I'mgonnafallI'mgonnafall
The stairs to the second floor of the barn were good and solid and wide, leading from the tack room upward, the tack room where we often had kittens, and where the saddles and blankets hung, before my grandfather died. Up top, hay bales and an old wooden sleigh my grandfather meant to refinish, he wanted to have the horses pull it in winter. A project left undone.
Often cats lived among the hay bales. Whenever there were kittens the first step was to find where the mother cat had hidden away in the cracks and holes between the bales. On the other side of the barn’s second floor, more hay bales, and the trapdoors for dropping hay down into the horses’ stalls. To get to the other side I had to walk across a pair of planks stacked one on top of the other. I remember them being about a foot wide. I was sure every time that I would fall and probably die. I always appreciate the tack room stairs better after going back and forth across those planks. I couldn’t see the floor through the stairs and they took me down, at a sensible pace of one step at a time, away from the heights of the barn’s second floor.
The consequence of falling wasn’t the scariest part, so much as the sheer fact of height. I say I am afraid of heights, and I am, but not in the sense that I am afraid of what the world will be like for my children or that I’m afraid I will spend my whole life broke. I worry about those things and sometimes those worries wake me up at night but that’s a very different kind of fear. I don’t worry about heights so much as that a part of me reacts to heights, a part that acts faster than I can think or feel. My insides jump and shake. The feeling part of me responds quickly and decisively, turning this jumping and shaking into fear. The thinking part of me responds next and in a disorganized fashion, jumbling words - “oh no, oh jeez, oh god” - and more complex thoughts - “I’mgonnafallI’mgonnafall noI’mfinebutbutbut whatifIfallIfeellikeI’mgonnafall” - and naming that feeling “I’m afraid.”
I say I had to walk across but really what I would do is scoot. I would sit and straddle the plank and reach forward and grab both sides with my hands. I would pick my butt up in the air, scoot forward, reach further ahead with my hands, scoot again, and so on, inching until across, then I’d crawl the last bit onto the other side. Sitting, straddling, scooting, it felt more solid, less prone to falling than walking across.
Once my grandfather and I found a mother cat and her kittens behind a bale of hay, on the side of the barn across from that stupid fucking plank. My grandfather set down a bowl of milk nearby. One of the kittens was all white. I remember the kittens’ as not having had their eyes opened yet but I also remember this kitten as having bright blue eyes. I think I was six but I don’t know. Old enough to remember and young enough that I don’t have clear age markers on hand in the memory. Somehow a hay bale flipped and fell, I remember it being my fault but I often remember things that way and I don’t know if I actually caused the bale to fall. The kitten tumbled next, falling just after the hay bale, hitting the hard wood barn floor eight or twelve feet (to me it looked a hundred feet) below.
In my mind I can see the kitten looking up with bright blue eyes and can hear it mew after it hits the ground. The mother cat walks to the edge of the barn’s upper level, looks down at her kitten and meows, looks back at her other kittens, looks down at the white kitten and meows again. “God damn it, son of a bitch,” I hear my grandfather say, though I think this may be added in later as these are to my mind the most dad-like of swear words and so they fit with how I remember him. He went down to get the kitten and he sent me in the house. I knew the kitten was badly hurt but I don’t know if he took it to a vet or what he did with it. I don’t remember thinking much about the kitten after that. My mom told me years later when I mentioned this incident that the kitten had died and my grandfather was upset about it. (I remember once we found a black trash bag at the side of the road, a bag someone had thrown from the window of a speeding car, the bag was partly split open on the side, inside dead kittens. “I can’t believe anyone still does that,” he shook his head, “sons of bitches. I’ll come back later with the car and pick it up. Sons of bitches.”) I used to think about that white kitten when I would cross the plank, seeing it fall toward the floor, picturing myself do the same.
After my grandfather died my family moved in to what had been his and my grandmother’s house. My dad moved the planks in the barn, taking the top plank off and setting it next to the other plank, widening the bridge across the two sides of the barn. From one foot wide to two feet wide. Too wide to straddle. Wide enough to walk across, I suppose - and my dad certainly supposed, but with only one plank the way across felt much less solid. I was also heavier by then, age 11, than I’d been when I’d climbed across with my grandfather, before the cancer years.
I don’t know why but that day we were going up there to get some hay for some use. My friend Marcus was there. Marcus was faster and stronger than me. He played baseball and didn’t seem to be afraid of anything, except going to hell, because while he had tried to accept Jesus into his heart he hadn’t spoken in tongues when it happened, the way people at his church often did, so he wasn’t entirely sure if he genuinely invited Jesus in. Marcus liked to steal Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues from his dad and Playboy magazines from his uncle and he and I and other friends used to like to look at them and he was sure this meant he was bad and likely going to hell. I shared the fear, not because of anything about speaking in tongues - I occasionally went to church with Marcus and his mom and his five brothers and sisters, whenever I spent the night at his house on Saturday nights, and it always seemed weird to me; none of the other people I knew had churches like that, all the swaying with hands raised and the very loud singing - but for me the fear of hell came from the conviction that I was simply bad - not Hitler bad, but bad enough, as in nowhere near good enough - a conviction that, like the fear of heights, arose as a bodily sense first, then an emotion, then a thought.
Late at night during sleepovers Marcus and I would talk sometimes about hell, enjoying talking about all the tortures the damned would go through, making up new ones - sinners would be forced to eat hot lava in hell because your mouth would feel burning but would never become so burned you couldn’t eat, and you could be stuck with a sharp stick so the lava fell out of your belly, which would feel the burning and the cutting but would never get so hurt that you died because you can’t die in hell, you’re already dead, and the lava that fell out of your belly, the demons would scoop it back up and pour it back down your throat and laugh. It was gruesome and fun to talk about especially when we thought about all the bad people in the world, the ones our parents told us about who would steal kids and hurt them so we needed to not talk to strangers, and it was also awful and terrifying to think we might end up there ourselves.
I wondered sometimes if my dad liked Marcus better than he liked me because like my dad, and like I knew my dad wished I was, Marcus was athletic, and because he never yelled at Marcus. When he would play catch and run around with us in the backyard I always noticed Marcus was better at all of it than I was and I felt sure I had disappointed my dad for being shown up by Marcus, for not being more like Marcus.
That day in the barn Marcus walked across the planks right after my dad. I took a step, stopped as my insides jumped, stood there, sat down to scoot but couldn’t wrap my legs around it - Marcus had seen me do this from times he came with me to my grandparents’ house - I paused again as my dad yelled for me to stand up and get over here already, I stood, took another step, stopped, went back, get over here the yell louder now, not so much in volume as in tone - angrier, the you’re gonna get it don’t you fuck with me boy kind of tone.
“I - I - I can’t, I’m-“
“You can now get over here right now.”
Two fears in competition now, heights vs my dad, whose presence, especially if I didn’t expect him to be there when I walked into the room, made me jump inside like heights did, like spiders did, especially when unexpected (that fear too another reason to feel I’d fallen short, only girls are afraid of bugs, I knew). Heights and my dad, immoveable object meets unstoppable force, I stood a crater on the ground at their point of impact.
“I. Said. Get. Over. Here.”
I step. The board sinks. I can see the board bend so far it falls, I fall, the kitten falls, it hits I hit the floor, this will happen nothing else is possible. I gasp, see my dad’s eyebrows and forehead a mass of angry knots, his lips a sharp thin line, step again with the other foot, board sinks stretchy like rubber I will fall on my head on my arm bones will break that will show him hot blood will splash everywhere wet now on my cheeks is how I know I’m crying, I’ve never seen Marcus cry, even when his dad beat him with a belt that time, even when Ian threw that brick and him him the head after Marcus rubbed Ian’s face in the sand and called him a sissy, Marcus who looks away when I look at his eyes and he looks to my dad “maybe just let him scoot along-“
“NO.” That sharp tone, one of the few times I remember him using this tone on a kid that wasn’t his, and Marcus shuts up right away, looks back at my face then down at my feet. My eyes follow his and I just stare at my toes as I step. Step. Step. Step.
Across.
I wipe my eyes and nose, take in several short fast breaths like “huhuhuhuhuh” and my stomach is tied up like when I tried to doubleknot my shoes and my mom had to untie it for me with her long fingernails. Don’t ouke, this is not a time for puking, I tell myself.
My dad doesn’t smile but his face isn’t all fire and sharp edges now, “you did it. See? I knew you could.” He turns toward the hay bales, picks up one in each hand by the rope holding them together, tosses them down to the barn floor.
Marcus tries to smile, punches my shoulder, “it’s okay.”
“Yeah.”
We each take a hay bale and push it to the edge of the empty space between the two sides of the barn’s upper level, push it over. I watch them turn in the air as they tumble the distance to the floor.
“Okay boys that’s enough hay. Time to get cleaned up and have some lunch, so let’s head back across.”