Three, and the Hand That Struck Her

The sound of her palm hitting my cheek was small, almost nothing, a wet little c***k that got swallowed by the clatter of forks on plates. It was the first time anyone in that house had struck me, and the last time she was ever foolish enough to do it at all. I remember the sting more than the sound. I remember the way the room went quiet, all those big men frozen mid-bite, and I remember her face above me, pinched and pleased, like she had finally put something in its place. I was three. I had wandered past her chair because I wanted a roll from the basket, and I had brushed against her arm, and she had already been angry about something I did not understand. "You little money-waster," she said. "Do you know what my dress cost? Move." Her name was Corinne. My brother Aaron had brought her home six months earlier, and she had walked through the front door of the Whitlock house like she already owned the hinges. She was twenty-four, blond, pretty in a sharp way, and she had decided before she ever met me that I was the enemy. I did not cry right away. I stood there with my hand on my cheek and stared up at her, and that seemed to make her angrier. "Don't look at me like that," she said. "You're not special. You're just the accident nobody planned." That was when my father stood up. Curtis Whitlock was not a tall man, but he was wide through the shoulders and he had spent thirty years in construction before he took over the family firm, and when he stood the whole table felt it. His chair went over backward and hit the floor with a bang. "What did you just say to my daughter?" he asked. Corinne opened her mouth, and I watched the calculation happen behind her eyes. She had been building a case against me for months, and now she thought she finally had the audience. She put her hand on her stomach, a gesture I would come to know very well, and she lifted her chin. "I said what everyone already thinks," she said. "This family has waited seven generations for a boy. Now you're getting one, and you're still all wrapped around a little girl who shouldn't even be here." My grandfather Arlen was already on his feet. He was sixty-eight and he moved slow, but when he reached for the heavy oak chair beside him, two of my uncles caught his arms because none of them wanted to see an old man swing furniture at a pregnant woman, even this one. "You don't get to talk about my granddaughter like that," my grandfather said. "Not in this house. Not anywhere." My brother Aaron was on his feet too, but he did not come to me. He put his body between Corinne and the rest of us, both hands out like he was holding back a crowd. "Dad, please," he said. "Don't scare her. She's pregnant. She's carrying your grandson. Just give her a minute." And that was the sentence that changed everything. My grandfather went around Aaron like he was a piece of furniture. He got right up close to my brother, and he was not shouting anymore, which was somehow worse. "Grandson," he said. "Let me tell you something about this family. Seven generations of only sons, and every single one of them thought he was the special one. Every single one of them got told he was the future. And every single one of them was wrong about what mattered." He pointed at me. I was still standing there with my hand on my cheek, one shoe untied, watching the whole room turn around me like the inside of a clock. "That child is the only girl born to this family in a hundred and forty years," he said. "She is worth more than your son, more than your girlfriend, more than you. And if you can't see that, you can walk out that door right now and take her with you." Corinne's face went white. She had been so sure. I remember that most of all, how sure she had been, and how fast it drained out of her. Then I did something that surprised everyone. I smiled. I was three. I did not understand everything they said. But I understood that the room had turned, and that she was on the wrong side of it, and that the men who had spent my whole life carrying me on their shoulders were not going to let her hurt me again. The good part had only just started. Her name was Corinne, and by the end of that night she had moved her things into the guest room upstairs and locked the door. Aaron followed her up, and we could hear them through the floor, her voice rising and falling, his voice low and sorry. My mother Ruth came to me in the living room and held a cold cloth to my cheek, and my grandfather sat in his chair and did not read his paper, just stared at the dark television. Nobody turned the television back on. My father had put his fist through it after he picked up the remote. It was still sitting there, cracked and dead, and nobody cleaned it up. It stayed like that for three days, a black eye in the middle of the room, so that every time Corinne walked past it she had to remember what she had done. That was my father's way. He did not shout after the first night. He just let the broken screen do the talking. By the fourth day Corinne had a new plan. She came down to breakfast with her hand on her stomach and sat at my father's right, where my mother usually sat, and she smiled at everyone like the last week had never happened. "I want us all to move forward," she said. "I'm carrying the next Whitlock, and I think we should focus on that." My father did not look up from his eggs. "Move," he said. "I'm sorry?" "That's my wife's chair. Move." Corinne did not move. She looked across the table at Aaron, who was standing by the stove with his coffee, and Aaron did not say anything. He just took a drink and looked at the floor. Then my grandfather came in with his cane. He walked around to Corinne's side of the table and stood behind her chair, and he lifted the cane off the floor maybe a half inch, and set it back down with a tap. "You're in Ruth's chair," he said. "In this family we don't take what isn't offered." Corinne stood up so fast her chair screeched on the tile. She went to the other side of the table and sat down next to me, and she smiled at me with all her teeth. "Good morning, sweetie," she said. I looked at my mother. My mother looked at me. Neither of us said a word.