The First Conception_Rise of Eris

by Nesly Clerge

  It’s too hot. You’re too sweaty.

  I don’t want you here.

  I don’t want to be here!

  I close my eyes and mentally go where I feel safe. I rewrite what he’s doing to me:

  When you use a pencil, use it firmly. Keep it steady. Move it deliberately and with no hesitation. Keep the point sharp.

  TOO SHARP!

  Why am I wet down there? Did he make me pee?

  I stay with the words I’ve read, while he does what he’s doing. Turn it into geometry. Anything but this. I’m drawing starfish and beehives in my mind to block out what he’s doing to me. And what he’s doing to himself with his other hand.

  “Lit-tle Ka-tie. Had to start with my finger ‘cause you too small. Maybe you grow big enough by next year. Maybe I stick around so you can find out what the real thing feel like. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Nod your head, Little Katie. I said, nod your head, you little bitch.”

  There’s no eraser big enough for this mistake.

  CHAPTER 2

  Which is the better buy? A six-pack of batteries for $8.99 or a ten-pack of batteries for $10.25?

  This math question had nothing to do with the vocabulary pop quiz my fifth grade teacher had scribbled on one side of the blackboard. The math question had been left on the other side, from the eighth grade class that used the room the prior hour. My teacher had been too lazy to erase it, I suppose.

  I couldn’t tell if any student had gotten the answer right. The answer wasn’t included on the board. But I knew it. I’d had to learn how to figure out such things. Because even at ten years old, I had to become the adult at home.

  Sometimes my mom shops for food, but most of the time, I’m the one who has to make sure we have something to eat. I got over my embarrassment about using food stamps in a hurry—I was too hungry. Her lazy boyfriend never gives us a dime, but sure keeps one shelf in the fridge filled with beer cans. Makes me wonder if that new gold chain around his neck is real or if it’ll turn green after he sweats on it enough. Shouldn’t take long. His skin is always hot and moist, like he just walked through steam.

  I don’t mind doing the shopping. It’s a good way to get away from them while they grunt and squeal in the bedroom, which seems to be almost all they do. If they even bother to go into that room. That’s why my old mattress, dragged in from off the sidewalk, has imprints from my body all over the top. That’s where I stay, sitting up or sprawled, door closed, more than any other room in the apartment.

  Each morning, long before either of them even think about waking up, I slide from my bed, tiptoe to their room and close the door. As quietly and as quickly as I can, I scrub their cooties from the toilet seat and tub and take my bath. I run the water at nearly a trickle so I don’t wake them up. After I dress, two bologna sandwiches are made by me, put into a small paper bag by me. I dress and leave early, sometimes while it’s still dark out.

  You might think it’s scary to walk by myself at that time, but it isn’t. Anyone who was up to no good the night before is asleep. Besides, it’s scarier to be inside when they, especially he, get up. As I said, she really knows how to pick them.

  The time by myself in that early part of the day is the only time I feel like I can breathe. It takes several minutes to get away from the stink in the projects. Then it’s more open, with more green things to look at or touch. If it’s early enough and not cloudy, I see stars overhead. Study their geometric configurations above me in the velvety midnight-blue sky. And there’s the special place I go to watch the sunrise. There, I eat one of my sandwiches and remind myself to hang onto hope.

  I looked that word up the first time I read it—hope. I’d never heard it spoken by anyone around me. Desire accompanied by expectation. I could see how that could be interpreted a lot of ways. But I knew what it meant for me. Or could. No matter what anyone did to me, I wasn’t going to ever, EVER, give up.

  “Time’s up. Pass your papers to the front.”

  I don’t dare look at my teacher. He isn’t going to be happy with me about this pop quiz.

  “All right, class. Use the rest of the time as a study period.”

  Mr. Sanchez shuffled the papers and put them in a stack at the middle of his desk. He plopped his pudgy body into the chair, grabbed a red pencil, and began to go through the quiz sheets. I opened my textbook, stood it on my desktop so I could peer at Mr. Sanchez over it, and pretended to read. My stomach felt like I’d swallowed a plump pigeon that wanted out of that dark, confined space.

  I knew he got to my paper because he raised his eyes to glare at me. I blinked hard, trying to see the words on the pages of my book. My face grew hotter and hotter as I waited for him to yell at me.

  He didn’t. Instead, he placed my paper face-down on his desk and to the side. Head down, but eyes aimed at him, I studied his face as he studied the back of my paper. I swallowed hard and let go of my breath when he went back to marking the tests.

  Every couple of seconds, I checked the hands on the clock that seemed to have forgotten how to move.

  The bell rang. I snapped my book closed and grabbed my other books so I could hurry to the bathroom before my next class.

  “Katherine Barnes.”

  I skidded to a stop halfway to the door. “Yes, sir?”

  “Come here.”

  I shuffled toward him and stopped in front of his desk.

  He jabbed his finger against my paper. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Sanchez.”

  He marked a big red F on the blank front of my quiz paper. “I don’t understand you. You didn’t even try. Just doodled on the back of the page. I wanted answers, not drawings of flowers, honeycombs, stars, and boxes in perspective.”

  “The word doodle implies absent-mindedness, something a silly person does. Leonardo da Vinci and some other famous people doodled, and look how they turned out. Besides, I read that doodling is a tool for self-discovery and discovery of the world around us.”

  “Be that as it may, Katherine, when I give a test or quiz, I expect my students to turn in answers. It seems the only answer you gave was to the math problem on the board for eighth graders. You also got it right.”

  I shrugged. “It was easy.”

  “Easy or not, why’d you do this?”

  No way was I going to tell him I couldn’t put my mind on anything like vocabulary because I was hurting down there. The only thing that brought me comfort was my precious geometry. I glanced at the wall clock above his head. Only a minute left before my next class. I was going to be late.

  “Mr. Sanchez, could you give me a hall pass? Please?”

  “What for?”

  Head down, I said, “You know.” I crossed my right leg over my left as I stood there wishing I was almost anyplace but here.

  I needed to change the wad of toilet paper I’d stuck in my underwear prior to his class. The last thing I wanted was for the liquid still oozing from between my legs to leak onto my clothes or desk seat.

  He stared at me, but his eyebrows were back over each eye instead of over his nose. From the middle drawer, he pulled out a hall pass, filled it out, signed his name and held it out to me. “You’re my brightest student. Anything wrong? Anything you want to talk about?”

  His eyes stayed fixed on me. I snatched the pass from between his fingers the way a stray cat once took a piece of bologna from mine. “No, sir.”

  After a few seconds more of staring at me, he sighed and said, “Get going.”

  I zoomed from the room.

  CHAPTER 3

  Earlier that morning, when I’d made my sandwiches, there wasn’t much bologna or bread left. It was up to me to get more after school. Good thing that’s all we needed, because that’s all I could carry along with my books. Homework in every subject. I was probably the only student who didn’t complain. Nothing like the perfect excuse for going into my room and not coming out until the next morning.

  Cabrini Greens & More, the neighb
orhood store, was small, but its bins and shelves stayed crammed with items, all the way up to the ceiling. Anytime I needed something from up top, like paper towels or toilet paper, one of the stock clerks had to get whatever down for me with a grab-pole too long for me to manage yet. Mr. Johnson, the owner, said I’d grow into it. I hope he’s right. Being small is a definite disadvantage at times.

  Mr. Johnson is the oldest person I know, and he never seems to move off the wooden stool positioned behind the check-out counter. He’s only ever been nice to me. So, I don’t mind the smelly cigar always stuck in the corner of his mouth. He lets it dangle there, except when he flips ashes into a rusty coffee can on the other side of the cash register.

  With his gravelly voice, which always sounds sweet to me, he said, “How you doin’ today, Miss Katherine?”

  I shrugged. “How are your joints?”

  “Tellin’ me it’s gonna rain.”

  I glanced out the glass front and up at the sky. He was right. I hadn’t noticed the dark clouds forming overhead. Can’t notice the sky when you’re keeping your head down.

  Mr. Johnson folded then stuck one of those big plastic trash bags into my paper bag. “Just in case you need it.”

  “Thanks. I’ll return it if I don’t use it.”

  “Keep it. Never know when you’ll need it for rain. Or something else.”

  The sky roared like a lion I saw at the zoo during a field trip for school. No one in my family ever took me anyplace. Not the zoo. Not the botanical gardens or a museum. If not for school and books, my imagination would never go anywhere.

  I made it home without using the plastic bag, but it was close.

  Buster wasn’t there. I put the bologna in the fridge and the bread in a cabinet. “Where is he?” I asked.

  Mama sniffed like she had a cold. “Why you wanna bother him?”

  “Why do you stay with him?”

  “Gives me somethin’ to do.”

  “What about getting a job?”

  “Too busy givin’ ‘em.” She snorted and swiped at her lips with the back of her hand.

  I crossed my arms and stared at her, waiting for her to explain that confusing statement to me.

  She sucked on what was left of a cigarette until the white paper turned to gray ash, leaving only the brown filter smoldering between her fingers. She stubbed it out in a cracked saucer. Mom leaned on the table as she stood. The ash- and butt-filled saucer slid close to the edge as the table shifted down on one leg. The folded paper towel I’d positioned under the shorter leg was missing. Again.

  Crumpled beer cans filled the garbage pail. I figured he must be getting more at the liquor store around the corner. Maybe one of those big, noisy, greasy, grimy, stinky, slimy garbage trucks would flatten him on the street. Or see him for what he is and load him into the back. Do that compacting thing and squish him until they can’t tell him from the rest of the trash.

  “When will he be back?”

  Mom turned bloodshot eyes toward me, but didn’t look at me directly. “Leave him be.”

  “Borrowing from your words, I want him to leave us be.”

  “Fix yourself somethin’ and take it to your room. And don’t come out.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “You sassin’ me?”

  I sighed. “No, ma’am.”

  “Better not be.” Mom held out a hand. “Gimme one of them colas.”

  I handed her one of the small plastic bottles from the six-pack on the counter and reached for the handle of the tiny freezer at the top of the fridge. “I’ll see if there’s any ice.”

  Mom sneered. “I ain’t gonna drink it.” She shook the capped bottle, wobbled to the bathroom, and slammed the door behind her.

  Grownups confuse me.

  As I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I heard my mother curse and mutter to herself from behind the bathroom door. And I heard him, laughing and bellowing his jive-talk to someone, which meant it wouldn’t be long before he was back inside, polluting my air. He’s so full of himself it makes me want to puke.

  I grabbed my sandwich and school things and beat it into my room. Dropped my books and stuff onto my bed and ran back to the kitchen for one of the four metal folding chairs at the table. Shut my bedroom door just as he opened the apartment door.

  The aroma of fried chicken wafted through the gap between my door and the floor. My stomach gurgled. I opened the door a crack. Saw the bucket on the table. No way was I going out there, not even for a wing.

  Since when did he bring food here? I figured he must have stolen it from some poor person walking out with his or her order. Maybe robbed the Colonel, himself.

  My eyes slid to the small school calendar stuck to my wall. Mom would have gotten her welfare check, cashed it, and given him the money, as she did every month. It was a wonder the exertion of going to the mailbox downstairs and the bank hadn’t worn her out.

  I locked my door and positioned the chair back under the door handle, like I’d read in a novel. That done, I sat cross-legged on my bed as I ate my sandwich. Opened my favorite library book to where I’d left off and read as I chewed. It’s the same book I used to check out over and over.

  At first, the school librarian said I couldn’t borrow it more than twice in a row. I checked on it every day for a month. No one but me ever read or requested it. After pleading with her, she agreed to let me check it out as often as I liked, as long as no one else wanted it. Eventually, she asked if I wanted to help out in there during my lunch hour—shelving books and such—in exchange for the book. That was last year.

  I hide the book under my mattress every night, though it’s not like anyone but me is going to wash the sheets, which I do in the tub, but only in the early hours, and only when I know he’ll sleep late on the weekend. After I press and twist out all the water I can in the tub, I drape my sheets over furniture in my room to dry. It’s a chore to get this done. It’s also why the intervals between washings can be longer than I’d prefer.

  I refuse to touch my mother’s sheets, or even go into her room. Both have a funky smell. Her sheets have stains everywhere. I don’t think she’s washed them since even before my not-so-immaculate conception when my combination DNA began to emerge into shapes and patterns that would result in me.

  I turned to one of my favorite chapters:

  Shapes and patterns are everywhere around us. If we know how to “read” them, we learn more about nature and how shapes serve us in our daily affairs. Like, why are some things round? Why do hurricanes, curls, pinecones, galaxies, shells, and whirlpools function as spirals?

  Here’s what I read about that once. The spiral is nature’s most efficient way to encompass the most information in the shortest distance or most compact space. Like DNA. See what I mean about why geometry and nature fascinate me? You don’t learn just one thing when you look at a spiral, you learn a whole bunch, especially if you look around.

  Ever watched a fern unfold? I watched one do that in a school science film once. Time-lapse photography, they called it. And I realized everything is in motion. All. The. Time.

  However, some people seem stuck in place. And some people’s actions cause us to lose our balance. Then we wobble in place like a slowing toy top until we figure out how to stop them from throwing us off our center point.

  I hadn’t had time to grab something to drink before he’d returned. Peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth. No way was I going out there to get something to drink. Thank goodness I’d used the restroom before I’d left school. Probably won’t be able to go until they start up with their nasty stuff again and forget I exist or pass out from drinking and whatever else they get up to.

  Amid all this chaos, and because I’m smarter than the two of them together, I’m considered the freak.

  Go figure.

  My eyes flew open. Had I heard something, or was I dreaming?

  I lay stiff, unmoving in the dark. Then I knew.

  Someone flushed the toile
t.

  Footsteps tromped toward my door. They stopped on the other side.

  I sat up in bed, trembling. Pulled the sheet up to my chin.

  No. No. No.

  Someone fiddled with the doorknob. Yanked on it. Fists pounded against my door the same way my heart pounded inside my chest.

  “Unlock the door, Little Katie.”

  I can’t breathe.

  With each connection his fist makes with my door, I quake.

  I heard my mother call him. He told her to get her ass back in the bed.

  She ignored him. I know this because I heard her say from the other side of my door, “C’mon, baby. Come back to bed. Mama wants more of what Daddy gives her.”

  “You done got enough.”

  “Unh-uh. Lookit over here. Look at what I’m shakin’ at you. C’mon, now. You know you like to spank this. She ain’t got nothing you want, baby. You a big man. This big girl’s business.”

  “I’m gonna give you the business.”

  “That’s right, baby. Now, let’s go back to bed.”

  “Nuh-uh. Right here. Against the door.”

  “Let the child sleep. She got school in the mornin’.”

  “What I tell you ‘bout dissin’ me, bitch?”

  “I ain’t dissin’ you. I tryin’ to give you more good stuff.”

  “An’ I tol’ you to get yo ass outta my business.”

  The scuffle started. Even with my fingers in my ears and my pillow over my head, I can’t block out the whumps and thumps against my door a few feet away. Or the disgusting things he says to her. Or what she says back—pleading with him. Weak-willed.

  I guess there’s only so much a person can stand. When I heard Mama scream, I scrambled from the bed. It took longer than I meant for it to, to move the chair and unlock the door with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. By the time I reached them in the kitchen, he had Mama cornered on the floor in the kitchen. She held her arms crossed in front of her as he’d kick, curse, kick, curse. Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t make another sound.

  I started to run at him but she saw me and gave a subtle shake of her head. When I nodded defiantly in response, she looked up at him and said, “Let me do what always calm you down, baby.”