Wearing My Smile | ✔

Tuesday, October 29th, 2002

It happened so suddenly: the sound of everything around us crashing down.

You had just turned twelve. It was 29th of October 2002, three days after your birthday. My father had just gotten home for the month. The three of us were eating dinner in a subdued talk about Luce's college until we heard a loud crash from across the street. We all ran outside, just in time to see the horror.

I don't know why it didn't register right away in my mind that it was coming from your place. The loud crashes. The screams. The cracks. The cries. The yells and shouts. The harsh words. Your mother screeching. Your father standing on the front porch, shouting at something he held around his fingers. And you, Sam, you—

I heard somebody screaming. I think it was me. I ran to you even before I understood what I was seeing. I said, STOP STOP STOP LEAVE HIM ALONE GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM but no one did, no one ever stopped. I saw him, that monster, clenching his fingers around your neck as if it was a stick as you struggled and wept. Your right hand was trying pitifully to get rid off the hands clutching around your neck, your left arm fell uselessly on your side.

I think I attacked him. I couldn't remember much, which was odd because you knew by now how I remembered everything, Sam, even the things I didn't ever want to remember. But I could recall jumping onto your father's back, hitting him, screaming for him to let you go. I remember seeing the tears falling down your cheeks over and over.

Another thing crashed when he finally released you and I found myself scrambling after you. All of a sudden, Luce was there right beside me, her hands were shaking. I could hear my father's angry voice, raising in between the shouts, but I saw only you. You, Sam, with your bloodied face and bruised neck and broken bones. You, who only lay down there on the wooden floor, crying silently.

With trembling hands, I swiped the stray hair out of your face. I saw your eyes and I held my breath, because that exact moment, that exact moment was the first time I saw the deadness in you. And I couldn't understand it, I couldn't comprehend how someone who was so full of life could look like death.

You wouldn't meet my eyes. Not even after Luce came back with a clean cloth, trying to stop the blood coming out of the side of your head. I felt trapped inside a limbo. You wore the skin of my best friend, yet I did not recognize your eyes.

“I'm going to report this to the police.” I heard my father said. His voice was so cold, Sam, do you remember?

“Call them then!” the monster yelled, slurring in his words for all the alcohol inside his veins. His voice was booming in its loudness, rough and striking like lightning. I saw the way you flinched, how you blinked and came alive. “Call the child services! Call all of them for all I care! I have no need for that piece of shit!”

I didn't see you get up, but then I saw you crouching on the floor beside your father, sobbing violently. Your right hand was clutching tightly onto his leg as you wept and wept. This is the second image I can never get out of my head, Sam. How you clung onto him, how you wailed and said, “No, please, no, Dad. Forgive me. Forgive me. I won't do it again. I promise. Please.”

“Shut up!” Your father tried to shake you off his leg in disgust. “You always say that yet you keep messing with my stash! No one—” he slurred further, “—No one touches what’s mine!”

You clung onto him tighter. Your voice was a croak. “I swear, I won't, never again. I swear.”

“And how many times have I told you I hate that shrieking violin of yours! Burn it before I do it for you!”

You were quiet for a second, but no one noticed it other than me. You said, “Yes, Dad. I will. Later.”

Only then your father stopped struggling. He snorted as he moved away, back into the house, the broken window and crooked railing and broken bottles be damned, but not before he said, “Good. Why does it always take you a hard beating to do what I want? Worthless fucking kid.”