The Hall Closet

He grabbed my wrist and yanked me in the direction of the hallway. I don’t remember what I said, and I don’t remember what he said about what I said. It wasn’t something I did because I never did bad things in front of him. His grip was sure and certain and painful. It was probably something I said because that was becoming my way of hanging on to my existence, my core, my very being. Without backtalk, I was completely absorbed into his world and I would vanish and not exist. It was a form of separation, even at the age of almost eight. To Dad, backtalk was defiance, disrespect and an unacceptable challenge to his immutable authority.
“Ok,” he shouted, “you wanna be like that? You’re a bad boy.”
“Frank!” my mom shouted. But she could not say no or stop or don’t.
“I…” was all I could get out. No time for apologies, and it was too late to offer one.
“Bad boys go in the closet and stay there.”
He twisted my wrist with his left hand and opened the hall closet door with his right. He was strong but when possessed with rage he had a super-strength that had malice in it.
“You go in the closet and stay there!”
He pushed me in and closed the door.
“No!”
I heard him walking away.
“Don’t come out until you know how to be good.”
My chest heaved and shook. My heart scampered like a small dog when the doorbell rings. I shook so much I thought my bones would unhinge themselves and collapse.
I was wedged between the Hoover upright vacuum cleaner and the bottles of water, which Mom had stored in the event of a nuclear disaster. I lunged forward but the heavy winter coats tossed me back. I started to panic that I wouldn’t find the door, but then I remember that I was not allowed to come out until I knew how to be good. I began to ponder that. How could it be determined? I slumped down and landed on the Electro Lux canister vacuum cleaner. It was like sitting on a cool log. I reach out in front of me and found the lining of one of Mom’s coats. I pressed the lining against my face and used it like a washcloth. I smelled her perfume and perspiration, her happiness and her worry. I stood up and found Dad’s overcoat. It smelled of perspiration, a hardline decisiveness, a steel trap of the night air, and Old Spice. There was a fur-lined sweater, too. I didn’t know Mom had anything with fur.
The hall closet was turning out to be ok. I settled in. There were things of comfort in here, and it was quiet, and the darkness wasn’t so bad as it seemed at first. I would just stay in the hall closet. Dad wouldn’t bother me, and in fact he would think I was still figuring out how to be good.
And how do you know when you’re good? Who gets to say? What if there are different ways to be good or bad? What if there are bad ways to be good, or good ways to be bad? Mom says I’m good. I even kept my earliest memory of her saying that I was good: when I went to the bathroom by myself. And I remember Dad saying, “Good boy!” when I drove in the final quarter inch of a nail he had started.
I calmed down. My heart settled in. My bones reset. I was breathing normally. The closet was ok. I was ready to stay until one of them open the door and let me out. Dad wouldn’t open the door until Saturday to vacuum the carpets. I hadn’t seen Mom open the hall closet door much. But I recalled the dilemma of “Big Bad John,” in the song by the same name. His friends were going to suffocate and die because there wasn’t enough air. I didn’t want to die; nobody was supposed to die when they weren’t supposed to, so I opened the closet door. I wasn’t going to die. Not that day and not any damn day. Not dying was certainly a greater issue than figuring out if I was good or bad or what that was or whether I was one or the other or both, but more of the former than the latter. I threw myself toward the door, bumped it and found the doorknob. The plentiful, new and unused air in the hallway greeted and blessed my efforts.
I went to the living room and saw Dad in his big chair watching TV. Mom was on the couch but not looking at the screen. They were acting like nothing had happened. I figured I could do the same. Dad said, “Well?” but didn’t say anything else. I set myself down on the blanket in front of the TV. Nothing was said until 8:30 when Dad said it was time for bed. I got up and went to my room. I got in bed and was thinking that the whole throw-you-in-the-closet routine came from somewhere else. That his dad, a man I never met, might have done it to him. But everyone said that Jacob was a kind, gentle man, and his name inspired mine so I didn’t want him to be that guy who tosses kids in a closet. But I was convinced it wasn’t an original notion for Dad, but that he had some kind of similar bad experience in childhood. Maybe his Mom did it, who knows?
What they didn’t know was after that night. I would occasionally go sit in the hall closet, just for the peace and quiet of it and to be next to their coats and the vacuum cleaners. I stopped sitting in there when spring came and it was too warm and stuffy. Or maybe because I felt I had sufficiently destroyed the horror and power of that moment of being cast off and left. I could face that and I had conquered it; I was ready for the world.