The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(12)
The guard removes the temporalysis and I bounce up quickly to identify the woman, because few ever call me by that name. The rookie perceives my alertness as a show of strength and yells, “Keep your head down prisoner! Don’t move. The turret cannon is on you.”
The veteran looks at the rookie and says, “Good job, kid.”
I cower at the thought of the formidable weapon trained upon my head. I take off my clothes to let them dry, becoming stark naked in the chilly damp air. I am beyond embarrassment.
I pick up the tablet and continue anything to keep my mind off the current situation. I cannot cry, because weeping will dehydrate me further. Picking up the tablet, I begin:
“We went to Jason’s wake and then his funeral. I never saw such sadness before. The casket was two-thirds the size of my great grandfather Willard’s.”
Travis glared at me from across the room where Jason lay. Even though I felt Jason’s death was an accident, Travis seemed as if he was holding me responsible.
We left the funeral and while we drove along the road in my mom’s car, I stared out the window. My mom was in tears. I tried to console her, but she was saddened by the death of Jason deeply, as if he was her own son. She blamed herself, moaning that she should’ve never allowed us three to head toward the cliff. No one could convince her otherwise.
In the car, I thought about the days of mourning before the funeral. I remembered wishing that Jason were delivered to heaven. I cried out to God from the salvation of my covers at night. I prayed that he could hear me and see my anguish.
I didn’t know then if God was there. God according to the Bible was omniscient and omnipotent. When he didn’t respond to my complaint, I lashed out and cursed his storied existence.
I found out in one of my encyclopedias that only twenty-five percent of people in America would see a bluebird once in their lifetime. It made me think what percentage might see an eagle, or a macaw, or God in their lives.
We arrived at home, and I was tired. It was time to grab some much-needed sleep, as Jason’s death had replayed over and over in my mind while I attempted to sleep the last few nights. I lay down in my parents’ bed for a nap, because the apartment caretaker was shampooing our carpets, and he started in my room. In my hand, I gripped my amulet.
The amulet was my caretaker, and my canary in the mines of danger. I went through a great deal of trouble to hide it from everyone. Always wearing a shirt outside in the scorching heat was sometimes annoying.
The next few weeks I spent a lot of time lying around because my depression and fatigue were becoming worse. There was something wrong with me, and no one seemed to care, not even myself. I chose to deal with only the symptoms, not the cause, because the outcome of a trip to the doctor frightened me. It was fear-induced denial.
The beatings were getting worse, and sometimes they were brought on by the slightest mistake: talking back to my mom, not making my bed, or even not brushing my teeth was enough to receive a beat-down.
Although I was resting a lot, emotionally I was strained to the breaking point. Even with my necklace alerting me to imminent danger every time my father’s anger was channeled toward me, there was no avoiding his wrath. He had recently been fired for being late to work too many times. When he lost his job, his temper teetered toward further abuse, and the frequency increased.
I was lying in my bed listening to the radio; a singer was belting out, ‘It’s a secret rendez-vous / They won’t discover / That it’s me and it’s you…’ Classic rock always felt good to the ears and soothed my everyday worries, much like our laundry machine would discharge the dirty water out with the suds. My dad had made a trip to the main floor’s laundry room to buy a cola, and my mom was boiling water for tea over the stove. The sound of the kettle whistling punctuated the relaxing music from time to time, but I blissfully ignored it.
My inner peace was about to be brutally shattered. A door in the hallway slammed. Belligerent, heated accusations rang out, then I heard a long shrill scream that must have reverberated throughout the entire apartment complex.
My amulet burned a fiery red color and scorched my chest. I took cover behind my two down feather pillows in an attempt to barricade my body from the situation.
Startled, I now heard glass shattering in the kitchen. Then, another scream. Ominous footsteps, and banging on the walls of the hallways, now racing toward my bedroom and escalating within precious seconds. Terrified, I braced myself.
Suddenly, my bedroom door burst open, and I recoiled instantly. In a blur, my mother’s face materialized in front of me. Her eyes, wide open with panic. On her cheek, a fat, ugly bruise. Totally degraded, hunted as prey, she stumbled like a wild animal, falling by my bed.
Moments like that happen in a snap of a finger. The way I think about it now, I see my dad barging into my room in a whirl—as crisply recorded in my deepest consciousness in slow motion, never to fade away. In his hand, he held a weapon unfamiliar to his regular antics, a hot teapot.
I cannot recall my dad in that moment because the sight of the teapot detained my attention. I remember screaming and burying my face afterwards in the comforter as my father slammed the steaming steel teapot into my mother’s thigh.
If something of that heat contacts a body, it smears skin like a searing hot pan would to the adjacent side of a raw filet mignon.
Really, the weapon was what separated that battle from all the rest.
Victims of domestic abuse usually feel helpless to defend themselves, even as the bar is continually raised. Moreover, the assailant often begs for forgiveness, thus confusing an already wounded victim. This classic scenario replayed itself here. After my dad defaced the side of my mother’s leg, he started in with his manipulative trickery, and she, dazed, was simply incapable of formulating any thought of her own.