I Hate My White House

I live in a little white house in the north of New Jersey, bordering on the humble city of New York. It's cute in theory. Sometimes it's even cute in practice. I have a lawn and my emotionally estranged mother planted hydrangeas out front, next to the mailbox. There's a yard for our dogs. There's a bustling grove of oak trees out back. Our neighbors have a swimming pool so the tranquil sound of running water is constant in the summer. I have my own bedroom and I can hang my theatre posters on the walls. One day, I was even brought home an automated motion-sensing trashcan. To this day, my prized possession. Still, I hate my white house. 

Last night, at around 3:23 A.M. (naturally) - my father laid hands on my brother. He'd never done that before, not ever. It's not like my brother didn't deserve being hit, he's an asshole more often than not, but it reminded me of something very true. This house is alive. It breathes out memories and swallows new experiences. My father is a good, honest man. He'd never do what he did in his right mind. To be truthful myself, I always thought I'd be the first one to beat my brother with the stick of a mop. I suppose this house also has a means of surprising you. I drop things sometimes. I get down on my youthful knees, crouch to look under the bed. Through the mess of dust bunnies and plastic water bottles, I see myself. Five years old, nine years old, twelve years old, fourteen years old -- they all blend into one, the way things do. I see them curled beneath the bedpost, quivering and shaking like a caught animal, the prey-animal fear those ages bring. She never looks at me, but I look at her. I wish I could grab her and bring her out from under the wood, but when I try, she slips right out of my two hands.

Through the things I do remember of my first years on Earth, most of them circle around my brother. I have this one recollection, this one thing I can see so clearly. I was probably around ten years old. My brother and my father were arguing about something or other, who really cares what? All my ten-year-old girl mind wanted to do was to go upstairs (the location of their dispute), sit down on the floor of my bedroom, and play with my miniature horses. Many such cases of this. I begin to climb the dusty stairs, everything was always so dirty back then, and my father's fury turns to me. He tells me to get lost, I can't come up here. I bite back, because again, my horses were calling. Something happens and suddenly I'm locking myself in the downstairs bathroom. I remember the feeling in my stomach, the beating of my small heart over the sound of his footsteps. I was very tiny, back then, you know. A man could've killed me, if he wanted to.

Soon my father's footsteps dissipate into my mother's, a greater evil to be true. She's banging on the white locked door hard, and I realize I am soon to be her vessel. My mother has always been an angry woman. She burns easily in the face of the sun. The source of her hate is dead, it's been buried for decades. When you still hate something that is gone, you start to hate everything else too. She hated my brother. She hated my father. She hated me most of all. Do I look like her, mother? The source of it? Do I bare resemblance to the reason? Her hate wasn't justified or pretty or poised. It was ugly. She was an ugly woman, back then. She's banging on the door with all her might. I breathe in and unlock it or she would've tore it off the hinges. When she sees my small girlish body her first move is to grab me by my wrist, tight. I'm losing circulation, not that there was ever enough blood pumping. We've always been two girls half dead, me and her. Her temperature is always too low and mine always too high. Sometimes when I cry I can still feel the imprint of her fingers around my wrist, keeping me in place, the subject of her wrath. Did you see me in that moment, mother? Or did you see her? Who did you see, if not the child I was? It doesn't matter because whoever she saw, she saw it. She's screaming in my face, her spit on my cheek, her hatred in my mouth. I think I started hating her that moment, too. I think that is when I realized I could not win her love because hate was already there. That is when I stopped trying.

Later that night I'm curled in the corner of my room, music is playing low off my stereo to drown out the wails I try to bite down. I can still feel the tears running down my wet face, the same way I can still feel her on my wrist. My curved spine (my scoliosis had not yet been rectified) is pressed again the beige plaster. My head is on my knees and I am crying like a weeping angel. Back then, I could still cry for hours. That feeling part of me hadn't left yet, where I could sit with something for as long as it needed to be sat with. It's a gift, if you can do that. It left me when I could no longer spend nights in my room, rather on the floor of my brother's, talking him out of suicide. My father's footsteps ascend up the stairs, it's been at least an hour after the debacle and my brother has worked himself to sleep. I can hear him come down the hallway, in that heavy thundering way of a good man losing composure, and he stops short in front of my bedroom door. He opens it with a crack, and I can see his face through the consuming darkness. My sobs don't stop. He can hear them. I know he heard them. We meet eyes for a moment and all I know I was thinking was come in, Pappa. Come in and hold me. Come in, I need you. I'm so afraid and I need you. He is gone just as quickly as he came and the door is shut. He walks away. I am ten years old and alone. I am ten years old and so small and so afraid with nobody to cry to except my stereo. I am ten years old and I have seen how the world is. I am ten years old and the people I love have already closed doors in my face when I crave them, when I beg for them like a dog. I am ten years old and I hate this world. I am ten years old and I needed my father, when my father did not need me.

I hate this little white house because when I look to my left I see that night. When I look straight I see me at thirteen, lying facedown on the bathroom floor to feel something or maybe dull any feeling at all. When I look right I see me at fifteen crawling out of bed in the middle of the night to check if my brother is breathing. When I look up I see myself at nine wishing I was dead. When I look down I see myself at eleven scratching my thighs. When I look around I do not see the hydrangeas or the posters of my most pleasant moments. I only see my mother's hate and a child's blameless remorse. I can smell all my fear soaking into the wooden planks, I can hear heavy footsteps still climbing the stairs. I hate it here because I was hated. What's more honest than that? I hate it here because hands are powerful and for the first time in my life I saw hands who I never thought could inflict pain, beat like a dog. I hate it here because hate has rotted into the walls and no matter what I do, what poems I write, what songs I hum, it's all around me. I hate it here because hate was the first word I was ever taught.