A Memory
She's screaming. She's ALWAYS screaming. That's nothing new and nothing he can help. She's always screaming, forming nonsensical non-sentences with her slurred words and her threats and her paranoid imaginary horribles...
But one night she doesn't stop at screaming, or shoving, or smacking him a little, which is okay because when she's drunk she hits JUST like a little girl and can't aim worth a damn anyway... But one night... she's just a little too sober and a little too crazy with needing not to be and it makes her mad. Really, really mad. One night, there's a young woman who used to be beautiful, and a child three years too small and three decades too old, with lines under the starved 8-year-old's eyes, the sad eyes, bassett-hound eyes of a child who isn't quick enough or wise enough to dodge tonight, the one night, the first time, when the desperate too-young mother of a terrorized child raises not just her voice, not just a limp-wristed hand, but a weapon.
One night, the siren brings a bottle down, and shadows flood his eyes, and the world smells like sharp metal, and the next thing he knows, he's staring out a window and it's much darker outside and not far away is the prone figure of a once-beautiful young woman with an empty vodka bottle near her hand and streaks of tears on her face and her pretty lips pale and stained with vomit.
He picks himself up slowly, dizzy. He can feel a lump on his head where the bottle hit him. It takes him a few minutes to regain his sense of balance enough to get up and take the bottle away and clean up as best he can. He can't move his mother's body -- he's too tiny a child -- but he finds a blanket to cover her with, and a pillow to put under her head. Afterwards he stumbles into their sparsely-stocked kitchen and finds a rag to soak in cold water and hold to his head. He spends the rest of the night curled up in the bathtub because the cool porcelain feels good and it's small and can be shut away and quiet. His stomach tries to be sick but he hasn't eaten enough to let it, so mostly he just cries until he's too exhausted to be awake anymore. He falls asleep in there, sleeps most of the next day -- his mother's too hungover to even realize he misses school. She doesn't notice her child until sometime the next afternoon when he's recovered a bit and she sees him trudging off to his room to find solace in his books and perhaps somewhere warmer to sleep. She expends all of half an hour smothering her child with ignorant affection, having no memory of the previous night, no idea why he's hurt. He tells her he has the flu. He doesn't know any better either.
She finds a can of soup and cooks it for him, watches him eat a little and finally puts him to bed. He lays there staring at the light of the cracked-open door and sees her opening another bottle as he falls asleep...
But one night she doesn't stop at screaming, or shoving, or smacking him a little, which is okay because when she's drunk she hits JUST like a little girl and can't aim worth a damn anyway... But one night... she's just a little too sober and a little too crazy with needing not to be and it makes her mad. Really, really mad. One night, there's a young woman who used to be beautiful, and a child three years too small and three decades too old, with lines under the starved 8-year-old's eyes, the sad eyes, bassett-hound eyes of a child who isn't quick enough or wise enough to dodge tonight, the one night, the first time, when the desperate too-young mother of a terrorized child raises not just her voice, not just a limp-wristed hand, but a weapon.
One night, the siren brings a bottle down, and shadows flood his eyes, and the world smells like sharp metal, and the next thing he knows, he's staring out a window and it's much darker outside and not far away is the prone figure of a once-beautiful young woman with an empty vodka bottle near her hand and streaks of tears on her face and her pretty lips pale and stained with vomit.
He picks himself up slowly, dizzy. He can feel a lump on his head where the bottle hit him. It takes him a few minutes to regain his sense of balance enough to get up and take the bottle away and clean up as best he can. He can't move his mother's body -- he's too tiny a child -- but he finds a blanket to cover her with, and a pillow to put under her head. Afterwards he stumbles into their sparsely-stocked kitchen and finds a rag to soak in cold water and hold to his head. He spends the rest of the night curled up in the bathtub because the cool porcelain feels good and it's small and can be shut away and quiet. His stomach tries to be sick but he hasn't eaten enough to let it, so mostly he just cries until he's too exhausted to be awake anymore. He falls asleep in there, sleeps most of the next day -- his mother's too hungover to even realize he misses school. She doesn't notice her child until sometime the next afternoon when he's recovered a bit and she sees him trudging off to his room to find solace in his books and perhaps somewhere warmer to sleep. She expends all of half an hour smothering her child with ignorant affection, having no memory of the previous night, no idea why he's hurt. He tells her he has the flu. He doesn't know any better either.
She finds a can of soup and cooks it for him, watches him eat a little and finally puts him to bed. He lays there staring at the light of the cracked-open door and sees her opening another bottle as he falls asleep...