prairie schooner Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

God comes after the worst nightmare I've ever had. The nightmare isn't nightmarish at all. I'm at the family house, in the kitchen, at the end of a visit. My wife and children are leaving too, on their way to do something that... more

God comes after the worst nightmare I've ever had. The nightmare isn't nightmarish at all. I'm at the family house, in the kitchen, at the end of a visit. My wife and children are leaving too, on their way to do something that involves boots and down vests. I'm curious. I'm always curious about their lives these days. My wife says little, and the older children consider it a betrayal to tell me where they've been or where they are going. My youngest is happy to tell me everything about anything but doesn't distinguish between memory, expectation, and fantasy. "Remember," she said to me once, "that night we were walking home and the dogs were barking at us and it was so terrible?" I didn't remember. I hadn't been there, and I was pretty sure she hadn't either, but after I had uh-huh-ed her through what I took to be a fantasy of externalized trauma, my older daughter began recounting the same event. A night or two before, my familyminus mehad struggled through the dark surrounded by barking dogs. My dream self, dressed, like my waking self when I'm with my family, in a loose shirt that conceals the breasts my son insists I don't have, asks my wife what they are going to do. "Oh, a lot of things," she says vaguely, turning to usher her warmly dressed children out the door. "But what?" I ask. My voice has a note of pleading that I censor when I'm awake. In the dream my plea hangs in the suddenly emptied air. My wife and children are gone. I hear them outside on the deck, laughing, bumping into each other, murmuring about their plans.