Little, Part Eight
Her head hurt from the night before. It had been another night of broken glass – of screaming – her mother and step-father fought with more frequency these days. The evening ended abruptly for the kids when a mere 8 year old Buddy had tried to defend his mother and was thrown against a wall.
Once he was tucked in, his heavy blond head rested solid on Little’s skinny arm. He had fallen asleep next to her, and pins and needles crept down her arm, but she dared not move. He sobbed, even in his sleep. She pulled his blue comforter over them both, and drifted off too.
The next morning, Little fed Buddy a bowl of cereal in silence, packed their lunches and they left for school. They were at the end of the driveway before they uttered a single word to each other.
“Did you get enough to eat?” It was the question Granny always asked right after she asked if they had a good sleep. Little missed Granny. It was like Granny knew how children felt.
Buddy nodded, and skipped ahead of Little, stopping short in the walkway between the houses to look back and make sure she was there. His glance was sullen. He was less and less a little boy, and more a creature of confusion and anger. He picked fights with neighbourhood kids that could easily kick his ass, and never backed down when they tried. Little was even punched in the stomach when she tried to protect him from an older boy. This only made Buddy wilder, and the older boy ended up with a black eye.
Little watched over him constantly now. He couldn’t go after their step-father that way, no matter how angry he was. His small fists were no match for Step-father, especially when the man was already in a rage. Before the explosion last night, Little had seen Mom walk by Step-father’s chair and smack him across the back of the head. Of course he got angry. He rose with great height as she ran down the bedroom hall, cursing a blue streak at him, “You fucking prick son-of-bitch, even your own mother told me to get away from you, because you’re so sick in the head. Your own mother doesn’t love you! She can’t stand you! Bastard!”
He walked calmly down the hall, almost eerily, his long legs took one step for every two Mom could take.
Little counted the seconds before she heard Mom scream and their bedroom door slam.
“I’M NOT AFRAID OF YOU!”
It was as though Mom was trying to convince herself.
Little wondered why Mom had hit Step-father in the first place. It didn’t make sense. Buddy flew down the hall before Little could stop him and well, lost his battle.
Little caught up to Buddy in the grass of the schoolyard.
“Don’t forget to bring your coat home after school, okay? It’s still cold in the mornings.”
He nodded again, and raced to find his friends behind the first portable. She looked toward the tarmac where her fellow grade sixes stood around talking. They were too old for schoolyard games now.
When she spotted her best friends, her face broke into a wide grin. The night before was left in the grass, behind her.
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
3:06 am |
Little, Part Seven
He was tall, she noted as he sat down in the other lawn chair on the balcony of the 24th floor apartment. Her mother was in the shower and they were heading out for the day once she was ready. Little swung her bare legs back and forth under the lawn chair, skidding her jelly shoes against the concrete.
She peeled back the skin on her banana and shifted in her seat, settling in and feeling the nylon take the shape of the curve of her tiny spine. The view from the balcony seemed to go on forever. Buildings and parking lots sprawled out and peppered the skyline with their hard lines. Little thought it was beautiful and loved the days it was clear enough to see the outline of the C.N. Tower. Today wasn’t one of those days. She often wondered what other people’s apartments looked like and if they had cats or kids.
She looked sideways at him, often straining her eyes to study his face, his eyes. Between them sat a small table with two glasses leftover from his date with her mother, the night before. The sun was shrouded in enough cloud to dull the glare on the glass and Little could smell that familiar aroma of wine. Her mother’s current boyfriend was a new fixture in their revised life and he made Little’s mother very happy.
“Let me tell you a joke,” Little said, and she suddenly perched herself on the edge of the chair, nearly tipping forward. She was nervous around him, and really wanted him to like her. He made her mother so happy.
“Okay,” he smiled. His glasses were dark now, as they automatically adjusted from clear to a deep brown when he stepped outside. Little and her brother Buddy found this to be one of the most fascinating things about him. Years later, she saw Steve Buscemi on screen and gasped, instantly reminded of the man sitting across from her on that balcony.
“What’s red and green and goes 100 miles an hour without going anywhere?” she recalled the familiar joke her own father had told her a million times.
He put his finger to his chin and pretended to ponder her riddle.
“I don’t know,” he chided. “Tell me.”
“A frog in a blender!” Little squealed.
They laughed together and he clapped his hands once. It seemed as though he wanted Little to like him too.
“What happens if you drink it?” Little asked, bursting.
“Tell me,” he grinned.
“You croak!” she giggled and went to take another bite of her banana.
“Oh you!” he laughed, and with one swoop, he clasped her hand in his and shoved most of the banana into her mouth, smashing it into her mouth and chin and down into her lap.
Little stopped cold and looked down. He was still laughing but she had banana on her shorts and felt the cherry red heat climb up her neck and onto her cheeks.
“I’ll be right back!” She used her body weight to awkwardly pull the heavy balcony door open, nervously smiling, and disappeared inside.
Her mother met her in the bedroom hallway, fresh and ready to go out. Her bangle earrings hung gently under her curly hair. Little met her mother’s eyes.
“I have to change,” Little said, wiping at her face and looking at her hand.
“What? Why?” Then she saw Little’s shorts. “What happened?”
Little told her about them joking around. Please don’t get mad please don’t get mad.
“What do you think of him, Little?”
“He’s funny, Mom.”
Clearly Mom wasn’t mad about the shorts. She clutched Little’s shoulders and said, “I have something to tell you. Where’s your brother?”
They both called out and soon Buddy was in the hall with them. Their mother sat down on the steamer trunk in the hallway and looked at her children carefully. She asked Buddy what he thought of her current boyfriend too and he said the same thing, “he’s funny Mom.”
He was funny, but not always in a funny ha-ha way. Most of the time when the three of them went to his apartment, Buddy and Little were expected to play quietly while Mom talked with him. They often went out on his little balcony with their wine glasses, while Little and Buddy watched T.V. inside the apartment.
The apartment was always immaculate and there was never anything out of place. There were rules as sure as the vaccuum lines in the carpet. All the tables were made of glass and they weren’t to get fingerprints on them. They had to use coasters, something they didn’t own at home, and if they played with the glass chess set, they had to be sure the pieces were placed back upon it, facing forward, in the middle of each square. They had to rinse their glasses and put them in the dishwasher, but Buddy wasn’t tall enough, so Little did it. If water got on the counter, they had to wipe it up and put the dishtowel, folded, back on the handle of the stove. The dishcloth was folded in thirds and draped over the neck of the faucet.
As much as perfection hung like a shroud over the apartment, the grownups didn’t seem to care when Buddy and Little sifted through his impressive collection of Heavy Metal magazines. Buddy was naturally enthralled with the naked comic women and their enormous boobs. Little leafed through them and thought they were weird and scary. She stared at the monsters that often had woman clutched at the neck or penetrated these women between their legs with their talons or other alien parts and wondered who would enjoy these seemingly violent pictures. She watched him with great interest whenever he came in to refill a glass or grab a snack, and wondered.
Little stared, wide-eyed at her mother in the hallway, waiting for her to say it. “Well he asked me to marry him!” she told them with great excitement, with promises of a house instead of an apartment, and more money. The three of them rejoiced in the hallway for a minute and Little scampered off to change her shorts.
This would be marriage number three for Mom.
Little’s stomach hurt. Worry slumped over hope like a dead body, and Little peered out from under it all, unable to move.
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
10:30 am |
The Truth Hurts
The other night I sat and began to write more of The Little Series. I’ve been writing it offline, some on paper, some in drafts here. I don’t know anymore what I can manage to share – some of it is so painful that I almost don’t want anyone to know. Some of it is very graphic too, and I almost want to protect the people I love in this world from it. As the words flowed and I put my heart and head into pulling myself back in time, I kept bobbing to the surface and wondering if I will always be broken.
Last night, alone in the basement, quietly assembling a Christmas present until 3 a.m., I wondered about where my mother and father where in their lives, if they are happy, and worried to the future and what kind of people my boys will be. Will they eventually grow up and decide I wasn’t good enough? That they never want to speak to me again? Will my own self-preserving karma bite me in the ass later with my own kids, as my mother wished upon me years ago?
Did I really do everything I could to maintain relationships with the people that brought me into this world?
If you asked Daren, he would say I did everything and more. If you asked anyone in my family, they would agree that I couldn’t possibly survive any more abuse, rejection and manipulation at the hands of my mother and father. If you asked me on a day where I’m feeling stronger, I would agree that I did everything I could. That it’s my parents who are truly broken.
Parents aren’t supposed to be the way mine were. They are supposed to love you no matter what, right?
Then why couldn’t mine?
Why couldn’t they love me through the growing-uppedness of being? Why couldn’t they pick me up from my mistakes instead of rejecting me over and over?
Deep down, I know it’s more about them, then me. I know that. I repeat it in my head, like a mantra, but I’m not always convinced. I have love around me everywhere I turn and I know that love is true and never, ever wavers, but I long for the why of my past.
Every once in a great while, a get that feeling in my throat that I’m going to vomit. Thoughts of my mother can be a sucker punch. Memories of my father twist my soul into a tight ball. There are memories that can throw me into a panic attack and I can’t breathe. My heart is racing and I can’t do anything but sit still and wait for it to pass.
I’m the girl with parents who chose not to love her.
What kind of people don’t love their child? What kind of child was I that made me so unlovable? I try so hard to justify their actions in my head, to make sense of it, but it only hurts the little girl who once was.
These times take a hold of my voice, and all the reassurance and self-confidence in the world won’t stop it from rising in my gut.
It hurts. It hurts so bad I can’t even tell you how bad it gets because I keep pushing it down as I have done forever. I feel so unbelievably alone in this sometimes and all the people that love me can’t fix it. They can’t fix it because nobody, including my amazing husband, can explain why two parents threw away the daughter they made together.
This is the part where I’m supposed to turn this around and tell you I’m breaking the cycle, right? And I am, I am breaking the cycle with my boys. They will never know this pain. This I know. And once I purge this from my system, I will walk away, take a deep breath and smile until the bile settles. Until next time.
The cracks in this broken heart are forever, I’m afraid. Forever. My blood runs deep into those cracks and pools in thick, suffocating clots.
I’m the girl with parents who do not love her. You can’t un-break this.
You can’t un-break this.
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
12:42 pm |
