ZEN Bitchin'

Since Jay died, Pa always came home drunk. He and Ma would fight. I could hear them in their room, shouting. Throwing things. Later they also fought outside their room. In the living room, while eating, while getting ready for bed. Soon Ma stopped sleeping in their room altogether. She’s lay out the mat by the big wooden cupboard beside the kitchen table and sleep there. Pa would coax her back but she wouldn’t budge, totally ignoring him. Once I saw Pa stagger out of their room and he tried to lay beside her. Quickly she got up and ran to their room. I heard the lock clicking. Pa tried to chase her but his drunkenness slowed him down. He pounded on the door until he passed out, crumpling unto the floor.

It’s morning already but it’s still dark. I wake up after another dream of Jay. I hear the screen door opening and closing slowly, gently. I look out the window. I see Ma. She’s carrying something heavy. I get out of bed. I stumble on the way to the door. “Ma?” I get out of the house. “Ma?” I run to her. She turns back. Tells me to go back to the house. Her face is a mask of sadness. “Where are you going?” She tells me to go back in the house again. Her voice has become sharp, her expression stern. She walks toward the road. “Ma!” A car is waiting for her. She boards it. I run. “Ma!” The car speeds off into the silent morning.

I never saw her again.

The wind blows strongly against my broken face. It’s cold. Like Pa’s responses when I asked him where Ma went. Many times he’d just look at me, as if he didn’t know me, saying nothing. When I’d wake up in the middle of the night, I’d see him standing by the door of my room, his figure outlined by the light in the hall.

When he’d speak to me he’d call me Jay. I’d tell him I’m not Jay but still he wouldn’t stop. Later on I just let him call me the way he wanted. I didn’t want to make him angry. I had no one else.

There were times—when he wasn’t drunk—he’d cook food and we’d eat it together. Sometimes he would take me out for a ride in his truck, to see the herd and the rice mill where he worked. Or we would stop by an old deserted road and he’d tell me all sorts of stories. When he hugged me I’d feel his fingers rubbing my back and bottom and I’d feel uneasy but just let him do it. I had no one else and being with him even that way was almost comforting. But as the days went by those times became fewer and fewer.

There were days when he’d just lay there, on the couch, passed out of drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. He would drink, throw up, and then pass out after crying and calling out Ma and Jay. When he’d wake up he’d push me aside gruffly or ignore me altogether. Sometimes he looked at me with a cold hunger.

Dark, fat clouds circle over me. Rain’s coming. I walk faster, muddying my feet even more. Lightning flashes. But it’s not mine.

“It’s mine.” I nod. I can’t do anything else. Pa’s holding me tight. So tight I’m having a hard time breathing. I can smell his breath. He’s drunk again. He lets go of me at last. I take a deep breath but before I finish he holds me again and pushes me back to the bed, on my face. He holds me down by the neck with his big hand. “It’s mine!” he removes my shorts. I can hear the garters tear. I’m so scared but I can’t say anything. I flap my arms but he holds them down too with his knee. He pries my legs apart with his other knee. “IT’S MINE!” His hands are cold. But the flesh that’s poking my bottom is not. I feel something big and hard push itself inside me. I cry out in pain. He strikes the back of my head. Twice. My tears and spit are soaking the sheets. The pain is getting sharper as he goes on moving on top of me. I cry silently. My chest hurts from trying not to scream.

I trip on a small rock. I fall to my knees, scraping them. I look at the blood on my knees. Red. Like the one I saw when I went to the toilet after Pa did it to me. I was kneeling, I remember, because I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t for days after. My bottom hurt.

To be continued…