The first thing I’m aware of in the dark is the smell of soap—my mother’s one indulgence has always been taking long baths… I can’t see her in the lightlessness of her room, but I can picture her worn, cotton nightgown covering her tough, mahogany-colored body…I picture her long muscular arms, her hostile knobby elbows, her large, ruddy hands. I want to crawl into bed with her, feel safe…pull those arms around me. I try to manifest it with my mind. She startles awake, suddenly aware of a nocturnal presence next to her…I’m maybe 6 or 7…barefoot & clothed in a simple nightgown, not unlike hers. My hair is plastered to my face, slick with perspiration. I smell sour, ripe, from cold night sweat. I tell her there’s a monster under my bed. She tells me to go back to bed. I repeat that there’s a monster in the room with me, that it is going to get me. The balm of sleepiness in her voice is being replaced with a slow rolling lava of red-hot irritation. She tells me to stop making up stories and leave her alone. I try one last time, beg to just stay with her in her room till dad gets out of work. I tell her the monster is going to hurt me, if she makes me go back in there. I plead with her not to make me go back there. She doesn’t even respond. She just reaches out in the dark and pushes me, her large hand landing roughly on my chest, knocking me backwards. I know better than to respond. It’ll just be another monster to deal with.
Bested, I return to my room. I peel my sheet back and climb under it. A letter in an envelope being mailed to Land of Nod. Try as I might to stay awake, I am halfway to sleep when I feel something slide out from underneath my bed…like a mechanic rolling out from working under a car engine. The sheets are suddenly ripped off of my body. As a scream starts to pop out of my throat like a jack in the box, a hand claps over my mouth, my nose. You. I keep tug-tug-tugging at your hand. Fingernails scratching at your arms. Eyes bulging. Flutterkicking my legs. My throat is a clogged exhaust pipe. You point upwards to the top bunk where my little sister is sleeping & draw your finger across your neck menacingly. I know what you are telling me. You always threaten to hurt her or my older sister or my mom. Control me with threats. Collar me with fear. You put your finger to your lips and remove your hand slowly.
I hoover in air, painfully trying to reinflate my lungs…my lips feel swollen, beestung…
“Why are you here?” I whisper, my voice dry & brittle, like the rasp of a broom sweeping. I can feel my limbs trembling, like a seismograph recording fear and adrenaline.
Because no one would believe you if you told anyway. I heard your mother. Now keep quiet & I won’t have to hurt anyone else.
I can’t help it, even though this has been my reality for years, I still begin to cry. Something about the assault taking place in my own bed makes it hurt worse. You put your hand back own over my mouth. And then you lean down & kiss the tears off my cheek, as your other hand seeks out what else my soft, young body has to offer. I tell myself to lay still and be quiet, to just let it happen. I count by 5s. I spell the hardest words I can think of in my head. I repeat a-u-t-o-b-i-o-g-r-a-p-h-y in my head over and over and over…before moving on to h-y-p-o-c-h-o-n-d-r-i-a-c. I try to list all of my stuffed animals from order of least favorite to favorite. The whole time, I’m terrified my little sister is going to wake up and that you will hurt her, too. As you try to break into me, you whisper, “Getting to you was so easy, maybe next time I’ll bring your other friend who likes to play with you.” The threat of your friend joining in again makes me whimper.
I tried with you. I really tried with you. I didn’t want it to come to this.
Before I can consider what that means, your hands are a cruel necklace…tightening, tightening. I can’t breathe. You are smiling at me, as I try to break free of you. You hang on, squeeze harder. My tongue is lolling out, and I’m making horrible noises from a place that hurts. And then, just as everything is starting to dim around the edges, you release. You let me breathe a few times before putting the noose of your hands around my neck again. Over and over you do this, till I’m sapped. I don’t have enough lightning and thunder left in my muscles to even try and push you off. I just lay there. Limp. Till you kiss my neck and I can’t differentiate between the soft of your lips and the rough of your hands and I lose control. “Please, please, just kill me already,” I scream at you till I wake up.
It’s Day 3 of having this dream. Or some variation of it. Repeatedly. Each night. I am writing this in an effort to exorcise it before bed (or maybe to delay going to bed), so tonight is not Day 4.
I am fucking tired.
Do the dead dream? Because I almost feel like he is somewhere dreaming the same dream at the same time. Only it’s flipped image because he’s dead. And evil. And while he never abused me in my own bed, most of the other elements are…a-u-t-o-b-i-o-g-r-a-p-h-i-c-a-l. So, for him, down below, is it a good dream of fond pedophiliac memories? Meanwhile, for me, topside, it plays out as a night terrors…
This is why I drink. I don’t think I’m allowed to say “used to drink.” I’m a couple days sober (after doing 5 days of sobriety last week & caving on the weekend)…I am finally past the withdrawals, but the urge remains…so I’m not sure past tense is appropriate. Or ever will be. The longest I’ve been sober in over 20 years is both of my pregnancies-so I don’t have a lot of hope for this caucus race. I’m just white-knuckling my way through the sickness and the cravings and hoping there’s something better on the other side of it.
Unfortunately, the problem with getting sober has always been that it opens up doors that I need to stay shut–if I’m going to function enough to raise my children, hold a job, maintain some semblance of uprightedness. But not getting sober means death, probably.
And if my aforementioned theory is right, if the dead do dream about their past life? Well, I think we all can agree, with the material I’m working with, I might as well stay put.
Song Choice: Hard Liquor-SOHN
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