Brigits Flame - July Week 2
Second entry for Brigits Flame. I'm in a dour mood, I think. Beware. Also, this is the first piece I've ever written in second person, because while it can be completely riveting when done right, it comes off as totally pretentious when done wrong. But I like how the detached feel of it went with the subject matter. So.
It takes 120 pounds of pressure to break a healthy human bone. You look it up on Web MD the morning you get home from the hospital. Gary's thin arm is wrapped in plaster, and his eyelids are fragile and purple against his bright Sesame Street pillowcase. 120 pounds is a fat child, a thin woman, your old, overstuffed loveseat, or your small television dropped from the third story. You imagine it exploding violently into shards of metal, glass, and plastic as it crashes into the concrete sidewalk below. You turn off the computer.
*
Your mother was a nervous woman, but you loved her. You did what you could to protect her when your father got that look in his eyes. Sometimes it worked, and he hit you instead. He broke your nose when you were thirteen, your arm when you were fifteen, and your ribs when you were seventeen. When you were eighteen, you left and didn't look back. You sent letters to your mother at first, then money when you got your first job. Sometimes you dream of going back to Chicago, to the brick apartment building with the tattered lace curtains where you grew up. In your dream, your father looks exactly the same, only this time it's you doing the punching, and you hit him again and again, throw him against a wall and kick him when he's down and hurt him until he begs. The dream ends when you push him through the window, and the sound he makes when he hits the pavement is nothing like a television.
*
You love your son, and you wish you didn't. Gary's cast doesn't slow him down a bit, and one Saturday when you're at the park, you overhear Gary tell his friend Jimmy that he broke his arm falling down the back stairs. Pride and guilt form a sick mixture in your belly. Gary is an accomplished liar; he's even better than you were when you were his age. Gary scrambles over the monkey bars like the rest of his friends, broken arm and all, and Jimmy's mother leans over from her side of the bench and says, What a little trooper! You must be so proud.
Yes, you love your son.
*
Gary's mother was much smarter than your own mother, and she left you before her son had even spoken his first word. She tried to take Gary with her, but after you choked her against the wall, she fled. You're a worthless bastard, but she came from a family of drunks, and you would never let your son grow up under the care of drunks. You inherited a lot of traits from your father (his black eyes, his temper, his Italian skin), but alcoholism isn't one of them. You don't keep beer in the house, and you swear your son will never find you passed out in an armchair before noon.
Since you became a single parent, you've developed a routine. You read Where The Wild Things Are every night before you put Gary to bed. He always points out his favorite monster with a breathless giggle. You understand why he likes this book, even if he doesn't: the fantastical pictures, the other-worldliness of it, the escapism. You read it without fail, as many times as it takes for him to fall asleep. You use funny voices or scary voices depending on his mood, and sometimes you act out the story like charades in your son's sloping bedroom. You have the book memorized anyway, and you love the sound of Gary's laughter when you twist your body into some particularly odd-looking contortion.
Sometimes his puts his little hand against your five-o-clock shadow and says, "I love you, daddy." These are the times you don't regret.
*
One week after the cast comes off, Gary spills cranberry juice on the creamy carpet you just installed yourself in the living room. You shouldn't have let him take the spill-proof top off of his cup, but he smiled with missing front teeth and said he'd be very, very careful.
"Shit!" you curse frantically, grabbing his wrist. He drops the cup entirely, and the dark stain sinks like blood into the pristine fabric. "Gary!" you shout, but he isn't looking at you. He's watching the stain spread with eyes like saucers.
You swing him around to face you more roughly than you meant to, and he makes a little noise. You barely notice, you're so angry. Stupid to let him have that juice, stupid for him to think he wouldn't spill, stupid kid and stupid house and stupid new carpet.
"What did I tell you?" you say angrily, shoving the plastic cup under his nose. "What did I say about being careful? Does that look careful to you?" There are little bits of juice still dripping off the sides of the cup, splattering your shirt and his as you wave it around, but the situation is beyond salvaging anyway.
Your son is still staring up at you with that mute, frozen look, and you don't know why, but that makes you angriest of all. He should be crying now, or promising to clean it up, but he's just stubbornly looking at you, baby mouth pressing together. He looks like your mother, all blue eyes, round cheeks, and brown hair, but he's a lot stronger than she ever was. And thinking of your mother makes you think of your father, and that affects you like nothing else. The haze comes over you is like crimson spiderwebs strung from corner to corner in your brain. In an instant Gary is you and you're your father and you can feel the violence and hatred welling up uncontrollably.
You don't even mean to, but you push your son against the wall with all your strenghth (if it takes 120 pounds to shatter human bone, and you weigh 190 pounds and you can bench press almost twice your weight at the gym, then...) only he doesn't quite make it there. He's a a short, sturdy little boy, and the back of his head connects with the sharp corner of the living room table with a deafening crack.
He sits down clumsily on the carpet, dazed. You realize in horror that he's bleeding, and he must see something in your face, because now, now, he starts to cry. He's sobbing uncontrollably as you scoop him up and hurry him to the car, a towel pressed to the gash on the back of his head. The few words you can make out in between the endless wails are "Daddy," and "I'm sorry."
You got exactly what you wanted.
*
You take him to a different hospital, and they give him twenty-five stitches and you instructions to wake him up every hour throughout the night. He has a concussion. A wound on the back of the head isn't as easy to explain as a broken arm, but somehow you get through it and even manage to meet the doctor's disbelieving gaze with clear eyes. It's important - this is the story Gary will tell his friends. You wonder if the doctor will call social services, and while half of you is frothing with rage at the thought of your son being taken away, the other half of you is waiting patiently for it to happen. You can't change; you'll never change, and you can't understand why no one has figured it out yet.
Scratch that - you know why. The people who can see the signs are the people who've lived it. And those people understand secrets that need to be kept.
*
The third time you wake him up during the night, he puts his hand against your face and slurs in a tired little voice, "I'm sorry I spilled the juice."
Yes, you love your son.
It takes 120 pounds of pressure to break a healthy human bone. You look it up on Web MD the morning you get home from the hospital. Gary's thin arm is wrapped in plaster, and his eyelids are fragile and purple against his bright Sesame Street pillowcase. 120 pounds is a fat child, a thin woman, your old, overstuffed loveseat, or your small television dropped from the third story. You imagine it exploding violently into shards of metal, glass, and plastic as it crashes into the concrete sidewalk below. You turn off the computer.
*
Your mother was a nervous woman, but you loved her. You did what you could to protect her when your father got that look in his eyes. Sometimes it worked, and he hit you instead. He broke your nose when you were thirteen, your arm when you were fifteen, and your ribs when you were seventeen. When you were eighteen, you left and didn't look back. You sent letters to your mother at first, then money when you got your first job. Sometimes you dream of going back to Chicago, to the brick apartment building with the tattered lace curtains where you grew up. In your dream, your father looks exactly the same, only this time it's you doing the punching, and you hit him again and again, throw him against a wall and kick him when he's down and hurt him until he begs. The dream ends when you push him through the window, and the sound he makes when he hits the pavement is nothing like a television.
*
You love your son, and you wish you didn't. Gary's cast doesn't slow him down a bit, and one Saturday when you're at the park, you overhear Gary tell his friend Jimmy that he broke his arm falling down the back stairs. Pride and guilt form a sick mixture in your belly. Gary is an accomplished liar; he's even better than you were when you were his age. Gary scrambles over the monkey bars like the rest of his friends, broken arm and all, and Jimmy's mother leans over from her side of the bench and says, What a little trooper! You must be so proud.
Yes, you love your son.
*
Gary's mother was much smarter than your own mother, and she left you before her son had even spoken his first word. She tried to take Gary with her, but after you choked her against the wall, she fled. You're a worthless bastard, but she came from a family of drunks, and you would never let your son grow up under the care of drunks. You inherited a lot of traits from your father (his black eyes, his temper, his Italian skin), but alcoholism isn't one of them. You don't keep beer in the house, and you swear your son will never find you passed out in an armchair before noon.
Since you became a single parent, you've developed a routine. You read Where The Wild Things Are every night before you put Gary to bed. He always points out his favorite monster with a breathless giggle. You understand why he likes this book, even if he doesn't: the fantastical pictures, the other-worldliness of it, the escapism. You read it without fail, as many times as it takes for him to fall asleep. You use funny voices or scary voices depending on his mood, and sometimes you act out the story like charades in your son's sloping bedroom. You have the book memorized anyway, and you love the sound of Gary's laughter when you twist your body into some particularly odd-looking contortion.
Sometimes his puts his little hand against your five-o-clock shadow and says, "I love you, daddy." These are the times you don't regret.
*
One week after the cast comes off, Gary spills cranberry juice on the creamy carpet you just installed yourself in the living room. You shouldn't have let him take the spill-proof top off of his cup, but he smiled with missing front teeth and said he'd be very, very careful.
"Shit!" you curse frantically, grabbing his wrist. He drops the cup entirely, and the dark stain sinks like blood into the pristine fabric. "Gary!" you shout, but he isn't looking at you. He's watching the stain spread with eyes like saucers.
You swing him around to face you more roughly than you meant to, and he makes a little noise. You barely notice, you're so angry. Stupid to let him have that juice, stupid for him to think he wouldn't spill, stupid kid and stupid house and stupid new carpet.
"What did I tell you?" you say angrily, shoving the plastic cup under his nose. "What did I say about being careful? Does that look careful to you?" There are little bits of juice still dripping off the sides of the cup, splattering your shirt and his as you wave it around, but the situation is beyond salvaging anyway.
Your son is still staring up at you with that mute, frozen look, and you don't know why, but that makes you angriest of all. He should be crying now, or promising to clean it up, but he's just stubbornly looking at you, baby mouth pressing together. He looks like your mother, all blue eyes, round cheeks, and brown hair, but he's a lot stronger than she ever was. And thinking of your mother makes you think of your father, and that affects you like nothing else. The haze comes over you is like crimson spiderwebs strung from corner to corner in your brain. In an instant Gary is you and you're your father and you can feel the violence and hatred welling up uncontrollably.
You don't even mean to, but you push your son against the wall with all your strenghth (if it takes 120 pounds to shatter human bone, and you weigh 190 pounds and you can bench press almost twice your weight at the gym, then...) only he doesn't quite make it there. He's a a short, sturdy little boy, and the back of his head connects with the sharp corner of the living room table with a deafening crack.
He sits down clumsily on the carpet, dazed. You realize in horror that he's bleeding, and he must see something in your face, because now, now, he starts to cry. He's sobbing uncontrollably as you scoop him up and hurry him to the car, a towel pressed to the gash on the back of his head. The few words you can make out in between the endless wails are "Daddy," and "I'm sorry."
You got exactly what you wanted.
*
You take him to a different hospital, and they give him twenty-five stitches and you instructions to wake him up every hour throughout the night. He has a concussion. A wound on the back of the head isn't as easy to explain as a broken arm, but somehow you get through it and even manage to meet the doctor's disbelieving gaze with clear eyes. It's important - this is the story Gary will tell his friends. You wonder if the doctor will call social services, and while half of you is frothing with rage at the thought of your son being taken away, the other half of you is waiting patiently for it to happen. You can't change; you'll never change, and you can't understand why no one has figured it out yet.
Scratch that - you know why. The people who can see the signs are the people who've lived it. And those people understand secrets that need to be kept.
*
The third time you wake him up during the night, he puts his hand against your face and slurs in a tired little voice, "I'm sorry I spilled the juice."
Yes, you love your son.