Novelist in Paradise Redux

MENARCHE

Margaret Baker, the headmistress of St. Mary’s School for Girls and my mother’s best friend from their cotillion days, clasped her arthritic hands together on the conference table and said, “Your daughter is only nine years old, Mr. Elliot, and that’s just too young for menarche.”

I was staring out the frosted window behind her, afraid of what was coming. I looked at her. “Menarche? What’s that?”

The other two women at table shared glances. Chantal Kieren the fourth grade teacher said, “Dewy’s started to menstruate. You didn’t know?”

My tension melted into confusion. “No, I didn’t. How did you find out?”

“She accidentally dropped a sanitary pad from her school bag yesterday,” Chantal Kieren said. “I asked her some questions, and she told me, but she really wouldn’t talk about it. It embarrasses and upsets her, of course. It makes her even more different than the others.”

“Dewy should have a medical checkup,” the counselor said. Karen somebody.

A hundred yards beyond the window, on a court cleared of snowfall, a gaggle of girls played games. Another girl sat alone on a bench, gloved hands resting limply on a blue jacket. A red woolen cap perched on her black hair. She swung her feet, scruffing her boots in the snow, her head bent as she studied the dashes.

“Day we,” I said. “Not dewy, day we. That’s how her name’s pronounced.”

Chantal Kieren tilted her nose. “Really? She hasn’t corrected us. Dewy is a pretty name.”

“For a librarian, maybe. Her mother named her Dewi. Means goddess in Balinese.”

“Now that’s very pretty,” Karen Somebody said.

“Since Dewi has no mother,” Margaret Baker said, “I’d suggest her grandmother talk to her about this.”

An immense weariness pressed down on me. I took a deep breath against the weight and said, “I don’t think that would work. Dewi’s only just met her grandmother, it’s taking a while for relations to warm up.”

The two remaining women in my life hadn’t been complete strangers; my mother had kept in contact via letters and e-mail. But she had never come out to see us. Tropical humidity and tropical diseases kept her at bay. Plus, she was pissed off at me for going native like that. To be a Peace Corps volunteer was noble, but to stay put was stupid. She kept waiting for me to come to my senses and come home.

And ten years later, here I was.

Karen Somebody said, “Since you’re new to the area, you might not have a family doctor yet. Here’s one, an excellent pediatrician, she’s agreed to accept your daughter as a patient.” She handed me a Filofax page with several lines of elegant handwriting.

“Thank you,” I said, truly grateful. In this part of Connecticut, psychotherapists, doctors, and horse riding instructors have waiting lists. I was damned if I’d ask my mother for help. It was bad enough that I was employed as an e-marketer by a company she owned.

I was a kept son. I hated it. I didn’t know what else to
do.

My daughter hated it worse. She told me what to do. Let’s just go home, Daddy.

Ten minutes later, I exited the building. I paused on the top step to watch my daughter swinging her feet. A bleeding brown girl in an immaculate snow-white land.

She hadn’t even started wearing a training bra yet.

Had the change in climate precipitated her puberty? Something in the drinkable tap water, or the pristine air? Something to do with the unnatural state of affairs here in Fairfield County, the maintained roads, the obediently observed traffic signals, the incessant politeness of strangers who at banks and post offices actually stood in line behind you?

I approached her warily. She’s embarrassed, Chantal Kieren had said, upset.

Dewi looked up at me. She smiled, a smile that started in the happy latitudes of her heart and rose across her lips to break like surf against her irises.

On my thirty-third birthday three months previously, I threw myself a party. The guests I invited were her friends, and the gift I gave myself was to give Dewi her mother’s wedding ring on a gold chain.

She’d smiled then like she was smiling now.

Thirty-three, the age of the crucified Christ.

I’d scored some heroin before the party, and as I partook of the packet and becoming serene of spirit and vaporous in mind, I had concrete thoughts of doing the rest of the gram in one grand, obliterating go.

Thirty-three, the age of the crucified Jordan Elliot.

Three months ago, Dewi had been a girl.

Now she was . . . what? I didn’t know what she was. What do you call a nine-year-old girl who is biologically of childbearing age?

You call her your beloved daughter.

And she puts her thickly padded court dancer’s arms around your neck to kiss you and says, “Hi, Daddy.”

We began walking to the car. “What did Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil want?” she asked.

She speaks excellent English, with a tropical lilt. Given the accent and her coloring, the first assumption of people around here is that she’s a migrant, most likely illegal. When my mother introduces her to her friends, she says, “This is Dewy. Her mother was a Balinese princess.” Balinese is exotic and royalty is everywhere royalty. But my wife Sari was from only a minor courtier clan. Dewi gave up trying to correct her grandmother, an endeavor akin to getting God to amend the Ten Commandments.

I said, “Dewi, is there something you should be telling me but you aren’t?”

A shadow fell across her face. “That snoopy Mrs. Kieren. I was going to tell you tonight.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“I feel kind of funny.”

“Mrs. Kieren says you’re upset.”

“A good kind of funny. Why in the world would I be upset?”

“Honey, do you really know what’s going on here with your body?”

“Dad. I’m a girl.”

“Who told you about sanitary napkins and all that?”

“Dad. I’m a smart girl.”

“You’re too young to be . . . you know.”

She looked up at me. “Menstruating. Why am I too young? I’m growing up, aren’t I?”

The amber slivers in her golden irises, there since her birth, were now cracks in the chrysalis. Bewilderment, worry, and pride tumbled within me.

We got in the car, a company-owned Ford.

“I was going to tell you tonight in a special way,” she said, “so can you please forget you know about it and be surprised?”

I should have known what she had in mind, but sometimes I can be as dense as depleted uranium.

I set the heater to high. “Honey, why do you let everyone at school call you Dewy?”

“What does it matter? I’m not me there.”

“I know it’s difficult to fit in to a new place like this, but you’re smart and pretty, you could have a zillion friends if you just tried a little bit.”

“I tried to tell Skye my name was Dewi, not Dewy, but she said she didn’t like foreign names. She said she didn’t like foreigners.”

“She’s just jealous she’s not the prettiest girl in the class anymore.”

“Dad, you don’t have to try to make me feel good. Who cares what they think?”

“I care what they think.”

“But I am different. I’m Balinese, not American. I told Skye I’m glad to be a foreigner, because who wants to be like her? She got angry and told all her friends not to like me.”

“You’re half-American.”

“I’m a Balinese Hindu.”

“You’re no more Hindu than the pope is.”

“Mommy was a Hindu, and you had to become a Hindu to marry her, so that makes me a Hindu.”

True, I had become a Hindu for a day, saying and doing whatever the priest told me to say or do, but as soon as we left her family’s compound for our own bungalow, I was back to being me.

My quiet cynicism never bothered Sari. She made the morning and evening offerings to her family gods, to the gods of our modest household, and to the gods of good fortune on behalf of my growing export company.

She died when Dewi was four.

My wife’s cancer ravaged her like a lion striking down a gazelle, a span of time that to me was a bewildered heartbeat of love. But to a young child, six months can be a full season of life and death. Dewi could only remember a mother who was sick, and grew sicker.

After the cremation, I moved to another residence in an expat alley. Over the next few years, the neglected gods began to from my business. I drifted closer to the neighborhood drug dealer. Aside from a few token tokes of pot, I’d never been a drug user. I started with cocaine, which made life interesting for a few brief hours. I partied on the beautiful people circuit, entertaining myself with a cosmopolitan mix of Asian women, Kentucky bourbon, Peruvian powder. I convinced myself that the time I spent with Dewi was quality time. She grew up quick.

Maybe too quick. Does such a thing cause early puberty?

By the time Dewi was eight, I didn’t want life to be interesting. I wanted my life dulled and my demons kept at bay. Hence heroin.

A week after my thirty-third birthday, my dealer visited me about the last gram I hadn’t yet paid for. I promised him my soul I’d have the money the next day.

Late that night, I went into Dewi’s bedroom and exchanged the gold chain around her neck with a cheap brass one. She woke up just as I was attaching the clasp. Her wide eyes held no sleepiness as she stared into mine. She didn’t say anything. I didn’t either. She felt for the ring. She gripped it in her hand, and closed her eyes again.

In the morning I sold the gold chain and paid the dealer.

Dewi never said a word about the switched necklaces.

Several weeks later, when I couldn’t pay Dewi’s school fee for the second straight month, and the registrar’s formerly understanding tone took a turn for the worse, I knew it was time to commit seppuku of the spirit. I phoned my mother. She sent the corporate jet.

And here we were, in the land of plenty.

In the land of empty.

Dewi and I were living in a cookie-cutter tract development. My mother, who’d offered me one of the bungalows on the estate, was scandalized at my choice of residence. “What will all Dewy’s classmates think when they learn she lives in a rented apartment?” she sniffed, adding, “I can’t imagine any reputable housekeeper willing to work there.” I said, “Dewi and I can live together quite well on our own.” She said, “Oh darling, why do you always have to be such a contrarian?” I said, “Mother, I’m a contrarian only because I refuse to let you turn me into what you want me to be.” She did not reply. She did not have to. She already had the last word.

By the time I parked, the sky had collapsed into a dull winter dusk, and it began to snow again. I unlocked the apartment door. Tropical air enveloped us. Dewi insisted we keep the thermostat at 80. I indulged her, heating bills be damned.

Dewi went straight to the fridge and for a pre-dinner snack got milk and Oreos. She didn’t hate everything about America.

I went straight to my bedroom and for my pre-dinner snack snorted a little line of Burmese brown.

A dealer lived on the end of the road. When I’d put the two months deposit down, I hadn’t known about the trend of hard drugs encroaching into American suburbia, and I certainly didn’t know about the dealer, and so to find out about her a few weeks into the rental had been serendipitous. I knew I had to be careful with the shit. This was a country and a county where people could take my daughter away from me. My own mother would. The line I had was just a therapeutic dose of heroin, to smother my fears for my child-woman daughter.

I put two cups of uncooked Thai jasmine rice along with green beans and sliced pork in the automatic rice cooker. I set the table. I called the number on the Filofax page. I got Doctor Edwards herself, not an answering service.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Elliot, Karen told me to expect your call.”

I briefly explained Dewi’s problem.

Doctor Edwards said, “Karen says Dewi is a lovely child.” Doctor Edwards had a terry cloth voice, the kind to cling to. “But Mr. Elliot, a problem is only if there is an abnormal physiological cause for her early menstruation.”

The word “abnormal” got through the heroin. “What kind of abnormal cause?”

“Relax, Mr. Elliot, the chances of that are small. I have seen several nine-year-old girls like Dewi, all perfectly healthy. Why don’t I see her after her school, three-thirty tomorrow afternoon?”

I hung up with a sedated sense of relief. Maybe I didn’t have to do any talking to Dewi. Doctor Edwards could do it for me. She called her Dewi, not Dewy. I liked her voice. I was sure Dewi would too.

I poured water into the glasses and ladled steaming rice onto the plates. “Dewi, dinner’s on,” I called out.

She emerged from her bedroom in full Balinese religious regalia, gold-leaf headdress, silk kebaya blouse, brocade sash, and colorful sarong. I didn’t know she even had it. Balinese costume is worn tight. Her chest was flat, her hips slim. She could conceive a child, but her girlish body could not bear it.

Her exquisitely made-up face looked like a woman’s face.

“What’s the occasion?” I said. Dense as depleted uranium.

She grew solemn. “Dad, I have something to tell you. I’m having my first period.” The smile broke again. She pirouetted. “This is just a dress rehearsal. So when do we go back home? I have to have the ceremony.”

Oh, God, so that what was it. “Dewi, honey, that ceremony’s for Balinese Hindus. You’re neither.”

“I am a Balinese and I am a Hindu. You don’t have to be a Hindu if you don’t want, but I am, Mom’s family can put on the ceremony for me. I have to go back, Dad.”

“You haven’t seen mom’s family since the cremation. They don’t know you any more.”
“That doesn’t matter, I’m still Balinese.”

“You don’t even speak the language.”

“It’s still in my head, it’ll be easy to re-learn.”

I moved to the sofa beside her. I took her hands. “Listen to me very carefully, it’s time I told you something. Mom died because she and her family kept praying to their Hindu gods instead of her going to get proper medical treatment. Mom was sure her Hindu gods would heal her. They didn’t. Because there are no Hindu gods. There are no Christian gods. There’s just you and me, and what we make of life ourselves.”

She blinked and bit her lower lip. “I want to go home. I have to have the ceremony.”

“Honey — ”

She cried out, “I heard what you said. But you’re wrong. And you can’t force me to be what you want me to be.”

The doorbell rang. Thanking a nonexistent God for the interruption, I opened the door.

My mother stood there in all, and then some more, of her subtle glory. She said, “I know, I should have phoned ahead.” She leaned forward and gave me a kiss. “How are you, darling?” She didn’t wait for answer, but swept past me into the apartment. She paused, startled, at the sight of Dewi. “My goodness, Dewy, don’t you look beautiful. What sort of costume is that? Are you practicing for a play?”

“It’s Dewi. Day-we.”

“Pardon me?”

“That’s my name. Dewi. Not Dewy. I’m sick of you calling me Dewy. I’m sick of people trying to make me what I’m not.”

“Now, Dewy.”

“Dewi. Dewi. Dewi.” On ascending scale and increasing volume.

When it comes to emotional forces, my mother is the imperturbable object. “Why don’t we sit down and talk about this, darling. And other things too. You know I love you. I’m your grandmother. Come, sit here beside me.”

“Excuse me,” I said. I went to my bedroom, and had another line. Thus fortified with added serenity, I returned to the living room.

“You should be enjoying your childhood,” my mother was saying to Dewi. “You’re not ready to be a young lady yet.”

Dewi sat as rigid as a Balinese statue.

My mother looked up at me. “Jordan, did you make that appointment with the doctor for Dewy?”
“Three thirty tomorrow,” I said. I sat down in the armchair across from my mother.

Dewi jerked her head toward me. “What doctor?”

My mother answered. “This doctor can help you, darling. She can give you some medicine to stop your menstruation and delay your puberty until you’re ready for it.”

“Stop it? I don’t want to stop it. Why should I stop it? I’m growing up. I am ready for it.”

“Darling, you’re only nine years old, I don’t think you’re ready — ”

“Yes I am, and I’m going back to Bali to have the ceremony. I’m not Catholic, not American. I’m a Balinese Hindu.”

“No, you’re not. And you are not ready for puberty.”

I, so artificially composed, could only admire my mother’s natural equanimity, the calm certainty that comes from knowing that you most assuredly possess the truth.

“I am too.”

“Let’s see what the doctor says tomorrow.”

“I’m not going to any doctor I’m going back home to Bali.” Dewi ran to her bedroom. She slammed the door shut behind her.

The sound reverberated through my brain. I got up with a vague idea to go into the bedroom and . . . what?

“Jordan, sit down,” my mother said, “let her have her sulk. You know she’s not going to want to talk to you right now.”

She was right. I sat down. My mother looked at me. I drifted away into déjà vu. I was nine, I was thirteen, I was fifteen. How many times had my mother sat across from me with that glint of disapproval in her gaze?

She said, “You married far too young. You didn’t think through the implications of having a child in a mixed marriage.”

My forearms itched. I scratched them. “But we did. We agreed Sari would raise any children as Balinese Hindus and they’d go to Western schools.”

“Jordan. Why didn’t you come to America when she got sick? I was on the board at Sloan-Kettering. I offered to pay all her expenses.”

“I already told you. She’d never been off Bali. She wanted local treatment.”

“You mean her witchdoctors.”

I scratched my forearms.

“If you loved her, you would have brought her to America for the best treatment in the world.”

“She didn’t want to come. I couldn’t make her. She trusted her gods.”

“And she died needlessly.”

“You don’t know that, maybe Sloan-Kettering would have just prolonged her agony.”

“Asian wives obey their husbands. You should have made her come here. Sweet, beautiful, mixed-up Dewy would have a mother still.”

Dull emotion pricked through the heroin’s blanket. “It’s Dewi, for God’s sake. And you don’t know that.”

She held up a hand. “That’s all water under the bridge. But learn from it, Jordan. Don’t make the same mistakes with your daughter.” She stood to go. “I’ll leave you to your dinner. I’ll see you at Doctor Edwards tomorrow.”

I saw her to the door, scratching my arms.

“Do you have a rash? It might help if you turn down the heat.”

“Dewi likes it hot.”

She squinted at me, looking into each eye. “Are you okay, Jordan?”

“Fine, mother,” I said. I kissed her goodbye, murmuring my love. I was her son, after all, cold-welded in her womb.

Ignoring my dinner, I had another line, breaking my strict limit. And having broken it, I had yet another. My consciousness became drawn out like taffy. I was here, there, everywhere. Moments of lucidity came to me like snapshots: I was on my bed, I was in the bathroom throwing up, I was having another line, I was on the floor with Dewi bent over me and saying, “Daddy, Daddy, wake up. What’s wrong? Wake up wake up!”

I woke up in an ambulance, strapped to a gurney. The male medic said to me, with a clear, cold look of disapproval, “You’re more lucky than you deserve. Your daughter’s a smart girl, she phoned us right away before anybody else, otherwise you’d probably be dead.”

I was fully conscious, but felt nothing.

Nurses transferred me from ambulance to a hospital room. One unstrapped me from the gurney and gave me a gown to put on. I lay on the bed, still feeling nothing. A police detective came to ask me some questions. She read me my rights. I told her about the dealer. I said, “Am I going to lose my daughter?”

“Your daughter about lost you,” she said.

In the morning, a lawyer sent by my mother came to see me. He scolded me for talking to the police. I felt nothing. I asked him, “Am I going to lose my daughter?”

“My brief’s very specific, I don’t know anything about that,” he said. He pursed his lips and studied me. “But you really should have thought of that before, shouldn’t you?”

He looked ten years younger than I was. I felt nothing.

The hospital released me early evening. I took a taxi to the apartment. Yellow police lines stretched around the dealer’s duplex. My apartment was empty. It had been searched. The thermostat was set at seventy-two. Last night’s dinner was still on the table.

I felt nothing.

Against the lamp on the side table rested an envelope. Dewi’s neat writing on the outside:
“Daddy, for when you get home.”

Inside was a gold wedding band on a brass necklace. A note said, “This always makes me feel better, maybe it’ll help you feel better. Love Dewi. PS: I’m only letting you borrow it.”

I sat down on the edge of the armchair, fingering the ring.

Feel better.

Feel nothing.

Feel something.

Footsteps at the door. It opens.

“Daddy!” Dewi rushes into my arms and kisses me.

Behind her, in the doorway, is the counselor. Karen Somebody.

“Oh good, Mr. Elliot, you’re home,” she says. “Well, Dewi, I’m so happy everything is okay, I’ll see you next week.”

“Okay?” I say. The word is mangled. I clear my throat. “Okay?”

“The tests came out negative, Dewi’s a perfectly ordinary girl, aren’t you, Dewi.”

Feel pain, my fingers clenched around the ring, nails digging into palm, my heart beginning to strain against the flinty layers I have for years deposited on it.

Dewi’s spindrift smile. “Skye talked to me this morning, she wanted to know what it was like. She was jealous, can you believe. She gave me her yogurt, and she invited me to a party next weekend. Can I go?”

“I’d better get going myself,” Karen Somebody says.

“No, wait,” I say.

She pauses.

Feel terrible pain, my heart squeezing upwards, being torn, ripped to shreds.

“Dewi . . . Oh God . . . ”

Dewi is alarmed. “Dad, are you sick again?”

I shake my head. I place the chain and ring around her neck. “Your mother . . . ” I say, but I can’t continue, can’t say the words.

I let your mother die.

I look at the counselor. “I need help,” I whisper.

My heart breaks the surface, torn, pulsing, bleeding, menarche.