Frank Zafiro - Beneath a Weeping Sky

February 1985

High school was a nightmare on all fronts. He’d hoped he’d grow out of his troubles, but they only evolved along with him, taking on different slants and hues but finding him all the same.

His retreat into the library was a permanent one. He graduated from hiding in the stacks of books, to working as a library aide and an audio-visual aide. Returning books to the shelves and setting up film projectors occupied his time. More importantly, it kept him flying underneath the radar of some of the school’s biggest bullies. He still took his share of casual barbs, as well as enduring the occasional act of intimidation. But he’d discovered a truth at home that carried over to his school experience.

He could handle it.

It would pass.

When they called him a name, he didn’t react. He just waited until they got bored and moved on. Whenever some jock or head-banger knocked his books from his hands, he merely knelt down and picked them back up. Did he get angry on the inside?

Oh, yes. He fucking seethed . But he learned to hide it. He learned to put it away for another day. A day would come when he’d get his revenge. He realized now that it might not be until he came back to the twenty-year reunion as a wealthy success that could buy and sell every one of the loser assholes who thought they were so much better than him, but his time would come. He’d roll into town in an expensive car with a big-tittied blonde trophy wife on his arm. Everyone would try to remember what he’d been like in high school, but all they’d be able to think about would be the nice car and nice rack in front of them.

All the girls in school would be jealous, too. They’d be sorry they didn’t get their hooks into him when they had the chance. Every one of them, especially the ones he thought about when he touched himself, would wish they wouldn’t have been such stuck up bitches.

Still, he knew that was years away. That didn’t make it easy to bear things, but it made it possible. He read books about anything and everything, learning everything he could while working in the library and hating every minute of high school.

Home was worse. His mother seemed to grow harsher each passing year. She had him doing all of the housework, even including her laundry. Her thin fingers still found their way under his chin for that demeaning pinch. “You can’t do anything right, can you?” was her favorite refrain.

She’d taken to walking into his bedroom without knocking. He didn’t know why she did that, other than the fact that she seemed to delight in watching him scramble to cover his erection and hide the fact that he’d been dreaming of girls at school and revenge. She’d order him out of bed to complete some mundane task like taking out the kitchen garbage, then stand there and watch him squirm while he made excuses to delay things long enough for his erection to subside.

Other times, out of the blue, she seemed to refer to his activities when she told him he was “still a dirty little boy.” He pretended not to understand as embarrassment and shame swallowed him whole.

His father’s visits grew more infrequent and more intense. His parents would usually drink together, which devolved into a fight without fail. Either they’d end up in the bedroom or his father would storm out. Sometimes he just didn’t come back. Those were Jeffrey’s favorite times. But often, he did return and never alone. He brought women home with him, turning the living room into a sexual playground. Jeffrey was at once attracted and repelled when this happened. He lay in bed and listened to the voices and the sounds of sex in the living room. Excited, he found himself masturbating furiously to the noises, then lying in bed afterward, full of shame.

The next morning, no one left their bedroom until his father roused the woman and sent her on her way, although Jeffrey sometimes sneaked out to get a look at his father’s conquests. He felt a strange sense of pride while hating him for it at the same time.

Other times, his father felt the need to assert his alpha wolf status. Despite Jeffrey’s efforts to avoid him and not to offer any affront, it required very little drinking before his father took offense at some slight, real or imagined. Then he was called into the living room, where he stood at attention to be berated and slapped. This worked into his father theorizing that Jeffrey thought he was “tougher than the old man.” He’d challenge Jeffrey to “take his best shot,” demanding it until he reached the conclusion that Jeffrey was “too much of a queer little pussy” to do so. “Get out of my sight,” he’d bellow at Jeffrey. “You make me sick.”

Rarely, though, and for some reason he had never been able to pinpoint, the three of them were able to co-exist in an easy, quiet truce. Jeffrey read his books in his room while his parents drank slowly and watched television. On these days, he was able to escape the house and go to the library.

Sometimes, he’d take his books and go to the mall where he’d watch the same bitchy girls from school ignore him there, too. But he’d pretend to read his book and stare that their bodies. He’d imagine tearing the clothing off of them. He saw their surprise at how tough he was, what a man he was. As that realization seeped into their eyes, he knew that his father was right about what every woman wanted deep down inside. So he imagined laying the whammo on them. If they didn’t cry out with enough passion, he’d punctuate matters with a good slap upside the head.

He stored those thoughts and the sights of the girls at the mall for when he returned home at night. Lying in bed alone, he’d recall them over and over again. He obsessed and studied and dreamt and watched and masturbated.

His day would come.

He knew it would.

June 12, 1987

High school ended on a Thursday. He left just like it was any other day. Only the librarian, Mrs. Bryant, wished him a happy summer. He thanked her, wishing he could spend it with her at the library, but knowing he’d be spending as much time as possible at the public library or at the mall, looking at girls. Still, the librarian’s farewell reminded him oddly of his kindergarten teacher, Miss Reed.

He wondered about Miss Reed as he walked toward home. Did she still teach? Was she even Miss Reed anymore, or did she marry some guy and change her name? He imagined she probably had. Looking back, he decided she was fine looking. Someone would have come along and snagged her.

Strangely, the thought made him feel betrayed. She’d been so nice to him, but he imagined that she had probably been faking it all along. Women were generally traitors, at least as much as he could tell based on the one he lived with. He wondered if Miss Reed made fun of him to the other teachers after he left for the day. He saw her getting together in the teacher’s lounge and telling all the other teachers shitty things about him. Anger brewed in the pit of his stomach as he made his way toward the apartment.

He switched the scenario. Saw himself finding her at her house. Fantasized about what he would do to her.

He smiled, holding his folder and library book in front of his jeans as he walked.

At his apartment, he let himself in. His mother was taking one of her naps, so he kept as quiet as he could. In his bedroom, he put aside the book and the folder. He opened his button, unzipped his pants and slid them down his hips. Leaning back and touching himself, he imagined again what his visit to Miss Reed’s house would be like.

I’d lay the whammo on that bitch.

He closed his eyes and saw it all over again, like a movie playing in his head. Coming inside the house. Maybe a hard slap across the face to get things started. Tearing away her clothing. Bending her over the couch. No, over the coffee table. Ripping her shirt off of her back as he pumped into her. Listening to her scream-