I pushed away from the table as my mother’s image flashed through my thoughts.
She was lying on her bed, surrounded by dirty unwashed clothes and empty bottles of beer. I was hungry, small, maybe four or five. I could hear her snoring. There was something long and sharp stuck into her arm and a rubber band tied around the top. I shook her hand softly, leaning against her blanket for support.
“Mommy?” I whispered. I was afraid of her anger. If she got mad at me she’d ignore me. Even at that young age I preferred my shell.
“Mmm,” Mommy groaned. “Get out of here, James. Go play. Go…” She trailed off, rolling over onto her side.
Her back was to me. My stomach growled. I was so hungry and the cereal was so high up. I couldn’t reach it even with the chair. “Hungry,” I whispered again, trembling.
Sometimes Mommy was mean. Most times she didn’t like me. She wouldn’t talk to me. She wouldn’t listen when I asked her questions. She didn’t like me at all.
“Do you think I care if you’re hungry?” She rolled over with evil in her wide green eyes. “Starve. It would save me the trouble of feeding your greedy ass.”
My bottom lip trembled. “Mommy,” I whispered again, hungrier, scared, and sad.
“Get the fuck out of my room!” She hardly ever yelled at me, but when she did she yelled loud.
I fell back on my butt and stared up at her, afraid.
“Do you honestly think I could love someone like you, James? You’re nothing to me. Just one lucky sperm. Your daddy didn’t want you and I don’t want you. Get of my room. I’m tired.” She rolled back over. “And don’t slam my door. And turn the TV off. I can hear SpongeBob in my damn sleep.”
I closed her bedroom door softly and then wiped my eyes. There was no food in the fridge. I sat on the floor and stared in the emptiness as my stomach growled. I sat there for hours, feeling something I didn’t know was bone-breaking loneliness. If I was better Mommy would love me. If I was better she’d want me. But I wasn’t better and Mommy didn’t want me.
I didn’t want me either.
The image faded away, leaving my past behind. I couldn’t hear again. My mother was out there, somewhere, or maybe she wasn’t out there, anywhere. Either way she didn’t want me. After Uma took me home I never asked about where she went and Uma never supplied the information. I accepted my disgust for myself at a young age. After I lost my hearing it got worse. I hadn’t been hiding in a shell. I was the shell.
I was trapped inside of my own self.
I had never been more repulsed in my life. If I could rip myself apart and drop my carcass and become someone else I would. As it was I couldn’t do anything about it. I was who I was. And that had never been enough.
Becca grabbed my face and forced my eyes on her. Hers swam, glistening with unshed tears. The sheen made them unbearably beautiful, like looking through diamonds to get to the golden green color beneath. I focused on her eyes, trying to ignore my pounding heart and nausea. Her eyes were gold around the outside of her iris and they faded to green. On her left iris there was a slight mark, almost like a dot of brown had mixed with the green. She was talking to me, begging with me. Eventually her tears fell, trailing down her beautiful face in clear rivulets.
I didn’t realize I was trembling until she dropped to her knees and held my hands, stopping their shaking. I tried to shove the memory from my mind. Why was this happening to me now? Year after year I was an empty vessel. Nothing came in and nothing came out. Now my past was demanding attention, begging me for answers I didn’t have.
I didn’t know anything.
How did that little boy think I’d have my shit together? Me, him—we both looked so little and broken. His hair was messy and his eyes were alarmingly blue, staring at the empty fridge. That was my childhood. Not enough of anything but an open gaping hole.
Becca moved my hands away and settled on my lap. She wrapped her arms around me and held my face to her chest.
I wanted to help that little boy. Save him. Hug him. Want him. Show him that his mother didn’t love him, but that wasn’t his fault. He was just a boy; a small child who’d been forgotten.
As Becca rocked me in her arms I forced myself to think about now. I wasn’t that boy anymore. I was twenty-two. I was James Rush. I was graduating with my bachelor’s degree soon. I was going to be a teacher, someone who helped children like me. I spent seven years in that house but much longer out of it.
Nothing worked to calm me down until I wrapped my arms around Becca. I gripped her body tightly in my arms, inhaling my soap on her skin, my shampoo in her hair, and that soft, delicate smell that came from simply being her. My breathing slowed. My pulse calmed. I opened my eyes and stared numbly at my kitchen.
“Please don’t leave me again,” I begged. “I can’t lose you too, Becca.”
In response she hugged me harder. I felt her nod her head against my neck. Her promise helped relax me further.
Eventually Becca rose from my lap with my hand in hers and led me to the couch. We settled on the leather sofa together, me sitting down and she curled up on my lap. She felt small in my arms, a fragile, breakable thing. I couldn’t protect myself as a child, but I could protect her. Someone this special, this strong, deserved to be protected. I hid my face in her hair and concentrated on the feeling of her breathing as her back rose and fell against my chest.
The sun lowered in the sky, trying to peek through the front window curtains. At one point Becca shifted so she was using my lap as a pillow, switching through the channels in a way that suggested she wasn’t really watching anything.
I lifted my hand and began tracing her full lips. They were silk beneath my fingertips, plump, warm, and inviting. Her eyes met mine knowingly. I wondered if it was healthy to break down in front of someone and then want to take their mouth. If it wasn’t healthy then I was unhealthy.
I bent over and pressed my lips to hers. She gave way beneath me. Her taste, her tongue, her warmth, completely dragged me under. In the moment she threaded her fingers in my hair to hold me in place I realized I wanted to be this man—the one Becca wanted. Any other version was going to get me nowhere fast. There was no way I was going to be the same when she left. So I kissed her harder, taking her mouth to keep her a little bit longer.
She pushed against my chest gently, freeing her lips. Touching them in a daze, she stared up at me with a soft, confused look in her eyes. That look made me want her. Now and later. I tried to kiss her again, but she moved away, the word “work” gracing her lips.
She had to work?
Being alone with myself made me panicky.
She touched my face gently. “Come hang out?”
Somehow being her tagalong for the night didn’t help either. I could imagine the looks she’d get. Who’s the loser in the back? Oh, that’s just James. He keeps trying to hump my leg…“Maybe later,” I offered, not so above being the loser in the back.
Looking away, she nodded, tugging her bottom lip between her teeth. When she returned her gaze it was unsure and hesitant. “Come over. Maybe we can hang out after my shift?”
Without thinking about it I nodded, because I’d go anywhere this woman asked me to go. “Text me.”
“I will,” she promised, reaching up to press her lips to mine softly before getting up and disappearing into my room.
Fifteen minutes later she emerged wearing skintight black jeans, a dark green tank top, and with her hair glistening cascading around her face and shoulders. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, appearing torn.
“Later?” she checked.
I nodded.
When she’d left I sagged against the back of the couch and stared up at the ceiling numbly. Too much was in my brain. Too many loud, imposing thoughts wanted freedom. I tried to drown them out. The harder I fought the louder they became. I suspected why. Becca was gone and my thoughts knew it. They knew I was alone again, susceptible and open to their torture. For hours they feasted on me,
throwing images of my mother at my face, of her boyfriend, of the hours I spent clutching my sore, broken body.
Mom’s boyfriend entered my life like a tornado when I was six. In my memories he was warped and disfigured; a dark, encroaching shadow wanting to swallow me. He had a particular fondness for my ears. He enjoyed slapping me as hard as he could in both, until they would ring for hours. Mom would lie there in a drug-hazed fog while I cried from the pain. Even his voice was twisted. He sounded like a strangled whisper to the boy inside of me.
“All you do is cry.”
I did cry a lot as a child. The moment I lost my hearing my tears stopped. The loss was too profound for tears. The wetness in my eyes didn’t convey what I was truly feeling.
“Stop crying!” he’d order. Slap. “You want to cry harder?” Slap. “I can make you cry harder.” Slap.
Sometimes my ears would hum for days after he left, a painful throbbing that made it hard to sleep. Just when the buzzing would dull he’d show up again. I cried when I’d hear his voice. I knew what was coming. But he’d lure me out with pizza, or burgers, some form of nourishment. Then he’d start in on the ridicule.
“What does it feel like to be so worthless?”
“What’s worthless?” I asked, scarfing down the cold leftover cheese pizza.
“Someone who doesn’t mean anything to anyone. Someone who is so unwanted there’s no point of them. No one cares about them. That’s what worthless means, James.”
I’d cry, insisting he was wrong. But he wasn’t wrong and he knew it. My tears were a fuse for him. The moment I started crying it was hard for me to stop. He’d slap me, ordering me to stop wailing. Slap me harder. Screaming. Slapping and slapping until my ears felt like they were going to explode.
And my mother would sit there the entire time and watch, bored and disinterested.
Eventually my ears did explode. His slaps turned into punches. Hard fists that tore my eardrums apart. It wasn’t one moment in particular that took my hearing, the nurse insisted. The constant damage to my eardrums was a ticking time bomb. They would have healed had he stopped. But he hadn’t stopped. He continued to hurt me even after the painful ringing had begun, ripping unrepairable holes in my eardrums. He hit me for not listening to him, for not hearing him. He took my hearing and so much more.
If it hadn’t been for our neighbor I might not have made it out of that broken-down house in Orlando. She’d noticed the door was slightly open and came to investigate. She found me and took me to the hospital. I was malnourished, my head was swollen painfully, and my hearing was completely gone. The neighbor called the cops on my mother, who in turn called Uma. Uma saved me. It was the only good thing my mother did, calling Uma that day instead of letting the state take me. Uma Rush was exactly what I needed after everything I went through in that house.
Amidst my breakdown I managed to get dressed. I was in my truck and on the freeway before I realized what I was doing. I stared at the packed bag on my passenger seat and then retuned my eyes to the road. I needed Uma again. Someone who wouldn’t demand an emotional response and knew there wasn’t one strong enough to ever expunge the memories in my brain.
I was normally good at hiding these thoughts from myself. I engaged with them rarely, but it was as if while I ignored them they’d secretly grown. They’d festered, magnifying, until they had taken over my brain. I couldn’t hide anymore. What was making me think about these things now?
When had my shell become a trap?
With my speed it took me just under three hours to get to Tampa. It was almost nine when I pulled around Uma’s driveway. The lights in the house were off but as I drove past it the garage was open and the lights were golden, spilling out the windows. Her old Ford, Grandpa’s Ford, was in its spot crowding the driveway. I fit my truck beside it and got out. After Raina left Kent this was where I fled to. I could always flee here. Uma didn’t require anything from me I didn’t want to give. To a kid who’d lost everything that was all I wanted.
Uma was bent over a piece of ornate iron. I could see the beginnings of the shape of a park bench. Her silver hair was in her face. She pushed it aside, tightened her gloves, bending a pair of pliers in her grip. When I came in my foot snagged the end of a paint can. I watched it scatter across the room, coming to stop near her workbench. Uma looked up in surprise and then in shock.
“James?” her lips said. She frowned to herself and then took her gloves off. She was exceptional at signing. She’d learned by herself for me. It was one thing I’d always appreciate about her. “What are you doing here?”
“She never wanted me, Uma. She never loved me. I was worthless from the moment I was born.” The words tumbled out of me.
Her eyes, wide and green just like my mother’s, opened in shock and then tightened in painful understanding. She shook her head and dropped her tools, rising to her feet as she signed. “You look unhealthy. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I was on the edge of something bad.
She approached me carefully, expression knowing. “That’s our way, isn’t it, honey? Keep it in until we explode. Are you finally letting it out?”
“I can’t breathe.” I could hardly see through my tears. I hadn’t even known I was crying until she pulled a handkerchief out of her shirt pocket and handed it to me.
I was falling.
Finally falling.
I fell.
Uma lead me into her house and onto the couch. Not the hugging type, she chose to rub my back as I let it out. Just once. All I wanted was for my mother to defend me, protect me, and love me, just once. Not doing it at all created a man I didn’t want to be. I didn’t like this man. He’s someone no one wanted. I wasn’t going anywhere fast. I was no one. I could go anywhere and be anything and it wouldn’t be enough because I couldn’t figure out how to make it enough.
“Where is she?” I asked, rolling over once the tears stopped. The wooden beams in the ceiling were just as thick and high as I remembered. When I first came to live with her I’d lie in the loft and find shapes. It was too dark to find them now. It was too dark for anything now.
Uma signed fast and efficiently. Unlike Kent, her words weren’t complete sentences with modern phrases but only pieces that mattered. It was strangely fitting for her personality. “I don’t know. Your mother never called.”
“What was wrong with me?” I begged. At this point my tears had a mind of their own.
“Nothing,” she argued, her expression stern. “You were a child. A baby. Your mother was ill. She was an addict. She couldn’t love anything.”
“Bullshit. Heroin was an object. I was a life. How could you want an object over a life?”
Uma looked on the verge of breaking herself. My mother was her only child. She must also feel the pain of her actions and indifference. She and I held it in. We protected ourselves. And in turn we hurt ourselves.
“Your mother had things inside, James.” She patted her chest. “She was ill before she started using drugs.”
“Why?” I refused to think about the person my mother was before she had me. That wasn’t who she was when I knew her and that’s all I remembered.
“I don’t know,” Uma admitted, but she looked away, which meant she did know and I didn’t want to. I grabbed her hand and glared, my expression difficult to dismiss. “Your father was a bad man.”
“Bad how?” I knew miniscule details about my father. All I knew for certain was that I had one. Everything else was rumor.
“Abusive and controlling. He’s the man who got her hooked.” Her hands shook as she signed. “When she got pregnant he left her. It broke her. Losing Grant at such an early age made her crave male attention anywhere she could get it. She sought it from the wrong places. You witnessed that firsthand.”
She signed faster as she continued, making it hard to keep up. I managed to get the most of it. The rest was implied. I guessed losing my grandfather would create a void in my mother’s life, but
I had the same void twice over, three times, maybe even four, and I was nothing like her. Drugs were not an excuse, pain wasn’t either. Uma wanted them to be. She didn’t want to be responsible for raising a daughter capable of the things this daughter did. I could tell she’d thought a lot about this. But I knew it wasn’t completely true. Our pasts had a hand in constructing us, but they didn’t control our morals, our actions. Starving your child, letting a man beat him, not protecting him, not wanting him—these were things done by a cold woman without a heart.
I felt guilty thinking this, but maybe Uma had a hand herself. She was reserved and unemotional. What if my mother craved love from her and she didn’t get it, looking elsewhere until she found a man who hurt her and a drug that blocked out what she was running from. Of course Uma’s role was small. If we searched we could apply blame to anyone and everything. Blame didn’t help. It simply hid the truth under lies that didn’t matter. My mother’s actions were hers alone and that was all that mattered.
She was responsible for this.
“Do I look like him?”
She nodded, smiling slightly through her pain. Then she made the sign for beautiful. “You’re both handsome.”
I rolled my eyes. The ridiculousness of her statement was just what I needed. I pushed up and sat back, scrubbing a hand down my face. Tired of talking, I resorted to signing, explaining to Uma how I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother. “I can’t stop.”
“Maybe you are not thinking about her. Maybe you are thinking about someone else.”
I frowned, wondering what she was talking about. “What do you mean?”
“What’s new in your life?” She looked like she already knew the answer.
My Vicious Demise (Demise #2) Page 20