If you want to feel it, I don't know how to make you feel it. I won't even talk about it. Not at all. And sometimes I won't even think of it, won't acknowledge it. So that's why I'm writing it down. It's the truth, and I guess it needs to be told even if I keep my mouth shut.
My mother died three years ago. She had cancer. Cancer takes a person and sort of turns them inside out, changes the colors of things. Her skin used to be tan, like she'd spent all day by a pool or by the ocean, the same color as my sister Angie's skin. But cancer made her pale, leeched away all the color until her skin was translucent. And her hair used to be dark, just a shade darker than mine. Cancer made it thin and gray and finally it all fell out. Cancer changes things. My mother used to be beautiful and she was always beautiful but the cancer made it a tragic beauty, a fleeting kind of beauty. It changed the light in her eyes, the normal living light dulled and then became fever bright.
Before my mother died she left my dad and me. We felt it in different ways but it hurt both of us. I'm not so sure about how my dad felt it, but I know it made him angry. It made me angry but I denied this anger. I loved my mother and didn't want to be angry with her. So I shoved it way down, and pretended that things were fine. I pretended that things were just like before. I felt like she should have taken me with her and maybe she wanted to, maybe she couldn't. I was nine when she left, and I didn't understand certain things that I understand now. I didn't understand how she was trapped in the marriage with my dad and that she got away. She escaped, like someone in a prison, beyond barbed wire fences and guards. It would have been too dangerous to take me with her.
My dad. It's hard to know what to say about him. He's smart. Scary smart. He's a surgeon. See, it's all short bursts about him. When he's near me I'm nervous all the time, even when he's being calm and nice and…normal. I'm nervous because his temper can come from nowhere and fill the room. His eyes behind his black framed glasses get this sharp look, this narrowed angry look focused on me like that red dot that shows someone where to shoot a gun. He has this intensity that makes it hard to breathe.
So my mom left when I was nine and she got sick when I was ten. When I was ten my dad, he hit me with this, his belt. Shit. If I make you feel it I have to feel it, too. So I'd just messed the house up, this colossal mess like kids can make. It was one of those days when the sun is all hazy and yellow and it fell through every window and made squares on the rug and the toys and the furniture. And I saw the dust kind of flashing in the bars of sunlight. And I'm looking at some toy, just this smooth bit of colored plastic in my hand, and then I hear my name.
"Craig!" His voice was so deep, so full of hate, like the hate could split his words apart. I dropped the toy and it didn't make a sound because of the rug. I looked up at him and it's the first time I remember noticing the narrowed eyes behind the glasses, and his teeth were yellow and sharp and crooked and clenched together.
I can't talk, I can't breathe, my heart is beating so hard. It was this fear that I felt in my bloodstream, I felt it with every beat of my heart. He's standing over me and takes his belt off so fast and it arcs up and slams down on me, across my back. It's like a bite, a sting, and the belt makes this cracking noise in the air. Tears come to my eyes and the tears make me angry, like I'm just a baby. But I can't stop crying as the belt comes down again and again.
That was the first of it. And the next day was the first of the apologies and promises that it would never happen again. When he apologizes his voice is soft, controlled, and his eyes are sad. Behind his glasses, but I can see the light blue color and the lines around them and the sadness. I never quite believed those things like I did the first time he said them. That was faith. I've lost that faith now.