She wanted me to say I was sorry, but all I could think of was how the other kid had looked at me, like I was something to beafraid of, instead of just another kid. I liked it. I liked it more than anything.
After, they sent me home with a note in my backpack. The vice principal offered to call my dad, but I said he wasn’t home, and she just sighed and handed me a bus pass.
I didn’t take the bus. I walked. I liked to drag my feet out, make the day longer, let the wind scrape away what happened before I went back into the house.
Later that night, when my dad returned, I told him I was suspended because I punched a kid. I didn’t dare to tell him I punched a boy because he pushed Amelia.
That was a secret, just for me.
I said, “I got suspended for punching a kid,” and tried not to let my jaw shake.
He finished his beer and looked at me, red eyes glassy and wet, like a wolf caught in the high beams.
For a second, I thought he was going to backhand me just for existing, but then he laughed.
“That’s my boy,” he said, and the words felt like a reward. He smacked my shoulder, and it didn’t even hurt, not like usual.
I think maybe it was supposed to be a compliment.
He raised the can like a judge passing a sentence. "World's full of little shits who want to see if you got any fight in you," he said. "You gotta show 'em you do. That's the only way they ever stop." He looked at my hand, the one I’d used to punch the boy, and there was something almost proud there, a twisted up smile I didn't know how to wear.
We sat on the couch together, him with another beer, me with the TV remote. He let me watch whatever I wanted, so I clicked through cartoons and car commercials and once, for a full minute, a woman in a tight dress.
He didn’t care. He just stared at the wall, sometimes making a noise in his throat when the TV went loud, but mostly he left me alone.
I wanted to ask him what it meant that I was his boy. If that meant I had to do things I didn’t want to do, or if I could just be like the kids you saw in movies.
But if you asked him stuff like that, he’d get annoyed, and then the whole night would turn sour and heavy, and I’d have to run and hide in my room.
So I kept my mouth shut.
When I was seven, I still wanted to be good. I wanted it so hard I could touch it, like an invisible badge on my chest nobody else could see.
I wasn’t sure what it meant to be good except that teachers and TV shows talked about it, and sometimes, if you were good enough for long enough, someone would give you a pizza party or a gold star, or maybe just not look at you like you were a stain they couldn’t scrub out.
Being good was impossible at home, but I kept trying anyway. I tried by eating all my food even when it tasted like the inside of a boot, by keeping my room neat, and by brushing my teeth with cold water so I wouldn’t make a noise waking him up.
I tried by not crying when it hurt, and by never, ever talking back, even if I wanted to tell him he was wrong about everything.
I thought if I was good enough, my mom would come back. Or maybe not that exactly. Maybe she would just call, or send a letter, or have one of those TV moments where she showed up at the front door with a suitcase and started crying and said: “I’m sorry, I was wrong, I didn’t mean it.” I would say it was okay, even if it wasn’t, and then it would be.
Once, I asked my dad if he thought she’d ever come back. He was in a good mood. His eyes were clear, and he let me eat dinner at the real table instead of the counter.
He looked at me over the rim of his glass and said, “The only thing that comes back is bad news. Nothing good ever comes back.” He said it like a joke, but it felt like a punch. I tucked my fork under the plate and didn’t say anything else, because I could tell he was almost done being nice.
That night, I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, trying to trace the shape of the shadow on my wall to see if it was a monster or just a jacket hanging on the closet.
My hand throbbed. I pressed it to my chest and counted the beats, waiting to see if it would ever slow down. It didn’t.
My brain was stuck in a loop: the sound of the boy’s nose crunching, the look on his face, the way it felt to be stronger, just for a second, than anyone expected.
My dad’s voice too, bouncing around my skull.That’s my boy.
I guess I’d thought that when you finally did something right, something that made your dad proud, you’d feel happy, or at least full instead of empty.
But it didn’t feel like that. It felt weird, and also like maybe I was going to throw up, and also like maybe I wanted to do it again.
I wanted to be good so badly, but that hope was slipping. All I wanted was to make my dad proud, make him like me.
