Little victories

Musiconomist

He is five years old.

His mother is standing with clenched fists over his brother. She is shaking with the barely suppressed anger. Saliva rushes through her gritted teeth as she breathes. The rage courses through her, seeming to make her appear larger than she is, and he knew even then that a part of her enjoyed it. The momentary surrender of control. She is like a wild animal, he thinks, for the first time. He is shaking with fear. He does not want to be there. He doesn't want to witness any more, but his body won't respond. He vaguely knows what is going on, but it is ethereal. A memory of a dream that was too terrible to be true. The handlebars of his brother's bike had torn a couple of inches of the new wallpaper in the front room as he wheeled it through the house. That was more than enough.

He wakes up, almost forty years older. It is still dark. He notices that he has been holding his breath. His body shakes as he lets it out. His palms are clammy. He knows he will not sleep again. His long legs swing silently over the edge of the bed, and his feet find his slippers. His wife is asleep beside him, in that corpse-still way that always makes him feel uneasy. He gets up slowly, careful not to disturb her. She doesn't stir. He could wake her if he wanted, and she would comfort him. Wrapping her slender arms around him, she would make him feel like it was ok, like it wasn't his fault. He would pretend to be comforted, too. She would stroke his hair like a child, and he would maintain the pretence, lying awake, feigning sleep. But that isn't what he wants.

He is aware in the same way that his mother had nursed her fury for most of her life, he himself clung dearly to his sorrow and his guilt. He was still that boy, buried now beneath a desert of time.

He creeps softly downstairs. He pours a glass of gin. He has never done that before. He won't tell anyone about it. He sips it as he watches the muted television. It burns dully in his mouth and the sensation briefly gives respite from thought. He tries to quell the ceaseless stream of internal dialogue, to merge it with the safe, filtered babble of the TV. It is no use. The chatter is relentless. What was it that had made him think of that day, he wonders? He had only to look at the fireplace to see a picture of his mother, on her wedding day, his father standing proudly beside her. Their faces beamed with the hopes they had shared. They were so young, he realises with some surprise. They looked happy then. Before reality caught up. How long had that lasted? he thinks bitterly, his jaw clenching unconsciously. He feels the urge to leave the house, to be somewhere without memories.

He slips on a dirty hoodie from the washing basket and a pair of food-stained jeans. His runners are still in the hall, encrusted with muck and dead grass. He pushes his bare feet into them without opening the laces. He takes his keys from the hook in the hallway, and leaves the house as quietly as he can. He has no idea where he should go. The destination seems unimportant. The pale hue of the eastern horizon threatens a dawn. It must be about 4 or 5. He finds himself walking in the direction of the park, his thoughts treading familiar ground.

In many ways, he had forgiven his mother. She had sought help when he was a teenager, and learned to curb her anger. Indeed, she seemed to simply shed most of it, like a weight that she no longer chose to bear. She became someone who could be tender. A mother, at last, just in time to become a grandmother. He and his brother bore the scars, however, and her transformation only served to highlight their inability to grow, to move past the injustices.

Why should she be ok? he thinks. Why should she now be happy? He tries to push those thoughts away, annoyed with himself. He knows above all other things the person he does not want to be.

A car slowly passes alongside him, lazily zig-zagging from one side of the road to the other. It makes it's way along the street at a steady crawl, twice almost colliding with parked cars. He wonders sombrely whether there are children in the back seat. It rounds the corner at the next junction, catching the dying glow of an amber light. When he reaches the park fence, he looks up and down the street before climbing over. He finds a bench under an elm and wipes the dew off before sitting on it. There is an eerie but pleasant stillness in the deserted park. The playground seems pointless without activity, like a forgotten piece of modern art. He takes his kids here sometimes.

The driver had reminded him of those nights, years ago, when his drunk father had taken them home, usually after a party. When they were old enough to understand the possible consequences of what he was doing, they had tried to protest and reason with him. His darkening expression would cut short any objections. The whiskey grin twisted into a snarl. His father had never crashed, but there was always a pall over family gatherings, as they watched him drinking and laughing, dreading the long drive home. No one had objected on their behalf.

His father was always the life of the party.

It had taken many years to learn to love his mother unconditionally. She had had her own demons, and her own parents. His father was easier to forgive, now a broken figure alone in an apartment, at that moment probably asleep on the couch in the cold light of his television.

The only person left to forgive was himself. For being what he is, and for not being what he should have become. The brother who was never hit. He was tired of being that boy, that victim, unable to act. A passenger in his own life. If he could cry, at least that would be something, a sign that there was still a spark within him. But he couldn't recall the last time he had managed to. He feels void, a chalk outline of a person. He had become resigned to living. He doesn't know how to be more than he is, nor can he be happy with what he is. He loves his wife and children, fiercely, but can't express it. He cannot find words to show them how he loves them. He knew he could sometimes be distant to them. Another reason to hate himself.

He watches the tip of the sun crest the horizon, his spirit heavy. He couldn't remember if he'd ever done that before. The beauty of it was so easy to miss, he thought. The silent majesty of the sunrise played out before him. He thought idly of the millions of people who had ever watched the same sun rise, of those who had been holding a lover's hand at the time, and those who had seen it through tears.

There must be someone else looking at this sunrise now, feeling what he feels.
The idea was a strange one, surfacing suddenly from the chaotic, churning oceans of his mind, but it gives him an odd sense of affinity. He is not alone in his grief. He is somehow certain that is true. He wishes he could see that person, and perhaps embrace him or her. Maybe they would cry together, without ever needing to say a word, and let the past slip away. That is all he wants. He feels he should act upon the realization, as if it is too fragile and precious to pass unacknowledged, but he doesn't know how. It seems vitally important to him, as if he had been brought there for that purpose. He decides to send a prayer to that person, a wish into the ether. He hasn't prayed in many years. He closes his eyes. The words he wants to say flow easily, as if they had always been waiting in the recesses of his mind. His heart reaches out for the stranger, knowing the true person beneath the body and mind.

When he is finished, he lets out a deep breath. Tension he hadn't been aware of flows from his body. He opens his eyes to the new day. Tears start to well in them. A small victory, he thinks, with a wry, self-conscious smile. He doesn't wipe them away when they start to tumble down his face. He notices the cool spring air, the earthy scent of the undergrowth. He watches the steady ascent of the sun, blissfully outside of time.

Eventually people start to appear in the park. Joggers wearing headphones and ponytails bounce hurriedly past, then mothers pushing children and children pulling mothers. He decides to do something small for his wife. He will make her breakfast, maybe walk to the shop and pick up ingredients for an omelette, her favourite. And pancakes for the girls too, he thinks. He rises slowly from the bench and begins to make his way home.

pickarooney

This is very good and very unusual in that it shows the point of view of the child who was not abused and the associated guilt of that.

I picked up three minor things on first reading it.

"seeming to make her appear"
use seem or appear but not both in tandem

"It makes it's way along the street"
misplaced apostrophe in it's

"He couldn't remember if he'd ever done that before..."
there are several lines in this paragraph which deviate from the present tense used in the rest of the piece

Musiconomist

pickarooney wrote: »

This is very good and very unusual in that it shows the point of view of the child who was not abused and the associated guilt of that.

I picked up three minor things on first reading it.

"seeming to make her appear"
use seem or appear but not both in tandem

"It makes it's way along the street"
misplaced apostrophe in it's

"He couldn't remember if he'd ever done that before..."
there are several lines in this paragraph which deviate from the present tense used in the rest of the piece

Hmmmm yeah, I wrote chunks in the past tense and then went over it again. Obviously overlooked a few things. Cheers for the feedback though.

nervous_twitch

I really enjoyed this. Or maybe enjoyed is the wrong word, content considered, but it shows great skill and the use of language is almost beautiful at times. Pacing, also, was perfectly executed. I think it's a very real piece, in the sense that it doesn't tailor to lazy assumptions; I liked how the mother just eventually shed her anger and became a loving person, as so often happens.

One or two notes; adjectives like 'corpse-still' and 'food-stained' sound a bit strained/redundant to me.

Also, I'm not sure if it's a willfully chosen style/technique, but it sometimes reads like an inventory; it's very fragmented, with sentences that are mostly short and abrupt. Going through it, almost every one begins with an article or pronoun: the, it, a, he, she, his - I wonder if you could play around with sentence structure a bit more. But maybe that was your intention. Anyway, thanks for sharing!

Agent Weebley

Very good, Musiconomist. My eyes welled up. They are still welled up. I don't know what to say.