They Only Hit Until You Cry, And After That You Don't Ask Why, You Just Don't Argue Anymore

--"Luka", Suzanne Vega

i. amoeba

Maybe it's part of my culture, he tries to tell her, explaining that that's the way his parents were raised. There wasn't any models of positive reinforcement when they were being disciplined. When a child was misbehaving you took out the old belt and gave him a good rap across the behind. It wasn't questioned. There wasn't even an option of another form of discipline; that's what was done to bad kids.



He looks at the CD cases in his hand to avoid meeting her eyes. Whenever it comes to this issue he always feels out of place, like he doesn't have the authority to offer up an opinion. What does he know of what it's like? He would hardly call himself abused as a kid, not like her. The most he ever got spanked was three or four times a year, and even those were nothing he would have considered excessive. He hardly remembers any one specific time that a line was crossed or that the punishment did not fit the infraction. He looks at the cases and knows nothing he says will stack up against the litany of horrors she can draw upon.

Amid the cacophony of the store he leans in to hear her answer.

With my family, she says, it wasn't handed down from my father to my brother. I don't ever remember my father hitting me at all. It's like he thought of the idea all on his own one day. Or maybe he saw it on TV one day and decided to give it a whirl. Who knows?

He listens to her speak and there's an awful neutrality to her voice. He tries to pick out the bitterness in her voice, some small sign of resentment that still lingers, but that too is gone. She sounds like him, barely remembering any one time to cause the anger or frustration to well up. To hear her speak, he thinks, she might as well be talking about some character on television. There's a distance to the way she refers to her past self that's eerie and not the least bit sad.

They both stare down at the aisles of music below. They're two friends sharing an afternoon in Hollywood engaging in small talk while they wait for their film to begin. He imagines if you would look up at them from the floor below you wouldn't be able to pick out what they were saying. Oh look, one might say, those two must be discussing something lighthearted and witty by the way she breaks into small smiles and little fits of laughter. Or you might mistake his nervous glances aside as the burgeoning signs of a new romantic relationship. You would never be able to guess they were ever discussing something serious.

He offers that he hit his brother when he was little too. Perhaps, in the folly of youth, he picked up that that's the way disagreements get solved. After all, he remembers, every time he hurt his brother the argument would end. Problem solved. It never occurred to him at that age that the disagreement didn't end, just the argument. For him, he says, they were one and the same. I didn't care if he didn't mean it. As long as Francis said I was right that was good enough for me, he continues.

It was the same with him, she joins in. As soon as I gave up it was over. It wasn't the fight that interested him. It was the winning. The sooner I gave him that, the sooner he would stop.

He thinks about that for a second. He never picked fights at school. He never even raised his voice so much with his friends or other family members. It was only his brother and a couple of times his younger cousin that he ever felt confident enough to actually physically hurt. Was that more from being around them more often or more from the fact he knew he could impose his will upon them physically?

Maybe he was just as bad as her brother and never knew it. Maybe he just never got the opportunity to grow into a monster because Francis never fought back all that much and she always did. Maybe it was the lack of a true antagonist that prevented him from turning out much worse than he did.

Soon she's jumping topics to the Smog CD she has just picked up and all talk of former troubles are forgotten. The moment has passed and nothing more is discussed of it.

----

ii. hawthorne boulevard

On a different day the two of them are driving up to the Border's when he asks her if there was ever a time if she was afraid for her life. She always seems the type to not be scared of anything and whenever she talks about her brother it's always in reference to how she didn't give up right away. He likes to believe that that's the way it happened because he would hate to think she would want to lie about that. He doesn't care how strong she was. She had more than enough reason to be scared. But it makes it easier to hear when she portrays herself as being defiant and resourceful. It's that reserve of strength that makes the rest of the details bearable, he believes. Without that the stories really were shocking, to say the least.



She blurts out there was one time she was frightened. But only the once, she makes sure to repeat. I came home from school to find him in my room combing through my things. I asked him what he was doing. Quick as a cat, he shoved the drawers he had been poking through closed. Nothing, he said. I told him that I didn't believe him. That's when he came stomping across the room and got in my face. I wasn't doing anything, he said. Then what were you doing in here, I asked. Again, he said, nothing. That's when I made the mistake of threatening to tell dad that my brother had been in my room again. I told him that I was going to tell on him and get him trouble.

He never even hesitated. Didn't blink once. He just grabbed me by the arm and dragged me over to the railing. I yelled at him to let me go, but he kept dragging me closer to that stupid railing. Finally, when we were standing next to it, he picked me up, still fighting him every step of the way, and put me on the other side of it. I barely had time to get my feet down and not fall. He held me by the wrists and kept threatening to let go so I would fall down to the first floor of the house. At first, I didn't believe him. I didn't believe that he could do something like that. I think I might have dared him to do it.

I remember his voice, though. It got quieter the longer I stayed out on that ledge. He kept repeating that I wasn't going to tell dad anything, that I was going to keep my big mouth shut. Otherwise, he was going to let me fall.

Eventually, when he say that I wasn't going to promise anything, he started to try to kick my feet off that ledge. He was still holding onto my wrists, but more and more I could feel he was the only thing holding me up and not my feet beneath me.

That's when I got scared he would actually do it, when I saw he didn't care that I was having a really hard time keeping my feet secure.

He would've let go too. He didn't care that I was crying by that point. He didn't even care that the rest of my family would be getting home soon and could've walked right in on the both of us. He didn't care.

He asks her how old she was.

Like nine or ten, she says.

But I wasn't even really that scared, she continues. I thought somehow if I landed on my feet I'd still be okay. I was more worried about if he pushed me backwards and I landed on my head. I don't know what I would've done then. Even I knew by then not to take whatever was coming to me in the head.

----

iii. lax airport

He's dropping her off at the airport to go visit her brother for Christmas. He wants to ask her how she could even consider wanting to see him after all he did to her when she was young. He wants to point out the two or three scars he knows about that were given to her because of her brother and say to her why would you ever want to forgive him for those. But it's not his place to say anything.

The only person who can decide how much time has to pass before it's ancient history is her. The only person who can absolve him is her.



She launches in to how great it will be to see her brother again and that she wonders if he'll like the video camera she got him. He responds that he's sure her brother will love it.

It's strange hearing how close they've really gotten over the last few years. With such a rocky start to their relationship as brother and sister, you would think there are some bridges they wouldn't have been able to cross again. Certainly, he imagines, there would be some type of unspoken animosity lingering there. But there isn't. She considers her brother reformed and what had happened and what she had to endure as something a thousand years ago.

If it were him, he realizes, he'd probably be agonizing over it till this day. He'd probably be sitting at home somewhere, posting it up for all the world to see, seeking some type of response that could explain it all to him. He wouldn't be able to understand it all or make sense of it. He is the type of person that has to ask why me and why then.

As he helps take the last suitcase from the trunk, he gives his friend a hug and wishes her a Merry Christmas. The characteristic smile on her face clinches it. She really is glad to be seeing him again.

That's when he begins to wonder if that's what being strong really is, the ability to move past those things and those people that made your life a living hell. He always thought she was repressing her true emotions when she said that she didn't really hold a grudge against her brother. He didn't believe it when she said she was past all that, for the most part.

But seeing how happy she is as she walks into the terminal, he can't help but think that he might take a cue from her. If she can forgive the world, God, or what have you, for the major injustice that was done to her... maybe he can learn to move past all the small slights levied against him.

Sometimes, he guesses, there really is no fighting against fate. Maybe it's like they were discussing, the more you struggle, the worse it gets.

Happiness might really boil down to picking your battles or, more precisely, knowing that there are no winners or losers. There's just people who are constantly fighting the same battles that probably ended long, long ago and people who aren't.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers