Punching Bag: List 2

His lanky torso disappears through the car window, almost falls in, then stumbles out with a plastic pharmacy bag.

He acts like he’s going to slug me, but stops at the last possible second.

Luther scowls at Sam, who scowls at Mom like she’ll submit.

At some point, Mom delivered me her cure-all: orange Gatorade and saltine crackers. Each bite, each slurp, was like a thousand black wasps stinging my esophagus all over.

Everything from the back of my tongue down the well of my throat feels like magma—you know, the lava stuff under the earth—burning and churning, melting anything it touches.

My little brother is acting like a lion, growling ferociously. On all fours, he bounds around the living room, hopping on and off the couch, then on and off the chair, swiping at Sam’s legs with his little fingers like claws.

Usually I prefer hot showers, almost scalding.

Every muscle and joint contracts as though being ripped from the bone, aching with the heat that consumes me from the inside.

I’m floating. Levitation. I wonder if the fever is my superpower finally developing. All the pain was just a precursor to this.

Sam sits down and rubs his temples. Then he wrings his hands.

“You think you’re so enlightened reading heathen mythology. But if you were a good Christian child, you would applaud my son for an honest living.”

Not until I hear her say, “First, she sends him to jail, and now she raises his only child with no care for his divine destiny under you—”

But Mom’s in there, cleaning. I know because the radio is playing and I hear the sound of a scrub brush brushing the tiles vigorously.

Two oscillating fans bar the doorway, both on their high settings, blowing the smell of harsh chemicals out of the bathroom and into the rest of the apartment.

I find a nook between an air-conditioning unit and a fence.

Somehow the pain doesn’t hurt so much as it jars me awake.

He leans forward in the chair, watching the wedding when Claudio denounces Hero.

My body is swimming with adrenaline. I feel so strong I could fly.

A meek whine crawls out of my throat.

Refusing to cry, refusing to fight anymore, I laughed. A maniacal laugh. Like an insane person in a straightjacket in an asylum, having some wretched and silly realization that pain and laughter are both inescapable.

I couldn’t stop laughing. Until I was gasping for breath. Hyperventilating.

She glares at me, like she’s the pope and I’m blaspheming. Like I’ve somehow offended her. “I don’t like hearing you talk like this.”

There’s no remorse in her face. No apology on her lips.

I lie there, waiting. This shudder rolls through me, a wave of anxiety, of dread and anticipation.

My sister reminds me of visits to Abuela’s. Trips to the Abilene Mall, or the Dyess Air Force Base, or just to Walmart, where my grandmother lets me roam the toy section without judgment. Or to bookstores, with the fresh smell of pages with words, or libraries, the same smell, only older. Or books, where I read and lose myself in the fiction of other worlds or space or the past. Of trips to the movies, when I go alone to the matinee and disappear inside the screen for two hours.

She reminds me of the cat, the one we don’t own but that we feed from time to time. And in return, he drops off dead mice on our doorstep, then prances inside, rubbing against our legs, purring as he crawls into my lap.

He kicks one dog, and slaps the other away. While he wards off one, the second snaps again, gnashing his teeth, clamping down on Ford’s hair.

“Look at your hands.”
They’re all covered in red lines, scratches and scabs and Band-Aids.

“Or else what? You had your chance to leave. You chose to stay. That was your choice. This is mine.”
“To stay with Sam?!” she seethes.

I was born this way, wicked, full of vile thoughts and dark instincts.