The Perfect Sonya
The Perfect Sonya by Beverly Lowry
(Page 2 of 3)
She gave Pauline a shove. Pauline's finger flew from her mouth. She jerked her arm away. She thought she might be able to, but if she was going to, it had to be on her own. They would have to shut up or she would never. She took a step toward the bear.
Certain of her psychologically minded New York friends tell her the bear is a seminal, archetypal image, a metaphor for that which is most frightening to her and at the same time most seductive. No matter that intellectually she knows the animal is sawdust inside. No matter anything. Fear exists on the other side of knowing. Ghosts take their stand beyond words and facts. The erotic in particular is never accommodating, never comfortable, will not yield to predictability. The bear stands: an underground current, indecipherable, cosmic.
Other friends say the bear is a phallic image representing the erect penis. The powerful, primal push/pull. Meaning father of course, always and boringly forever.
Pauline knows all this and more; New York has taught her a great deal. But cleverness is not all. Nor does information necessarily invoke change. She is also efficient: smart enough to acknowledge the information she can make use of, canny enough to ignore the rest. In acting, emotions are useful. Memory serves. Sliding past her friends' slippery interpretations, she focuses on the pragmatic. Some possibilities are too dangerous to consider.
One step more. She looked up. The eyes. They never blinked. She could not make herself do it.
She took a step backward.
"I'll go," Mavis volunteered. Mavis started to push past Pauline.
"No, you won't," Jack said.
Mavis stopped in her tracks.
Jack came out from under the bear's arms.
"See?" he said, holding his own arms out wide. He was as small and as perfectly proportioned as a muscle-man doll. "Not a scratch."
Pauline tried to take another step. "I can't," she said.
"Why not?"
"I don't know." She was starting to whine. "Because."
Jack screwed up his face and mocked her. "Because why not, Pauline?" He swung his hips, imitating girlishness.
Pauline lifted her head, straightened her long braids, leveled her voice. "Because I don't know. I just can't."
In Baytown where she lived, she was known to be a daredevil, a girl who, afraid of nothing, gloried in danger and sought out adventure. A member of the town's junior swimming team, she swam distances, won ribbons, and for fun, after swimming practice did flips off the high dive, entering the water perfectly every time, practically no splash at all. Plunging carnival rides thrilled her; she liked the feeling when her stomach went to her feet. Enjoyed being suspended. Like the air: leapt from rope swings tied so far up in oak trees even boys hesitated to go.
The trick to rope-swinging was to let go at the peak of the swing. Scared people waited, held on too long, waited for the descent to begin, then hit flatfooted and hurt themselves. Pauline trusted her luck, releasing the rope when she was highest, throwing herself into the air. For a moment, it felt like flying.
In water she was even more proficient. She swam in the bayou, which people said would give you hepatitis. Nothing happened. She could hold her breath underwater longer than anyone, swim to the other side of the bayou and back, water-ski when she was seven, ski on one leg at eight, on bare feet at nine.
All this was different from the bear. Except for the eyes, the bear was soft, untrustworthy, both fake and real. There was no way to measure its danger.
Her father came toward her. The camera swung.
Someone giggled. The boy on the sidewalk awaiting his turn.
Pauline, backing away, bumped into Mavis.
Mavis gave her a slight shove back in the direction of her father, sending Pauline's head and shoulders toward him. Pauline flexed her knees and bent her toes to grip the dusty street with her sandals. She was barely able to stop herself in time. Facing her father, her eyes met his.
They were all three within a few inches of the same height, something between five-three and five-five. Mavis was a squarish person of skewed proportions, large in the middle, tiny at the extremities, wrists thin as twigs, baby feet, tiny hands with fingers that tapered to points like the tips of candles. At school, when the health nurse came to give shots and measure everyone, Pauline turned out to be the tallest person in the fifth grade, a statistic the nurse found so amazing she told everyone. Mortified, Pauline was beginning to stand in a stoop. She felt like a freak.
Jack reached out to her.
Pauline buried her hand in the gathers of her skirt but her father found it. She hadn't wanted to wear a skirt but Mavis said no to shorts, they might want to eat someplace fancy. Jack grabbed her by the wrist and pulled. Pauline planted her heels in the dirt. Her braids flew behind her. She was strong. From spending all her time at the country club swimming pool, her skin was as dark as that of the Indians who sat on the wooden sidewalks selling things, her long dark hair tinged by chlorine a faint greenish gold.
She had not wanted to come to the Indian village in the first place. She had made friends with the hotel pool lifeguard, whom she'd promised to help that day, cleaning out the traps, seining leaves from the surface of the water. But Jack said she needed to see new things; she could swim at home. On trips, she had no power at all. She was expected to suspend her regular life totally and go look at things.
Strong but her father was stronger. He pulled. She couldn't help it. She was moving.
"You're hurting me," she said, still pulling back. His fingers were locked in a circle around her wrist. The pressure of his skin against hers burned.
"Only because you're so willful." He pulled harder. His face was turning red. She could see the spark of victory in his eyes. "It's stuffed. It's not real."
There was only one thing to do. Still pulling back, Pauline let her knees buckle. She crumpled to the ground, spineless as a dishrag.
Surprised, Jack stumbled. His left ankle was weak and it sometimes gave. He fell halfway with her, his bony shoulder crashing into Pauline's shinbone. Pauline quickly drew her legs and feet into her skirt. She rubbed her shin.
His face on fire, Jack jumped up. His cowboy hat was cockeyed. He fixed it. There was no telling what he would do now. He was springy and quick, like a whip. Pauline had a secret method of judging his moods. She watched the vein in his temple, to see whether it rose or just throbbed. The vein seemed on the verge of bursting. He took a step toward Pauline, then stopped.
The dusty fake street looked like a wax museum of tourists, everyone in their sightseeing clothes, no one moving. Beside Pauline, Mavis was a statue, hands up, mouth open in perfect circle, like a comic strip version of fright. Only the Indians seemed unimpressed. They moved their jewelry around, maintaining a stolid demeanor, trying to look like the kind of Indians everyone imagined American Indians to be. Wise, unfazed, ancient. Like trees.
Pauline stood, brushed at her skirt and reminded herself not to take a step away from him. Retreat was a sign of weakness, and weakness only increased his powers to win.
The redness drained as quickly from her father's face as if someone had pulled a plug. The men in Jack's family died young, a family fact of which Jack reminded Pauline and her mother often enough. Most of them went in their forties; "Gone like that," he said, snapping his fingers. Pauline watched the pulsating vein in his temple, crawling down the side of his face like a worm. His temper was cooling, but the vein still throbbed.
Jack took the camera from around his neck and tossed it to the ground. Her camera. Dust puffed up around it.
"Fine," he said in a completely normal voice, as if they were disucssing what to have for lunch, peanut butter or tuna fish. "Fine with me."
He lifted his hands to the bright blue Arkansas skies and made a face, twisting his mouth to one side.
"You made your bed," he said, smiling as if her fate were sealed. "Now you can lie in it."
My Library
