Here I Am, This is Me
By Roaming Tigress
Chapter Four
A Lesson Learned?
On the week before my third birthday, I would come to realize why I was kept locked behind that bedroom door whenever company was over, and why I was treated differently than my brothers. Even back then I had a shrewd mind. I knew better than to assume that Antonio and Andreas were getting more attention than I was just because they hogged it all and my parents gave into their demand, or that they did things to deliberately get their attention. The behavior of my parents had something to do with me, just as I had thought, and that was proven to me the hard way.
I was given a handheld mirror from my father as the first and only gift I would recieve from my parents. It was an old family heirloom, dating back to somewere in the nineteenth century. Typical of a child of my age, it held a fascination to me as I was -- and still am -- attracted to shiny and reflective things. That fascination lasted until saw what made me so different, and why I was called the devil's child since birth.
Frightened of seeing the distorted face in the reflection, I dropped the mirror on the kitchen floor and clung to my father's leg when the sound of the glass shattering startled me all the more. I was unaware of his fury building up inside Roberto; all I wanted was a hug to let me know that everything was going to be alright. Instead of the comfort I longed for so badly, I recieved a smack in the face which would be the first of several. I didn't understand what I did wrong, and cringed as he yelled at me in his native tounge. Right in front of my mother's apathetic eyes, he kicked me before storming off into the living room. To him, a family heirloom was more important than his son.
All I wanted from my father was his approval and forgiveness for every wrong that I had done. I told him I was sorry as best as a three year old with a malformed beak could. When there was no response from him, I crawled into his lap and gave him a hug. I was naive, and expected everything would be fixed with just those words and a cuddle alone. Nothing could be further from the truth and I was promptly shoved off of him, and watched forlornly as he and my mother went into the kitchen.
I was too young to understand what they were talking about behind the door, only that it very quickly escalated into a shouting match. Hearing my name mentioned in a particularly unpleasant tone, I slunk into my brothers' bedroom and hid behind them as they were involved in a boardgame -- I knew I was in some sort of trouble. Arguments between my parents were happening so often in the past few months that they didn't phase them in the least. It was me that needed to get used to them; I cringed even at the slightest raise of their voices.
The argument between my parents ended with the slamming of the side door. Roberto had offically walked out from the family, and I would later find out that the reaseon behind him leaving was that my mother was too much of a coward to kill me. From that moment on, my life was to take another turn. Emillia decided to make her youngest son her scapegoat, for all of her sins were now mine.
Right before the frightenened eyes of Antonio and Andreas, my mother burst into the bedroom, grabbed me by one of my legs and dragged me out into the hallway. My brothers tried their best to defend me, but as they were only six years old at the time, there were limits as what they could do and were shoved back into the bedroom. Behind the closed door, I was beaten until I was nearly comotose. I couldn't magine how scared my brothers were when they heard my screams. Without a doubt, they likely thought they were going to be given the same treatment as well.
When she came to her senses and realized what she had done, Emillia rushed me to the hospital -- but only to save her tailfeathers. She explained to the doctors that one of my brothers tripped me while they were roughousing with one another, and on the same day, I fell down the stairs head first. The doctors fell for her lie, unaware of the danger they were doing by sending me back home. That wasn't the last time my mother would lay a hand on me -- quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. I would get hit for doing something so simple and innocent as giving her a hug, or even crying whenever there was a storm that scared me. Abuse was the norm in the Volatili family, and it never went away with time, and neither do the memories. Even today I bear the emotional scars of her treatment; I still shy away at the hands that come up to my face, and I get flashbacks of what happened to me all those many years ago.
When I turned four years old, my mother did something to me that was far worse than a smack in the face.
To this day, I can recall what happened to me after I crawled onto the table to raid the cookie jar. It was rare that I ever got a treat like my brothers did; if I did, it was as a reward for being seen and unheard. The rest was stolen away the moment Emillia's back was turned, but one day, I wasn't quite sneaky enough.
When I lost my footing and took a tumble, Emillia grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and pinned me to the ground. She had it in her mind that she was going to teach me why it is not a good idea to take things things that didn't belong to you, she proceeded to molest me to get her point across. She didn't get too far, thankfully. My brothers intervened before she was able to steal my innocence, and this time, they were successful. I couldn't understand why she was touching me in the way she was, and why her hands were on places they weren't on before. I hadn't learn the truth about this incident until I was fifteen, thanks to me evesdropping in on a phonecall between my brother Andreas and my mother.
From that incident on, I went from a precarius toddler who just wanted a little loving, to one who was afraid of the world -- just as mother wanted. I learnt that it was a bad thing to show how I really felt, for a whimper could very well a slap in the face. Old habits die hard, and to this day I still have a tendancy to hide my emotions. I am so good at it that only those who know me well know that I am betraying myself with veils of pride and arrogance, compensating for what I once was.
There was, however, one thing that my mother didn't succeed in doing; teaching me a lesson on stealing. What became a hobby for a deprived child developed into a talent, as so what would happen when my mother would sell the farm and move us to a neighbouthood in New York's Coney Island.
Disclaimer: Steelbeak, Darkwing Duck, and all other characters mentioned except for Javert J. Adair, Emillia, Roberto, Valentino, Andreas and Antonio Volatilli belong to Disney. Do NOT borrow ideas from or distribute this story without prior permission of the author at
Author's note: this is a revised, improved version of "Twisted Every Way" which was originally written in 2002. Certain aspects from that story have been changed or elaborated.