Masks Of Yellow

Chapter 2 - Agony

I admit, I was a pretty secretive kid growing up to where I am now. And I am still learning and growing every day as a kid.

"What do you mean, a secret account?" My Father's "angry face" has always been the one I saw more than his "happy face" or "normal face."

I sob again. It is more of a sob-scream. That's how this goes. He screams at me, I scream in agony.

"LOOK AT ME YOU FUCKING BASTARD." He screams.

My Mother sits in the chair on the right, I sit on the couch, and my Father sits on the chair in front of me. I flinch, wiping my eyes, trying to calm my breath down as I hesitantly raise my glance to meet his fire-filled eyes.

"I'm going to ask you one more time. This was you?"

I choke on my words. I cannot get anything to come out. My mind is screaming at me to say things that I wish I wouldn't think of.

Goddamn, well if you weren't so fucking uptight then maybe we wouldn't be having this problem? I never get to do anything in this hellhole. You're so worried about what I did that you can't see that I cannot breathe. If you opened your fucking eyes, you'd see that it was you who did this. You made me this way. If you were actually trying to be a good father rather than the pathetic excuse you keep calling "loving," you would've noticed how I almost killed myself last week; but no, you're either too wrapped up in sports or mistakes I've made.

And you- Fucking bitch. You're too invested in your goddamn wine and the dog to even begin comprehending what is going on right now. What kind of mother actually flat out says that she loves the fucking dog more than her children? Not a good one. Why don't YOU get off your ass and call the motherfucking police? He literally slapped me to try to "teach me a lesson." You're the one playing his game, not me.

But of course, being the happy, perfect child I am, I choke out a defeated yes.

And just like that, my father slams his hand on the ottoman. He stands up and stomps to the kitchen. With every step, every scream, the house shakes more. I can feel the anxiety from my brother and sister upstairs flowing down into me.

"DO YOU EVEN REALIZE HOW BADLY YOU HAVE FUCKED UP THIS TIME, KOUSHI? I DON'T THINK YOU DO. YOU NEVER SEEM TO LEARN, DO YOU?" He keeps going. I drown it out.

The amount of times I have heard this lecture was not healthy for a 13-year old boy.

What I did wasn't even that bad. I'd prefer not to say, but apparently it's enough to scare your kid into shakes, sobs, and screams.

Lying has always been the one thing I am good at. Growing up in a household like mine, one where you don't know the difference between abuse and parenting,  you learn to lie pretty quickly for a multitude of reasons. One of them being who I hang out with and what we do is always the go-to when people ask me, "what do you lie about?"

It's not even like we do anything bad, though. It's more I am afraid of what my father's judgment of "bad" is. I could simply go to a boba shop and that be considered "bad." I do understand that he just wants to protect me from bad places around town, but I feel like it's a little too much when it comes to my personal life. 

The little things that he does tells me so much about who he likes me hanging around. One thing that is automatically a sign of judgment is when I talk about where we go. If I say, "oh they took me there," his reaction is either 30/60/10% most of the time. 30% being a good reaction at times, 60% being bad most times, 10% being indifferent rarely.

The stories I tell when my parents ask me "what did you do" has also been one of my biggest lying sagas. I tell the stories of what we did in the least amount of words possible. I leave out people, places, and even major events that happened. 

I remember one time, my friend almost got hit by a car.

Did I include that in my story?

No.

Why didn't I? My parents would judge them by saying "they aren't careful enough" and then automatically have a bad impression of said person. They would feel like they aren't safe for me to hang around. 

When I forget to abide by the rules of storytelling I set for myself, all hell breaks loose. Questions rise, judgments are made, and the overall image of the person can change in a mere sentence. If I did not learn to lie about what I do, then I probably wouldn't be allowed outside of the house.

It also helps that I have a younger brother and sister so I can learn from their mistakes. Many times, they will let something slip and my parents will instantly grill them. I study the way they react to our conversations and build from there.

Now, I am not calling my brother and sister dumb. Although they can be very annoying at times, I do understand that they feel the same way as I do.

We are like antelopes, prancing around the subject while the lions wait to pounce when we fall.