Author: Tokemi
Warnings: Nothing very violent, but it does describe abuse.
Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh is owned by someone in Japan, "My Papa's Waltz", the poem, was written by Theodore Roethke, and I lay claim to neither.
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing is not easy
I can remember waltzing with you. My father. Way back then, when Okaasan and Shizuka were still living with us. I must have been around five, so Shizuka would have been about three. You'd come home drunk; always the happier with a couple of bottles in you. If you came home early, before my bedtime, and saw me you'd grab me up, made clumsy by the alcohol and waltz me around the room. Can you remember that? I can. I can remember franticly trying to keep up with your large, lurching steps, fighting the urge to gag. The sour reek of whiskey that came off you made me feel dizzy and sick. But I always tried to keep up, because back then I loved you so much, wanted you to be so proud of me. So I grabbed your shirt and hung on as tightly as my chubby hands could clench to the material and danced with you.
We romped until the pans
Fell off the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
Sometimes we'd run into things as we whirled around. One dance session sticks out in my mind. It was in mid-December and you had gone on a holiday binge with some drinking buddies of yours. You came home while I was in the kitchen with Okaasan, laughing and singing drunkenly. I was grabbed up and we swung dizzyingly around the room until I was swung right into the kitchen shelves, and all the pots came raining down on me. A skillet came down hard on my foot, bruising it, and making my eyes water with pain. But you just laughed and so I got up to dance some more, refusing to cry, determined to be just as strong as you were, though later I had to go see the doctor for my foot.
Okaasan was backed into a corner to avoid being hit, watching us, brown eyes large with worry and fear, her mouth tightened into a nervous frown. Troubled eyes darted repeatedly to Shizuka's door, not wanting the toddler to awaken to find her darling 'Niichan being drug around the kitchen.
In later years, I was so angry at her, wondering why she'd done nothing to help me out, just watching the painful dances. That's gone now though. It's not my nature to hate for that long-- and anyway, now I realize she was just as frightened as I was. Maybe more, because I looked at our waltzes as a chance to prove how tough I was, what a good son I could be, and she had always seen them for the cruel games they always were. It was all she could do to keep Shizuka safe. She depended more on me to be strong for my Imouto-chan, and I would have given anything to keep her safe. Even if it meant watching them drive away without me.
But I digress; after all, I was talking about the dances, wasn't I?
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
I was so small. I barely came up to your knees back then. The images of those waltzes are burned in my mind. Your hands squeezed painfully tight around my forearms, thick and beefy, one knuckle marred from a time it had been broken long ago.
You looked down at me clutching on to your shirt, eyes hazy from the liquor. My view was mainly of your boots. They were tall and had buckles all up the sides. My right ear is slightly scarred, did you know; from catching on those damned buckles every time you lost you balance. Sometimes we would dance for a long time, sometimes for shorter periods. The pain always made them seem to drag on forever. If we danced for to long my breath would become gasping, and I would get dizzy both from being dragged around and from the overpowering smell of whiskey that hung around you.
You beat time on my head
With a hand caked hard with dirt;
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
You, of course, being the wondrous dancer that you were kept perfect time. Right on my head. I can remember being waltzed around, sick and dizzy with the scent of whiskey dripping off of you, my ears ringing from the steady three beat thumpings. Eventually though, you would tire and we would stagger off. You'd drag me down the halls, me barely able to stand upright.
I'd still be clinging to your shirt to keep from collapsing, still trying to keep up with you. You'd fling me up against my beds headboard and slur out a mocking goodnight, thanking me for the dance. I'd try to smile and wait till you were gone to cry over the bruises and scrapes. As I got older I sometimes wondered if you hurt me on accident--? Or on purpose.
Sometimes I still do. Do you realize when you crack me on the back so hard I fly into the table? When you try to force me to drink booze and nearly choke me? Or are you just playing when you wrestle with me. When I have to wear the jacket all week to hide the bruises. Or is this all just some game to you? Some waltz. But I can't do anything. I couldn't do anything about it then and I can't now. Sometimes it's just like life. A painful waltz, in which all you can do is hang on and try to keep up. I'm still hanging on and I will be for a long time 'cause nobody can keep Jounouchi Katsuya down. So come on, life's a blast.
Wouldn't you like to dance?
Author's Note:
Wow, I have absolutely no idea where this came from. I was reading this poem and I started thinking, "This reminds me of an anime character. From YGO. Not Seto, hmm, oh, JOU!" and then the ideas came thick and fast and this was born. Actually I mostly like it, except for the last part, which I think sucks. So please review and tell me what you think with that little purpley-blue button down there!!
As of November 2003, I'm thinking of writing an alternate ending. Any comments?