Trigger Warning: Extreme Horror: Contains Strong Sexual Content, Violence, Drug Use, and Language. (13 page)

***

The only friend I had made at church was a little black kid named Dexter. He was funny and cool. We didn’t talk about religion, just hung out after the sermon was over and skipped rocks across the parking lot or tried to catch grasshoppers or climbed trees (while our parents and grandparents discussed paranoid delusions with the other pecans over rancid, soy-laced potluck food).

My sister hung out with us too, but she was withdrawn…followed us like a ghost.

Dexter didn’t mind, and was never mean about it.

I told him that my grandparents locked Delilah in her bedroom at night…that she was scared. That’s why she was so quiet.

People demand an explanation when you’re quiet. Dexter didn’t, but nodded.

“Yeah, my parents can be mean sometimes too.”

He hugged Delilah, trying to comfort her, I guess…but she quickly withdrew.

“Sorry,” Dexter said.

“It’s okay,” Delilah said…first time I had heard her talk in forever.

“Are you scared of the end of the world?”

I didn’t know who Dexter was talking to exactly (me, Delilah, both?), but I said, “I don’t believe in that crap.”

Dexter laughed.

We were only eight, and he said, “Yeah. Me neither. It’s stupid.”

Dexter and I weren’t friends for very long because Gramma told me I wasn’t allowed to hang out with him anymore.

When I asked her why, she went off on a feverish rant, her words slurring together with drunken hate:

they smell and their women try to stay pregnant and collect welfare checks pigs feeding at the trough their nigger babies hanging off their soiled titties like hungry nigglets hungry nigger mouths constantly craving and sucking wanting more more more—when Cain killed his brother Abel God banished him to the land of Nod and turned his skin black and killer niggers have been a plague on humanity since—killing and raping that’s all they know to do they cause all the crime in America that’s why police officers shoot ‘em and ask questions later it’s what has to be done to keep white people safe—Prophetess White warned us about these sinful races god destroyed the earth with a Flood because of them but after the Flood there again has been an amalgamation of man and beast: the dark-skinned monkeys who have sex out of wedlock and mix their genes with ours (unequally yoked!) and overpopulate the planet with mulattos (almost makes me believe in abortion!) whom we support with our hard-earned dollar—it’s not politically correct to say these things but they’re true and that’s what the pinkos are afraid of: reality—the niggers are growing like a melanoma on the white populace and it won’t be long before it develops into stage 4 and we are all dead because of this fuckin’ heathen race

“Gramma, you swore.”

“No, I didn’t. Shush up.”

The next time I saw Dexter at church, I ignored him. I knew if I talked to him, Gramma would beat me with a wooden spoon, or have Grampa hit me with his belt, or they’d lock me in my room and not feed me for days—forcing me to shit and piss into a bucket (all these things had happened before; punishment for my sins). 

Every Sabbath, Dexter would try to talk to me, and eventually, I told him: “I can’t hang out with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a nigger.”

His eyes widened. He had a look on his face as if I had just smacked it.

“Oh,” he said.

He never bothered me again.

I felt awful for the thing I had said. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I sucked it up. My Grampa told me crying was for faggots (as he beat me with his belt).

So I sucked it up like a man and moved on.

***

One night, our grandparents decided to leave Delilah’s bedroom door unlocked, because she had been behaving modestly for almost a week (a.k.a. being quiet and submissive). That was the night my sister snuck into my room; she was scared. Scared of the shadows on her wall. Scared of being alone in that bedroom at the end of the hall. Scared because she missed mom and dad and hated this prison we were trapped in. She slinked under the covers and we cuddled, me holding her sobbing face against my chest. Her hot tears wetting my shirt.

“I miss mom and dad,” she cried.

I hushed her. “Don’t wake them up.”

She whispered: “I miss mom and dad.”

“So do I, Dee.” My nickname for her.

Silence. The room dark except for the moon waning through the window.

“Robbie…Grampa licked me.”

“…What do you mean?”

“He licked my…pee-pee.”

My stomach turned. “When?”

“When we first got here.”

The night they locked Delilah in the bedroom (the lock on the outside). Her screams echoing down the hall, keeping me up. Then the footsteps pounding across the floorboards…entering her room. And the long silence afterward.

“He told me to shut up…and then he pulled down my pants and licked me.”

At eight, I didn’t even know how to react to this. I didn’t feel anger or fear…just confusion. Why would Grampa do that? He was old, and Dee was a kid. Why would you lick someone there in the first place? I was aware it was inappropriate to touch a girl down there, much less lick them, and could not understand why Grampa would do that (even though he had no problem hitting us with his belt).

“That’s weird,” I said.

“I don’t like Grampa and Gramma,” she said.

“Me neither. They’re pecans.” I giggled.

She giggled a little too.

Then we heard feet pounding down the hall and our tiny hearts climbed into our throats, choking us with fear. The door to Dee’s room swung open…and there was a pause. Then the feet turned around, pounding toward my room.

Dee hid under the covers, crying, shaking like a leaf.

The door burst open and Grampa stood there, glaring at me, at the form beneath the sheet next to me.

He marched over to the bed and ripped the sheet away.

“Get out of Robbie’s room, you little slut!”

Dee cried and cried and cried, screaming: “No, no, no, no!”

Grampa grabbed Dee by the wrist and ripped her from the bed, sending her toppling onto the hardwood floor.

“You don’t sleep in the same bed as a boy, especially your brother, you filthy harlot. It’s sinful.”

“Dee’s not a harlot,” I cried. “You’re a harlot! You raped her!” I don’t know where it came from…the words shot out of my mouth before I could even think to hold them back. I didn’t even know what a harlot was at the time. But I knew what rape was. My dad was a police officer, and he told me rapists were the lowest, dirtiest scum of the earth and that he wished he could put a bullet into their backs…but a jury of your peers and all that shit. He told me rapists always got off with a slap on the wrist, if that even. Some were praised for being so brave after being “falsely accused,” their victims blamed for the crime of lying and seeking attention. Some of the victims committed suicide; they couldn’t handle being violated by the perp, and then again by the jury of their peers, and yet again by family and friends and strangers who made a mockery of their trauma. It wasn’t necessarily the rape that caused the suicide, but the lack of support. My mother told me that she had been raped in college, and that her father was the only one who had stood by her, who supported her. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would side with a rapist, but I was a kid, naïve, stupid. I didn’t know about religion and politics yet. I didn’t completely understand my father’s words about how ideologies become more important than people and how dangerous that is.

But at that moment, I knew my Grampa was a rapist, and that he deserved a bullet in the back. And I wished my father was there to put it there.

“You’re a rapist and you deserve to be shot!”

Grampa just stared at me blankly. Then said: “Shut your goddam mouth, boy, or I’ll wash it out with soap. Don’t you dare say such a word again.”

He dragged Dee from the room by her wrist and I chased after, grappling onto Grampa’s gnarly hand, digging in with my nails, trying to loosen his grip on my sister.

He slapped me hard across the face.

“Get your fuckin’ filthy paws off me, you fucking queer! You think you can be the man of the house? Well, you can’t. You’re eight. I’m the man of the house and what I say goes. Didn’t your parents ever teach you to respect your elders?”

“Watch your goddam language,” Gramma yelled at him.

“Go back to bed, Eunice.”

“Gramma, Grampa raped Dee! He licked her pee-pee!” I cried.

Gramma glared at me. “Quit your filthy talk, boy.”

“Fuckin’ kid doesn’t know what the hell he’s talkin’ ‘bout,” Grampa said, as Dee struggled in his grasp, flopping on the floor like a fish caught on a line, and crying, crying so loud.

“Hush up, Delilah, you temptress, you harlot!” Gramma screamed.

“I didn’t rape nobody,” Grampa said. “I caught these two canoodling in Robbie’s room. If anything, Robbie molested her.”

“Your own sister,” Gramma shrieked. “Sickening! The Lord does not permit incest!”

“We were just talking,” I cried.

“You can’t sleep next to a woman without touching her,” Grampa said.

“You’ve already committed lust in your heart,” Gramma chimed in.

“We didn’t do anything,” I cried.

“Liar! No one is blameless! All have sinned and fallen short before the Glory!” Gramma, raising her hands to the heavens, to her false god.

“But Grampa licked her!”

“Is that true, Art?”

“She made me do it. She tempted me. She’s a harlot. It got her to shut up, didn’t it?”
“It’s not her fault,” I cried.

“If she didn’t want it, she would have cried out. The Law of Leviticus says that if a woman is raped and does not cry out, she shall be stoned! I’ve read Freud. I know that all little girls think about is fucking their daddies and killing their mommies!” Gramma lowered herself on her haunches to scream in Dee’s face: “Well, your daddy’s dead now, so I guess you had to turn to my Arty. You had to lead him astray! How many times did you take advantage of your father, you little slut? How many times did you call him into your room, because you were afraid of the dark, and then make him do awful things to you?”

“Stop it stop it!” I cried.

Dee thrashed in Grampa’s grip, sobbing, trying to escape…but little by little, she gave up, just like the fish on the line, who realizes it’s hopeless…it’s not returning to the water…it’s in Land World now, where the air is thick and suffocating…and slowly, it just lies there and waits to die.

“Lock them outside!” Gramma shrieked. “I want these whores out of my house!”

Grampa grabbed me by the ear and dragged us both toward the back door. We hollered and screamed the whole way (futile).

Outside, a few snowflakes began to drift lazily toward the earth, toward the barren, dirt ground, now vacant of golden wheat. Grampa shoved us to the dirt and kicked us in the ribs a couple of times, then walked back to the house.

“You can sleep out here tonight, until you learn to behave yourselves,” he said. “Hard to get a hard-on out in this cold, isn’t it, Robbie?”

Gramma came out with a bucket of water and dumped it on Dee’s head. “A cold shower for this little harlot,” she screamed. “Wash your sins away!”

Then they went back into the house and locked the door.

We banged on it for hours, begging for them to let us back in (futile).

Like the flopping fish on the line, we eventually grew weary and gave up, our voices hoarse and cracking from the screaming. We huddled together against the house, trying to absorb any warmth (futile).

Dee shivered as the water crystalized against her china doll face, and her breath came out as steam in the chilly air.

I stared up at the stars…you could see all of them out here, in the middle of nowhere, without any city lights or tall buildings or smog to obscure your vision. I wondered if there was anybody up there, looking down on us. Anyone who would feel compassion for us and save us.

As the wind picked up and chilled our bones, I realized what a crock of shit that was.

There was no god.

This was just life (shivering in the cold) and there was no one to pity us or protect us. No one watching over us. We were going to die.

It’s not fair, I thought.

But that didn’t matter. That thought was pointless. There was no fair. There was no justice.

Just like the rapists my dad hated, my Grampa and Gramma would get away with it. Because the world was amoral and only those who took from it got what they wanted.

There was no right or wrong, good or bad.

Everything was nothing.

Terrible thoughts for an eight-year-old. But what other conclusion was I supposed to come to as I sat beneath that big sky, staring at those apathetic balls of dead light, holding my shivering, crying sister in my arms as she froze to death?

“I can’t feel anything,” she cried. “I can’t feel anything.”