roman.
he hits you and he hits you and he hits you until thereâs nothing left but his hands and the light coming in through the window. he sends you away and all you want to do is go home. he sends you away and you curl under the thin blankets late at night, your heart racing through your body. there are more monsters here than there were at home. shiv isnât here. thereâs no one here to lean on. there isnât anyone at home to lean on either, but here the nothingness is its own person, the scenery itself is cruelty. you want to go home. you want to go home so badly. you beg him to bring you home. he laughs at you. all he does is laugh at you. but when heâs laughing he doesnât hit you. when theyâre laughing theyâre not hitting you, except when they are. except when you die. you want to go home. he tells you there is nothing left for you at home. he tells you a strange story, about a boy who came home and brought with him pestilence and plague, a boy who killed everyone because he couldnât do as he was told. you donât know what this means.Â
when itâs summer, youâre allowed to be home. kendall isnât allowed to lock you up anymore. you sit with shiv in the sunshine. your father doesnât let you leave the property, the grounds when youâre home, but you have nowhere you want to go. he says thereâs no telling what you might have brought home. youâre not allowed in shivâs room when youâre home. but you can sit with her on the porch. shiv is older than you remember. she has long hair now, snaps at you like your mother used to. but she still sits with you on the porch. you can still make her laugh. if youâre laughing with shiv, your dad isnât hitting you. if youâre laughing with shiv, the world seems to fall away. you pretend you never have to go back.
of course you have to go back. you go back and you come home and you go back and you come home and after a while, you canât ever speak of the things that happen to you there. voices in the darkness, the kind of terror you canât go back to. after a while you start laughing. thereâs nothing else to be done, after all. and if youâre laughing, they canât hit you. this is the rule. you learn quickly that no one follows rules. you learn quickly the only way to survive is to be the one to make the rules.
he hits you and he hits you and then one day, out of the blue, youâre bigger than him. youâre stronger than him. heâs fading. you wait for him to raise his hand again. you think this time youâll hit back. he doesnât hit you again, not for years, not until you think the danger is long past, and then his hand comes flying back into your face like the past twenty two years meant nothing, your tooth buried in his palm, and you bend over as ken tries to act like he always took care of you. fine, im fine, im fine, im fine. you donât go to the roast. you donât go anywhere. you sit on the balcony and you think about how youâre bigger than him now. you could hit him back.Â
and then he dies.
and then you die.
but youâre still alive. your body wonât stop functioning. the breath doesnât stop coming. the memories donât abate. you remember more things than you ever have. you do strange things, you tell no one. you call up kerry every night. you ask her to tell you about him. im just getting the ideas for the eulogy, you know? how would you describe him to someone whoâs never met him? one night, you call your mother. he didnât know how to love anything, she says. i should never have let him send you away. you wonders if she knows that you never really came back. you do strange things. you tell no one.
election night. you feel the world slipping out from beneath your fatherâs fingers and you do whatever you can to claw it back for him. heâs dead. you pretend this will bring him back.
and then its the funeral, and all the years bleed through. he hit you and he hit you and he hit you until there was nothing left but his hands and now heâs gone. now heâs gone. you want to drag his body across the floor. you want to curl up in his arms like you never did as a kid. he sent you away and he stopped hitting you when you got big enough to fight back and now heâs gone. coward. your father. the only person youâve ever loved. the only person youâve ever wanted to love you back. your father. heâs gone. heâs gone. thereâs nothing left for you. thereâs nothing left here. and now they all know; the world knows; all the worst nightmares you had as a kid come to fruition. they all know exactly who you are, how weak you are, how lonely. they all saw you cry. your father would be so disappointed. you can see him rising from the grave. you can see the disdainful smirk. of course, kendall could do what you couldnât. itâs why he sent you away.Â
your father was the boy in the story who brought pestilence and plague unto his family and itâs why he let you go to a school where they took everything from you. your father killed everything he touched. your father grew up thinking he killed everything he touched and the only way for him to live with it was to make it true. but he never finished the job; he killed everything he touched but he let you live, forced air through your lungs. he didnât take you with him. he never did.
heâs gone. thereâs nothing left. you plunge into the streets and hope you never come back out.
