Incest Taboo - Denise Duhamel

     

      It always freaked me out when my father
      
called my mother "Mommy," as in "Mommy,

      let's pack up the car and go for a drive!"

      I grew up to be afraid of birds.

      I swerve now whenever a sparrow swoops
      
towards my windshield. I can't go to the beach

      because of the seagulls that dive and circle

      like hornets or warplanes. Even humming 

      birds creep me out, the way they just hover

      quivering like they are about to explode.

      Blue jays, robins, even doves have wronged
      
me, one way or the other. All lousy parrots.

      I was changing my bathing suit at the beach

      house my parents rented. It was a parrot
      green one-piece with a yellow swoop

      of daisies down the front. It was wrong

      the way my brother Fred barged in--the bird

      brain--without knocking, his voice exploding,

      "The drive-in starts in two minutes!" He hovered,
      
my suit rolled down around my hips. "Mommy
      
wants you to hurry up," he said, leering. The hum

      of a car engine out front, my father

      honking. Then Fred backed away. My suit left wet circles

      

on the floor. On the movie screen, explosive
      
wings and Tippi Hedren. Two clean semi-circles

      arched the dusty windshield, a splatter of white bird
      
poop the wipers couldn't reach. My father

      yelled, "Mommy! Look at that! They're running the wrong
      
way!" Sea water sloshed in my ears, humming,

      the soundtrack fading in and out, dialogue swooping
      
from the crackling gray box hanging from my mother's
      
window. Fred avoided looking at me. He parroted

      bird screeches. His fat greasy hands hovering
      
over the popcorn made me say, "You ugly beached

      whale! Share!...Mom and Dad, look, Fred's driving



      me to drink!" "That's enough," my father replied, hum-

      drum dad-talk, as though the drive-in

      was as good a place as any to announce my wrong
      
turn, to foreshadow my own alcoholism. Beach
      
bunny Jane, fourteen--that's me--with a father
      
as good or bad as most, a hovering
      
mother. Did I know then I'd wind up terrified of birds--
      
hunched under bar stools, screaming about the parrot
      
on Baretta's shoulder? The next day I circled
      
the beach house block on a rusty bike. "My mother's
      
a bitch," I said, meaning Fred. Freckles exploded

      on my arms. My ponytail, a bright chestnut swoop.



      Years later, at the party, my husband hovers

      over me, trying to control my drinking, swooping
      
towards each rum and coke, like a father
      
tying to save the boiler before it explodes,

      like a mother bargaining with the beach--

      "Give me back my son and I'll be the best mother
      
in the whole world! I know I was wrong

      to let Fred swim alone." She'd trusted that circle

      the sun made in the sky, but never again. "Jane drives
      
herself crazy with regret," my husband says, a parrot

      to my whims. The party is humming

      with rumors, guests screeching like dawn-inspired birds.

      

I never wanted to become a mommy.
      
That is, I wanted to stay sexy, unburdened

      by diapers. I wanted to walk a birdless beach
      
without a string of toddlers behind me, pull-toys humming.

      I was sure my body would explode. 

      during childbirth. I dreamt of parrots,

      instead of babies, flying through my legs. My father

      had wanted a boy, someone he could teach to drive

      gold balls into the future, someone he could swoop
      
down and lift to the basketball hoop, a circle

      of victory. He had Fred who hovered

      behind him, a cub, until everything went wrong.

      

I say the same words over and over, a parrot

      who wants the Prozac-cracker. My therapist wears the wrong
      
colors--spring, though she's clearly an autumn. Explosive

      dinosaur earrings brush her neck, hover

      near her collar. I'm distracted, humming

      "The Wind Beneath My Wings," drawing a circle

      around each question. "If we'd rented a beach

      house, I think I'd remember!" my father's voice swoops.

      He reminds me Fred was a good son, a Boy Scout. The Birds
      
is my least favorite movie. "What drive-in?

      We never went to any drive-ins," my mother 

      insists. "I don't like mosquitoes. Just ask your father."



      How can I break the incest taboo circling 

      my own marriage? My husband looks less like my father

      when he wears my lingerie. I don't hum

      even when he's sick--I won't soothe him like a mommy.

      Every girl is part Jane--part me--hovering 

      around puberty, a sleazy corner. Adults drive
by
      quickly so they won't remember their imploding

      hearts, nothing ever as intense again. Bird
      -
watching aggravates me. "It's wrong,"

      my mother said, talking about girl watching, Fred's swooping
      
eyes scanning breasts and things, his mouth parroting
      
his friends' dirty talk. All winter he waited for the beach.

      

Baretta's parrot, also named Fred, drives

      me to think about that moldy beach
      
house where Fred picked up my wet suit. His voice hovered

      close to my ears. "Everything's related. Parrots

      descend from dinosaurs. That's why mommy
      
is afraid of them," Fred said, swooping

      my bathing suit into the air, humming

      a Donny and Marie love song. "You're so wrong!"
      
I said, about the parrots with the dinosaur grandfathers.

      Fred locked my door with a hook that looked like a bird's 

      beak and flapped his arms like a seagull wings, circling

      a fish who was me. My insides exploded



      as he pushed me on the twin bed, his palm swooping
      
over my mouth. Now the radio explodes
      
I'm a bitch. I'm a lover. I'm a child. I'm a mother
      
trying to shock me with its top ten song, circle
      
lyrics that make me wish I still had the parrot

      green bathing suit that proved my bird-

      bee-beeing brother walked in on me, then hovered.

      That proved he came in again, after my father
      
had fallen asleep, dreaming of a walk on the beach

      all by himself. I don't think he was wrong
      
to want out, my mother in the shower, humming.



      Fred liked to shoot things, especially birds

      which were more challenging than cans. His guns hummed

      with promises of taxidermy. Parrot-

      sized birds he couldn't name were driven
      
out of trees and plopped dead in circles

      onto the ground. I knew killing was wrong, 

      even birds, and I'd yell to my mother,

      "Make him stop!" She waited for beach-

      weather, then buried her son's fun, explosive

      pangs of anger in her chest. "You're his father,
      
talk to him," she said as her husband swooped

      his fork to his plate--me crying, silence hovering.

      I finally felt happy, though I knew it was wrong.

      At Fred's funeral, his girl-watching buddies hovered

      near the casket, crying in huddles, circles

      football players make before they swoop

      and clobber the other team. I was learning to drive.

      I'd missed drivers' ed to stand with my father

      near the casket. My mother kept fainting, parroting,

      "Thanks for coming," to the mourners whose grief exploded
      
like shaken soda bottles. Sometimes I hear them hum

      like I did that summer at the beach

      when bottles popped right on 7-11 shelves. A bird-

      like cashier. Glass shards. My father yelling, "Look, Mommy!

      

Look at that!" My father and mother

      sill don't remember seeing Hitchcock's The Birds
      
or the swooping seagulls. Even the beach house
      
is caught in a blurry circle of memory, humming

      and hovering, ready to explode. It doesn't help

      I get details wrong--

      Baretta had a cockatoo, not a parrot.