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Then we have toearnforgiveness.
I don’t like earning forgiveness. It doesn’t feel right. Even if I get fed afterward. Even when I’m told it’s for my own good.
Ivan doesn’t like it either. He’s older. He knows more than I do.
I trust him when he says… maybe… it’s no good.
But Ma says nothing. She doesn’t say a thing. Doesn’t ever say it’s happening.
So Ivan and me deal with it. The dark spaces, when we do manage to hide, become where we want to be. If we hide good enough, he can’t find us.
We disappear.
Our latest spot in thesottotettokeeps us hidden for days. We snuggle up there the minute he gets home.
When he finds us, dread makes it hard to breathe.
But we survive. We survive for years like this… ’til the day we’ve had enough, and we get him before he gets us.
* * *
In his sleep, we do it. Ivan holds up the knife, but I steal it from him and plunge it into his belly. Then we stand back and watch the struggle unfold. He begs us. He pleads, asking us to call for a doctor.
We don’t react.
We watch. We stare at the blood soaking his clothes and listen to his desperate gasps for breath. Ma won’t even know ’til the next morning—she’s asleep in their bed.
My father dies pleading like a bitch, lying on a sofa, his face gray.
A pathetic ending to a pathetic man who let himself be turned into what he is. No money, no power, no nothing.
Just the blame he aims at us. He didn’t expect us to turn it back on him.
His rasping, dying breaths go still. So does his body. His eyes remain open.
I don’t give a shit.
Good riddance.
* * *
I can’t live like this.
My father was mediocre. My mother is mediocre. Ivan settles for mediocre. But I refuse to be more of the same.
I’m not like them. I’m not somebody who lets life happen to me. I make life happen.
At an early age, I know this.
I know because the times Iletthings happen, were the times I lost. Probably the most valuable lesson of my life.
Maybe that’s what Pop was trying to teach me, in his own twisted way.
So, that’s what I do—I make shit happen.
For years.
It’s a slow-moving process. Magic ain’t real, and if it is, it doesn’t happen overnight.
