penance. a love story (The Böhme Series) (12 page)

“Blake, people want to learn sometimes. Don’t you want to learn?”

“Hmm, I want to learn the best way to please a woman. Oh wait, never mind, I already have a degree in that.” He laughed and there was something hidden in that laugh. He didn’t have demons that he tried to push away, but he had something he never wanted to share with me. We held a silent agreement never to discuss our issues.

“Man, you’re so fucking lame, you know that?” I laughed. He always had a way of saying stupid shit to try to lighten the mood. I always wondered why he did it, was it for my benefit or his own? He had a good life—loving parents, good home, never any fighting. I envied him for that.

“Yeah, I know I am, but that’s why you love me. What time are you going to Sid’s today?” he asked.

I checked the time on my phone.
“I’ll be there at five or so, you coming?”

“Of course I am. I wouldn’t miss your annual tattoo. What are you going to do when you run out of space on that fine body of
yours and words in your mind?” he mocked.

“God you’re an idiot
,” I said with a laugh. “But I won’t. I don’t think there will be an end to this. Every year is something. Plus you know me and books. There will always be a quote that hits me like a truck and I will have to get it tattooed.”

“Whatever. I don’t know why you want to cov
er that lovely skin of yours,” he said with another laugh.

“Oh my god
, you’re fucked in the head.”

“Again that’s why you love me,” h
e said and I heard the smile in his voice. He was a schmuck. But he was right, in a way I did care for him.

“Okay, I’m going to ha
ng up now. I’ll see you at Sid’s,” I said.

I put my phone back into my pocket and looked around the bar.
Hannah
. Her name repeated over and over in my mind and I tried to hold onto the memory of her as she was reading her book. She hypnotized me as I watched her. As hard as I tried to hold onto that moment, older memories kept overshadowing it.

I found myself back at the pool tables
in the bar. The torn fabric on them matched the rest of the place. I sat on the table and lying back I took a few deep breaths and covered my eyes with my forearm. I wanted to focus my thoughts on Hannah, but I lost to the memory of that day seven years ago.

I was drifting closer to death
then and I was only sixteen. I was so sick inside from the pain my mother had caused me. She was pure evil and her control over me was tiring. In her sick mind it was okay or at least acceptable to abuse me. I was her property and she had told me that on several occasions.
“Wynn, you came from my womb, so I can do with you as I please. I own every part of you—remember that,”
she had whispered in my ear. She told me that no one could help me and no one could love me as she did.

My father left her when she told him she was pregnant with me. She always told me he was the love of her life. She said I looked like him and every time she looked at me her heart cracked even more. It wasn’t from a lofty mother/son love we shared, but because I was a constant reminder of her lost love. She looked toward a distant unreal place when she spoke of him. I wondered how much of what she said was true and how much she created in her mind.

My mom had grand interpretations of what happened in her world. Sometimes when she spoke of him it was as if he were two different people. She loved him, but I had a hard time believing he loved her in return. One part spoke of him as a saint brought into her life to save her and another part spoke of him as pure evil. She had this idea in her head that they had a fairy tale romance—she was damsel and he her prince charming. But something happened and he was the villain again in her constant roller coaster of emotions.

For the last few years of her life she used guilt to control me and she used my fear towards her as a tool to take her aggression out. She hit me, knowing that I would never hit her back because I had more than fifty pounds on her. As much as I hated what she did to me, we still had good times. There were moments when she wasn’t drinking and we lived a normal life, as normal as our life could be.

I remember my ninth birthday being one of those times. She invited Blake and his family, as well as Sid over to our house. She made a cake and they sang to me. It was one moment in my childhood I remember being loved. The attention embarrassed me and I kept my chin lowered as they sang. She held sadness and guilt in her eyes when she looked at me. I wondered if she felt guilt for what she did to me and if the sadness came from that or if it was because I was so damn shy. Later that night, she found her sadness drawing her back to a bottle of Cabernet and it morphed into her anger. As her memories of my father changed, her emotions did as well.

As I grew older, she grew frailer. But when she drank her wine and grabbed her belt, she struck me across the back or arm with as much strength as she always possessed. She screamed at me that I ruined her. I believed her—my birth ruined her. My entrance into the world brought her sadness. I was the cause of her pain. I drove my father away and caused the hollowness in her eyes.

That was our insane life—constant sorrow and emptiness. Sometimes, I welcomed the strike of her belt, because the physical pain brought me from the void that entombed me. The belt or hand connected me with the woman I called Mom.

Then one day during my sophomore year of high school we were reading Shakespeare in my English class. I always read as a child, but started reading more around that time. I discovered the escape it brought. I never read Shakespeare though as I always bought into the stereotype. Shakespeare was for lovebirds. I learned I was wrong.

We were reading Macbeth aloud in class and I never thought much of fate, but that day I questioned it. On my turn to read I got Malcolm’s part.
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.
Those were the first words I read that caused an explosion inside me whose force of impact started a crack in my walls. I couldn’t speak of what happened to me throughout my life. I couldn’t tell anyone what my mother did. But in my silence it was devouring me and I wanted release. I chose to give my sorrow words without speaking.

Sid offered to give me a tattoo when I decided on one. He lifted an eyebrow at me when I told him what I wanted. It wasn't because of the tattoo, but the placement. "You rea
lly want to tattoo your neck?" he asked me. I thought it strange, considering he had a neck tattoo himself. I nodded and told him that it was what I needed. 

The words could not cross my lips to tell him why I needed to get it on my neck. But seeing them every time I looked in the mirror I gave them a voice. It reminded me that yes it did happen and it does happen and that someday I could speak and it will stop.

After describing the details of the tattoo to Sid, he looked me in the eyes for a long while. My pain reflected in his expression and he was helpless. I never spoke to Sid of what happened, but he had an idea. Without question though, he agreed. He didn’t even bother asking my mother’s permission, because she wasn't aware enough to make a decision.

Included was a h
awthorn tree on my upper left arm whose branches climbed my shoulder and stopped to surround the words on my neck. I wanted no colors, but black with gray shading. On the topmost branch sat a raven looking towards the words. I chose the raven because I read somewhere that they were bringers of light, truth, and goodness and I wanted each of those. I chose the tree, because even though I didn’t know my family, it was their namesake. It took Sid several hours over several days to finish the tattoo and I asked him to put the words on last.

The day he finished the tattoo, I went home and found my mother dead in the bathtub. She choked on her own vomit and drowned in a drug and alcohol induced sleep. I didn’t call 911 right away. I sat on the floor leaning my back against the toilet as I stared at her.

Her eyes in death were as blank as they were in life. She wore a vacant expression that made her look as if she were longing for something she once had. Part of me wanted to know what her story was. Part of me feared it. I hated what she
did
to me. I hated
her
for it, but she was still my mother and she made me who I was.

With my elbows resting on my pulled up knees, I fingered the wrap over the tattoo on my neck. I didn't miss the irony of her choking on her own sorrow. This woman never learned how to give her sorrow words. She fed her sorrow and let it fester and grow until inflicting it on others was what gave her release. I received her pain and trapped it in me. Our pain will burden me the rest of my life.

Now every year since, I get a new tattoo. My anniversary tattoos are always quotes. The last six years I got Shakespeare, Salinger, Orwell, Bukowski, Bradbury, and Hemingway. This year I am getting Vonnegut. The tattoo is a recreation of his tombstone drawing from
Slaughterhouse-Five
. I wished for that phrase to be true.

A few hours later I was in Sid’s shop. Blake did come through and he was there waiting for me. I removed my shirt because I was going to have the tattoo put on my right upper arm and I didn’t want to have to hold my sleeve out of the way. The scars across my back were stark in contrast to my pale skin. Even the large tattoo across my back could not hide all of them. Sid saw more of me than my family doctor. But he was only aware of my physical scars, not the emotional ones.

We were talking and joking until that moment. The removal of my shirt showed the “X’s” that intertwined and formed within the wings of the gargoyle tattoo. Sid told me once that it was going to hurt tattooing over any scars and after that first tattoo he never gave his spiel again. I could handle it.

Scars traced my arms and thighs as well. I couldn’t blame her for those. It took me a couple years after her death before I stopped. It started when I was thirteen. It was at that time, I realized the pain could fill the void much as her strikes had. A slice across my skin with a knife or any sharp object brought me back to reality. I sometimes imagined I floated outside myself, but the physical pain brought me back. I wasn’t suicidal. I only needed to stay grounded. I needed the physical pain or I might explode and watch as particles of me drifted into nothingness. I breathed a deep breath and exhaled into the chair, awaiting the connection the needle to my skin brought.

Neither of the two men spoke as Sid tattooed. They both saw what she was capable of doing. The scars I bore showed almost everything she had done
. Almost
. She kept our doors tightly locked so the world couldn’t see the darkness. I learned from the best.

The next morning, I had my first art composition course. This was the class I was looking forward to least. Stinson pushed me to take this particular class because his theory was that I might be more inclined to drop my walls when I saw another human being in a vulnerable position.

I didn’t see how staring at an old, naked guy and drawing his every detail was going to make me closer to humanity. Taking photos of people was enough. I wanted to keep my distance from them, but still capture them in their reality. Plus it didn’t take from me to do that. I didn’t have to be near them or examine them. It was unfortunate that most people choosing to be figure models are old hairy guys with beer bellies and I was going to have to look at them longer than I wanted.

I took the seat by the door and found myself more relaxed than in the classrooms on Friday. I didn’t focus on the circular formation of our desks. I appreciated how open it was and I wasn’t sitting near anyone this time. The professor entered the room with an air about her. I should say she flowed through the room. She had on a long dress and wore anklets with bells on them. Every time she took a step she made a tinkling sound.

“Hello, class. I’m not going to ease you into this. If you managed to get into this class, it means you have drawing experience. So let’s get to it. I have our first figure model for you today and just as you take a bandage off a kid; we are taking one off of you. We are going straight to nudes.”
Great
.

I pulled my drawing pad and charcoals out and tried to focus on the items before lifting my head. I took a deep breath to prepare myself. “This is Hannah, everyone
,” the professor declared. I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to see another Hannah. I didn’t want to see
the
Hannah. I was already nervous and that possibility intensified the nervousness. There is more than one Hannah in the world, but I knew it would be her.

I repeated her name in my thoughts since yesterday. I let out a deep breath and allowed myself to look at the girl who walked into the room. I started at her feet and kept my head lowered as my eyes
traced up her body. I was playing Russian roulette with my emotions and I couldn’t decide which would be my end—it being her or it not being her.

When I took my last blink and opened my eyes, I saw the same blue eyes that haunted me. She was looking right at me and she pulled the terrycloth robe around her tighter as if she wanted to hide. She wore a demure expression that was different than how she looked the other day. She wore no makeup and there was a silent purity surrounding her. I was seeing another side of her. She was cautious and hesitant as she dropped my gaze and looked around at the rest of the class.