October 24, 2011

I felt like I was drowning in sound. Every word my dad shouted at me vibrated on my eardrums and through my spine. I remember thinking I shouldn't have come home. After finding out I had traded virginities with Andrew, my mother had launched a full-on campaign against me that resulted in me fleeing into the home and house of my best friend. I stayed there for four days, trying to work up the courage to talk to my mother. I had no idea it wouldn't be her I'd have to brave.

I sat on the chair at the kitchen table, trying to swallow the lump in my throat so I could talk, and I felt like I was swallowing silly putty, sticky and thick and clay-like, choking me. I started to cry, softly at first, then more and more as my father says I'm a manipulative liar and that my tears are bullshit, a well-rehearsed act worthy of a shiny golden man-trophy sitting in a glass case. I open my mouth to try and explain myself but my tongue feels like it's being swallowed and I instead let out a small wail.

My dad throws up his hands, exasperated, and storms into the next room to watch Animal Planet. My mother, bewildered, retreats down the hall. And I realize I have been left alone, abandoned to my own devices, a test to see if I will walk past my father to get to my room.

I do not rise in body, but in voice. I taste iron coating my gums and teeth and tongue. Before I really know what my plan of attack is, I'm screaming at the top of my lungs into the next room, proclaiming that my dad does not care about how I feel; he only cares about Animal Planet and his business. He seems to be tuning me out, smiling even, so I force my lungs to let me scream louder, asking if he's listening.

He suddenly leaps to his feet, yelling at me to get my shit and leave, for good this time. I balk, face stark white I'm sure. He stomps out to the garage. I wish he was still smoking.

Desperate for a way to explain, I grab a pen and paper and confess to everything: the sex, the depression, the secret Vicodin addiction, all of it. My father comes back in, like a Minotaur, anger and rage burning into the floor and leaving blackened marks where his hooves touch. By now I have three pages, back to back, of confession.

He looks, scoffs, and crumples a page thin as a splinter, turning it into a rock before throwing it to the ground, "That's what I think of that." I bite my lips so hard my teeth turn red, but I keep writing, trying to be indifferent.

But I can't and I feel the blackness coming out of my throat; I direct it at my father. The layers of this bitter cake pile on top of each other until this Satan-fruit, this cherry on top, explodes in a red-visioned layer, filming over the world around me.

He jumps to his feet again, declaring he will go buy a gun and blow his fucking head off. He charges out the door, peeling out of the driveway and away. I feel something shaking me, a dryness in my lungs. My mouth opens as an attempt to suck in air, my mother is holding me, I am hysterical, wild adamantium tears falling from my eyes. My mother is calling the police, saying that her husband threatened suicide. For a moment I am afraid he would come back and shoot me.

As she is speaking on the phone, he bursts through the door. The police are coming, I say through a throat spider-webbed with choked sobs. He looks at me, sarcasm etched into the lines of his face, his hair, his blue eyes looking like the frozen lake of Judecca; his pupils have to be holding Satan. His face is expressionless except for the sarcasm that is driving him to laughter. He walks away and my phone begins to shake.

It's my mother telling me to come outside this very second because the cops are going to raid the house. I run out the door, only to find three police cars sitting in the driveway and on the road. A black angel of death, a police grade standard issue helicopter from hell, circles overhead.

I wonder if the pilot can see me in my green plaid skirt and blue shirt.

They drove my dad away to a hospital. He says he saw me there, reflecting in a patient's eyes as she huddled in a corner, rocking back and forth while adamantium tears forced themselves down her cheeks.

I can't get that night out of my head.