Still Life with Tornado(56)

“Not your fault.”

“I’m so glad you called me.”

“What are we gonna do? I can’t stay there anymore.”

I feel like running away. I feel like going home with Bruce and living in Oregon. I feel like I’m two different people. Maybe three. Maybe ten.

Bruce finishes chewing his piece of bread. “So why’d you leave school?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You keep saying that.”

I realize that it really isn’t a long story. Not if I just say what happened. But it’s not about what happened. It’s about how I pointed at what happened and said, “Look! That happened!” How do I even bring it up in the middle of a conversation that includes both my mother getting her bones broken and Bruce getting hit every day of his life until I was born? It just makes me feel the pervasive feeling of being sixteen—silly and dramatic. It’s not a long story. It’s an unimportant story.

I am saved by a steaming hot plate of goat cheese ravioli.

? ? ?

“Hi, Bruce? It’s Sarah. Did he ever break your bones?”

“Hi, Sarah. It’s Bruce. Yes. Two times we know of for sure.”

“Hi, Bruce, it’s Sarah. Why didn’t Mom help you? I don’t understand why she didn’t help you.”

“Hi, Sarah. Bruce here. I think when you’ve been abused by someone for a while, it’s like being in a cult. The longer you stay, the more brainwashed you get. It’s not her fault. She didn’t have anywhere to go.”

“Hi, Bruce, it’s Sarah. So, they were going to get a divorce? You told me that in Mexico. That they were getting divorced.”

“Hey, Sarah! It’s Bruce! Yeah, they were always going to get a divorce. At least four times a year. Probably more. But it never happened. As you know.”

“Hi, Bruce. It’s Sarah. I don’t know if this is normal, but I feel guilty because, out of all of us, I’m the only one who wasn’t beat up.”

“Hi, Sarah. It’s Bruce. Please don’t feel guilty. It’s normal to feel this way, but there was nothing you could do about it. They put you in a role and you had to play that role.”

I hang up my hand-phone. “That’s the problem,” I say. “I’m acting.”





Meat Grinder



I have no idea who I am. I’m a character in a sad movie about my parents. I’m a character in a sad movie about an art show. I thought I knew what I was doing.

I had no idea what I was doing.

When you learn the truth late, you doubt everything that ever happened in your whole life because your whole life was a lie.

I try to imagine going home tonight and seeing Dad. I think about Mom and I know I shouldn’t be angry with her, but I am. I am so angry with her.

“I can’t go home tonight,” I say.

“You have to,” Bruce says. “They’ll worry.”

“You’ve been gone six years and they don’t worry about you,” I say.

“I’m not sixteen.”

“Mom took me shopping today. She was so normal.”

“She is normal. All this stuff we just talked about is old. It all happened a long time ago. I’ve healed. Mom’s healed. It’s—”

“Mom hasn’t healed,” I say. “She’s still living there. She has to deal with him all the time.” When you learn things late, you put everything you ever knew through a completely different meat grinder and you end up with totally different meat. The sliver of tissue was a test. This is what abuse looks like. It looks like weeks of waiting for your wife to say Why can’t you vacuum up that sliver of tissue? so you can tell her she’s a bitch. It’s a trap. Everything Dad does is a trap. Every shrug, every night he sat and watched TV when there were dishes in the sink—everything was a trap. And Mom knows because after twenty-six years, how could she not know?

I think back to every time Dad was cocky around Mom. I try to picture her reaction. She would shrink. I understand now. I understand that hitting a person is the same as screaming at a person, is the same as head games and traps and bait and all that hard-to-define emotional abuse. This is why I never said anything about Miss Smith. It’s why I never took my headpiece seriously. It’s sneaky. It hides under other words and other actions. It’s power. That’s all abuse ever is. That sliver of tissue is power.

We lighten the conversation for a while. I try to see Bruce as my brother again, not a victim. He’s the kid who let me win half of our Ping-Pong games in Mexico. He’s the brother who showed me shooting stars.

He tells me about Oregon and how much he loves it out there. He tells me the people are different—he can’t explain how, but they’re just different. He tells me it rains a lot. I contemplate telling him that I am Umbrella, but I decide against it. He tells me about his job and his kids. That’s what he calls them—“my kids.” He tells me about an eleven-year-old girl who’s addicted to meth and a fifteen-year-old boy who keeps getting arrested for arson. He talks about these things the way Mom talks about retrieving random things from patients’ rectums. He seems happy—with his job, with his life.

“It must be so cool to know what you want to do with your life,” I say.