Suddenly, I’m tongue-tied.Steve’s just hit the nail on the head—I have no idea why I’ve shown up.There’s something inside me, just under the surface, that needs to come out.I don’t know the words for it, though.
What did I tell myself just moments ago, while waiting for the shuttle?I need some closure…
“You came to tell me I was a rotten father?Well, you weren’t such a great daughter, you know.”
His words hit their target, a soft, fleshy part of me I didn’t even know still lived inside my spirit.Seems like it was just hanging out, waiting, still vulnerable to attack from an old enemy.
I wasn’t a great daughter?So I deserved neglect and abuse?
“Let me tell you right up front that the cigarettes weren’t my idea, all right?So don’t go blaming me for it.”
I have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about, and for a moment I think the drugs left him with permanent brain damage.“Cigarettes?”
“That was all your mother’s idea.She told me to mind my own fucking business because she knew how to discipline children the proper way.Now, my daddy liked to use a belt on me, but your mother said a cigarette or two would keep you in your place.”
I rub my right leg.It’s a reflex that I don’t quite understand.And then I feel something move toward me from far away, like the ghost of a memory.I feel it hover over me.So much anger.The pain makes me cry.It hurts so much.
My eyes water.
I must look confused.
“Turns out your mother was right.You never cried after that.I remember thinking that she was treating you like you was a three-year-old ashtray.”
Those three round scars on my thigh…that’swhat they are?My mother burned me with cigarettes, and I never cried again.
How did I forget this?How far down have I shoved the memory?What else is in there that I haven’t acknowledged?But I have to make sure I heard right.
“I never cried again?”
“Worked like a charm.But like I said, it wasn’t my idea.So, if you’re going to do some kind of lawsuit or press charges or some shit, go and see your mother about it.I let her take care of you.She was the mother, after all.”
She was a mother like you were a father, asshole.
“I went to the women’s annex.She refused to see me.”
“Isn’t that just like thebitch.She won’t see me either, even though as husband and wife, I could see her once a week.They hand out free snacks over there to prisoner husbands.Did you know that?Good snacks.Stuff I could sell over here.”
I slump into the back of the plastic chair bolted to the floor, stunned.When I was here a decade ago, I didn’t know shit about shit.I was only just beginning to understand that I’d escaped a situation that was about to drag me to my grave.That I’d wandered into heaven on earth and found a place where I was safe.
The last time I was here, I still hated them, and I was still working to find a way not to blame myself for all their failures.But now?
Now I’m just amazed and horrified that I ever wanted these people to love me.Kids are like that, I guess.They need love and belonging more than anything, more than air.
I’m not that kid anymore.
“Hey, I have a question for you,” I say.
He waits.His eyes are vacant.
“Out of curiosity, have you ever thought of me?Not the stuff youdidto me, but just me, as a person, as the child you brought into the world?Have you ever wondered what happened to your daughter after you got arrested?”
He removes his hands from the table and drops them into his lap.“Wonder about you?What do you mean?Are you trying to trick me or something?”
It takes me a moment to regain my footing.I’m sitting down with a human being who can’t think outside himself.It’s all about him.Are you here for my money?Are you trying to trick me?Have you come here to blame me for what your mother did and file a lawsuit against me?
Steve Stevens is a product of his own abuse and neglect.So is my mother.I get that.But they had no business bringing a child into the world, and yet they did.
It’s a fucking miracle I made it out with even some of my soul intact.
