Terror followed me to Augusta and Rockwell at age 22. Or maybe I brought it with me to Augusta and Rockwell. I’ve blocked out a lot of what happened in that apartment. I lived with a man there, but I can’t recall anymore what he said to me or the things he did. I wonder if past me was able to somehow receive all of that pain in such a way that future me would not have to remember it. I wonder if past me turned her mind off so that future me would be spared. I wonder if she knew then: there will be no memories, no flashbacks, no waking up in terror. Were the memories formed and then destroyed somehow, eradicated from my mind by some function of survival? Or were they never formed at all? Instead of experiencing his rage, his incoherence, his name-calling, his destruction, maybe my perception shut off, a mental black out, so that the memories wouldn’t form at all. Perhaps the time spent witnessing my father’s violence made it so that my mind could just switch off.

I haven’t forgotten all of it. One night, I arrived home earlier than him after a night out. Maybe he’d come home an hour later, two hours later, four hours later. I didn’t know what time he’d get home. I couldn’t rest as I waited for him, waited to hear his footsteps come up the stairs, his yell spilling into and filling the apartment, a typhoon of objects thrown around the living room. Was this the past? Who would come through that door? Was it Gabriel at age 48? I felt an uneasiness that was like being perpetually stuck in the moment before a scream, held between the sharp intake of breath and the expulsion of sound. The anticipation, waiting to hear his footsteps, was felt in a stillness in the back of my throat, the stillness just before the shiver of tonsils in a shriek.

So I hid. At two in the morning, my uneasiness and anticipation turned into an energy that became careful, methodical, and thorough. At the back of an unused bedroom, there was an empty closet, a long closet with sliding doors. I gathered blankets and a sleeping bag and laid them out on the carpet floor inside. They fit perfectly, folded in half, a cozy nest. A pillow. Headphones. A flashlight. My phone. I’m age nine setting up a playhouse. I made sure the volume in my headphones couldn’t be heard from outside. I put a rolled up sheet against the bottom of the sliding doors so that you couldn’t see the light of my flashlight.

I hid in a closet so that he wouldn’t find me when he got home. I waited to hear the door open, waited to hear the mud rush in. It was like being at the bottom of a tank, or the bottom of the sea, looking up at the surface. Stuck in that moment just before you can no longer hold your breath underwater. I’m the corpse. Have you ever made yourself small, looked up at your closet from the floor?

Finally, I heard his footsteps on the stairs, a deep, low thump muffled through our apartment walls. I heard him muttering and confused and angry. I heard him look for me. I heard his footsteps walk through every room, the kitchen, the bedrooms, the bathroom, the back porch.

I finally heard him walk into the empty bedroom, I heard him on the other side of the shut doors that I laid next to, the wall separating me from the swamp. I tried not to make a sound. I’m waiting for the corpse beside me to come alive. Who was on the other side of that door? Who was on the other side of that wall?

I’m nine years old, seized before a scream. Please don’t find me.

He didn’t find me. I held like this for hours. He didn’t sleep. He searched for me. He texted me, I had one of those navy Nokia phones with silver buttons and glowing green screen. Realizing I would never rest, I gave up hiding. I pulled open the closet doors to face him. I pulled open the closet doors to die. But the memory ends there. It fades to black. I don’t remember if I screamed. I cannot see who is on the other side of that door. Was this the same man who terrified us?

The violence of the body in the canal, of Gabriel at age 48, of my childhood, of my dream, of the apartment at Augusta and Rockwell, is never in the present. The violence of the corpse in the water happened before the story, before the dream, or after the story, after the dream. Did he jump? Was he killed? Is it worth it now to guess?

Gabriel’s violence at age 48 is never present. I tried not to watch. It happened behind me, in another room, just beyond a closed door, just out of my eyesight. Gabriel was violent with others in my family but not me. I was his favorite. I was only a witness. I am left with the horror of witnessing—a smell sick and putrid like vomit, the sound of an impact like a mallet striking a hanging and fresh veal, the sight of thin panes of glass shaken by a bellow of rage and a slamming door, the feel of my toes curling into a blanket at the bottom of a closet. The things that Gabriel did are things no one should ever see, not even you, even though you may be seeking it now.

The violence is past the river, just through the trees. It is in the corner of my eye as I tried not to look. It is just slightly off page. It is just outside of your sight and if you turn your head to find the smell it will just barely escape your vision. But it is implied in the water and in the mud and in the silence of the dream, the silence of the canal, the silence of the text.

Today, as our family sees each other’s faces from far away on a video call, the violence isn’t present anymore. We laugh and we love each other and we’re proud of each other. He has apologized for it, even though he doesn’t remember most of it. But the silence of memory remains.

And for me, the silence of terror remains. But it is no longer in the canal or in my room submerged in water. It is in the silence of my Chicago apartment, on Augusta and Rockwell in a third floor walk-up, hidden at the bottom of a closet. As I entered relationships where I loved and feared the people who loved me and hurt me, the violence emerged from its concealment and looked me in the face.

Sometimes my memory gets mixed up. I’m starting to forget things and I’m starting to remember the past differently. Here, I’m the little girl on my father’s back and I am also the little girl watching my father slap the corpse in the water. I’m the little girl witnessing and swept up in a typhoon of his violence, a storm that strikes and plunges little girls in the water and sweeps us downstream.

I tell myself never again. I tell my father I love him.

But I still watch the corpse, I sleep next to it every night. ■