Читать книгу it was never going to be okay - jaye simpson - Страница 10

i am eight & my foster father lets me read in his library,

the piano mournfully sings mozart & i am under it hiding from my siblings’ cruel laughter & delight. as i am reading about edgar cayce, atlantis, the sahara & the fall of rome, c s lewis’ science fiction. peter says: stay here you are safe here

i am seven, & my sisters are painting their nails. shiny with clear coat over pastels. they have locked me in the laundry room, i can hear their giggling

the lights are off & i am crying again & by again i mean i am laying on the floor trying to see them from the space between the door & floor. the linoleum is stripped from my salt-heavy tears and rushed breath. i have been doing this for years.

i am five my sisters are saying boy i do not know what the word means but i am bruised into knowing it: the blunt b, the hollowness of the o, the blade of y oh how they struck

struck when i stole a doll

brushed her hair & changed her outfit, saying to myself: i want to be painted nails, long locks of shiny hair & soft.

my foster mother, a cold rock of a mountain, temperamental & prone to avalanches overhears painted nails, long locks, soft. not boy. she cascades and i am pushed out from under the bed, dragged by my ear by her gravity and i am forced to stand naked. struck as she yells boy.

i am eight,

i am in the mirror looking at my naked body. i have been doing this for years: pushing prepubescent fat together. i am eight

i am crying at the hairdresser’s as my sisters are treated like goddesses, preened while i am pruned.

i am crying,

called fag for the first time, soon my classmates are saying it, asking me if i am gay & running as if i am contagious, as if they are at risk, as if this was something you could get in the stalls of the boys’ washroom.

boy.

i am boy in mother’s house. bound to the blunt b, the hollowness of o, the blade of y

except in father’s favourite room, where i am free to just be, reading while the piano mournfully sings mozart and i am under it hiding from my siblings.

crying as peter says, stay here you are safe here

peter, when the piano stopped playing mozart and just became silent in your absence, the library was converted into a mausoleum i was left with only words. I miss the sound of the piano, the times we spent in the garden, you loved the rhododendrons & roses, the strawberries & rhubarb. peter, you had a box of seeds in the shed, picked one at random and planted it. the spring after you died, you must’ve known for the only seeds left were forget-me-nots. peter, you understood me like you knew the way the piano keys made noise, the way a plant grows from seed to flower. i had to mourn well after you’d left.

i am nine, i am crying you are dead & i am boy now boy because i do not want boy because they are watching, boy because they say

they never asked me if i was, only told me i was, & i was not

the blunt b, the hollowness of o, or the blade of y.