Punch. (Full stop.)
Hilary Fair
Punch drunk.
I imagine that’s how my parents felt while they were making me. When they were young and probably stoned, full of those big, animal impulses that compel us to rub our body parts together and mix up our fluids—a thing we do over and over again for the whole of our lifetimes, no matter how smart or stupid we are.
Punch him in the face.
That’s what I’d do. And I imaginethat’s whatmy mother wanted to do, too,eight months laterwhen my dad was long gone and she was alone in a gray and blue delivery room,labouring hard to get me out of her.
Punch. (Full stop.)
That’s what my mother started to call me after she saw how I came out (which was squalling and scrappy, with my hands clenched and ready to brawl). I was a littlepremature but a wild woman even then, andbeside all the really tiny babies in the ICU, the ones who were actually half way between living and dying, I looked robust. And I’vestayed that way—[L1]hearty, and quick with my fists, I mean—pummeling the air and anyone who gets their face in the way, ever since[L2].
My legal name is “April May Elizabeth Simons![L3]” but only uptight or exasperated people call me that. Examples: Mrs. Eghetz, my grade six teacher, who said, “I will notcondone violent behaviour by indulging such an ungodly chosen name;”and my mother when she was yelling, which wasoften enough; and, more recently,the judge[L4].
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” Her Honour’s name wasFrancis J. Denver-Pringle and that sadhyphen [L5]was her own doing, I’m sure of it. She wasramrod[L6],an airtight piece of a woman, with acompletely vertical spine (how does that happen?)and a body that movedonly at the neck and the head.(Andsometimes a little more, of course, likewhen she lifted her hand to write things about me on the papers in front of her.)Her face was stony and humourless—compensating, probably, for the fragility of her little bones. Underneath thelacquer, the auberginepantsuit[L7]and the robe,I bet she is breakable. There must be a real, vulnerable little heart in there, ticking away, trying to squelch out thefeelings. Whymess with a name like Denver unless it was the best option you had?Unless you still needed someone else’s strength and advantages to help hold you up? (You wouldn’t, am I right?)[L8]
Women[L9] are good atcompromises, even when they’re soldiers. It’s how we’re still a species. I’ve read about this: At work, where I check out books for people and then put them back on their shelves and my shoulders crack when I raise my arms[L10] above my head, “Feminism” is catalogued in the three hundreds. 359.24AUTHORLASTNAME.That’s just slightly above eye level for those of average height. What do you make of that? [L11]
The judgesquinted and pointed a highlighter at me as she spoke. “Ms. Simons,” she said,“Aare we clear here?”
“Absolutely,Franny,” I wanted to say, and I had the urge to gnaw my own hand like I had Tourette’s, like I’d seen a character do in a TV movie which was both funny and so sad, which was precisely how I felt standing there, wrinkly-necked and clunky as a wildebeest[L12], in a courtroom with panel lights and felted walls. I both love and hate to make a scene.“Absolutely, Franny,” the character had said, “Absolutely.” Chomp, chomp, chomp.
Sometimes [L13]I am unsure if I have a working heart. Then I cry at the sight of a rotting squirrel. I don’t know where [L14]all the feelings come from—they just gurgle up from my belly and pound out through my mouth, like a vomitmissile too fast to catch.
The lawyer named Paul (that assigned by Legal Aid assigned to me, not my choice) elbowed me lightly in the guts and jerked his head toward the judge’s bench: “It’s imperative that you’re polite,” he said, hardly moving his lips before his mouth went back to a straight line.I’m told my own resting face is a pout and I’m not sure how to fix that[L15]. I am just a little bit worrisome.
Bback when we first met, a few weeks before, in a little windowless room where we were trying to decide whether or not I would plea, h.He’d also said, “Do you have anything else you can wear?” back when we first met, a few weeks before, in a little windowless roomwhere we were trying to decide whether or not I would plea. Pants stick to my thighs and creep into my butt crack, so I wear heavy tights and long, loose T-shirts instead. Claire, who is my boss, says this is fine for the work I do because I am mostly alone in the stacks, and because most days our primary visitors are the underemployed and mentally ill. Libraries no longer require sweater sets and pearls, thank Larry (that is what I call God)[L16]. They are essential halfway houses for the people most other places won’t lend a washroom key, and I take that seriously. Flipping the bird atdress code is an equalizer. I understand intersectionality, and I have my own activisms.[L17]
Paul poked me again, this time in the side of my thigh because I was standing up beside him. I was looking down on him now, andI shifted my weight into my heels, just trying to get more comfortable, and he cleared his throat to hurry me up. His cheek was twitching a little and I could see the moles on his bald head quiver: he was jerking it his head up and down in such a fast, microscopic nod it looked like he had a little tick of his own. But, instead of saying that[L18]—or any ofthe other things I was thinking—I simply said, “Yes. Yes, your Honour,” which was half, maybe three-quarters, cow shit. Because I understood, yes I did, but I did not agree.
And so I made myself feel better by sitting back down in my chair andpulling on the seam of my shirt, and taking a minute just to think about how much that fucker deserved it no matter what I’d[L19]just said to the judge. Because what is guilt? I try to have none of it, particularly about this.Sometimes I eat whole boxes of crackers—when I am alonein my apartment[L20], where I can lie on my mattress, which is on the floor with everything else, and listen to the rail cars go by andwatch their shadows move on my white walls. I fear hunger—that’s why I will always be a little bit fat[L21]. But I am trying to learn to watch my impulses. To“own” my actions, and to allow the shame to lift like clouds all around me. That’s what Nina[L22] advises. She isthe counselor who was assigned to me at the court.“Just try to notice everything,” she says (and by that she means all the vomitous feelings)“with equanimity and compassion.” Which , did you know, is exhausting.?But together, every Wednesday night at seven o’clock, she and I sit together in her neutral office with dim lights and pillows and motivational posters and we notice together how I still want to pound Stephen, to punch the living shit out of him for all the times he punched Melissa.And then we also notice that that would undo all the work I’ve done. I[L23] used to kill frogs and I got over that. I am waiting for this one to pass, too.
IMost of the time it feels like I just make the same brain circles[L24], round and round again, but Nina says my process is unique,that I am finding my own way out of the loop.“I’m with you on this journey,” she says, “but you’rethe guide.”More (and maybe immense) cow shit. But also: Mandated. And sometimes, it’s even a little bit comforting.
I used to kill frogs and I got over that.I am waiting for this one to pass, too.
Melissa was in the court that daythe day of my hearing and all the pretty parts of her looked swallowed up and beat[L25].She had dark circles under her eyes and her makeup only made them worse. She shouldn’t wear her hair in a bun—it makes her face particularly round—and the bulge in her stomach was poking up through her brown sweater, which kind of matched her hair, which made her look like a monochrome lump except for her pale skin.(There were no wins for her that day.)[L26]She sat behind the bar andfar away from me, refusing to look no matter how many times I turned in my chair to stare at her before Paul sniped “Turn around” through his teeth and her Honour looked back up.
I don’t tell anyone, but I think she’s[L27]pathetic[L28]. That’s how I get so provoked. Do things ever get simple?Love crumples and folds, and then you flatten it out again—that’s just how it works. But this time it’s different: The creases are tight and there are probation terms.
***
Melissa used to share her lunch with me. All the way through elementary school sheslipped the carrot sticks and chunks of salami and fruit snacksthat her mother packed for her onto my desk in little piles. They wentbesidetheKraft cheese slices I brought, wedged between pieces of the white bread my own mother bought at the A&P on Friday nights.Mom (wrong[L29], I almost never call her that)—my motherworked thereas a cashier, under the fluorescent lightsand in a burgundy and cream uniform, which she hated because she was both vain and sensitive.
“I look gray,” she’d say when she got home from her shiftseven though her hair was still all brown and she looked just fine. She’d sigh and turn away from the mirror. “God, I just feel like I’m frying up [L30]and dying sometimes.”Often she would hug me after she said stuff like that, like there was something I could do about it.Like, in that very minute, I was the remedy, not the reason, for all her bad feelings.
“Do you know what the three lucks are?” Melissa asked me that when we were six, while we were pretending to bekangaroosand playing house in the oak trees at the very back of her backyard. “Love, happy[L31] and food,” she said andshe served me some yellowingleaves on a piece of bark. She was the mommy and I was the little baby.“Now, honey, I need you to eat all this.” In Melissa’s real house, her other names were Honey and Darling and Pet. She put a pebble in my mouth.: “Swallow!” she said, “Oor they’ll have to cut you open to get the bugs out.” Then she put her hand to my forehead and kissed it. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I think you’ll be okay.”
When I was actually sick, my grandmother took care of me while my mother was at work.She stroked my back and tickled my arms[L32]and stirred up the gingerale so there weren’t any bubbles to prickle my guts. That’s what we said when we[L33]had a flu: “There’s a prickle in my guts.”
I grew up calling her Tilly because she wasn’t ready to be a Gran, and I remember that her skin smelled like lavender and sweat even when she was freshly clean, like,just minutes out of the lake. Tillytook me there, to Lake Huron I mean,for daytripsin the summertime.
“Caw,” she’d[L34]call as she pulled up in her big old boat ofa car, always honking—three shorts, two long—and then she’d[L35] lean across the front seat and yell “Caw…Caw!”again.
“Caw!” I’d scream back, all the junk I’d crammed into my backpack smacking my thighs through the canvas as I ran toward her, and we’d natter likegullsall the way there.
Tamarack trees lined the path into to the beach we liked best, and Tilly showed me how to rub my face[L36] in the needles.Ispent the afternoonsripping up into the sand dunes, picking snake grass like Tilly showed me (“Not by the root, Punch. Like this, like a suction cup”), [L37]then down into the water,then flopping onto the beach and rolling myself into a sand dollar, covering every inch of me ingranules until it was too itchy to bear[L38].
Tilly sat in her red striped chair for all those hours, arms and legs spread as wide as she could to get all the sun which made her freckles come out and the skin on her shoulders pucker like worn out leather. We’d watch the sun dip below the lake with our feet in the water, my bum on the wet sand beside Tilly’s chair, getting wetter with each wave that rolled up to hit me but I most certainly didn’t care[L39]. We ate the egg salad sandwiches and digestive cookies she’d packedin paper bags and that she’d left in the back of the car all day.“It’s white,” she’d say, handing me my sandwich, “Iit doesn’t heat up [L40]enough to turn the mayonnaise.” And we’d clink our Coke cans, and she’d say nice things like “Cheers,” and “Isn’t this romantic?!” Aand even if I’d had a belly ache for days, it would havewas been worth it.
My birthday is July 7, 1987, and Tilly made me a cake every year until 1995. My lucks [L41]died when she did.
But by then, I had Melissa.
Sometimes my mother’s manager sent her home with expired candies from the bulk bins. When he did, it usually put her in a good mood and we would sink into the couch cushions together and play a memory game with the produce codes she needed to memorize to get faster at her job. Bananas #4411.Limes #4048.Pears #4412.She’d[L42] dole out chocolates wrapped in blue and red foil[L43] for each one I got right, and I would line them up on one of my crossed legs, saving them to share with Melissa later.I’ve[L44] given all my love, happy[L45] and food to her for the last twenty-three years.
“DAnd do[L46] you know what the three hates[L47] are?” Melissa asked that, too. “Mad, sad and too attached.[L48]”
I have been poisoned with the hates. But I am recovering[L49]. The leaves are dropping and the apples are nearly finished now. The law is a rational brute: I am not allowed to see her.It’s time to let go.
***
Before the boys came along, we spent our days biking around, down the streets lined with big houses and big yards and big trees, where the pretty and happy familieslived, and where Melissa lived, too, until her dad got so sick he died and then her mom moved away[L50].We’dcollapsein Melissa’s backyard, eating all those stale chocolates and orange slices and tickling each other or, as we grew up,playing MASH[L51]. “You can’t marry me, silly,” she said when I wrote her name in the slots for each ofmy prospective future husbands.
When my bike tire was flat, Melissa’s father pumped it up for me—it’s a thing that fathers do if you have them. He didn’t know that I had taught Melissa how to light fires with a magnifying glass, or that we’d made the dry leaves under his back deck smolder the week before.
“That should do it, kiddo,” he said, and when he stood back up, he ruffled my hair and that made my body buzz right up. He had a big black beard and his name was Mr. Nicholson, though I only ever called him “Yessir,” or said, “Thank you.” I have one photograph of my own dad, looking skinny and frantic, wearing jeans and no shirt, with long, stringy brown hair and a very scant beard of his own. Did you know [L52]there is an actual place called Holiday Valley? I found it on the map. He sent me a postcard from there once, when I was too young for it to be meaningful. I kept it until I was ready to ripit up. And thenI just didn’t hear from my dad ever again.
When it was time to go to my own home, in a plain brown brick apartment building not unlike where I live now, I would walk away and sit under the oak trees[L53], by the silly little pond with Shubunkin goldfish and ornamental grasses in it.I always just needed a minute and, sometimes, to have a little cry. Tilly called them that: little cries. I haven’t had one in a while. I wanted a house with a pond that needed to be cleaned each spring because it got clogged with algae and poop.I still wish for that.After a while, when it really was time to go because Mrs. Nicholson was in the car and waiting for us, giving a brisk honk every few minutes to remind us to hustle, Melissa would come over and take my hand.
“It’s time for Punch to leave now,”she’d[L54] say to the fish, every one of which had been named eitherRod orDigby by her older brother. “But she will come back.”
That is no longer true. I won’t be back there, none of us will, and Melissa will never hold my hand again[L55].Instead,she wears the ring Stephen gave her like it’s the symbol of something good. I say something that fugly can only be a sign of a grave mistake, but it’s not my judgment call—the courtshave told me so.
I’ve never had an orgasm with a man[L56], so I guess I don’t get it—the yank [L57]those endorphins might put around your heart. , Eeven if the guy is for a schmuck.I also haven’t tried that hard. Only once, with a plumber andin the back of his van when I was eighteen. That might sound extremely hot, but he was a nice, bland guy named Mattand it wasn’t much of anything[L58]. He made some guttural noises in his throat and then he rolled off of me. “Thank you[L59],” he said, crouching to stand up in the back of the van as he pulled up his jeans. Then,: “Are you hungry?”(Which, of course, I was.)[L60]