Baby Steps (An Act of Violence)
I've wandered here and there across all the old haunts now. I whiz by, carried along by music cranked high. I have found that happy place we yearn for when becoming a full-blown (responsible?) adult hits you like a ton of bricks.
We all revet back inside ourselves at these times, searching like mad to regain some sense of control and wonder. At what point did we lose it?
I remember the day that I lost my way inside my little world. I lashed out in anger at a boy on the school bus, slapping his face so hard because he turned around and cornered me with an intense gaze, out of nowhere. It caused me a deep sense of alarm–to be noticed so closely. I slapped him before I even had the thought to do so.
He was shocked. He cried real tears. I seethed.
I don't know what he did when he got home, but as for me? I did not tell a soul about it for 40 plus years.
Life has been situated in a pattern of relative joyful dubiousness. I recall all these dreadful moments when I lost my shit. Always and invariably, it happened when I was embarrassed. It creates an immediate ripple-effect in my emotional railway system. It all comes crashing to a halt and I erupt.
It is not even to fight back. It is just that the lava inside of me WILL flow. It will have its way.
I am only human, of this I have no doubt. But something otherworldly resides just outside my periphery, turning me into something well beyond the realms of the demure and soft-spoken. Why is this so?
I believe it all boils down to a sense of threat I feel when it comes to safety and security. I just want to know where the boundaries are and you can't know them if someone pushes through, somewhere, somehow, unannounced.
That boy? That's what he did. He pushed through, unannounced. And as I found my place in the very hot and crowded bus, I turned to sit facing the front in my seat and when I finally felt at ease, after battling an entire day's worth of public school bullshit, I let my guard down and at that moment, just as I exhaled, he was there with his eyes glued to me. GLUED.
Up until that very day, I had never been the subject of such scrutiny. Such an up-close gaze. He seemed to be swimming in emotional overwhelm, looking so closely at me. One could almost call it desire. He was 7 or 8 years old and I was only 6. How could this be?
Whatever it was, it offended me beyond the point of self-control and before I could even think, I reached my hand way back and I slapped him so hard across his face, his handsome brown eyes, his golden skin and shiny dark hair. I slapped him. Very very hard. It shocked him fiercely and surprised me as well, in equal measure. My embarrassment only deepened.
My sister from across the aisle hissed my name, but said nothing more. No one knew what to say, not even me. He held his face, his eyes strained with emotions of a hundred varieties. Tears spilled over onto his brown skin, his soft cheeks. He turned away from me.
Good, I thought to myself. I turned my head and looked out the window. Good. His gaze had been broken, his eyes torn off of me in an act of violence. What else could I have done? I slumped down in my seat–hating the bus ride home. Hating the scene that had played out between us both, so quickly and so innocently. He got off the bus first. Our eyes did not meet. I could feel his shame exit with him, hovering all around him like a swarm of hornets. I felt him, in pain because of me. I regretted it all.
How did this happen and why?
I don't even know his name, but we shared this moment as hot and sharp and piercing as any moment of passion ever was, slicing us both like a bolt of lightning.
I was so deeply deeply offended that his eyes were drawn to my physical presence. Mostly, I think, it angered me because it caused me to confront the corporeality of my life. I was always, otherwise, in a dreamland. The transition from my world to his, place to place, was so very jarring, to say the least.
But here this evening, the birds sing. I am forgiven, or so I feel. I can smell freshly cut hay. I have these beautiful flowers and so on and so on. Many years have passed and I never hit another boy as hard as that again. At least, not with my flesh.
Whoever that boy was, I cannot say. I cannot say I am sorry for the involuntary response my six-year-old body had to his keen interest in me that day. It is an inborn sense of self-preservation all fatherless daughters experience, overgrown to compensate the lack of a paternal guide.
Comments
Post a Comment