Crush

by Laura Susan Johnson

  My skills improve and I not only get used to it, I want to do it. Because I don't want to be left alone. He can't stay away from me very long, he says, I'm too good. He taught me so well.

  Mom videos Daddy as I do the things he showed me, and then he puts me on my stomach—I wish she would stop recording, stop watching and go away. But she stays. "You're a nasty boy, Jamie," she says, her mouth pulled into a snarl-smile that still scares me in my dreams, her vulva wet. After Daddy comes, he takes the camera from Mom and she uses the big flashlight on me, or the whisk broom, or whatever she can get her hands on that's shaped right.

  I get used to what Daddy wants, and pleasing him is second nature. And he always praises me when I'm finished. He's as gentle as he can be, unless Mom tells him to do it harder.

  The flashlight I never get used to. It hurts. They trade laughs and comments like they trade the camera. It hurts when they say those things about me, even worse than when Mom uses the flashlight.

  And when he videos her burning me with her cigarette, calling me names as I scream, I don't understand what I've done wrong. I'm doing what they tell me to do. I don't want to, but I love them. Why does she burn me? Why doesn't Daddy make her stop?!

  They only ever change the sheets when they want to make a new video. Otherwise, my bed stays soiled. While Mom tucks in the nice smooth clean sheets, I huddle down on the floor as far away as the chains will let me go. I don't want to do this. It's the same every time, a story they have to tell over and over again. When he has all his clothes off, Daddy squats down naked beside me. "You ready to make another show with Daddy?"

  "No," I cry. "I don't want to do the show." I really don't. Though I've said I've gotten used to it, even gotten to like it, I really don't like doing these videos. I'm so mixed up inside. I want Daddy to love me, but I don't want to do things to him, I don't want him inside of me, and I especially don't want Mom to do the things she does with her flashlight, belt and cigarettes.

  But when Daddy smiles and kisses me, and says, "I'll bring you mac and cheese, your favourite," my stomach clenches and churns. I'm so hungry.

  "How about green beans? And Ding Dongs for dessert! With the creamy stuff in the middle!"

  So I do the shows with him. Sometimes the mac and cheese is hot and creamy, with plenty of salt and pepper. It's so wonderful that I beg them for seconds and thirds. Other times it's cold and tastes like it's a few days old, but it stops the cramping in my tummy.

  I'm the centre of their attention a couple of times a month. Otherwise, I'm a nothing behind several locks and chains, they ignore me except to bring food now and then, and to dump my bucket into the toilet.

  It takes a few more years, but I learn to stop screaming. If I stop screaming sooner, she'll stop burning me sooner. I learn other things too. If I don't scream, they're not as fun to watch. They finally stop making videos when I'm eleven or twelve, when I become too skinny and weak to do what they like. I've become so weak I don't even care when Mommy hits and burns me. So they stop. They no longer come into my room, not even when I beg them to bring me food.

  I'm in a dark forest. I can see myself, my skin reflected in the meagre light. I can't see ahead or behind me. There are no sounds in the wood, not even the howling of coyotes or the hooting of owls. I'd rather hear anything than this thickening silence.

  No-one is here. No-one, and I'd rather have to do the videos, and I'd rather be burned with her cigarettes, than be here with only myself.

  But I'm too skinny and weak to make their friends happy now.

  I'm all used up...

  They don't come back.

  April 23rd.

  My thirteenth is my last birthday in that room. Daddy opens my door, peeks in at me for a second. I don't notice him. I haven't eaten—I've lost count after six days or so.

  He hasn't brought food. He doesn't come in. He just closes the door softly.

  There is no mirror in my room. I've never liked mirrors. I see my father in my hair and my mother in my eyes. Now, even without a mirror I look down, and I see myself. My hair is falling out. My eyes are about to sink into my brain. My skin is grey. I feel so light.

  The loud reports from outside my room are the last sounds that make my body jump, the last stimuli I respond to in that house. And then the house is quiet. I've been praying to die. I'm crying. I'm in pain. I'm unbearably thirsty. I hate the silence. It's horrifying, the silence.

  Please God, let me die. Sleep drapes itself over me like a heavy wool blanket, and I surrender. The endless hours in that stinking bed meld together, the chains eating into the skin of my ankles forgotten.

  I'm alone in this thickly wooded wilderness. The trees close in around me, as always, but the difference now is, they seem friendly, like they feel sorry for me being all alone, and are bending down to tell me everything is going to be okay.

  I stop being hungry. I stop being thirsty. I stop being afraid of the deafening silence. I stop being angry at Mom and Daddy for leaving me for so long without food, for not emptying my commode so I can use it.

  I stop loving Daddy. I did everything I could to let him know how much I loved him, how much I needed him.

  And still, he left me.

  Alone, in the dark.

  I hate him.

  My most recent and frequent companions come to visit, buzzing in through the slit of the open, screenless window that I once tried to crawl through to freedom—shiny green flies that have followed my repulsive aroma for miles. As I sleep, their tiny black tongues lap at the sweat, vomit and other ungodly waste that's leaking out of me unbidden.

  I stop praying for God to come get me.

  three:

  tammy mattheis

  (aged four to fourteen)

  The memory is there. It's buried far, far below millions of grey and white molecules, beneath bundles upon bundles of nerve fibres and synapses. It's there. But I don't remember it right now.

  I'm in a grocery shop with my mother, somewhere in Sacramento. I'm going to be five in a few months, so I'm too old to ride in the baby seat. I'm a big boy now, and a good boy, for I never run off on my own when I'm shopping with my mom. I walk beside her quietly, like the good boy I am. We get in the checkout line behind a dark haired lady dressed in a powder blue business suit and shiny patent high heels. Her black hair is piled neatly on her head. She never looks to see any of the people around her. She has a baby in her cart. He's sitting in the baby seat like he's supposed to be, his curly blonde hair like a halo, his soft baby legs dangling, one chubby little hand holding the railing in front of him, the other clutching a piece of Red Vine liquorice. He's looking at me, his face and hands coated in sweet, sticky liquorice residue. The woman with him finally turns to face us briefly, a red vine hanging out of her mouth as well. Her sour face doesn't match her nice clothes and pretty hair.

  The little boy reaches out for me as if to say, "Come here!" And I go to him, which is something I never do. I don't talk to strangers, no matter how old, or young, they may be. But I go to the little boy in the cart. I don't even like Red Vine liquorice, but I go to him. "You have big eyes!" I tell him, and he smiles and laughs at me. "How old is he?" I ask his mother.

  "Two," the woman grunts, grabbing several more packs of Red Vines, along with a bunch of beef jerky packs. "These too," she tells the cashier. She seems unfriendly. She won't look at me. I glance backward to my own mom, who smiles gently.

  I turn back to the blue-eyed baby boy and he reaches for me again, the little pink bow of his mouth curling up in a smile. I shake his gooey hand, "I'm Tammy. How do you do?"

  The baby giggles. "What's his name, please?" I ask the woman whose eyes match his. She ignores me. My heart stings, and I look at my mom again. She just smiles and shakes her head. I turn back when the baby babbles musically, his relatively new and unabused vocal cords manufacturing the loveliest sounds I've ever heard as he jabbers and coos like a magpie. "He's so sweet!" my mother exclaims. The baby's mom continues to disregard everything
we say and everything her baby does.

  I wish I knew what he was trying to talk to me about! I stand on tiptoe and take his sticky pink hand in my own. "You don't say!" I gasp. "Is that right?" The more I respond to him, the more the baby loves it, filling my ears with enchanting gurgles and coos of delight.

  His mother finishes paying for her groceries and says flatly, "Come on, Jamie. Let's get out of here."

  "Jamie? Is that his name?" I ask desperately. The dark-haired woman blinks her blue eyes rapidly at me and in her grown-up-irritated-at-annoying-child voice, says, "Yeah, Jamie. What do you care? You won't ever see him again!" Tears crowd in my eyes as I turn back to my mother. She looks like she's likely to say something to this rude, haughty, dark haired lady who now turns to look for the bag boy. As her attention is taken from us, I stand on tiptoe again and kiss the baby's liquorice-coated cheek. He smiles, leans down over the safety bar in front of him, and kisses my mouth.

  Love's first kisses.

  Then she takes him away from me.

  In the car on the way home, I cry, tears mixing with the sticky stuff on my face. "I wish I could be his friend forever," I sniffle.

  "I know, honey," Mom says.

  I don't think I'll ever forget those blue eyes.

  But I do.

  By the next day, I stop thinking about the baby in the cart.

  I forget about him for a long, long time.

  But it won't be forever.

  From the moment I am able to put words together, I realise people like me. They can't help themselves. People like pretty kids, and I'm pretty. I'm told often too, even when I get older. Oh, they don't use the word pretty for me. Somehow to call a man pretty is a huge no-no. Everyone thinks men squirm when they're described in that word. Not me. I know I'm a pretty boy. I'm a masculine version of my mom. I have thick black hair and eyebrows and bluish-green eyes. The girls love my lips. Killer smile too.

  As long as I can remember, I've believed myself photogenic enough to have a career in the spotlight—a movie star, a music star on MTV, or better still, a famous news anchor on CNN or ABC or something. I love to watch the news, even as a very small child. My heroes are Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Wolf Blitzer. I also get to see the last few years of Cronkite's heroic reign.

  In the third grade, I have several friends from church and school: Ray Battle, a big stocky boy a year older than me, Stacy Pendleton, a girl who's in kindergarten, and Benny Feldman, a tall, lanky fifth grader. After school and on Sunday afternoons, we chuck our clean clothes and dig forts out in Benny's backyard. Later, we make videos of ourselves doing commercials and newscasts. It's great practice. I'm always the leader, and I love the attention I get from Stacy, and from Ray's sister Yvette.

  I spend childhood practising my smile, the one Uncle Price likes so much. When he and Aunt Sharon come to visit, he steals me away and we go to the movies or ball games, or to see the ocean. He even takes me to Marriott's Great America a couple of times, just us two.

  I'm lucky to have him. Mom's worked in the meat department at Lucky's for many years, but she's had to take a year off because of carpal tunnel in her hands from wrapping meat eight hours a day. She gets disability now, and can never afford to take me places anymore. What little she gets has to go for bills and the payment on our bluish-grey wood panelled house on Truckee Street that we've lived in since she bought it after my first birthday. It's a smallish three bedroom house, built in the thirties or so. The front lawn is really small, not even two yards, separated in the centre by a red cement walk that doesn't match the three wooden stairs that go up to the smooth, glossy white concrete porch. The front porch is cooled all year round by the shade of an ancient live oak. Around each window, deep pink camellias bloom, and Mom parks her feisty old Ford Granada in the unpaved drive to the right of the house.

  We're not as close as we used to be. She used to take me somewhere almost every weekend. Or, if we stayed home, we'd watch funny old shows together, like I Love Lucy, The Three Stooges, or Bugs Bunny cartoons. Now she's in pain all the time, both arms in braces. We live on frozen waffles. I butter for both of us and pour her coffee. I look after her quite a bit during this year. I don't get to play with my friends as often as I used to because Mom needs me around to help. It's a lonely life, and I blame her. She's always popping pain pills, so she's always drowsy and out of it. I have no-one to talk to.

  I'm thrilled when Uncle and Aunt move up from Stockton so we can see each other more. He's glad to have a nephew, he always says. Aunt Sharon can't seem to get pregnant so they can have a beautiful boy of their own, he tells me, so he's awful glad I'm here. I'm happy they can't have kids. I have him all for me, and he tells me, all the time, that he loves me. His attention makes me feel special. He asks me to do things with him, but I'm afraid and say no. He just says, "Okay," and holds me close to him while we watch Scooby-Doo or Tom and Jerry. He's a good-looking guy, about six years older than my mom, tall, shares our almost-black hair and dark green eyes. He's not as cute as Christopher Reeve in Superman, but he's close.

  I tell him I want to be special, famous, loved the world over. "You are special, Tammy. You're beautiful, smart—you've got it all. Don't forget that."

  He takes pictures of me in all kinds of costumes: a football hero in big shoulder pads, a pirate with an eye patch and a sword, and an army soldier all painted with green and black camouflage. He tells me that when I'm a man I'm going to be a knockout, a lady killer. When he tucks me into bed he kisses me with his tongue in my mouth. I'm scared, but I like it too.

  As I grow into the years just before teenhood, he lets me watch porn with him. Sometimes he holds me and makes me make out with him while people have sex on his TV. He unzips his fly. "Wanna touch?" he asks, and suddenly, yes, I do! I do everything he asks, and I love it. I love him.

  Whenever we can, we sneak away, saying we're going to a show or to get pizza or to a ball game. We go to the Motel 6 off of freeway 80 in Sacramento. He never puts it in me, he just lets me touch it. Then he sucks mine. I think it's silly, him wanting to suck me. He looks ridiculous down there. I laugh sometimes, but he doesn't seem to notice. He asks me to put my mouth on him, and I'm scared. He keeps asking, and eventually, I do what he wants. I don't want to keep hurting his feelings. I want him to know how important he is to me. I don't want him to ever leave me.

  Even after Mom is back to work and can afford to take me places again, I prefer the company of my Uncle. Mom's glad he's part of my life.

  I'm not special to my dad. I don't know him. He didn't leave his wife when he slept with Mom. He's never even sent money to Mom after he got her pregnant. He doesn't acknowledge me, not even when he sees me in church. That's where he and my mom met. He's the Reverend Mark Sellers, pastor of the Southern Baptist church of Sommerville.

  Mom feels an increased need to attend church because of her "illicit" affair with a married man, a "man of God" to boot. She's the only one who's ever given the slightest hint that she feels badly about what happened, and the only one for sure who's had to deal with the result of the relationship, that being me.

  Though she never calls me a "bastard", I feel like it's the correct term for me. She tells me not to approach him, not to bother him, that he's a man of God, and that it wasn't his fault, it was hers. He's a prick to allow her to shoulder all the blame, and she's an idiot, blaming herself, while he just goes on with his life and his wife, pretending I don't exist, treating me like the invisible boy, because I'm the product of his adulterous urges. Leave it to Pastor Asshole to put himself before his own son, ignore my presence, never give a clue that would tarnish his "fine, upstanding Christian reputation".

  I'd say, fuck him, but I can't. He's my dad.

  The "thing" with Uncle Price lasts a year or so. When I'm almost eleven, he tells me Aunt Sharon is preg, and I know things are going to be different. I try to lure him to me by groping him and whispering in his ear. I tell him I love him and that I need a dad, that I want him to be my dad, not
just my uncle. But he's so preoccupied with that stupid baby on the way that he pushes my hands away and says, "We can't do that anymore, Tam." I demand to know why, but he never explains. It's never occurred to me that what we've been doing is wrong. Uncle never says, "it's wrong", or "it's dirty". He just says, "We can't. I'm going to have a baby."

  And I hate that baby. From the moment I first hear of her existence and far beyond the day she plops out of Aunt.

  I hate the way she looks just like Uncle Price.

  I hate that she has a dad and I don't.

  I think of ways I can kill her and make it look like an accident or nature. One day I am this close to pinching her tiny nose shut, but then Aunt comes in and I pretend to be pinching her stupid fat pink cheeks. I smile and tell them how adorable Natalie is. Uncle says he's busier since the baby, and has no time to come visit us like he used to.

  I hate her.

  Early on I begin expressing my anger by being cruel to innocent bystanders. It will become a habit, blaming those who are blameless. I don't tell anyone what Uncle has done to me. Around town, I begin to notice him with his arm around other boys, boys who are around the age I was when I fell in love with him. Why does he have time to hang around with them if he's so fucking busy?! The jealousy in me burns and festers. How could he discard me and what we had together? He barely speaks to me when he and Aunt visit. The hatred born of his rejection begins to ooze foul green pus. I love him, I hate him, I want to kill him.

  He told me he loved me!

  My mom is a good, sweet, kind person, but she tries too hard with me. She has no idea how mad (in all known ways) I am. The more she tries—to get me to talk to her, spend time with her, like I used to, to get me to be a good boy, to get me to be more interested in Church, to get me to accept Jesus, be baptised and become a Christian—the more I rebel, fuelled by the rage Uncle Price left behind.