from Keep It a Secret

Three women stand near each other. With each one the shade continues to shift to something closer to white. The first woman has grey & black curls sitting on top of her head like puffs of clouds. Her daughter stands next to her in a light blue shirt, hands cocked on her hips, dark sunglasses & white toothy smile contrasting with cinnamon skin, next to her is her daughter, still a teenager in a light blue Gucci knockoff t-shirt. She sports an awkward smile being caught by the camera mid-pose. In front of them is a picnic table & some folding chairs. A big burgundy van behind them. Above the van numerous pine tree branches. Just right & barely caught in the picture are the handlebars of a BMX bike, the dirty white hand grip at first looks like a smudge. My bike is there, but I am not.

There must have been a time when my father & mother realized that their marriage was a sham. Platitudes of politeness in front of the public, knocking on doors devoted to sharing God’s good name & saving the world. Do-gooders by day & violent monstrosities by evening.

Mother in a plain dress, almost shapeless & patterned in unremarkable faded flowers.
Father in a dark suit, pants near flooding, cheap dress shoes near cracking, glasses firm against face.

My mother with her fast backhands that often drew blood— her wielding belts like some minor Blaxploitation character— all mouth & volume & spit.

My father exhausted from a hard day of labor. Loading boxes into a little brown truck, unloading boxes to sullen stores in the fading parts of the city with shop-owners working in dying professions.

I know it stopped for sister when she was big enough to hit back. I know it stopped for me when I was smart enough to become invisible— stay small— a silent speck of dust floating, never tethered to family or feelings.

Even if I maybe felt everything too much there are many versions of I—mostly cocooned in various kinds of violence, but the specifics— a blackbird blurred in the distance— a secret I keep for myself; a secret I kept from myself.

Did my dad share this in a letter with either of his sisters? This thing called feelings. He seemed to talk to his brother a lot. Doug appeared to live the life my father longed for, the life my father lived when he was in the Air Force. My father then & my memories of Doug align as brothers, but my father post-Air Force, the only version I have known of him, seems to be at complete odds with his brother. A desire for another life buried deep inside, forgotten? Or is it what now burns inside me? Fire blossoms upon the brain, peonies withering at the feet.

A small boat afloat in an endless ocean. Actually, just one of many thousand lakes in Minnesota. Pine trees line the shore, the sun diamonds off the flat surface—occasional dragonfly dips & skitters. Doug & Dad deep in conversation. Low murmurs of what? life, love, survival? Who knows. It was the kind of talk given in a register to remain safe, secret from a kid’s ear.

By the time I reached middle school, there was less, or almost no holiday celebrations or activities related to the holidays. I was able to re-fashion myself in my own image. Which is to say, I was not necessarily cool, no never that… but, most kids no longer thought of me as that weird anti-holiday idiot.

However, every Saturday morning & most Sundays too, while everyone I knew was watching Megatron fight Optimus Prime, or another episode of those lovely blue Smurfs my sister & I had to go door to door preaching the good lord’s name. We almost always had to work with an adult, but one Saturday morning, it was drizzling with rain & there was a biting chill just starting to set in. For some reason, my sister & I were paired up together. It was a block of mostly modest ranch-style homes in variations of brown, but the end of the block had newer, bigger two-story houses. After giving a few half-hearted memorized pitches & receiving responses from “No Thank you” to having doors slammed in our face, I spotted a classmates’ last name on the mailbox. A rush of red at the back of my neck. Anxiety’s frantic dance. I asked my sister if I could hang back & not go up to the door. When she knocked, I saw the girl in my class, a girl I had a mild crush on peeking through the window curtain. My face flushed & I began to dread Monday morning.

The next house, my sister recognized a name from her class. I, who tended to introversion & quietness, suggested that we could just skip it. Then I said, we could you know, pretend to do the houses, but actually skip them all.

My sister looked at me as if she had misjudged her little brother for all these years. A smile began to round out her face, nothing shocking, just a modest bit of mischief seeping through. She said, “sounds good.”

In 8th grade this kid kept bullying me. He had scraggly black hair & his dad was a cop. An asshole cop according one of my sister’s friends. He was taller than me & had a nose that looked like it had been broken a few times already.

We had the same class directly after lunch. The teacher, who had short blonde hair, a husband in the FBI, & drove a tiny red sports car would make us queue in front of the door until she allowed us to enter. Whenever I stood in line, the bully would find me. He would walk up to me & start wailing away on my arm while spitting a stream of insults. What he wanted was for me to hit back. Said he’d keep hitting me until I’d hit back.

In the beginning he called me Beetlejuice, said I had a too-small shrunken head. But by this point in the bullying, he preferred to call me McFly. Apparently, he fancied himself as a Biff. I would shake with anger, but I never hit him back.

It is not that I did not want to hit him. It was not that I was scared of him. I was scared of him, but not that scared of him. I’d seen him fight countless times. There was no doubt that he would probably kick my ass, but I would survive. To this day, I still see him haunting in my head & still regret not hitting him back. A secret shame that plagues me yearly since 8th grade.

What I was scared of, what I was truly terrified of, was my mother & father. Of getting suspended & of getting the shit beat out of me from my mother & father. That fear alone kept me from ever hitting back.

But it gets tiring. It gets exhausting. Watching my mother & sister exchanging blows, falling asleep to my mother & father shouting at each other. In the morning, secretly slipping on a Suicidal Tendencies shirt & knowing the joke’s on no-one.