“How to be Afraid”

So your stepdad likes to leave notes. Notes on your pantry (PUT THE TUPPERWARE AWAY LIKE I SHOWED YOU), notes on the dishwasher (HANDWASH ALL DISHES UNTIL JULY), notes on all of the things out of place on the first floor of the house (THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T BUY NEW THINGS LIKE THE EXPENSIVE COUCH YOUR MOM WANTED BECAUSE YOU ALL LIVE LIKE PIGS).

He likes to shout. He also likes to speak loudly. He wants you to know he’s there, that he takes up space.

When he isn’t shouting, he whistles.

(In college I was whistling and my friend came over and said he thought it was the radio, he tells you smugly. You hate it.)

When he comes home from work and you hear the garage door open, you leap off of the couch, collect your homework, and bolt to your room. Shut the door just in time to hear him open the ones downstairs. Your heart pounds as you hear him stomping. You go to get your headphones. He’s already started to whistle.
So your stepdad calls his ex-wife a cunt one time to your brother, who is smaller than you and more gentle. So the whole house hears. So he calls a family meeting but with just you three kids, all to tell you he’s never hit a woman before.

So you feel your little sister tense against your arm on the couch. So your brother sits there silently, miserable. So you want to scream.

Maybe you’re the brainy one. Maybe you’re also the class clown, the charmer. Maybe
your friends have no idea.

He wakes you up at 2am because he’s found that there are five spoons missing from the kitchen. He screams at you: FIND THEM OR YOU AREN’T GOING TO SLEEP. You look in your room but you don’t have any of the spoons. (One is in the sugar, one is in your step brother’s lunch box. The other three will never be accounted for.) So you stand up in the living room when he’s gone stomping up stairs. Your legs are wobbly and you feel three inches big. You say to your mom, this isn’t normal. You will mean to sound angry and powerful but you will cry instead.
You knock on his door and say what you practiced in the bathroom: I’m sorry, it’s my fault, I lost all the spoons. He looks at you, sharp as a knife, and says he knows you didn’t do it so don’t bother with the heroics. Eventually you’re allowed to go to sleep, but you all have to pay him twenty bucks, even your little sister, out of principle.

You will do yard work in your homecoming dress. You will remove a wheelbarrow full of dirt from your bedroom. You will hand wash the dishes every night for a year, out of principle. You will not be allowed to shower after 8pm. You will start controlling what you eat. You will leave the dinner table to try to make yourself throw up. You can’t do it, so you spend five minutes every night sitting, cross-legged, on your bathroom floor, still beach-themed from childhood. Once when you are talking too much he threatens to beat you with a stick and you will know he probably won’t, but you shut up anyway. Your mother will ask you, tearfully, why you haven’t talked to her in three months. She will say that you were a happy child. She will wonder what happened. You can’t make yourself say.

Colleges will start sending you postcards. You tape them, one by one, on the paint cracks on the walls of your closet. You will close the door and sit there when you need a place to hide. You keep the light on so you can see them: Harvard, UChicago, Penn State.
You go on runs when you are angry. They keep you skinny. Sometimes you run twice a day.

One night, senior year of high school, he will be awful. It is so bad that you go to your sister’s room and say the unthinkable: you will graduate and you will not come back. You know your friends would help you. You know you can be safe. It is the ultimate act of revolt, to leave, to no longer be afraid.

You will see the look on your little sister’s face, standing in her pink room. She looks just like you but younger. She will look at you with such acceptance, a maturity beyond her age, knowing that you intend to leave her, and you will want to die.

They will get divorced after four years of marriage. They will decide to get divorced on your 18th birthday, when you are out of town. You will come back and your mom will sit on your bed, and before she talks you will know, and you will begin to believe in a god.

He will take months to move out, but he does in the fall. Your first nights at college are exhilarating, terrifying.  The only strange noises are those of people coming and going. You make friends easily but you don’t want to leave the house. You’re afraid of deadlines, of failing. You think you’re always in trouble even though you rarely are. You have learned to expect the worst. You are in a constant state of wincing.

Your college years will pass without him. You will travel and work a couple of jobs and live in New York. You meet friends and boyfriends and great writers. You will get an apartment that you decorate, and that you clean, and it feels overwhelming to always feel safe. You are grateful for it.

You will need to fall asleep with headphones in. Noise at night makes you panic. One of your boyfriends will raise his voice at you and you will feel like he hit you.

But most of it will be replaced by new, better things. You are functional. You are, as they say, adjusted.

Your sister isn’t as lucky. She will be suicidal. You will get a scary text from her boyfriend. You will think she is going to do it. You will bargain with your newfound god. You will be angry with your god. You will say to a friend when you are drunk one night that you are the older sister. Your job is to take care of her. If someone’s head is on fire, it should be yours.

She recovers. You will all recover, slowly, and sometimes all at once.

You will stand in your dormitory shower when you are 20 years old. You are an RA. It is late. The halls are quiet. One of your residents will come in to get ready for bed. You will be shampooing your hair when she begins to whistle. The whistling will get louder and louder until it is all that you hear. Your heart will thud and you will gasp for breath, shocked at the fear you feel come alive inside you. You will lean against the shower stall, the plastic cold against the length of your body. You will almost shout at her to stop. But you will stay there in the shower. You will wait it out, because you will know that it has to end eventually. So you make the water hot, as hot as you can stand. Tears bite your eyes, but you will stand under that water, even as it scalds you, even as it makes your skin red. You will stand there till she leaves, the steam rising up, up, and around you. And you will do your best to burn yourself clean.

Amanda Brennan is a senior philosophy student at Miami University of Ohio. She’s been published in her campus publications Happy Captive and Inklings. She has two plants.