun suspended outside the window. I feel chilled and exhausted. I hear my heartbeat pound in my ears. I taste my dry lips, giving silent thanks that I did not eat the breakfast my guardian offered earlier that morning.
“You need your strength,” she said.
I need a drink, I thought, though I didn’t say it out loud, given that I was officially clean and sober.
The classroom windows are closed but I can smell the cigarette smoke from the designated smoking area; every cell in my body shifts in its direction. I pull my sweater down over my hands; my arms still feature scratches and scabs in various stages of healing. Maybe I can cover up the rest of me and hide. Maybe, if I stay very still, no one will notice me.
Common nouns refer to any member of a category. Class. Teacher. Proper nouns are specific names. In this case, English, and Mrs. Kelly. And she is quite specific: five feet tall; shaped like a well-fed pear; thick black hair rounded at the top, a flip at the shoulder-length ends, and a Cruella de Vil streak of white highlighting the crown. A gauzy scarf twines around her neck and flows down her back. Mrs. Kelly strides toward me on brisk, sensible heels, and it takes everything I have not to leap out of the chair and bolt into the hallway. Mrs. Kelly says, “Hello and welcome,” and sounds like she means it. She matter-of-factly hands me a copy of the Harbrace Handbook and tells me what page the class is reviewing.
* * *
It would be a vast oversimplification to say that I find—in the Harbrace Handbook or Mrs. Kelly’s class or my new home—everything I need to leave the chaos of my former life behind. I yearn for my mother, not her presence, exactly, but the hope that she will say, “I’m sorry.” I miss my sister, who is making her way in and out of places that are much less kind than the place I am living. I don’t miss my mother’s husband, or their house. I do miss disappearing, as strange as that may seem. I really miss cigarettes.
Even so, the reality of my life, for the first time in a long time, is this: a hot breakfast, school, afternoon snack, homework, dinner, bed. Concrete nouns, rock solid and reliable. Abstract nouns: safety, peace. Sometimes I wake up breathless from nightmares, but I am not alone. The woman who becomes the mother to my true self listens out for me at night. She walks softly, on the balls of her feet, holding her housecoat to keep it from rustling, so as not to startle me. I do not realize until months later that I never hear her leave; she hums and rubs my back where the knots have formed between my shoulder blades, until I fall asleep.
* * *
In Mrs. Kelly’s class, second period, Monday through Friday, we continue our journey through the Harbrace Handbook. I am pretty good at grammar, as it turns out. Although my classmates seem to struggle with discerning where sentences begin and end, I easily spot independent and subordinate clauses. I make verb tenses consistent and steady them, keep them from veering between present and past. Moody, I speak to myself in the interrogative, dream of confronting my mother and her husband and all the people who looked the other way in the imperative. I devour stacks of books, struck by how the sentences arc and peak, ebb and flow, each seductive stack of words building a powerful tower of meaning. Nouns can be subject as well as object. Pronouns and antecedents agree in number and person, no clashes, no confrontations. Verbs create action in sentences, in many forms: infinitive, participle past and present, future, conditional. To live. I cried. I am learning. I will laugh. If I forget….
Another joy of Mrs. Kelly’s class, I must confess, is watching the absurdly muscled members of the football squad sweat through the verbal grammar drills, the ones I navigate with ease.
“Please identify the dangling modifier, Mr. Ackerman.” Mrs. Kelly points to an obvious flaw in the sentence on the board.
“Dang!” says Mr. Ackerman.
“No, sir. That’s an interjection.”
“Ha! The tie guy!!!” I scribble lines of exclamation points in my notebook.
I also smile to myself when Mrs. Kelly emphasizes the intimate and unalterable relationship between passing grades in English and the ability to play football for the mighty Fighting Patriots. On the outside I am still tongue-tied, the quietest member of the class who speaks only when commanded, which Mrs. Kelly does, with unnerving regularity. At the same time, I begin to like some of my other classes. I find a few other misfits to eat lunch with; I walk home in the brisk wind and feel strength returning to my arms and legs. My shoulder aches, but it is healing, and I can hug my new father. I don’t remember when I realize that I am leading a regular life, looking forward to meals with my family, to the predictable routine of homework and chores. I especially anticipate Mrs. Kelly’s class, where I work my way from collective nouns to transitive and intransitive verbs, to case and mood, to the vast wealth of punctuation: comma breath, semicolon pause, full stop, exclaim, query. I open the eyes of the squinting modifiers, rescue those precariously dangling, scoop up the misplaced ones, and gently—almost reverently—put them back where they belong.
In that front row, listening to the tense breathing of the defensive linemen seated behind me, I begin to learn not only the conventions of grammar but also the rules of possibility: I remember my days and sleep through most of my nights; after school, I go to my home, and no one there strikes or screams. There is a quiet consistency that, on occasion, bores me but more often leads me into dreaming about what can be.
A flock of kiting birds. A class of eager students. A team of terrified Patriots. A family of peaceable people. We soar. We learn. We quake. We live.
Beth Richards’s work has appeared in Fourth Genre (Editor’s Prize), Solstice Literary Magazine, Talking Writing, and the Cincinnati Review (Robert and Adele Schiff Award); in two anthologies—Coming Out in the South and Into Sanity—and in Michael Steinberg’s blog (#84, “Stories and Stars”). She is a Florida native who migrated north and (much later) earned an MFA from the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program (Lasell University).