I gritted my teeth together hard enough to hear them grind in my jaw. I curled my fists tight and walked three steps toward the wall. My knuckles seemed to jam into my hand as I threw my fist into the wall. I yelled out but then sucked back the noise to keep from alerting my dad. I'd put a tennis ball sized dent in the wall, but most of the damage had been to my hand. The throbbing pain pulsed all the way up to my shoulder. I held my hand against me and hopped around, holding my breath and fighting back the puke rising in my throat.
The bedroom door opened, not quickly or suddenly, but slowly, as if he was just looking inside to check that I was doing my homework. Dad stood in the doorway with that emotionless, granite face. His harsh scowl landed on my right hand with knuckles that had already swollen to twice their normal size. I could barely move my fingers. They seemed to be permanently frozen into a fist.
He stepped into the room and looked at the dent in the wall. It was hardly noticeable but my dad never missed a detail. He rubbed his finger over the concave plaster and without looking at me, motioned me toward the wall with his finger.
Suddenly the pain in my hand was nothing compared to the terrified pulse pounding in my ears.
Dad stepped back. "Hit it again," he said calmly as if asking me to turn on the lights.
I stared at him in confusion.
"Hit the wall again in that same spot. Now," he added darkly.
I balled up my left hand.
Dad shook his head. "The right hand."
Nausea raced through me as I thought about slamming the unforgiving plaster wall with my tender, aching knuckles. Dad stood there like a statue. The only sign that he was actually a living human was the slight movement of his nostrils as he breathed in and out.
I pulled my arm back and gritted my teeth as I threw my throbbing hand into the wall. The plaster dented a little deeper, and my knuckles jammed farther into my hand. Blinded by the pain, I stumbled into my bathroom and puked into the toilet. I used my left hand to throw cold water on my face. I avoided looking at my right hand, certain that it was starting to look like a ball of red clay instead of a hand.
The room was silent, and I hoped to hell that Dad had gone, satisfied that he'd caused me enough pain and anguish for one night. I stepped out of the bathroom. He was still there, like a tall, dark shadow of cruelty.
"Again," he said calmly. Calm was the tone I hated the most. I preferred anger and rage to deadly calm. Calm meant that he was in full monster mode.
"What?" I asked weakly, hoping I'd misheard him.
"Get back over here and hit it again."
"But, sir, I think—"
"Again."
The bile rose in my throat again. The room seemed to spin around me as I walked back to the wall. The plaster was cracking around the dent, but I had no doubt it would still hurt just as bad. And then the pain turned to rage. Anger heated my skin and made blood boil in my veins. I would show him. I would fucking show him.
Without hesitation, I threw my fist into the wall. Plaster chipped off, and the pain in my hand began to be muted by numbness. I could feel the vibrations of the impact through my arm and across my shoulders and back. This time I didn't wait for his order.
I hit the wall again. Plaster jammed into my fingers, slicing two of them open. Red smears of blood colored the crumbling pieces of wall. I pulled back and hit it again, wanting and hoping that I'd feel every bit of it. I yelled out as I hit it again. My hand went clear through, leaving a fist sized hole in the wall. A spray of blood covered the white wall. My hand felt as if it was no longer attached to my arm. I couldn't feel anything except pulses of pain running through my entire body.
"You can spend tomorrow night patching that wall." Dad walked to the door. "I'll hire you a private tutor tomorrow. You're done with that ridiculous academy." The door shut behind him.
I grabbed a clean sock from my drawer as I stumbled to my bed. I wrapped the sock around my hand and collapsed down on the mattress, wishing that the damn bed would just swallow me up so I could disappear for good.
8
I rode along the coastal highway to clear my head. A visit with my dad always fucked up my day, and this afternoon had been no exception. In the past few years, I'd managed to keep my childhood memories tamped down. Otherwise, they could overwhelm me and darken my mood, bringing me to a place that I worried I couldn't crawl back from. That night when my dad forced me to ruin my hand, a self-inflicted injury that eventually required stitches and pins to straighten out the fingers and a fabricated story for the doctor, was the night when I realized I would never be normal. My dad's insane parenting methods had left deep and lasting scars. And as hard as I tried to free myself from those scars, they stayed there, crisscrossing my soul like belt lashes on my back.