HAROLD BRODKEY
53
Always doesn't mean every minute to a child but simply an
attempt to express a recognition that this happens sometimes, more
than once, that if one is not obdurate- and unaffectionate-things
come to this .
I can remember , when the stick withdrew-between feints-a
crazy resurgence of pride, even though I was in pain , a crazy dismissal
of the pain, at least partly, and of the above , replacing by a lunatic
semi-swagger , a baby's swagger of she-has- to-like-me : now-this-will–
end : I would look at her-and at the stick only obliquely-with a
stiffish , backward-leaning babyish
calm-and
disbelief: a child doing
that: you-have-to-stop-now-and- be-charmed-by-me.
It
was the pride , the distance between me and the real abyss , that
made her feel failure , a girl's impatience of it-is-not-tidy-yet .
The stick approached .
My skin winced .
The stick continued to approach.
There was a brief, huge moment, dilated with the disbelief, the
sudden vision that the disbelief was misplaced; one is so astounded,
the correction is so immense-when one knew the stick had passed a
line , and was going to strike , or might strike: it was all a set of circles , of
an unspoken 0
h,
ofvision as through a telescope (not a binoculars), of
rising through the oval or circular limit of sleeping consciousness to
wakefulness : this painful and startling expansion of the selfwas in part
the painful and startling expansion of openings to pain. A newborn
infant perhaps has no senses : or they are barely used. Just so for a
moment , a second, I had none, only agony .
Nonie was a
floor-the
air was a tree trunk : do-you-remember–
rough-tree-bark-and-being-pushed-or-falling-against-it?-it was al–
most as if I asked myself that . The sense of agency , of confusion about
the nature of existence , ofpossibilities, of the obduracy of this and that
(including of oneself) saw nothing , saw everything-Nonie , her grasp
of the stick, the trellis-saw it not through the eye but as part of the
enormous expansion of all the sensory world as it changed its quality to
entire loss and pain : later, it could be interpreted : now it simply hurt .
It
is possible that I had moved , that I had twitched , and there–
upon happened onto the blow .
But one knew she'd-done-it.
The stick struck me. The skin is thinly stretched over bone on the
