Take It Boy
Fodder for the maw.
In response to A. George Ilinca’s post about first memory.
The memory was simple enough: A toddler in wet pants looking out just above the far right bottom sash of a six light [window] entrance door, to a snow buried stoop that belonged to the house that belonged to my grandparents. Late morning sun, partnered with temperatures in the teens, created crystal prisms that glazed over the fresh white surface in a dazzle dance; spectrum’s best. I remember feeling the fizz of the cold and thinking it made everything so clean. I touched where the glass met the sash and was surprised at the roughness of the varnish. A tiny black bug made its way into my field of vision, but in no time scuttled away with as much consequence as my wonder of the great outdoors.
To look at me, as I suppose my siblings did, a button faced little one in my sister’s eyes, and a nondescript two year old in my cousin’s mind, I was known in the family as ‘the youngest’. I had no idea what was behind the looks they gave me while they played in the snow, always closer, with their toy shovels destined to destroy the pristine.
I did not want them to ruin the snow show, and I thought it would be enough just to think of the not wanting to make it so. Moreover, wanting something to happen, I would quickly discover, made no difference to Margo, Bobby, or anybody else.
Without realizing the consequence, my little heart processed this revelation into a prophetic sadness. I set myself up for a life changing event that was to be my second memory; important enough to register. I include memory number 2 with memory number 1 because the scene of prism kaleidoscopes, and pure, frozen glass, was an image I counted on to return me to me [instinctively]. I would need this mental impression if I was to survive …
He came through like a stormtrooper, a cold focused stare, and made short work of it all. My self preservation had not kicked in yet; another unchecked box on my sprouting to do list. I had no idea of defense. He could have taken his time and ruined me for many lives to come, but as it happened everyone was home in the kitchen around a corner where people couldn’t see for a minute. He took his eyes off mine several times, paranoid, making sure no one was coming, then it was done.
What ‘it’ was I cannot say. I only know the aftermath; my mind protected me with shock. To described it fully, one would have to be a member of the cult, that is to say speaking from experience. Someone from his life had done the same to him once, and so, following the Vampiric law, he must pay it forward. I don’t mean to talk in fiction. The memory was real enough: vicious, complete, no escape. It, [the memory], was an instant replacement from being a three year old kid, to being a three year old kid with a life’s worth of fear and pain. Gone, as if thrown out of a ten story window, was any personal self ability except what he now demanded; I was rendered mad. I looked the same — and had to act the same — I could never expose what he did, he surely would have done me in and told me he would do so if I ever told my mother; his new wife. I was trapped in a psychological prison. The physical pain of a stutter [I lost the natural facility to process speech patterns, due to DNA damage], was my jailor — insane fear the warden.
As far as memories go, anything after memory number 2 is redundant until I reached the age of acceptance, even forgiveness, many … many years later. I will never be all of what created me wanted, if that is such the case. He twisted my mind in ways that will not straighten, but in the future I look forward to the memories I have left to come. I am humbled and thankful. There are millions of children in this world, right now today, who go through the same like experience and then get blown away by a bomb, or a bullet, or a murderous parent. Let us pray.
How lucky can I be.
