act i; summer, 1965.
there were certain categories which were silently agreed upon made to categorise families; the soft ones, the typical family, the harsh family and the abusive family.
in terms of my own experience with my father, who was the primary influence of categorization, i would say that my family is harsh, and most would agree, because i was beat far more often than most children, and for far sillier reasons. but, it was the matter of my mother’s neglect, and my father’s behaviour towards her, which made it cross the threshold into being abusive.
i had never believed that my family was loving, but it was not anything i dwelled over enough for it to consume my thoughts. it was simply a fact of life that my parents were bad enough to earn community disapproval. which wasn't something that people said to our faces, naturally — unless it was other kids retorting to me — but the sort of gossip and conversation typical to older folk in small towns. you know who the man who drinks a lot and beats his wife and child is.
you know that you have to express pity by habit: poor boy, in reference to me, to live like that. i was known for my foul temper, my quick retorts and my ability to pick at people’s insecurities as they picked at mine, and the opinion on me was split. on one hand, it was clear where i picked it up from, which granted sympathy, and on the other, my name was very commonly followed by the sentence: “he needs a proper lashing.”
one particular time i had heard it in real time stood out to me, because the man saying it was standing right next to his wife and glaring me down from a distance as he said it. i had insulted his son, he was angry, and his wife only scoffed as she turned to look at me for a brief moment: “i reckon he already gets it.”
you know that, well, you know the man. you know that he’s changed a lot since he married that foul woman. you know that his wife’s a whore, clearly, look at the family! the house is messier than it would be if it was derelict, the boy’s so thin he looks like he could be blown away by the wind, and what does she do? just sits on her ass all day. she’s sucking the life out of them, someone will say, and someone else will agree. sometimes, although very rarely, someone else in the house takes the blame.
consequent to the disgrace which came to mind when someone mentioned 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑠𝑛𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑠, and my knowledge that there was better circumstances which i could reach towards, i had awareness of the fact that i would one day need to rid myself of all and all association to my family very young. but, it was mostly a thought lingering in the back of my head, a fact for the near future. my actions at the time, though clearly a sign of rebellion at times, were not ones of total rejection. i would refuse to wear my father’s clothing and then i would hide my mother’s which hung off my body using one of his jackets, i would tell myself that i’m ‘not like my father, i’m not violent, i won’t be violent,’ then i would break the rules i set for myself in hours time, i refused to cut my hair but then i just looked more like him in pictures from when he was a child ( funnily enough, through growing out his hair, he was trying to mimic his own father, whereas mine was trying to establish a difference between us. ) moreover — i was simply too eagerly like my parents for it to be named rejection.
as a primary example, i tried to be more like my mother each day. she seemed to me much more ideal. but it went deeper. i hadn’t paid particular attention then, in the mid to late sixties, to how extensive ridding oneself of another’s presence in one’s life exactly is. i had shamelessly taken on my mother’s habit of calling things elementary and my father’s habit of calling people brainless. we had the same eyes — me and my mother — often dubbed by people the ‘blackest eyes they had ever seen’, and apparently the same downward glare through the eyebrows, which i could only find then in photographs of her youth. i had my father’s penchant for self–isolation, and had dubbed its origin to be resentment ( which i later found out was wrong, in his case, but it was a fitting motive in mine ). more importantly — i had a frustration which i based on his own, and developed it to fit me.
as a result of my circumstances and my nature, since the very early days of my childhood, i have been hypervigilant, and eager to take in anything which surrounds me in order to never find myself unaware. at as young as one, the part of me wired to help me survive had learned to not pick up objects and use them as toys, and instead spectate the adults, their movements, perhaps to understand even though i couldn’t. had learnt to turn my head, look at my environment with eyes wide from some sort of chronic panic as opposed to the curiosity to just learn without thought. hence, i have many memories of before the summer of nineteen sixty–five, from the same year and from times before, but they only exist as visuals, seldom accompanied by particular words and sentences which had stuck out to me. it was that summer, though, during a notably hot july afternoon, when i realised the importance of senses beyond my eyes and ears.
my parents had argued the night before, as was typical. my mother had provoked my father — something she did, i don’t know, i was trying to block out the words they spoke by myself on the second floor, he was easily provoked — and about thirty minutes into their argument, i heard my father shout my name. as was typical, again; somewhere along the lines, i always got involved. the contents of the argument itself are unimportant, they always seemed to direct at her a similar train of thoughts, and when he was tired of being mad at her for all she responded with was silence and a blank stare, he turned to me. somehow, suddenly, i had been at fault. i stayed silent throughout the accusations, lips pressed together in frustration, and looked at her, trying to tell her to defend me. she didn’t. her eyes remained blank and fixed to the wall. i hated her then, and what followed didn’t matter at all — only that she had, suddenly, became the most abominable person to walk the earth.
setting the scene for the day itself would be easy, it was very mundane, nothing stood out in particular.
i woke up, angry, and washed and dressed myself, inadequate and still angry.
i had a habit of dressing odd, putting on the first clothes which i saw, which often meant that they did not fit me, and matched so badly it looked comedic. it wasn’t a lack of awareness that made me dress that way, if anything, it was the opposite. i did it out of spite. before i had begun to distance myself from it, years later, i eagerly welcomed the horrendous. everything, everything in the world, everything about me was ugly, a mess, a reminder of all the grime life bore, and i deliberately accentuated it — let there be a mess! let it be a reminder. to live my life was uncomfortable, and if i could bear the discomfort itself, then others could handle bearing witness to the proof of it.
i walked out of the house, not greeting my mother, still angry.
if she noticed, i don’t think she minded. if anything, she seemed even less pleased when i would talk to her after arguments. it was better to stay silent for a day or two, i had learnt, but it often eluded me. uncharacteristically, when it came to my mother, i seldom applied knowledge — what i did and what i didn’t do was all based on the instinct stemming from a craving, a want. so to say, from emotion.
and so i walked over to the lake, angry and angry and angry. i hated everything that day.
i can remember every particular detail which annoyed me in the moment, even more so because the scenery hasn’t really changed over the years. the water had been clearer, only that, because there’s a world’s difference between the pollution and putrid smell it has taken on over the years and what it was then. still, it wasn’t particularly clean, and i hung on to it. i didn’t want the scent of dirty water in my nose.
the other sensations, though recalled without hinderance, are difficult to describe if you have not felt them. what connects them is that they all were all fashioned after the prospect of absence. for example: it sounds bleak, admittedly, but for as long as i can remember i’ve always felt as though there is a hole in the centre of my chest, almost in the same ludicrous manner that some people feel bugs are crawling all over them ( though i suppose i cannot call it ludicrous, seeing as i perpetually feel, and have at many instances described, dirt digging into my bones. it’s not all that different, really ) — obviously, it isn’t there, but who can disprove their existence to the skin, hm? i remember, throughout the course of my youth, wanting to get a hammer and then a knife, to break all the bones in my chest before shoving the knife in, making an evident hole. i don’t believe it was a desire to harm myself which encouraged me, really, or any sort of suicidal ideation; it was simply the feeling of being ‘blocked off.’ i wanted to fill the hole, be overwhelmed by an abundance instead, and something sharp, hurtful seemed to be the only solution. if i could feel its ache, see its blood, i would know that i have finally rid myself of emptiness.
the absence at the centre of my chest was only the most evident one, the one which i could look down at and see the lack of, which is why it brought forward a range of grim fantasies. but it was not a sole instance. starting that july afternoon, could feel the hollowness of my body in–between my fingers, in the lines of my palm, at the sides of my nose, where my head met my neck, then at its nape — in every crevice, there was something to lack.
it transmitted onto the nature surrounding me. the river i mentioned, but have i talked about the grass? how it annoyed me; the dirt it grew from, the green stains it left on pale cloth, with rocks pressing it down here and there, with sticks. my hand weaved itself around one, cracking it with the force of my hold before i dug my nails into the earth, and that before i dug nail beneath nail, scraping at my skin, trying to remove the remnants of brown. it was all hate that i glared at, there is nothing more to say.
what else to say, what else to remember?
the way heat hit me through my clothing? that seemed to me to be the only effect my clothing had on me — ugly or not, it was always either hot or cold, never right. i remember that i did not want to remove the blazer, i don’t remember why, but i imagine a part of me knew that it would be futile and i’d find something wrong anyway, so instead i pressed it against me tighter.
the flowers? i talked about the grass, but i didn’t mention the flowers. they were pretty, i suppose, a pretty part of life to hang on to, but i didn’t see them. i know that they were there because they always were, but ugliness blinded me and i ignored all of their beauty in the moment. i am glad it did; you will find that when i feel, it attaches itself on to everything. i am angry and i hate everything, i am happy and everything is bright, i am remorseful and everything makes me feel ashamed. that’s how it’s always been for me. if i had seen them, they would’ve turned ugly too, and i would always remember that certain ugliness. so i am glad i ignored it, the beauty. it meant i didn’t ruin it. though i can attach them to the scene, i suppose.
there was a fox. this is an important detail, but i cannot make it stand out except with words, because back then it didn’t. it’s snout was down in the grass, i presume eating the flowers. i looked at it and it looked back, then i began to glare.
how difficult it is to put emphasis. what should i say? that i glared, glared, glared? i didn’t. it wasn’t as though i was overcome by a need to glare, i simply did. i knew that foxes were not aggressive because i had seen them often, but i imagined that it could attack me then and there, and i thought about if i would mind.
i would've, of course, because i was five years old and had a tendency to get scared as five year olds do, but i pressed into my head the thought that i wouldn’t. so i glared ( maybe it was a compulsion, after all, ) and i thought about the attack. come on, kill me. ( should i mention that this is a phase my mother often told my father? does it matter? ) i know you want to. come on, and then it snapped. is saying it like that dramatic enough? likely not, but it wasn’t dramatic at all, as i remember it.
i had tilted my head with what i thought was an unexplainable curiosity, my gaze having softened. perhaps i knew what was going to happen before it happened. and only then was there the snap, and i remember that i had watched it as one watches a movie, as though it wasn’t happening in front of me but was rather something staged. it was cartoonish, there’s no other way to describe it; perhaps it’s the twist time adds to memory that makes it seem so, i don’t know, but i do know that there was bone and blood. not at the first crack which took hold of its little body, of course, but as my gaze regained its force it gained new injuries. in the end, it looked more like it had been ran over, repeatedly, time and time again, as opposed to simply being subjected to unrelated anger.
i cannot tell you that i felt bad about it, and i cannot tell you that i didn’t. the most tell–tale sign of something being horribly wrong with a child is that they hurt or kill animals, and though this being my first incident of magic should, theoretically, put me in this category, i am hesitant to place myself there.
i hadn’t beaten it to death, i hadn’t sliced it open with a knife, i had simply … made a mess, a mess which i was earnestly apologetic for.
despite the fact that i describe my thoughts as not hesitant, my manner was, when i stood up and walked towards it with careful steps. i kneeled down next to it, and i wasn’t fascinated or eager to tear it apart, see what it was made of; instead, i was slow and deliberate as i tried to put it back together, leave it in one piece. my hands were bloody and i knew that it was futile, but i wanted to try, and this was almost prophetic. i have spent my entire life scraping at wounds and trying to knit them together once it’s too late, though it all started here.
my hands were bloody. i repeat this because though i had seen it before, i only realised it moments later. bloody! and yet, strangely, i wished they were bloodier. not out of a thirst for blood, as i’m sure you could’ve guessed, but because the weight of morality is much heavier when you do not deliberately choose to carry it. i took my bloody palm and wrapped it around my wrist bone, tried to smear so as to not miss any spots and not go beyond an imaginary border. it was clumsy, of course, and i did not succeed — i couldn’t have, without undoing the carcass, an act which was so disgraceful it did not even pass my mind — but it was better than before. or at least i assured myself that as was the case.
the chaos had been made deliberate, was the logic, and the next step was to make it orderly. i stood up, scanning the lake for whatever i would deem the ‘cleanest spot’, which turned out to be only a few steps away, before dipping my hands in it. i washed them in a manner almost resembling a machine, with limited movements all the more deliberate. everything that was covered had now been hovered over with water, but not in the obsessive manner which would cause it to infiltrate me with its pollution, or worse, imply guilt. i was slow, but not at all gentle, and approached my misdeed as one might approach scolding a child, but not in the manner i was used to.
i scolded myself often, but really it was always my father’s drunk voice which rang in my head, the anger and harshness of him. perhaps this is why no matter how hard i try, i cannot regard his presence with the excuse of objective misery which i give my mother; her absence was constant in my life, thereby becoming the heaviest of presences, but it was his voice which i was familiar with, and the silence and guilt were only consequent. i assume it’s because of this sudden otherness of my inner voice, the unfamiliarity, the softness despite its meanness, that i had another realisation — i shouldn’t have washed my hands of the blood. it is difficult, i admit, to transcribe a train of thought which was as hectic as it was orderly, as still as it is contradictory, but i suppose i can summarise the emotion as frustration. i had washed my hands carefully, with precision, and i could still feel its stain, i had only intensified it with dirty water. i can say now that i could’ve scrubbed them raw with and pure and peeled off my skin and they’d still feel dirty, i was just like that. am just like that. there’s not much to do about it, really.
i took my hands out of the water, immediately bringing them to myself to wrap my clothing around them, try to wipe whatever remained of the water off. i wrapped it tightly, and made sure my hands were spread out instead of balled in a fist, then pulled them out of the cloth — clothes are, after all, easier to clean than conscience — before standing up.
i stood like that for a while. perhaps the ‘while’ is, in reality, a few minutes, or perhaps an hour, this i am not sure of, but i know it felt long. i was as eager to distract myself, as i was eager to focus, and i think that in a sense i did both of those things at once — my eyes lingered on everything for so long and my thoughts seemed to attach themselves in such a way that, though it temporarily served to lift my senses from the carcass, ultimately only further cemented it in my memory.
naturally, it was my parents which came to mind first, or rather my mother. it was solely their rejection which i valued, for better ( as i did with my father ), for worse, or for both ( as i did with my mother ). it was them i sought after i had sinned so viciously. ( or rather, my mother. )
that day, i walked back to my house with a sort of determined shame.
i knew that what i had done was wrong. though i regarded even the act of existence with a conviction of my own ‘wrongness,’ i knew that this was especially wrong, the kind of wrong that doesn’t spark judgement and disgust only when done by the likes of myself, but by anyone. more importantly — and therein lies the determination — i knew it ought to spark guilt where it is attached to kinship.
the truth is that i looked for this guilt with an almost desperation. i hope you can see where my embarrassment comes from now. i cannot say that i didn’t want to be held as a child, when in fact i sought it the way addict does a drug, but over the years i had learnt that in order to earn love you first have to build up layers upon layers of aggravation until it turns to a sort of derailment, before it is excused with remorseful affection.
in my case, that is to say: damn the fathers, everyone’s first instinct is to see for the mothers of murderers, perhaps it is even the murderer’s own instinct. to hear the shatter of ignorance. with my determination, with my shame, i wanted to address my mother: i feel bad, do you? that this is what i have become? my entire life, i had tried to suppress my inborn aggression, and yet my very existence was an act of violence: are you sorry? do you hate me?
i didn’t look for her, i knew where to find her; with her back pressed to the side of the brick wall, she would squeeze herself in the corner, try to make herself appear smaller. quiet with a cigarette languidly rested between her fingers, not quite successful in her attempts at shrinking her presence, but successful in at least hiding it from approach; nobody ever came up to her. maybe because they didn’t like her, maybe because it was clear she didn’t want them to, maybe it was both. nobody except me.
i was used to speaking to her with directness, the one a child bears and one emphasised by my want to make her react. it carried on into casual conversation, too; then or years later, i never twisted my tongue away from its harshness, its distress, its blind love and blind hatred, its openness. “mama,” i said, standing right in front of her.
she had looked at me, but she didn’t respond, not verbally. though i had seen her brows move up, and though i can fill in the gaps of silence with the short air coming past her in an inaudible ‘hm?’, i took great offence to her lack of words, always. to me, it seemed as though she was telling me that i am not worst wasting her words on.
my brows twitched to a furrow, and i bit my lip with frustration, but didn’t express my thoughts just yet. instead, i continued, told her “i did it.”
the vagueness of my words was purposeful. i wanted her to speak, ask me what i had done, which she did, after putting out her cigarette on the wall.
“magic,” i replied.
i could tell that my reply confused her; her lip twitched, and she briefly looked around herself, as though she was unsure of what to tell me. she settled on staring at me, with a look in her eyes which implied something different, rather that she had been staring 𝑡𝘩𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔𝘩 me. i had taken to labelling as ‘accusatory’, though it wasn’t, because i didn’t like the implication of disengagement, and because she often took it on during arguments.
it annoyed my father just as much as it annoyed me, and we both approached it through contradicting it; we were both characterised by wanting. though i mimicked her motion ( looking ahead into her eyes, looking around and then settling ), you could tell that my gaze pierced right into hers, always dug to see every bit of her and never considered her with anything characteristic of invisibility.
“don’t you want to know what i did?” i asked her.
my mother blinked at me, looking away, eyes aimed straight at the wall opposite her. she stayed like that for a few frustrating moments, before she looked down at me again without turning her head. instead, she simply pressed it harder against the bricks. “do you want to tell me?” she asked, her voice soft in a way which i found it to border between caring and mocking — both being quite wrong.
she was a difficult woman to decipher.
of course i wanted to tell her, she knew this, and for that very reason i was momentarily possessed by the urge to say ‘no’, spit at her and walk away. but i didn’t, i knew i’d regret it, and instead i inhaled an angry breath. my voice earned a quality of irritated quickness, furthering in determination, though the words were almost muttered: “i killed something,” i said.
her gaze didn’t avert, but she was silent. “did you hear me?” i asked her, a bit louder, before repeating myself. “i killed something.”
she took in a breath, the kind of breath you take when you mean to follow it with the sentiment of ‘god help me.’ “i heard you,” she said.
“so?”
“we’ll discuss it later,” she told me, and paused. though she had not yet finished her sentence, i had already began hating my mother yet again, hating her with that desperation i tell you of. ( why later? why not now? ) “you should go inside,” she added, and my hatred had filled itself up to the brim again.
“i don’t wanna go inside,” i responded. “why can’t we talk about it now? don’t you have something to say?”
she thought about this, or maybe she didn’t, maybe she was just taking in all that i’d said, diluting it into a muted echo at the back of her head.
my mother had always been like this, always was like this. always. she talked to me the way one talks to a patient, behaved around me as one behaves around a moron. i don’t know how to describe the shame it brought me; i’ve exhausted my words, it was exhausting. my words rang loud and yet they were lodged in my throat, like begging and pleading at nothing at all.
“because i don’t think you’d like to discuss it now,” she said, in that quiet condescension which i’m not sure even she was aware of. i don't think you're in the right headspace. patient–like, see? had i been a few years older, i would’ve told her to go fuck herself. but i didn’t.
“no, you don’t want to discuss,” i said. there was a light crack in my voice, like a sob which i wasn’t aware of. “should i discuss with everyone else?” — my tone increased, then — “i killed something. i killed a fox. because you made me angry, because i hate you, i wished it was you, you made me kill somethi——”
“severus,” she interrupted me, and added nothing more. that alone had been enough.
her gaze wasn’t stern or commanding, no, it was as i’ve been continuously describing it. like i was something wrong, a nuisance, something to take care of; not as one takes care of a child, but as one takes care of a problem. my bottled–up frustration seeped through the crack, furthering it, until it no longer resembled a sob but was one. though muted, its proof of existence would lie in the red of my face.
my mother repeated herself: “severus.” my name sounded like a forbidden sound to slip from her tongue, not because she shouldn’t have said it but because of the contrary. because she had to, was forced to, yet she didn’t want to. her voice was meant to calm me, instead it had the opposite effect.
i took a step forward, and almost threw myself at her. i punched her in the stomach once, twice, and then i was embarrassed at the childishness of my gesture, instead burying myself in her blouse, from where i remained in a position serving half as a hug and half as a manner of punching her in the back and sides. somehow, this was less embarrassing.
her hands clasped over my head, hesitantly, as though this was something she wasn’t meant to do. she said, “shh,” then dug her nails into my head, her hold almost immediately softening as soon as she did, though she didn’t cease pressing me tighter against her. “i don’t understand why you’re crying, you have no reason to cry.” her voice was so comforting that it disgusted me. “i don’t understand what it is that you want.”
i want you, is what i would’ve said, had i been following my first instincts. but i wasn’t, and a moment later i could realise my want was fabricated. now, i’d even add the characteristic of melodrama to it. it wasn’t right, not quite.
what i wanted was to stand taller, to slap her as my father would have done, to yell at her and have it have some effect. a rare bout of envy. i wanted to pull away, to push her away, instead i buried myself deeper inside her embrace. “i hate you,” i repeated to her, softly as one says ‘i love you.’
she was the one to pull away, her hands — cold — travelling down to my cheeks and forcing me to look up at her with a light press. “you should go inside,” she told me again.
“you don’t want me,” i said. “you don’t care. you hate me.”
“i don’t hate you,” she denied, but there was no weight to her words, perhaps because she always picked them so carefully. she didn’t hate me, no, at least not in that moment — god, i would’ve yearned for her to hate me — but she did not want me, she did not care.
“then why won’t you come with me?” i asked her, before pausing and adding, “i don’t want to hurt things.” the image in my head, the one i conjured of craving, was clear. i imagined her response: ‘okay,’ or ‘you won’t’, the simple event of everything being forgotten in a few minutes and i wouldn’t have to deal with the need to swallow my words. though the responses never came, and the event never played out.
she didn’t assure me off my innocence, instead she only kept her cold finger firmly pressed for a few more moments before her hands slid down to my shoulders. “i’ll be with you in a moment,” my mother said, and didn’t give me space to speak when i opened my mouth. she could already sense the why not now? hitching in my breath. “a moment, sev. you compose yourself and i’ll compose my thoughts,” she added, “you don’t want us to argue, right?”
i did, in fact, but i sensed that that was not the correct response. instead, i shook my head, pressing the lie of a ‘no’ into the air. she smiled at me, quick and gentle, and had i been a better son i would’ve thought that the lie was worth it. her hands squeezed on my shoulders once, then let go.
( ... )
she didn’t come, of course. not in a moment and not until hours later, minutes prior to my father coming home from work. i waited for her, fruitlessly, for an hour or two. why i didn’t go outside to search for her, i am not entirely sure. or i am — the embarrassment which would come from doing so, the decisiveness, the fact that i wanted to excuse my incoming anger, the childish drive ( she will come, she said she will ) — but i cannot tell you why i so persistently opposed the truth which i knew as a fact.
though i did feel betrayed by this, it was not the heaviest betrayal of the day just yet. that one would come later, for now it is time to describe her coming in; i was up the stairs, sitting cross–legged and staring at my mattress when i heard the door shut. i never heard her come up, and neither did i expect her to.
a few minutes later, the motion repeated itself, and i could almost hear the brief downward smile when he greeted my mother with a “hi” — which she did not verbally respond to. it was a shame, really, because he was in a good mood, but it is not to say that she did not respond at all. i have seen her enough to fill in the gaps: if she could muster it, she would’ve offered him an even quicker smile without looking up at him from her seated position, head resting its weight on her finger. if she couldn’t, she’d simply raise her brows in acknowledgement, staring off into the nothingness anyway.
“what’s for dinner?” he asked, after a few moments of quietude.
my mother hadn’t cooked, evidently, and she was not a good cook anyway. “i don’t know,” she replied, before adding, almost snappishly: “whatever you find, whatever you make. i don’t know.”
my father didn’t respond immediately this time around, either. i imagine that he had blinked at her, had looked around without moving, then furrowed his brows before saying, “what’s with the attitude?”
she made a clicking ‘tsch’ sound with her tongue. “i’ve had a hard day, tobias,” she told him.
he took a deep breath. “so have i. so has everyone in the bloody neighbourhood, i’d guess, having worked their asses off. you don’t see us making it everyone’s problem, do you?” he asked. there was another pause, in which i’m guessing she had looked up, or simply stayed silent, and so he continued: “and yet here you are, lazing around, spreading around your misery. well done, you’ve ruined my day and it’s not been five minutes.”
“oh please,” she said. “as if you don’t ruin every day. can i express sadness for once — once! — without you taking it personally?”
“as if i don’t—” he began, his temper clearly at an increase, though his voice was still relatively quiet, “i’m not taking it personally, you’re making me take it personally. do you see me starving the family every time i’m feeling a little down?”
“no, but i see you beating it instead.”
“what the hell’s the matter with you?” he asked, almost immediately after she spoke, then repeated himself following her silence, “no, seriously, what the fuck is your problem?”
my mother let out a sigh of frustration and something that sounded like a scoff. “you won’t die if you don’t eat for a single night, you fucking pig.”
this annoyed him. annoyed him greatly, i could hear it in his tone, the disbelief. “have you ever gone hungry for a single day of your sorry life?” he asked her. “have you ever known— no, even thought about the idea that families look after each other? ever seen your mother work day and night, day and fucking night, to ensure the entire family’s staying alive? your father slave off? your brothers, your sisters, follow suit?”
he paused, and my mother’s persistent lack of response rang louder than anything she could’ve said. and so he continued.
“no,” he told her, then increased his tone. “no, you stupid fucking princess. a princess, that’s what you are. you’ve never went hungry, as a matter of fact, neither have i, because my family knew how to look after one another. yours did too. it’s not even about hunger, it’s about having a single thought of love in that bloody head of yours.”
“really?” she asked, her voice calm and steady. “really, love, is it? remind me, then, next time you beat him black and blue, i’ll tell him it’s because daddy loves him.”
“my god, will you shut up about that? is that all you can talk about? what are you, some broken record?” he asked her. there was an undertone of guilt in his voice, a persistent one, mixing with the desperation. this i know.
“i’ll shut up when you give me a reason to,” she told him.
“a reason? you want a reason? you want me to shut you up?”
“yes, as a matter of fact, i d—” he slapped her hard across the face before she could finish the sentence. as i recount my parents’ arguments, i realise that they spark through what i would consider an almost laughably quick build–up. it is easier to see when you confess it, how stupid things are, but such is life, i suppose. anyhow.
“that enough reason for you?” he asked, and i can clearly picture his hand up in the air, not having changed position.
“come do that again,” she retorted, provokingly, but i did not hear him speak in response. so my mother repeated herself, slightly louder, “come do that again,” pausing between each word and not letting in on anything but spite and hatred. “come do it, do worse. do worse, you aggressor. that’s what you are. you abuser.”
“don’t act like some bloody damn victim when you’re well aware you’re asking for it,” he yelled, before mocking her, imitating an annoying girlish voice “‘come do it again’, ‘i want a reason’, ‘i’m sad’, ‘all you do is beat’— all you do is nothing. nothing! get a fucking grip, woman, do you know what real abuse looks like? do you want me to tell you, in detail, stories of how men torture their fucking wives? torture. you want me to show you? wanna know how a real, hateful man treats his wife?”
“be my guest. be my guest,” she told him, volume at an increase, “you’re the one who wants to show me, you. you show me, show me how a real bitch of a man treats his wife. you want to beat me? beat me. you want to kill me? here i am, suit yourself. kill me, i don’t care.”
the silence after this dragged on for a bit longer, and i stood up. i walked over to the door, standing hidden enough on the top of the stairs so as to not be involved but visible enough so as to see. my father, whose lips had thinned, walked over to the kitchen; our kitchen was not separated from the living room by a wall, and the rooms were small, so he only really took a few steps. he took two plates from the stack, then stood in front of my mother. she did not look up at him.
“look at me,” he told her, initially quiet and steady, and repeated himself in a shout when she didn’t respond. despite this, she continued to ignore him until one of the plates broke on the wall nearest to her seating.
only then did she move her eyes upward again. “are you not well in the head?” she asked him. “those are your plates, shattering on your wall, of your house. how does the fact that you’re breaking your own things concern me? am i supposed to cry now, do you think you’re scary?”
the next one he aimed at her, and a shard of the shatter might’ve hit her, though she was quick enough to evade it. she began to glare, and her eyes glistened — though not like crying, and i respected her too much to call it fear. she asked, “and you say you’re not an aggressor when you behave like this?”
“i say i’m showing you what aggression is like,” he said. “cunt. stupid cunt. you know nothing about the world. all you know is to bitch and whine and get on my nerves. do you know how many people would love to live the life you do, would cherish it, whilst you’re sitting here wasting it?”
“then maybe you ought to fuck and have a child with one of them next time,” she replied. “actually, let them take my spot. i told you, kill me, have them take my place and cherish this life instead, since we both know i don’t. i don’t care. about you, about our life, about our son, about your stupid plates and whoever will be my stupid replacement. i’ll never cherish life with you. never.”
he was about to throw a punch at her, though she instinctively caught his fist, and so he pointed with the finger of his other arm. “which one is it then, huh? you don’t care about dying or you can’t deal with as much as a bruise on your face?”
she didn’t respond, except for shoving his hands away. he tried to push them forward, and grabbed on her shirt, holding her weight up and pinning her against the wall. his grasp loosened so as to move up, until it met the base of her neck and travelled to her throat in the form one’s hands take when they are readying to strangle another.
there was no fighting back on her end, not yet, and he hadn’t yet pressed with his force either. i began to move closer to the stairs, instinct dragging me forward, and apprehension pilled up in me despite the hate i felt for her.
admittedly, throughout her life, i had been unforgivably foul to her; and yet i never meant for the harm i wished upon to manifest. not in a way where i could not simply wish for it to stop.
her eyes moved towards me, but they hadn’t yet fixed on anything. i wasn’t sure whether she saw me or not, though it wouldn’t have mattered, it was a miniscule detail.
she looked at everything else, even my father, who let out a sound like a hesitant yelp–like sound upon catching her do so. i saw his grasp tighten, after which her gaze narrowed into a slit, suddenly pointed. “say something,” he told her, a plea or a howl, and his thumb quivered over her throat.
she spit at him. uncharacteristically vulgar, though it was not something she was opposed to. i was surprised, at first, and wondered whether a share disbelief between all of us — or really, me and my father, though at the time i didn’t want to group myself alone with him — would ensue, or whether the anger would blaze from my father. i was left wondering for a few silent seconds in which the flash in his eyes persuaded me to convince myself of the latter.
in that moment, she didn’t let him double down on his strength. she put her hands up, grabbing his, and tried to pull them away, which he attempted to oppose. she had forced them to unlock their grasp a few seconds in, and what followed was her trying to block his hands from reforming it, ultimately mostly failing.
“do you want me to kill you?” he asked, repeating in a louder, more desperate tone immediately afterwards: “do you want me to kill you? are you provoking me to kill you?”
“yes,” she retorted in an instant. “yes. i dare you, kill me,” my mother said, once again trying to fight his hands away when they tightened again as if to prove that he can, in fact, do it. simultaneously with her movements, i rushed down the stairs, and tried to place myself between them, in order to get him away.
“severus, get out of here,” my father told me, warningly. i repeated his words back to him: you get out of here, and he, too, repeated them again, “get out of here when i tell you to!” whilst grabbing me by the shirt and pushing me away onto the floor. i would’ve minded, had it not given my mother an opportunity to move from her position.
briefly, i wondered if she’d thank me later; a childish hope which i knew was wrong, but indulged in occasionally. as though she somehow knew of my thoughts, she immediately contradicted them, looking at me the way one looks at someone who has truly hurt them. who they hate. she rarely, if ever, looked at me like this — and she never offered such a gaze at my father.
she rubbed her eyes and my father briefly held his head, deciding to kick me in the legs. it wasn’t a harsh kick, but it wasn’t gentle as a suggestion, either. “get up, go away,” he told me, managing to mumble in a loud tone. i didn’t listen, instead pulling myself together and — to oppose him, primarily — crossing my legs in my seating position on the ground. he would have minded it more if he wasn’t preoccupied with his wife.
“i see where he gets it from,” she said, suddenly.
my father looked at her, puzzled, and his voice carried a tenderness in it when he spoke to her, “where who gets what?” it wasn’t the sort of tenderness one earns with affection, but the tenderness of disbelief. though he had been nothing to lose faith in, yet, except himself, he spoke in a perpetual expression of ‘please.’
“you,” my mother retorted, spitefully as i’d never heard her speak, her usual nonchalance cracking into uncharacteristic incoherency. “you, in his bones, some inherited mania— you know what he did? you know what your son did?” she asked.
he looked at her, and his unawareness rang loud in the silent air. then her eyebrows furrowed, angry though there was no one to tell him; how could you, equally as loud, only unfamiliar. all of a sudden, my mother began to sob.
“your son is a murderer. a murderer,” she cried, “he killed something and now he wants me dead.”