I was momentarily stunned by the question. “I dunno. It doesn’t matter. He’s not here to answer.”
“I understand but perhaps getting them out of your head might be helpful.”
I tipped my head back onto the couch and sighed, closing my eyes.
“I’d ask him if he loved me. If he ever cared about me. I’d ask him his real motives behind testing me, and if he enjoyed hurting me. Why he lied to me. Why he let me suffer. If he was ever going to let me go to college. If he was ever going to tell me the truth…”
I trailed off when I felt the lump in my throat swell and the urge to cry rose to the surface. I bit my lower lip, wishing I could draw blood.
“Why don’t you think he loved you?”
“It’s fucked-up because I shouldn’t question it. It was his last fucking words, that he loved me, and yet here I am, wondering if he actually did.”
“Whyare you questioning his love for you?”
“Because…because I don’t think love is supposed to hurt like that. Enoch’s love doesn’t hurt, he’s never made me question my worth, he’s the opposite. He’s constantly telling me how worthy I am of his love, of being loved in general. He tells me that I’m strong, that I didn’t deserve all the bad things that have happened to me, that I’m not too fucked-up to love or forgive. Now…looking back, I think maybe my brother just wasn’t capable of the kind of love that didn’t hurt. And…”
“I miss him,” I whispered in the silent room. “I miss him and I hate that I miss him. That I still love him. That I wish he was still here. Even knowing what kind of person he was, I can’t stop. I can’t stop loving him. And I hate it. It would be so much easier if I could, and I’ve tried…Lord knows I’ve tried, but I just can’t. And it only proves what he believed to be true—I’m weak, too weak to handle this world.”
“Love is our greatest strength, Emory. It’s what makes this world a tolerable place. What gives us hope.”
Hope.
That’s what Enoch was for me. With Enoch I was strong even in my failures.
“Did he say that? Did your brother tell you that you were weak?”
I frowned. “Many times.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t strong enough. He said it when I couldn’t pass his tests—”
“Tests?”
“Yeah. At first they were about helping me not be such a crybaby, but then they just morphed into making me strongenough to withstand the threats of living in our home with our father, the people he brought home. So, my brother gave me mental or physical tests so I could prove to him that I was capable.”
“I’m not understanding. How did you prove capability?”
My mind raced with memories, until one stood out.
“The goal was always the same. Don’t cry, don’t show any weakness, and survive the test without tapping out. They were usually physical, like, he’d sneak up on me, and I’d have to get out of a chokehold that kind of thing. But one day when I was in middle school, I had come home wearing make-up. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, I just wanted to feel like the other girls in my grade, normal. But my brother was really pissed. Lectured me about how I was being stupid for letting other people’s opinions of me matter. Then he got it in his head that I must have had a crush or a secret boyfriend that I was seeking attention from and he really got pissed. Said I’d soon find out how badly I wanted attention like a weak fucking puta.”
I shook my head at myself.
“I didn’t understand what he meant until he ignored my existence for an entire month, wouldn’t make eye contact with me, would pretend I wasn’t in the room. I finally snapped and attacked him. He won, for obvious reasons, but he finally broke the silent treatment. He told me that if I ever let someone else’s opinions of me influence my decisions like that again, he’d tie me to a kitchen chair when dad’s friends came over and show me what kind of attention a weak puta deserved.”
She winced and shook her head slightly. “And did he? Tie you to a chair?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I learned my lesson well enough.”
She hummed in thought. “Sounds like a complicated relationship. You think he was doing those things to you because he enjoyed it?”
“According to the people who knew him, knew his secrets, yeah. He tortured and killed people for the gang as an ‘outlet’ so he wouldn’t accidently hurt me too badly.”
“Well, I see now why you believe he might have had psychopathic tendencies,” she said with a nod. “You never questioned him? His actions?”
I placed my hands beneath my thighs to keep them from doing something stupid.
