Let me tell you a little about myself

Chapter 5

The games my father played with me as a child were what I ended up basing the rest of my life on. I learned to catch a ball, swim instead of sink, and live without breathing. I learned that my only thread of hope was in the stories and places I imagined. Stories that would later become my best friends, my crutches, my shelter and my hell.

We would drive for hours searching for my mother. She spent much of my young life running away from my father, as I could never hope to do. I don’t know if she knew what she was doing. I don’t know if he knew what she was doing. But I know I had to get my imagination from somewhere, so I can only imagine what he was imagining my mother doing.

I would stare out the window into the abyss, pretending to look for her gray Toyota Four Runner. Some nights, I would pray to God as hard as I could to find her. Other nights, I prayed that she had finally managed to get away.

We found her occasionally, in shady bars and nightclubs, hiding. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to stay in the car a few times, so I didn’t have to hear the nasty things they screamed at one another. My brother was most often asleep in the back, and I would look at him, wishing I could sleep, wishing I could keep him safe.

Other nights, he would pull me into the smoky bars that I now myself frequent. The music seemed then like a living beast waiting in the shadows, waiting to get me alone. I would choke on the air and the fear. I followed my father closely, never wanting to get lost in the crowd of strangers. I knew that if I fell behind, I would be left to fend for myself. No one would come back for me.

He screamed at her, call her a bitch, a whore. He would grab her by the arm in the way that he had so often grabbed me, and she screamed back that she didn’t need him, that he didn’t own her. I wish I could have said the same.

She would drive home afterwards, alone, or with my brother. I was always left alone with him, seething. He would grab my leg and squeeze, telling me to never be a bitch, or a whore like my filthy mother. I didn’t know what he meant, so how could I know how not to be.

I tried once to defend her. I have never seen such a look cross my fathers face. Even as a child, I recognized the hurt that he felt. I had betrayed him; I had become an empty vessel filled with my mother’s poison. He beat me until I would have sold my mother’s soul to make him stop.

As life wore on, my father got smarter with his methods of bringing my mother back. He would sit me down on the cold linoleum floor of his master bathroom, and force his fingers down my throat until I was vomiting and crying so hard I thought I was dying. He’d call her then, when I was sobbing and begging for her, and I would vaguely feel him press the phone to my ear. She may as well have been comforting me from the moon.

She always came home then.

In those dark times, during his lessons, I would picture myself lying on a bed of flowers, breathing deeply of the intoxicating aroma, surrounded by life and warmth. I felt loved and safe in that place. It grew to be the only place I was safe. Soon it was colorful, and I began to imagine living things running wild in my mind like weeds, integrating themselves so much in my reality, that I have to force myself to sift through the memories and nightmares and dreams and decipher what’s real and what’s not.

The scars are always real. So are the blood and bruises and tears. The nights spent silently curled, praying for help are real. Raw throats and knees, black eyes and the lies to cover them up, those are real. The flowers never are.