Whisper Me This(66)

Tony grounds himself with his feet on the floor and grips the arms of the chair, but nothing he can do will hold back the tide of memory.

He huddles together with his sisters, all of them on one narrow bed. Vanessa and Jess have burrowed under a blanket. Theresa and Barb sit cross-legged, Barb hugging a pillow. Baby Mia is asleep in Theresa’s arms.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, his father is shouting. His mother’s voice, low and soothing, answers. Something crashes and all of them jump. The baby startles awake and begins to whimper, but Theresa hushes and rocks her, and she settles back to sleep.

Barb, always braver than the rest of them, tiptoes across the room to close and lock the door. Tony knows there is no real safety in this; the door to the room he now shares with Mia is cracked and hangs on its hinges, a reminder that locks can be broken and doors can be kicked in.

“Let’s play Whisper Me This,” Theresa says, cuddling the baby. “Vanessa, you first.”

“Okay.” Vanessa’s whispered voice is so soft it’s hard to hear through the muffling blanket. Tony doesn’t even try to listen. He tunes in on the downstairs noises. He squeezes his eyes shut, remembering the last time fists flew, of the sound they made striking his mother’s body, of her sobs, of the slap to the side of his own head that rattled his teeth and made stars flash in front of his eyes.

“Your turn, Tony.” Theresa touches his shoulder. “Whisper me truth, whisper me lies.”

He flinches at a dull thud downstairs, which is followed by a whimper and then the sound of weeping and more shouting. His body starts to shiver. “Boys don’t cry,” his father always says, but Tony’s eyes don’t care. Tears pour down his cheeks. His nose is running.

To his own surprise, his hands clench into fists. “When I’m big, I’m going to beat Dad up,” he whispers, and he means it for his truth. “I’ll make him stop.”

His sisters meet this statement with silence.

Barb reaches over and smooths his hair. Vanessa and Jess peek out over the top of the blanket, eyes wide. Theresa squints her eyes at him.

“That better be your lie, Tonio,” she says.

Another thud from downstairs. More shouting. A sharp cry of pain.

“I will,” Tony says, louder now, feeling that his sisters don’t believe him. “I’ll punch him in the nose and make him bleed.”

“That would make you like him,” Theresa whispers. “Do you want to be a man like that?”

Tony isn’t sure he wants to be a man at all. It’s all women in his life so far, his mother and his big sisters and now baby Mia. Dad is the only man he knows.

“Come over here,” Theresa says, and Tony crawls over Vanessa and Jess to sit directly beside her. She’s been bossing him since his earliest memory, and he’s used to following her commands.

“Hold out your arms,” she says, and Tony does so.

Theresa shifts the baby into his lap, and he automatically wraps his arms around her so she won’t slide off. He’s only held her once, the day she came home from the hospital. There are so many willing arms with all the girls that he hasn’t been offered the chance.

Which is fine with him. He hasn’t wanted to hold her again. She cries too much and takes more than her share of everybody’s attention. Her crib is in his bedroom, and she wakes him at night. He has to be extra quiet whenever she’s sleeping, too, and she’s stinky, all sour milk and poopy diapers.

Sometimes, he wants to shake her, even though he knows that’s bad.

Now, he’s surprised by how much heavier she is, how much she’s grown. Maybe she knows he doesn’t like her much, because she screws up her tiny face and makes a sound like she’s going to cry.

“Rock her,” Theresa says. “Pretend you’re a tree in the wind.”

Tony sways back and forth, pretending to be a tree, tuning out the sounds from downstairs.

Mia gives a little sigh and nestles against him. One tiny hand curls around his finger.

Something happens inside Tony’s chest right then, a sort of melting that he’s felt before when he’s petting his neighbor’s kittens. He doesn’t want to shake Mia anymore, or send her back to the hospital. He wants to hold her, and rock her, and make sure that she is happy and safe.

Theresa nods at him. “That’s the kind of man you want to be, Tonio. Don’t you forget it.”

Tony isn’t sure exactly what she means. He still wants to beat up his dad, maybe even more now than ever, because the baby needs protecting . . .

Maisey cries out in her sleep, and it jolts him back into the now.

This room, this chair, this man-size body that still trembles like it did when he was a child. He didn’t do a very good job of protecting Mia, he thinks now, or the others for that matter. How many times did Mia get hit after that night? Theresa and Barb, Vanessa and Jess? His mother? All of them, over and over and over again. And how many of those times was he cowering in a corner, behind a chair, even under a bed when the fists were flying?

How many of those times was he harboring rages of his own? Slamming doors, punching walls. His anger has always felt like some sort of evil science experiment, oozing out of containment into the corners of his life and exploding without warning. He remembers as if it had happened five minutes ago the first time he put a fist through the wall in his bedroom. The shock of that moment, of realizing that despite all his efforts he was growing into a man, and an angry one.