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Kristin T. Schnider 
from a novel-in-progress Aurora
This is not how she talks about him to her friends.
This is not what she says when asked.
This is not even what she really remembers, she thinks.
But she is not sure.
That it does not matter is what she really thinks.
This is what she thinks, thinking of him.
My father is very dark, very dark and I cannot see him at all. He must have a face but I don´t see it unless he opens his mouth to smile at me. Then I see teeth and don´t know if that is not even worse. Only teeth. I see his eyes only when he cares to look at me. I see his eyes when he looks at me and his teeth when he smiles. I don´t see his teeth when he starts talking because then he is moving his lips so fast, and I can´t really hear what he is saying and maybe I don´t want to. I don´ t see his eyes either. Four little slices of white beside nothing, moving.
I imagine his eyes and his teeth and I know this is what I would see of him so I imagine I would at least see his eyes and teeth at least. So my father is all darkness and eyes and teeth, and I only see him when I close my eyes.
I have always seen him like that.
I close my eyes and all there is is my father. I try to go around him. I try to find out if he has a body. My father is darkness, darkness. It is when I have just closed my eyes that I think it is his eyes that I see. Far away tiny specks of light, white orbs at the back end of that darkness yet as I get closer all I see is just darkness denser than anything I see in my bedroom lying awake staring into the night. There are shades. Aren´t there degrees of darkness. Memory lets me make out that my room, which has retreated for the time being, consists of shades of grey and brown and black, and there is the occasional fleck of light having found its way inside, rests of the headlights of a car swerving past, throwing spots onto the ceiling, the wall. As I close my eyes there is nothing, really, I tell myself, no eyes, no teeth, no father. I go to sleep.
When I started waking up crying and sweating I must have decided to do something about it. I held my breath. I was in a dilemma, I could not close my eyes against my fears and be safe. I had to keep them wide wide open, clinging to traces of light, glueing them to the wavery shape of the leg of my chair, I did not dare getting up either. How was I to know if there was not a deep darkness lurking behind the chair? Enclosing me. The black man lying in wait behind a toy, ready to engulf me, ready to carry me away as I had been told he would do, if I did not behave. Had I been good on that particular day? My heartbeat seemed to pump me up ready for an explosion while at the same time my extremities went numb with fear, numb first, then they began to feel brittle, ready to break, to crumble and sink, little heaps of ash into the pillow, onto the mattress and then the black man would come and grab my throbbing heart, disdainfully blowing away my ashes and sink these teeth of his into my heart. I did not sob for fear of him hearing me.
I freeze. I pretend to be dead. I don´t know what it is like to be dead. No one is interested in you any longer, because you are of no use. So no one will hurt you. You can´t be hurt when you´re dead. All anyone wants is to hurt you and to make you dead and when you´re dead they will go away.
He has not come. It works. I am dead and I am safe. He has to leave my bedroom when the light comes and then I can come alive again and he never existed at all. The black man never comes during daytime to take the children away. Because then other people would see him and they would see what he does and he does not like that. I don´t understand really. He makes children behave. So he does a good thing. People want to see good things. Children should do good things. So why can´t he take the bad children and people would thank him and say, good man? They must think it is good, because they always talk about him. He only takes children. I wonder. Either grown ups don´t misbehave or they are safe because there are always two of them in the same bed at night and the black man is not strong enough for two.
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