He knows this, too.
Now we’re at the part of the night where he will do whatever it takes to break me.
He stands up, stalking over to me, looming over me. Invading my space, breathing on the top of my head.
“Is that your plan?” he grunts, each breath coming out in a hot puff that stirs my hair, that makes my stomach churn. He’s heavy and his breathing is even heavier. I can hear it all over the house, anywhere he goes. “I’ve seen your grades. You’re not gonna be a doctor, or a lawyer. I doubt you could bag groceries right.”
He’s leaning over me now. Trying to force me to move or make a sound. Trying to get me to crack.
“No, there’s only one career path for you.” His chuckle is cruel, sending spit flicking out onto my cheek as he bends even closer. “You’ll be sucking cock, morning, afternoon, and evening. Just like your mother.”
He puts his finger in his mouth and wets it with a loud pop. Then he jams it in my ear.
That’s what makes me snap.
I leap out of my chair, already screaming at him, “DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH ME! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOUUUUUUUUU!”
My scream is cut off by Randall’s hand hitting my ear in a slap that sends me flying into the wall just like he did to my mother at their wedding breakfast.
He hits me so hard that I black out. When I sit up, shaking my head, all I can hear is a muffled thunder with a high whine on top of it.
I must have been out a minute because Randall is staring at me with vague alarm, like he was just wondering how deep he’ll have to bury my body in his garden.
“Stop hamming it up,” he grunts, as I grip the edge of the table and attempt to stand.
My head throbs. There’s a sharp pain on the left side of my neck. Wetness, too. I touch my ear. My fingertips come away bright with blood.
Oh my god. If he made me deaf, I’ll fucking kill him.
No, I’ll kill myself. I can’t live without music. It’s all I have.
At that moment, I hear my mother’s key scratching in the lock. Scratching and scrabbling so long that Randall and I both know how drunk she’ll be before she stumbles through the door.
My mother is no longer as beautiful as she once was. She used to brag how well she held her liquor, how she could party all night long and get up as early as she liked in the morning, with hardly a headache.
Time is catching up with her at last. A tube of fat runs around her once-slim waist, stretching the tight dress. Dark circles shadow her eyes. Her hair is no longer long and shining, but frazzled from constant changes in color and length.
She stares at us blearily, the strap of her dress slipping down one shoulder.
“You ate without me?” she says, her voice mushy and loose.
Either she doesn’t notice the blood on my hand, or she’s choosing to ignore it.
Randall’s piggy eyes flit between me and her, as if trying to decide whether to transfer his rage to a new subject.
My mother must intuit the same thing—she sidles up to him, laying a hand on his bicep, looking up into his face and batting her long false eyelashes.
“Should we go upstairs?” she slurs.
I see the struggle on Randall’s face—the offer of sex battling with his undrained rage.
“In a minute,” he says. Then, turning to me, “Get my belt.”
This is so outrageous that I gape at him. He already took my iPod and slammed me into the wall. There’s no way I deserve a whipping on top of that.
Through stiff lips, I say, “You can’t do that anymore. The gym teacher said.”
“The gym teacher said,” Randall mimics me in a baby voice. He points one sausage-like finger in my face. “FUCK your teachers.”
My mother makes a small sound from behind closed lips.
This wouldn’t be her first visit from CPS. Or even her fifth. They’ve been called to our various apartments many times over the years. The end result was a couple of weeks where I had lunch packed for school and somewhat cleaner clothes. Only once was she subjected to drug tests—that made her angrier than anything. We moved again, and our harried social worker never reappeared.
“We don’t want trouble,” she murmurs to Randall.
It’s so rare for my mother to stand up for me that for a moment I feel a slight flush of warmth, the last vestige of an affection that once dominated my entire life. She was everything to me, my only family and my only friend.
Then she says, “Punish her some other way.”
And I remember that I fucking loath her.
They both stand still, thinking.
Randall says to her, “Go get the teddy bear.”
The effect on me is electric. I have no resistance anymore, no dignity.
“NOOOOO!” I howl. “No, I’ll get the belt! Don’t touch him! DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HIM! Please! PLEEEEEEASE!”
Buttons is the only thing I have from my father. I’ve kept him with me through every move, everywhere we went. I’ve never lost him and always kept him safe.
He’s missing one glass eye, and I’ve sewn his rips with mismatched thread. But his warm, nubbly texture is still the most comforting thing in the world when I press him against my cheek.
Randall pins my arms behind me while I thrash and scream. I can already hear my mother’s stumbling steps ascending the staircase. I hear her bumping around in my room, and the thud of her knocking something over.
I’m praying she won’t be able to find him. If I can get up the stairs before Randall, I’ll hide him somewhere. And I won’t tell them where, no matter what they do to me.
She descends a few minutes later. When I see the old bear in her arms I let out a scream that tears my throat.
Randall holds me fast, saying to my mother, “Put him in the grate.”
She opens the fire grate as I scream and beg. I don’t know what I’m saying, only that I’ve never been more pathetic, more sniveling, more weak. And I’ve never hated them as I do in this moment. It’s a white-hot rage, burning me alive from the inside.
My mother douses my teddy bear in lighter fluid. She seems strangely sober as she does it, her drunkenness evaporated, her eyes fixed intently on the bear.
I’m still hoping in some desperate part of my brain that this is all theater. The punishment is scaring me, making me cry.
But I know better than that.
She lights the match, the flame flaring into life with the bitter smell of sulfur. Only then does she hesitate, just for a moment. Probably because of how loud I’m screaming, like I’m being tortured, like I’ll die.
“NOOOOOO! PLEASE PLEASE NOOOOOO!”
“Do it,” Randall says.
She drops the match.
Buttons ignites.
I watch him burn and I burn too, howling with pain that feels physical, like I’ve truly been lit on fire right next to him.
His fur singes away, his cotton ignites. His glass eye cracks.
I’ve never known agony like this. I never knew how much I loved him till this moment.
Randall holds my arms, knowing that I would still lunge away from him and snatch Buttons out of the fire with my bare hands.
He holds me in place until the bear is nothing but a smoking, melted ruin.
Then Randall says, “You’re too old for stuffed animals.”
All the love I had inside of me is turned to hatred. I’d light this whole house on fire if I could. I’d burn them in their beds like they burned my bear.