The Long Night

I had committed a cardinal sin. I had defied my father by breaking the stiff, unnatural silence generated by his guttural command. It was evident that my father was in a ferocious mood. He may have had a bad day at work, or my mother may have rejected his unrefined sexual advances. Whatever the reason or reasons, his inner demons were raging and they needed to be appeased.

The angry tread of his bare, callused feet on the floorboards of our small, three-room house alerted me to the threat of my father’s intentions. Before I could get to the front door, however, he was before me–a living mask of fury. Suddenly, my mother was between us, facing my father and trying to reason with him. He tried to shove her aside, but she resisted him temporarily. Without warning, my father’s right leg shot up, barreled past my mother’s side and his hard, stevedore’s foot landed squarely in my gut.

The pain hardly registered as I saw the raging monster in our house finally throw my mother aside. Primordial instinct took over. I leapt onto the tiny bed shared by one of my brothers and me, kicked at the latch that held our bedroom door shut and fled into the early night. Half fearing that I would be followed, I looked back once or twice as I ran, but my fears were unjustified.

I stopped running when I reached the open road, my heart still pounding and feeling a bit disorientated. As the adrenaline rush subsided, I sat on some concrete steps nearby to consider my pain and predicament. I was alone and unprotected in the night. I could not return home for fear of what might befall me there. The thought of approaching a neighbor or my sister–who lived nearby–for succor never occurred to me; spending the night in a home other than my own was not part of my upbringing.

Finally, I decided on a course of action. I would sleep beneath the house of our nearest neighbor, Mister Eleayza or “Mister Boy” as we called him. I climbed the concrete steps leading to Mister Boy’s house and settled in beneath it on a large piece of plywood that I found there. I dozed fitfully for a while, surrounded by the dark and the nameless creatures of my imagination.

I awoke with a little start. Again, I was a bit disorientated, so I sat up to get my bearings. The reality of my refuge hit me like another kick in my gut, making me physically sick. I tried to go back to sleep but feelings of anxiety got in the way. Eventually, I got up and descended the concrete steps to the road.

My mind was whirling as I walked into the night. Past the Husbands’ house and onto a connecting road and then to my left towards Mister Oliver’s place, I walked. There were voices coming from within some of the houses that I passed. Once or twice I stopped to listen so I would not feel so alone–so disconnected from humanity.

For countless hours, I walked the lonely streets; a teenage boy with bent head, drooping shoulders and aching heart. I felt no anger or ill feeling as I walked–only a numbing sadness. The ghosts of my imagination rose from the dead streets to join me in exile and I welcomed them. Whatever fear I may have initially felt was gone; there was only the numbness and the automatic trudge of my bare, blackened feet on the hard, uncompromising road.

Somewhere between eternity and the dawn, I entered the public bathhouse or “freeness” as it was called and masturbated. There was no prior arousal, no libidinous thoughts of teenage fantasy encounters–only the desperate need to break the sickening monotony of a forced march. So I spilled my wasted seed on the cold, barren concrete of the tiny bathhouse with a slow, measured hand and returned to my beat.

Up and down the deserted, night-clad streets I walked. No one called out to me or approached me. No one questioned the incongruity of a defenseless, bewildered-looking boy walking the night in search of the dawn. Past the exhaustion, I kept moving. Past the first crows of bough-crouched cocks heralding the gray dawn, my feet repeatedly pattered a prayered supplication.
At last, the first rosy flush of the sun-kissed morning appeared. With the weight of my ordeal heavy on my exhausted flesh, I returned to the concrete steps and waited for my father to depart the house.