N K Smith - [Old Wounds 03]

by Weight of the World (epub)

  She placed a steady hand across my forehead. “Jesus, I knew it.”

  I gave her a questioning look.

  “You’re fucking hot.”

  I managed a small smile for her, but she just rolled her eyes.

  “I mean, you’re burning up.”

  Now that she mentioned it, I was feeling warm, but I thought it was due to the nap and the kissing.

  “Stay here.”

  She got up and left the room for a quick minute. When she returned, she had a digital thermometer in one hand and a wet washcloth in the other. I let her take my temperature as she brushed the hair back from my face and held the cloth to my forehead.

  The little stick beeped, she looked at it, and then she shook her head. “For shit’s sake, you’re sick,” she repeated.

  I curled my hands in reaction to her taking the Lord’s name in vain twice. It wasn’t my place to correct her about things like that, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. I was not my father. His beliefs were not mine.

  Before I knew it, I must have fallen asleep again because I was back in my room in Chicago. I was in the closet, actually. The door was just barely open. I uncurled my body and crawled toward the door, peering through the crack.

  The day was growing long and the winter sun was setting, casting shadows in my already-darkened room. It was difficult, but I could make out the door that led out to the hall. The blood and bits were still stuck there, but the color had changed.

  My eyes dropped to the bed and then to the floor at the foot of it. My little bloody footprints still came toward me, leading away from my mother. Through the gap between the floor and my bed, I could see her pale hand, with her fingers slightly bent.

  I felt very small and alone. My mind warred between the knowledge I had gained since then and the thoughts of a seven-year-old. I felt the urge to crawl from my hiding spot and try to step over her again, but the fear that perhaps her eyes would open and her hand would reach out and grab my foot seemed too much.

  Then the tears came, because if her eyes opened then she would be alive and if she was alive and I was cowered in the closet, I wasn’t helping her when she needed it. She was my mother and I was letting her lie there in a pool of her own blood.

  But I couldn’t go out there. God’s angels or the Devil’s demons would be coming to collect her and I didn’t want to see either one.

  I knew if they saw me, they would take me, too. While I wished to be gone from this place, I knew that God would banish me to Hell if the angels took me and the demons would deliver me straight into the hands of Lucifer. My father’s words rang in my head and the images that accompanied them took my breath away.

  I sat back down, wrapping my arms around my legs and burying my face in my knees.

  My father and Joseph would be back and if nothing else, Joseph would save me from the body of my mother.

  Joseph always saved me.

  The hours passed like days and it was dark when the closet door opened. I looked up from my folded hands to see my father’s impassive face.

  “You were right to pray, Elliott,” he said to me as he bent down to pick me up, bringing me close to his body.

  It was the one time I remembered being happy to be close to him. It was the one time I could remember being relieved to hear his voice.

  I clung to him and squeezed my eyes shut.

  My heart began to race again when I felt him put me down. I knew even with my eyes closed that we had not made it out of my room. When I opened my eyes I was on my bed. Joseph was next to me, his hands and chest bloody.

  Instantly I knew he would get the belt for ruining his clothes.

  “It’s time to pray,” my father said.

  My little body shook and my mind couldn’t keep up with his request. Prayer meant knees on the floor and my mother was on the floor and her blood was … I didn’t initiate any movement, but I felt my body being moved. My knees were soaked as my hands automatically folded together. My father’s words of demons and Hell, of repentance, shame and sin echoed through my ears, growing louder until it blocked out all other thoughts. I tried to keep my eyes shut but when he demanded that I open them to see what a forsaken soul looked like, I had to.

  There was nothing left of her face.

  I felt sick as I finally pulled my eyelids open once more. I was hot and sweaty as I looked up at Sophie.

  “I’m going to call Dr. Dalton.”

  I shook my head and held onto her arm.

  “Fine, but would you at least take Tylenol or something?”

  I shook my head again.

  “What? You like suffering? All you have to do is swallow a tiny pill and you’ll feel at least a little better. Why won’t you do that?”

  God created my body to be in His likeness. My body could fight off what it needed to fight off and if it couldn’t, it would be God’s plan.

  I hated my thoughts even as they raced through my mind. These were not my thoughts. I took medicine. I took the medicine Stephen prescribed me. I took medicine when I needed it and Sophie was telling me that I needed it.

  I was growing confused and was finding it difficult to separate my father’s thoughts from my own.

  My body hurt from my throat to my muscles. My stomach ached as though it were starving. It felt like it was sticking together each time it contracted.

  I thought of my dream. It had taken hours for my father to finish praying over my mother and after that it took even longer for the medical personnel and the police to clear out. There had been so many questions.

  I had to sit in my father’s study for an hour with a woman who asked me a bunch of questions that I didn’t understand. I tried not to answer many. If I answered them wrong and my father found out, he would be angry with me.

  They wanted to take me someplace. They said something about a warm bed and people who could help, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. He threatened them and said that if God hadn’t wanted me to see it, then He wouldn’t have let me. He told them that I would be fine, but when the woman pushed, he compromised and agreed to let her come back for a follow-up visit.

  By the time she came back the next day, I had only slept a few hours and my father had told me what I should say to any possible question she asked. All of my answers involved the will of God. Thinking back, it was obvious that he was making sure to draw a line of religious freedom.

  But back then all I knew was that he told me what to say and I didn’t want to upset him by saying anything different. He had taken the belt to Joseph for soiling his clothes with the blood of our mother, but he’d left me alone. I didn’t want to feel the sting of the lash simply because I couldn’t follow his instructions.

  We went to Christmas Eve and Christmas morning services as if nothing happened. The men clapped their hands on my father’s shoulders, but no one mentioned that they knew. The women sat with Joseph and me and wouldn’t meet our eyes.

  My brother wouldn’t speak, even when I asked him questions. He wouldn’t look at me, but just stared at the Christmas lilies while words were spoken about the sin of the world from the pulpit.

  My father didn’t cook for us. A few women from church dropped off covered dishes.

  I didn’t want to sleep in my room; no matter how hard we tried, Joseph and I couldn’t clean it enough. The blood was too thick and the floor was horribly stained.

  I would stay awake until I knew my father was asleep and then I would leave my room and crawl quietly into Joseph’s and sleep in there.

  I opened my eyes and looked around Sophie’s room to find that the lighting had changed and the door was open. There were quiet voices just outside, which I could tell were hers and her father’s. I tried to move, but my body was too heavy.

  “He doesn’t want to.”

  “He’s si
ck. You can’t keep Stephen out of the loop about this; he’s a doctor and that’s exactly what he needs.”

  I should have told her that I get sick like this every year. It just sort of snuck up on me this time.

  “Has he said anything?”

  Her voice was soft and I had to strain my ears to hear. “He mumbled something about god healing him if he was meant to be healed.”

  Her words deflated me even more. Now she knew how messed up my mind was. Now she knew I was like my father.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s clearly crazy. I’m calling Stephen.”

  “But …”

  “Look, I admire that you want to do right by his wishes, but that fever has been too high for too long.” Quiet fear struck me as I wondered if her father had checked on me. As a paramedic, he probably would have.

  I drifted back off to another time and place.

  The kids at school were celebrating Halloween. I didn’t know what grade I was in, but Joseph sat next to me, so we were still in elementary school together.

  The Bible sat open on his lap. “You have to say it again, Elliott. You stuttered on the word ‘suffering.’ Dad will hear it. Do it again.”

  I didn’t want to. I wanted to be inside the classroom eating candy and wearing a costume.

  “I d-d-don’t w-w-want to.”

  “I swear if Mom takes your punishment again tonight, I’ll use the belt on you myself.”

  His words hit me like my father’s strap and all thoughts of forbidden parties disappeared. I looked up at him with wide eyes, wondering if he’d really do that.

  “Aw, Elliott” he began, his expression shifting to pity, “you know I won’t but …”

  My fears were gone, so my thoughts turned back to the activity behind the closed door. “Thhhhhhey’re e-eating c-c-c-cupc-c-cakes in thhhhhere.”

  Joseph sighed and his voice hardened again. “And we’re not. Now say the passage and don’t stutter.”

  “W-w-w-why c-can’t w-we eat c-c-c-cupc-c-cakes?”

  “Our bodies are temples of God. ‘Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?’” Joseph could always quote Scripture well.

  “B-b-but w-w-what’s w-wrong w-with c-c-c-cup …”

  “This is why you get punished all the time. You ask too many stupid questions.”

  “B-but …”

  “Sugar is a vice. Vices are vain and vanity is a sin.”

  “B-b-but w-w-what’s w-w-wrong with HHHHHHalloween?”

  “Really?” My brother looked down at me like I was as stupid as the other kids in school thought I was. “It’s the Devil’s holiday. Now read the Scripture before I decide to stop helping you all the time.”

  His words again ignited fear in me. Joseph not only helped by going over the lessons, but he would hide the strap sometimes, too, even though all that seemed to do was make my father even angrier. Still, it gave me a few extra tries to get out of my punishment.

  I didn’t want Joseph to stop helping, so I looked down at the Bible he passed to me.

  I went as slow as I normally did when trying to focus and eliminate the stammering. My father had chosen a long passage. I thought he did it just because he knew I wouldn’t be able to say it all.

  We’d been on this one for nearly a month.

  “You have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed in your struggle against sin. And have you forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as sons? ‘My son, do not scorn the Lord’s discipline or give up when He corrects you. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves and chastises every son He accepts.’ Endure your suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? But if you do not experience discipline, something all sons have shared in, then you are illegitimate and are not sons. Besides, we have experienced discipline from our earthly fathers and we respected them; shall we not submit ourselves all the more to the Father of spirits and receive life?”

  Although I got through the verses with my brother, I failed at home in front of my father. I had made it all the way to the word “respected” before my focus slipped.

  When I forced my eyelids open, I was no longer in Sophie’s room. Thankfully I was in my own bed and not a hospital bed. Two years ago I had been admitted. Stephen had given me his word that he wouldn’t come into my room unless I was dying. That time I got very sick, but wouldn’t let him in to care for me.

  He made his point by taking me to the E.R.

  “They almost weren’t going to let me stay.”

  I tried to lift my head to find where she was, but I found the action too difficult. I was thankful when Sophie appeared to my left.

  “It’s a good thing for you that I’m a stubborn bitch.”

  I tried smiling, but I had no idea if it translated from the thought to my face.

  “Seriously, Elliott, you were … I mean, you’ve been sleeping for a really long time and you …”

  I turned to look at my clock. It was five in the morning.

  “… you kind of hurt your hands and …”

  If I’d had energy, I would have probably panicked. I glanced down and saw that my hands were patched with white gauze and surgical tape. I had bitten my hands in my sleep and Sophie saw.

  “… I don’t think we’ll be able to go driving today because everyone’s super worried about you.”

  My throat was dry. Not that I really had anything to say, but I tried to swallow and found that I couldn’t.

  “Are you thirsty? Here,” she said.

  The bed sank down as she sat next to me, pulling and tugging me up until I was slightly inclined. She held a glass of water to my lips and I drank, hating and loving that she was doing this. I didn’t want to be a burden and I didn’t want her to think of me as helpless, but I loved that she was taking care of me.

  Not even Jane could have done it better than she was.

  When I was settled back down against my pillows, Sophie gave me a little smile. “I’d lie down next to you, but you’re kind of sweaty and gross.”

  The way she said it let me know she was joking. Besides, I would hate to make her sick.

  “It’s good that you’re drinking. Dr. Dalton was like a second away from taking you to the hospital, and then your fever broke.”

  I was tired, so once she took my hand, I closed my eyes again.

  A gentle nothingness overtook me.

  I woke again at quarter past eleven. I was extremely disoriented, not only mentally but physically as well. My legs felt like jelly and my sense of balance was off. I made it out of my bedroom and across the hall, barely making it in time to heave twice into the toilet, but my stomach was already empty.

  I clung to the railing as I ventured downstairs.

  I wondered if Sophie was still here or if they made her go home. I needed her.

  I needed water like crazy and a nice hot shower to clean the filth away, but I felt as though I’d been granted a reprieve from the usual week-long bout of flu I got this time every year.

  My dreams had been horrible and I had wanted to wake from them, but found I couldn’t. I dreamt of things I didn’t want to remember. Things that I never wanted to think about again.

  My last dream after that was about the night at the bonfire, except it wasn’t Megan I was with, it was Sophie. Instead of Megan’s inexperience leading her to believe that I was normal and functioning, Sophie’s experience made it no secret that I was completely inept and incredibly dysfunctional.

  But the Sophie in my dream wasn’t like my real-life Sophie. She was mean, ignorant, and hateful. She laughed at me and called me names. Instead of letting me set a pace I was comfortable with, she took control and forced it to be something I
couldn’t handle.

  The dream ended with everyone in school hearing from her how horrible I was, how I couldn’t finish, how I cried like a child and begged her not to tell.

  I was thankful when the dream was ended by my rumbling stomach.

  I padded softly into the kitchen and paused when I saw Jane and Sophie playing cards. Jane had said that Sophie wasn’t capable of being a good friend, but I was happy to see them connecting, even if it was through a game called “War.”

  Jane noticed me first. She jumped up, her chair scraping loudly against the linoleum. “Elliott!”

  She stopped herself before getting too into my space. “You look disgusting.”

  I wanted to tell her that I felt disgusting, but I still had no will to speak and the words would not come.

  She reached out and touched my arm and I smiled at her. I wanted her to know that I was feeling better and I would be okay. Jane had always been my rock during the times I was sick, but I was thankful that she took the backseat and let Sophie do it this time.

  I turned my eyes to my girlfriend and found her looking at me closely. “I made you soup.”

  I smiled. Her soups were good and she had made one just for me.

  As excited as I was for Sophie’s soup, after I sat down at the table and she served it to me, I realized that I did not feel a whole lot better, but that I wanted to feel better. I wanted to go on the drive she had talked about. So long as everyone thought I felt better, then maybe we could get away.

  I sipped at the broth of the homemade chicken noodle soup and tried not to show how unappealing I found it. I doubted it was her soup that was turning my stomach, but more my body rejecting food in general. I shivered as it contrasted against the cool of the kitchen.

  “It’s not good?”

  I looked up at her, completely unaware that I had stopped eating. I couldn’t settle on which response to use. A shake of the head could indicate that I thought it wasn’t good, and a nod could be seen as agreeing that it wasn’t good, so I shrugged.