by Frank Zafiro
The principal gave Jeffrey a look that was difficult to decipher as the boy sat on the chair in front of his desk with a tissue pressed against one nostril. Jeffrey wanted to believe that he felt bad for Jeffrey’s bloody nose or maybe that he was proud that he’d tried to put a girl in her place, but somehow he didn’t think so. Then he gave both children notes to take home for their parents to sign. “Bring those back tomorrow,” he told them. “And you two leave each other alone the rest of the day.”
Jeffrey endured the snickers and stares for the remainder of the school day. At the final bell, he scrambled to get away from the school as fast as he could. He managed to avoid all but a couple of catcalls from other kids. Once on the street headed home, however, he slowed to a crawl. He wondered if his mother would get angry again and march down to the school. Would she find a way to ‘own the school,’ like she told the principal last time? He remembered how good it felt for that short time while she was sticking up for him. He momentarily quickened his pace, until he remembered her admonition afterward.
And what would his daddy say? He’d been in a fight. Didn’t that make him tough? Deep inside, Jeffrey knew it didn’t. He’d been in a fight with a girl. And he lost. A real man laid the whammo on girls. Laura laid the whammo on him instead.
Jeffrey hung his head and shuffled home.
When he arrived, he found his mother sitting in her chair with her glass of special stuff, watching one of her programs. She turned her gaze toward him as soon as he walked in the door. The black eye, bloody lip and swollen nose registered slowly with her. She pressed her lips together and scowled.
“What happened?”
Wordlessly, he handed her the note from the principal. She snatched it from his hand and read it, her lips moving while her eyes scanned the slip of paper. When she’d finished, she balled up the note and set it on the rickety end table next to her.
“You’re supposed to sign it,” Jeffrey told her quietly.
His mother turned toward him again. Her right hand lashed out, slapping him hard across the face. The force of the blow was magnified by his earlier injuries and he yelped in painful surprise. His hand flew up to his cheek. Tears stung his eyes.
“He’s gone again,” his mother said quietly. A cruel smile curled up at the corners of her mouth. “It’s just you and me against the world again, Jeffie.”
A strange combination of relief, anger and fear washed over him at those words. The tears in his eyes bubbled over and coursed down his cheeks.
His daddy was gone.
An ache appeared in his chest, almost like a jagged blade was tearing through it. He let out a small sob.
His mother reached out to him. Gratefully, he fell into her embrace, resting his face between her breasts. The sobs rose up in his chest and came out in huge, racking moans. His mother ran her fingers through his hair. For a moment, even though he hurt, he also felt safe. He also felt good. Maybe the two of them could stand against the world. Maybe she could make everything—
Her fingers twisted and tightened in his hair. She jerked his head backward to stare up at her. Malice radiated from her red, watery eyes. Her foul breath washed down onto his face. The sour stench cut through his overworked sinuses, despite the earlier bleeding and his crying now.
“He’s gone,” she repeated, “but you’re just like him. You ruin everything, too.”
Jeffrey felt something deep inside him wilt. The intensity of his sobs waned. The color in the room faded.
“You ruin everything,” his mother said, and Jeffrey believed her.
October 1980
All he ever wanted anymore was snow. That was the only real wish he had left that he held out as a possibility. There had been a time when he wished for other things, but now that he was ten, he knew better. He knew better than to wish for the things that his mother or father (not his ‘daddy’ anymore. ‘Daddy’ was a baby word) would have to be responsible for making happen. Instead, he wished for things that came from outside his own house. The weather seemed to be the easiest thing to count on, and in Seattle, snow seemed like something special enough to hope for.
His father made it home once or twice a year. Jeffrey both dreaded the time and looked forward to it. He held out an insane hope that the next time would be better. His father and his mother would decide to make it so they were all a real family. His mother would stop being mean all the time. His father would want to stay. He’d tell Jeffrey how big he’d grown to be and how much he was proud of him.
But these foolish hopes didn’t come true. Every time his father visited, in fact, they seemed to slip farther away. His father usually arrived in a foul mood, sometimes already drunk. Sometimes Jeffrey noticed he had one less stripe on his uniform. Other times, he’d have it back. He noticed the lines on his father’s face and how he always looked tired. He seemed meaner, but not as strong.
At first, that diminishing strength only fed Jeffrey’s hope. He reasoned that if his father wasn’t as strong, then he wouldn’t be so mean to his mother. Then things would get better. His mother, however, seemed to have other plans. In the face of his father’s weakening, she grew more bold. He heard them arguing more frequently, with her voice gaining resolve. His father had to lay the whammo on her more often. Sometimes she ran into the bedroom and locked the door. Then his father would either break down the door or he would sleep on the couch. If he slept on the couch, Jeffrey made sure to leave him alone because he was always in a worse mood than usual. He didn’t hesitate to give Jeffrey the back of his hand for any perceived mistake or irritation.
Once, he spilled his cereal bowl. Milk and corn flakes splashed across the kitchen table and onto the floor. His father was sitting at the table, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. He leapt up in his chair, wiping milk off his shirt and pants.
That resulted in a spanking with his father’s belt. The folded strap lashed his backside, raising red welts on his buttocks and the backs of his legs. He tried not to cry because crying only resulted in being told he was a ‘sissy’ or even a ‘little queer,’ both of which burned in his chest just like when the kids at school said it.
His mother stood in the kitchen doorway and watched the spanking. He looked up at her and pleaded silently for her to intervene. He knew she could probably make him stop, even if it meant that he decided to lay the whammo on her instead. She could make him stop. He knew it. So he pleaded with his eyes, begging her.
But she only watched the beating, her expression flat and unreadable.
The strappings only came when his father was furious or when he had a little time to think about things. Like the time he brought home his report card on the same Friday his father showed up. The littering of ‘Unsatisfactory’ ratings led to another session with the belt, with his father counting the strokes. He received one for every ‘Unsatisfactory’ on his report card.
More often, though, his father’s hard palm lashed out and cuffed him in the back of the head. Sometimes he got the back of the hand across the mouth, if that were more convenient. He tried to learn what to say and do in order to avoid it, but he was unable to crack the code. He got in trouble for asking questions, but he got in trouble for being too quiet. He got in trouble for staying in his room and for ‘hanging all over’ his father. He was punished for not looking at his father when he was being spoken to, but other times he got the back of the hand for the expression on his face.
And yet, still he tried to impress his father. He asked his mother to let him play fifth grade football. She refused. When his father came home a few months later, he ridiculed Jeffrey for not being on the football team.
“Maybe you could be a cheerleader,” he suggested, shaking his head. “Jesus, what a mess you are, boy.”
Whenever his father came home, he made a point to show him he wasn’t a sissy. He wasn’t a little queer. He was tough. If that meant finding a way to get into a fight (never a difficult thing to do when all the other kids seemed to pick on him more every yea
r), so be it. He’d come home with a black eye or bloody lip and a note, wearing those injuries like a badge of honor. But his father always took them to mean that Jeffrey had lost the fight (which was true, but how did he always know?) and ridiculed him all the more.
When his father was away, his mother ruled with an iron fist. Her hand was quick to slap his cheek for any reason. Sometimes there didn’t seem to be a reason, but he learned not to ask her why, because that resulted in a follow-up smack.
Jeffrey stopped wishing that it would ever truly be she and him against the world. He knew that she wasn’t going to love him enough for that to happen. Every so often, though, she gave him a renewed false hope. This seemed to happen in the evening and only when she’d been drinking her vodka (he didn’t call it ‘special stuff’ anymore. That was a baby word, too) for the majority of the day. He always knew when it was coming. First, she stopped watching television. Then she brought out old pictures and thumbed through them. Next, she grew weepy. She’d mutter things he couldn’t hear clearly nor understand. Then she’d call him to her, draw him to her chest and stroke his hair.
“You and me against the world,” she’d whisper over and over again.
Sometimes, she’d fall asleep in the chair. When that happened, he always cleaned up the pictures. He didn’t bother to look at them. Most were of people he didn’t know. A few showed his mother and father much younger and smiling. He put them back in the shoebox his mother kept them stored in and covered her with a blanket. He always hoped in vain that she’d wake up and hug him in the morning like she did on those nights. Maybe she’d even make him breakfast and repeat that it was the two of them against the world. But she never did. Instead, she awoke in a foul mood, demanding silence all day because she had a ‘splitting headache.’
Other times, her mood would turn before she even fell asleep. She’d push him away, toppling him to the floor. Then she’d throw down the box of pictures and hurl invectives at him. He was worthless. He was an anchor pulling her to the bottom of Puget Sound. He was everything that had ever gone wrong in her life.
Once he told her he was sorry for being all of those things. She responded with a vicious slap. “Don’t patronize me, you little bastard!” she screeched.
His head humming from the blow, he blinked back and didn’t reply.
“And don’t you sit there and give me your father’s look, either!”
He struggled to put a neutral expression on his face. And after that, he didn’t say anything when her mood turned. He sat and endured it until she shouted herself out, turned and staggered away. Then he’d slip off to his bedroom and go to sleep.
There were times, though, that her weepy affection and reminisces led her to take him to bed with her. In those instances, she took him by the hand and led him into her room. Together, they curled up under the blankets. She held him close, her chin resting atop his head. The warmth of their bodies surrounded Jeffrey like heated cotton. He closed his eyes and let himself drift, always hopeful that this is how it would be forever. While she slept, her arm rested gently across him. Her breath plumed lightly in his hair. Even the rattle of a snore deep in her throat was somehow comforting.
He soon learned that even on those rare occasions, nothing good can last. When she woke first, she expelled him from her bed, calling names ranging from ‘little baby’ (which he understood but didn’t agree with) to ‘dirty little boy’ (which he didn’t understand but knew he didn’t like to hear). In either event, she’d send him to his own bed with an ear ringing from a slap and the blankets of his bed cold. So after that, if he was lucky enough for her to want to snuggle with him, he tried hard to wake up first. Sometimes that didn’t work, either, because if she remembered the night before, he’d still get the slap in the morning. But the nice thing about vodka, Jeffrey discovered, was that sometimes it made his mother forget the previous night. Maybe that’s why it was a whore’s drink, he figured. That’s what his father said about vodka. Jeffrey thought that maybe a whore was someone who forgot things in the morning. Or maybe it was just another word for a mean mother. He wasn’t sure exactly, though he had figured out that only a woman could be called a whore.
At school, he found an oasis of safety – the library. In the library, everyone had to be quiet. They couldn’t call him Jeffie Pee-Pee Pants or queer-bait or any of the other dozen names that kids kept coming up with. No one was able to take his place in line or steal his milk money. There was always a librarian on duty who made sure of these things, though Jeffrey figured out that it wasn’t him she was worried about so much as the sanctity of library silence. He didn’t care, though. He was able to find a book, hide away in one of the study carrels in the corner and read.
The books took him to worlds far away from Seattle. He read about pirates and wizards and monsters. He read about sports heroes and war heroes and super heroes.
For his birthday that year, he convinced his mother to get him a library card at the public library. Unlike the school library, which only housed children’s books, the public library had a wide array of books about anything he could imagine. She balked at first, but he said he wanted it more than any presents (she would have only bought him some clothes, anyway, he figured), so she relented. Besides, he explained to her, it was free. There was a library branch just six blocks from their apartment. This quickly became his sanctuary. He spent hours among the shelves. When he wasn’t there, he holed up in his room, reading the books he checked out.
His mother only occasionally objected to his absences, but since he’d turned ten he started making his own meals and taking care of himself in every way, which left her more time to drink her whore’s drink and watch her programs. About the only thing they did together on a regular basis was sit in the Laundromat once each week and watch the three loads of laundry as they were first washed, then dried. Every other interaction seemed to be in passing, sometimes punctuated with a sharp word or a stinging slap. He learned to absorb those without crying. Crying in front of his mother was almost as bad as crying in front of his father and there were far more opportunities for it.
So they settled into a routine of sorts, Jeffrey and his mother. She seemed to accept his bookishness because it freed her of dealing with him. He accepted that the cost of being her son remained the frequent slurred, angry words and hard smacks, but that they never lasted forever and he was eventually allowed to escape into a book.
Then his father came home and disrupted the truce. For those few days, Jeffrey tried to hide his reading habit while at the same time needing the escape all the more. The arguments between his parents grew fiercer and more frequent. The bruises and swollen lips appeared on his mother’s face more often. At the same time, it seemed like his father only ever slept on the couch. Sometimes he went out, staying away until late in the night. Every time he left, Jeffrey hoped he was going back to the best damn ship in the Navy (even if it was full of idiot officers) instead of coming home in the middle of the night, slamming doors and singing incoherently.
Once, he ordered Jeffrey out of bed in the middle of the night and into the living room. He stood at attention, blinking stupidly through his sleepy eyes, while his father criticized him and gave him advice on how to stop being such a sissy queer boy. He punctuated his points with heavy slaps to Jeffrey’s shoulders, along with admonitions to ‘stand up straight like a man.’
Jeffrey stood as tall and rigid as he could at three o’clock in the morning. He pretended he was an Army soldier and stared straight ahead, refusing to cry. He knew his father hated the Army even more than he hated and loved the Navy, so pretending to be a soldier gave him a strange sense of satisfaction and strength. It must have shown on his face because his father lit into him for having a “smart ass look on that mug of yours.” He followed that up with a series of hard slaps to Jeffrey’s head.
“You think you’re something? Huh?”
Slap.
“You aren’t shit, you little shit.”
Sla
p.
“You little whore’s son. You’ll never be shit.”
Slap.
“Don’t you fucking look at me like that.”
Tears sprang to Jeffrey’s eyes. He willed them not to fall.
The appearance of tears seemed to satisfy his father. He stopped slapping and laughed uproariously. “Oh, there it is. The little queer crybaby I know.” He waved him away with a flick of his hand. “Get out of my sight.”
Jeffrey retreated gratefully to his bedroom, but it was a long time before the burning in his belly allowed him to sleep.
On another occasion, he heard two voices come into the apartment late at night. One was unmistakably his father’s deep rumbling, but he didn’t recognize the other voice. It was definitely a woman’s voice, though. There were some whispers and laughter and the clink of glasses, followed by some other noises that he couldn’t exactly place. He heard the woman’s voice cry out as if she were in some kind of pain. That’s when he figured out that his father was putting her in her place. He was laying the whammo on her, just like he did to his mother.
After a while, the noises leveled off and he drifted back to sleep.
In the morning, he waited for the argument to begin, but it never came. Eventually, his hunger drove him out of his room. In the kitchen, his father drank coffee and read the newspaper. His mother sat in her chair and watched television. No one said anything.
Jeffrey made himself some toast. For now, he decided not to say anything, either. Instead, he ate his toast, then slipped into the living room. He stood next to the window and watched the sky for snow.
August 1982
His father missed his twelfth birthday, which was no surprise.
