by Poppet
Everything I fear and dread comes true
~ Job 3:25
WHILE I’M SCRUBBING the bottom of the linen closet the sun comes out to burn heat into the damp ground. In an instant the gloom is chased back into its casket so the thaw of shattered souls can commence. But I’m oblivious. My eyes singe beneath my lids, my skin itches, my heart gongs with panic, my mind battered and bruised after my toil. I’m mentally persecuted, unable to embrace the finality of the past twenty-four hours.
I can tell the time, have been able to since I was four, and know any moment now Adam is going to thunder down the stairs and I have to have the house clean before he reaches the bottom step. Now I’m like Amy, trying so hard so he has no reason to beat me. If he only knew what I’ve done he’d break my legs and bury me with her.
Despite the drama of hands blurring with feverish scrubbing, the caustic assault of bleach in my nose, the heat from the new day is already filtering into the cold corners of the house, the brightness blooming through the windows without curtains, cheerful and rejuvenating. The murk of the wee hours is eradicated by the new day. It’s a lesson for me, one which will take me years to learn. This is rebirth, the sins of yesterday are gone. The damage of yesterday is history, the only moment that counts is right now, today. I have no more power over yesterday and its peril, but I have power over today.
Adam’s hard heels bang down the steps, yelling to me, “Dinner’d better be ready when I get home!”
The front door slams, his truck engine revs, and in three minutes I’m finally alone. Relief floods my adrenal glands and in an instant I’m exhausted. The relaxation of knowing jeopardy isn’t smothering my existence for the next few hours gives me reprieve from the incessant anxiety.
Chilled and worn out I slouch to the front door, banging it wide open and sitting on the step, letting the golden rays of forgiveness wash down the hallway into the house, into me.
Closing my eyes I relish the blistering heat carving into my skin, rendering my eyelids bright scarlet. The breeze is still blowing, balmy and blessed, hastening away every drifting cloud from my canvas. It doesn’t even feel like winter, it’s tantalizing as summer; beckoning. The birds are singing, the air smells sweet, and when I look up the sky is an amazing shade of bluebell.
The scent of bacon and eggs wafts on the morning ether and my stomach growls. It’s a mating call for that food. Nourishment is for the privileged. Instead I turn my face to the gentle strokes of sunshine, letting her be my new mommy; my only friend.
Somehow the warmth from the day’s deity soothes the aches in my bruises, reinvigorating my cold toes and nose. She dries my tears, and I swear to all that is holy I’ll never cry for a woman again. She was my first love, and she’ll be my last.
I love you, Amy. The sky answers by being even brighter and warmer, the sun now so vibrant she’s blinding me where I sit. But nothing good lasts forever. Heaving a lachrymose sigh I battle tears, denying bereavement. I can’t sit here and pretend everything is okay. I’m eight, my mommy died, and I don’t know how to stop it from happening again. I just wish so hard that I could understand how I killed her? Can I undo it?
Mind made up, I go back inside, closing the front door without locking it. Adam forgot his keys once, and when he came home we were asleep in bed. He broke the door in and shattered half the house in the ensuing rage that followed. It’s hung weakly on its hinges ever since, and the key chamber is smashed in so if I dare lock it he can’t get in, then I’ll really be in trouble.
I don’t hesitate in my purpose, charging through the house, out the back door, and down to the yard, running to Amy. “I’m coming, mom. I’m gonna dig you up so we can be a family again.”
First I scour the earth until my nails are thick with dirt, my fingers scrubbed raw by the coarse grains, then go back to the shed for the shovel. It takes me ages, but I finally unearth her, holding her rigid hand.
“Mom?” I lean close, staring into her eyes, hating that she smells funny. She no longer smells like Amy, she smells like something … wrong. With trembling fingers I pick the grit out of her eye, screaming and jumping back when it moves with the pressure.
“Amy?” I squeak, carefully standing a foot away, ready to run from this new bad thing, the bad mommy who smells odd.
She ignores me.
“Stop being such a bitch!” I shout at her, copying the way Adam talks to her. Bending back over her I punch her hard as I can, like he would. She always reacts when he punches her. “Stop pretending, mommy. You have to wake up. You have to!”
That one eye stares at me, the other stares at the sky, both looking strange and milky. She needs a bath, maybe if she brushes her teeth? I try not to breathe when I get too close. I don’t like this. It frightens me, but I’m not letting her know that.
“I said I was sorry,” I whine, dropping to my knees and grazing them both. “Please mommy, I promise I’ll be good.”
Nothing happens, just the birds making a noise in the peach tree. It gets on my nerves so bad I jump up to shoo them away, waving my arms like a lunatic, “Fuck off!” I bellow and stomp and screech, unleashing pain and hurt and rage. I’m so pissed with Amy for not caring. She doesn’t get up, look at me, come back in, tell me it’s okay.
She doesn’t care. She’s bad. She’s not who I thought she was.
She pretended my whole life and now she ignores me. She gave the silent treatment to Adam all the time, only answering him when he got mad and hit her, but by then it was too late and instead of talking she’d end up screaming.
Maybe that’s how girls like it? Maybe they’re all as cold as Amy, pretending they’re loving and caring and warm, but when they get mad at you they turn ice cold and rigid. Her fingers don’t even bend. She’s not human. She pretended to be a mommy. He chased her smile away and I chased something else inside her away. Girls are just hollow and empty. When they’ve had enough they just pretend you don’t exist. Because they’re not nice. Maybe they never were.
It was all a lie. Now without her mask of pretend happy and pretend love, I see the awful truth, the awful horror.
“Liar!” I shriek at her, kicking soil at her face, grabbing handfuls of dirt and pitching them at her until my arm aches.
No matter how hard I shout abuse, aching for a reaction, she stonewalls me, giving me the same treatment as Adam.
“Look at meeeee!” I screech, hoarse after my tirade, hysterical and desperate.
Wild, I bang and punch, getting up to jump on her, afflicted with the ache she’s pierced through me with her stoic adherence to not giving me a shred of attention. Nothing. She doesn’t react.
“Fine,” I sob, crumpling next to her, wishing again to curl onto her chest and be embraced with the warmth of her love. I miss it already.
She doesn’t love you. If she loves you she wouldn’t leave. Amy has gone. For good.
My soul hurts so bad I have fire in my lungs.
Lying in the dirt, pulled tight into myself, I hug my knees, trying to get the warm back, foetally curled in the sunshine, but it no longer reaches me. Everything wrings and pains inside. It’s as bad as when I puke, when I am sick and shiver and shake and can’t still the trembling, can’t stop the anguish, wretched and traumatized I don’t understand the big words to say how awful this is, the day you know for sure your mommy never loved you. It’s like someone stabbed me inside, in a part with no name, a part where the horror lives, the place where tears come from. My brain hurts and I can’t stop crying.
Rolling, my face turned to the sand, I keen and wail until my eyes are so swollen I can barely see, wiping my nose on the grass and my arm, sniffing because there’s no one to tell me to blow my nose and behave, wishing I could die too.
How can she pretend for so long, putting on the face, making me believe her disgusting lie. Adam was right, she is a bitch. Maybe she deserved all the terrible things he did to her. Maybe he could see who she really was. Maybe she’s why he drinks and always has needles.
The kids at school bully me because they think I’m contagious. I don’t even know what contagious means. I hate them. I hate them the same way I hate Amy now.
I got suspended for saying fuck you to Brad, the biggest boy in my class, the one who likes to trip me whenever he can. I don’t see what’s so bad about cussing, I didn’t even know it was cussing because Adam and Amy say it all the time.
Weary, I go upstairs to have a bath. I know I have to be clean before he gets home, and I hope he’s not full of rum when he gets here. If he’s full of rum I’ll be in big trouble. The kind of trouble where I won’t be able to go to school ever again because I’ll be too broken to explain another fall down the stairs.
Reaching the bathroom, starting the water running, I strip down to stand in front of the mirror, examining my scrawny body. I prod the tender ribs sticking through mys kin, dismayed by my knobbly knees. Tight as I can I flex my arm, desperate to see a big muscle, but I’m still underdeveloped. I can’t wait to be grown up. I’m going to be so big and mean no one will ever stomp on me again. I’ll punch their lights out if they try.
Examining the welts from the belt and the myriad kaleidoscope of bruises in varying shades of the rainbow, I get an idea. Dashing to my room I grab the permanent black marker, then skid back into the bathroom. After my bath I’m going to draw pictures all over. I’m going to hide the damage and the scars. These burn marks, no one will see them.
Excited now, I test the temperature of the water, climb in and scrub up in record time. Feverish with excitement I towel off in a frenzy, then get to work.
They can be my tattoos. One day I’ll make them permanent. What happens inside me, inside this house, it’s my secret now.
What I couldn’t know in this moment of renewed hope and power over my own body and life, is that Adam lies too. I might not be a girl, but I hid under my bed this night, bleeding, in more agony than I’ve ever known. I’d rather have the boot in my eye than the searing torture of him holding me down, his pants round his ankles, the strong stink of blood and poop mingling with my screams and tears. This is my punishment for ruining the food he worked so hard to provide.
The screaming ceased when I passed out. I’m weak as Amy.
I’ll never be a man. He wants to make me a man, but this doesn’t feel like love. He told me he loves me. I don’t believe him.
I am broken. I want to hide here forever.
I dare not sleep, watching the open door, listening in fear of his return. Sometimes I beg the world in silent prayer to make the pain stop.
Please, someone, make it stop.
~ Chapter 6 ~
O God put a curse on the day I was born;
put a curse in the night when I was conceived!
~ Job 3:2
Eight years later:
1972
THE STORM REACHES us like a banshee trawling for souls. The willow tree is scraping against the garden shed, the window frames rattle, the old coal stove chimney is squeaking like a steampunk contraption, and the apple tree is pounding on the shingles and gutter like it’s trying to tear us a new one.
Moving to the window to watch the thrashing foliage the gap in the casing is whistling like Satan calling Cerberus, the ethereal fingers of reapers slink through every unsealed nook and cranny, pilfering hideout havens and dust bunnies. Mrs Addler’s garden gate is violently swinging on its creaky hinges, the treehouse at number 87 just lost three planks, and the zinc roof at number 74 warbles like a ghoul freshly woken from hibernation.
A little while ago I could smell wood fires burning, fouling up the neighborhood, but now it’s salty fresh sea air, fog rolling in, drizzle its Siamese twin. West coast living is what it is. I can smell the heavy scent of marine oil even this far inland. I’m a state over, but the smell of ocean breeze reaching me from the coast makes me long for vacations at the beach like my classmates get.
I’ve seen it in newspapers, TV, and photos, but I’ve never been to it in person. The thought of the ocean conjures up magical moments and effervescent joy, the kind that even my father can’t cull. In 1963 Harry Webb released the song Summer Holiday, and Amy used to play that album on repeat until Adam sold the player, then when it came on the radio she’d turn it up and dance with me every single time. Holding me on her hip, swaying and singing. It made me yearn for a Summer Holiday of my own, for a regular life and a regular family. She was such a fan of UK culture she knew Cliff Richard’s real name. She took me to see a rerun of the movie … once.
Hugging my knees I watch the mailbox finally rattle off its rusty pole, the wind on a demolition derby to sweep the squatters and squalor from this suburb, litter tumbleweeding down the street in trash races the cockroaches bet on, and then I hear it.
Staring out my window that hasn’t had curtains since Amy croaked, a rumble peals across the sky, like a tornado approaching, that or the four horseman got a day/night pass from their barracks.
Sitting here I can just see the Paulson’s TV, but I can’t hear it over the storm. I’m secretly in love with Sandra Dee, crushing hard for her. She was so feisty in The Manhunter. I wished Amy was like that, standing up to Adam instead of cowering every time he raised his voice.
I flirt with the idea of suicide almost every day. Life is so hard without her. There’s enough lying around this house to kill a dinosaur with toxic overload. The hippie culture made contraband easy to procure, professing love while killing pain and inducing hallucinations. With Amy gone Adam has a lot of Hookah Hooker parties. I can’t tolerate the stink of hashish.
Every day I think death would be easier than life. Life is cruel. I’m a coward, I’m shit my pants afraid of killing myself. I want to escape, but don’t want to be just another body buried in the back yard.
MY MOOD PLUMMETS every time I walk the garden path to the derelict front door. Is he home? What’s waiting for me on the other side of that distressed white paint?
I’ve worn shorts to school since Amy kicked the bucket. Why? Because my fucking father is an addict. When my ever growing legs stick out the bottom of my trousers I’m forced to cut them below the knee, so I can wear them for another six months without looking like I’m too destitute for fleek threads. Instead this is now my style, my trademark. Summer or winter I’m the retard in long shorts. I’ve worn oversized flannel shirts for years, growing into them, then out of them, forced to rip off sleeves and cut down into the armpits to get more mileage out of them.
Fuck my life.
There has to be a way I can make decent money. To get the fuck away from this shithole and the shithead who owns it.
Mentally I’ve called him A-Damn for years. It sucks that Adam is my middle name because the options of it are so shitty. A damn. Say it backwards and you have mad-a. Mad-der than what? Cocaine? Heroin? MM? Either way you say it it sums up my father. Mad, damned, put them together and I can tell you that evil exists, hell is real, satans likes screams, the Devil can possess and he uses drugs to do it. Just the proximity to my tormentor has my legs trembling, my innards twitching, the weakness of bleak doom stealing my courage.
It takes me all day to build the fortitude to return to my prison, and every evening I lose my will to enter just outside the door, staring at the grimy windows coated in filth, knowing it shields purgatory behind a shroud of urban camouflage.
Female laughter, with a pitch so piercing it makes my teeth ache, filters from the front room. Thank fuck. At least I won’t be fighting him off tonight. I know they’re whores, or hopefuls looking to score from his stash, sometime
s wanting to be my new‘mom’, but at least if he’s boning some random he’s not going to target me when he hits the deranged high.
I spent the afternoon in the mall, where it’s warm and peaceful. The food court might be overcrowded to others, but it’s a haven of obscurity to me. It’s where I do my homework, where I study. No one looks twice at just another kid in the food court, but if I was in the library too often, dressed the same way day in and day out, I’d become a specimen of interest. The place has heating in winter, air-con in summer, and with so many people I’m safe.
In the department stores I‘test’ the deodorants and colognes, then pretend I’m shopping for supplies in the food department, trying all the free samples with a shopping-basket of‘purchases’ which I leave in a refrigerator before I exit. That way what I pretended to purchase while‘browsing’ stays fresh, and no one looks at you funny because you’re sampling the wares, instead they encourage it, hoping you’ll take what they’re peddling.
I especially love the ladies cooking up squares of pizza and sausage rolls in the frozen food section. I even go so far as to pretend I’m buying three packages of each on offer, stacking the boxes into my cart after trying every flavor on their cooked‘to sample’ trays. I’ve realized women are suckers for cute little boys, now that I’m a little older I test charm and flattery on them, and it works.
Going through the same routine with the dried fruit and nuts, I then ask the butcher for me to sample the jerky before requesting a few ounces of each variety, filling my emaciated belly up on free samples before coming home. I never buy the stuff in my shopping cart, but I like to indulge the fantasy that I have the finances to have anything I want.
It means walking further sometimes, so the stores don’t cotton on to my routine; I never frequent the same place inside the same month. A dude does what a dude must. I may be his bitch at home but I still have my pride. For the long hikes to and fro I have an old water bottle I keep filled and in my backpack. The one thing I could afford today was a bag of pretzels. Dinner fit for a pauper. No heated water required. Even Ramen noodles are for the privileged. To have them you need hot water, a kettle or water heater that makes the water feed hot enough to produce warm food. Not in my house. The water’s been cold for four and a half years, and the kitchen appliances got pawned for contraband. My morning shower in winter is enough to give a champion iron-man hypothermia.