T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

A while later — or was it? He couldn’t tell anymore — his mom woke him again. “Hey honey, Troy is having waffles,” she explained as she led him to the kitchen.

Whether Troy had been out of the booster seat since Achilles last saw him, he couldn’t tell. Troy sat before a plate of waffles, picking at them like a beaten boxer who refused to quit. Eyes fluttering, his chin would slump down to his chest and jerk aright whenever his fork clattered off the table. Achilles’s father would pick it up, wash it with soap and water, and press it gently back into Troy’s hand, like a gift. Achilles pushed the food around on his Justice League plate, sometimes revealing Aquaman, sometimes Batman, but never the Wonder Twins.

“You tired, Troy?” asked Achilles’s father.

Troy snapped awake. “No, I’m fine.” He stuck a piece of bacon in his mouth and slowly chewed.

His father looked happy and chipper, his mother serious. It was like they had exchanged bodies in the last hour. His father exclaimed, “Six and eats like a horse. He’s a real Conroy. Let’s have cake!”

Excited that the cake was to be again unveiled, Achilles said nothing about thinking that horses ate hay.

His mother flung open the refrigerator door with such force it banged against the counter and the glass jars rattled on their shelves. She slapped the cake on the table.

“Ann, please,” his father whispered.

“Yes sirree! A knife.” She yanked open the cutlery drawer, and after a moment’s searching upended the drawer into the sink, picked out a knife, and tossed it on the table.

His father, red-faced, stormed out of the kitchen. His mother followed a moment later, saying over her shoulder, “Have all the cake you want Achilles, sweetie. All the cake you want.”

Achilles opened the cake box. He’d snuck a peak earlier, but hadn’t seen the whole thing. His name was spelled out in red letters with Happy Birthday in gold. Orange and blue frosting balloons clustered in the corners and a comet trailed by yellow stars underscored his name. The brightly colored decorations stood out against the white frosting. He hoped it was angel food, the best flavor ever! Troy grabbed the knife, wrapping his fingers around the tapered end of the blade, and waved it about like a conductor. Achilles, feeling heroic, leapt up and snatched it from Troy. The blade glistened. Rivulets of blood welled between Troy’s fingers and dripped onto the cake. Troy squeezed both of his hands into tighter fists, but still the blood ran, like he was growing Wolverine claws. His parents rushed in when Troy wailed. Their eyes traveled from Troy’s hand, by then bleeding so much that the corner of cake nearest him looked like red velvet, to the knife in Achilles’s hand. He saw the shock on their faces, the misunderstanding, but he couldn’t move.

“It’s okay Keelies,” said his mother, inching around the table to Troy, going the long way and sidestepping the entire time, as if afraid to turn her back to Achilles. His father raised two hands in surrender, and calmly said, “Put the knife down, son.”

The short wooden riveted handle and long steel blade felt so dense, so heavy, his entire arm and the knife one leaden elbow pipe, a rigid burden affixed by a cruel fate.

“It’s okay son. We can talk about it. Put it down.”

The knife bounced off the table and onto the floor, clattering and streaking blood. His father kicked the knife away, backhanded Achilles. A thud. The first blow surprised him. His father had never struck him before, so he sat stock-still until the next blow knocked him to the floor. The base of his skull and jaw rattled, and he instinctively ran his tongue across his teeth to see if they were all there. Tucking his chin tightly into his chest, he tried to cover his ribs with his elbows, but the blows came from everywhere. Covering his head, he was kicked in the side, and covering his sides left his face exposed to his father’s kicks, precise and snappy, cracking like a whip. One foot found his temple, another his stomach, and his breath rushed out in a whistle. Heaving, he scurried under the table and curled up to fight the contractions in his stomach.

Like playing Rock’em Sock’em Robots, he flinches when struck, but he no longer feels it. His father’s waffle-soled brogans stomp back and forth, probing under the table, and behind them, his mother’s red espadrilles squeak as she shuffles to and fro, like she’s dancing, until suddenly they take flight, her legs dangling like willows until she wraps them around his father’s waist. Achilles hugs the pole supporting the table. The metal is cold on Achilles’s face, but he stays there, keeping his head away from the floor because he knows it’s dirty. His father pounds the table, the vibrations traveling down the pole and rattling Achilles’s head. Soon the metal is no longer cold against his face. He can’t see his mother’s shoes. His father must have taken off his belt because the buckle catches Achilles on the funny bone and he vomits, like a sissy. Someone yells, “Daddy, please. Daddy, please stop!”

His father’s heavy breathing. His mother on her feet, her voice a knife. “You will leave now.” His father’s last kick, halfhearted. A brogan floats by Achilles’s head like a blind, angry animal. His father’s pronouncement: “I’ll not have that kind of violence in my house. I didn’t adopt a boy so he could attack my son, his brother, with a knife. Be a man, Achilles. Things change. Accept it. Be a man.” The front door creaks open and slams shut. Two steps down the porch, slipping on the gravel. The opposite of the scrape and two stomps that cast the day off when he comes home each evening.

His mother, eyes swollen and bloodshot, sat Indian-style on the floor, something she always forbade Achilles to do because the floor had little germs with big teeth. She held her arms open to him, a gesture of forgiveness that made him cry, and cry he did, knowing, unable to explain, but knowing, that she took his sobs as an admission of guilt.

“I didn’t mean it,” he sniffed.

“I know.” She remained motionless, arms extended, until Achilles released the pole and crawled to her. She hugged him and helped him to his feet, sitting him on her lap. Troy sat in the corner, his hand wrapped in a towel, tears fanning down his face. Had Achilles heard Troy yell Daddy ?

Achilles pointed to the small puddle on the floor and his shirt and started weeping again in earnest. He could smell himself. “I made a mess.”

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”

His arm swathed in one of the white towels Achilles was forbidden to use lest he get them dirty, Troy held his hand like he was in class waiting to be called on. Seeing him fixate on the towel, his mom wiped Achilles’s face with her own shirt. “You can put your hand down now, Troy.”

His mother hobbled from the table to the sink. She slipped out of her squeaky red shoes and kicked them, sending them tumbling loudly across the linoleum and onto the carpeted living room floor. Then, thinking better of it, she retrieved them and tossed them in the trashcan. Every so often, between wiping the table and floor, she’d run her hand down the side of Achilles’s face and tell him it was going to be all right or pull him in for a hug. She eventually led both boys to her bedroom to sleep curled beside her. But Achilles couldn’t rest and slipped from beneath his mother’s arm and out of the bed. He tiptoed to the door, looking back just before he left and catching Troy awake. Troy quickly shut his eyes and snuggled closer to Achilles’s mom. When certain that Troy would continue pretending to sleep, Achilles left.

A third of it broken off, the edges crumbled, the frosting balloons flattened, his name smeared, the cake was in shambles. He pushed the third that was broken off against the rest, wet his finger, and ran it along the fissure where the frosting met. He tried replacing the balloons. All stayed, save one. He tried to reshape the crumbled end, but it kept tumbling back down. Thirteen years later, he will stand before the minaret that remained as the last monument to a bombed-out mosque, remember this moment, and realize that he had always been puzzled that it was so easy to destroy things and so hard to fix them, that even the biggest building could crumble like cake. He will temporarily feel less anxious about the war, about the future, believing that to have plumbed his younger self meant all mysteries would eventually unfold. Neverending darkness was how he’d later describe the feeling he had on his eighth birthday. It was the way he felt watching the night sky from inside a bombed-out building, thinking about how peaceful it would be if the sun never rose.