Memories Momentum

CW: abuse, mental health issues, and self-harm

“The place is great, Danny!” I said.

“Thank you. Have you met Margot yet?” He said, smirking.

“No, she’s the one you’ve been going out with, right?”

“Uh huh,” he blushed, “She’s gorgeous, you know, and brilliant like you, Elias. I’ll introduce you; you’d like her.” Danny rushed me over to the corner of his living room, where she was looking out the window. We talked for a while, and then she had to go. “Forgive me,” she said, heading out the door. “I have to get back to the hospital for my dad.” Now waving at Danny, she hurried out. 

“She’s great, Danny.” I let him know, sarcastically, that I approve. 

"Her parents come first. Her sister died from cancer a few years ago; they moved closer to her afterwards. Now her dad has the same illness; it's horrible." Danny said.

"God, I can't imagine," I said, furrowing my eyebrows. "Can I do anything? Send flowers?"

*** 

“It’s like cancer,” She told him after another family dinner gone wrong this past holiday. Elias understood; she’s a mother. How could she not move on? Mothers have a complex; they can never allow themselves to feel like they failed, even when maybe they had. He was angry at Mom, your wonderful mom. He was angry that she facilitated something she didn't even realize she was facilitating. He was angry at himself for even thinking this way; it was unfair, wasn’t it? Unfair to place blame on someone who hadn’t even thought to claim it. 

As for you, Manning, he didn’t see a type of cancer. He was sick with all that you were those years. He saw the look in your eyes; he saw the collection of tiger stripes worn proudly, feeding off the concern of others, placed one by one, climbing down your arms and legs, screaming at others to look. You never bothered to hide them from him or the world, but you hid them from the people you wanted to study them most.

I saw not a monster, Manning, but a predator, an animal. The idea of inherent evil challenges me; don’t you remember the swings? The Sunday morning pancakes? I loved you, then, with a naive choice, but a choice. Then again, wasn't it always a choice?

***

“Maybe we should get curtains like these for our apartment,” Lanie said, sneaking up behind me. 

“Lanie, I… I haven't even agreed yet.” I said.

She asked me a few weeks ago after we watched a Jack Lemmon film. Right after the movie ended, she paused during the credits. 

“I want you to move in.” She said, “Think about it. Just wait before paying next month's bill, and think about it. You don’t have to answer right now.” 

I couldn’t shake the fear. You wouldn’t be able to keep me, the bats told him. Pick. After the movie, we decided to have the others over for dinner before we all went out. 

“Did someone move my cosmetic bag?” Lanie asked, searching under the sink for the bag of ‘touch-ups’ she kept here.

“I did. It’s in the cabinet above the sink; I’m sorry.” I sighed, realizing I forgot to put it back before she came over, and forgot to ask before it was a permanent spot. 

“Sorry?” She laughed, “I’ve been upgraded!” Scott and Danny walked in, coats decorated with gentle snowflakes, noses and ears red.

“It’s nice being a guy right now,” Scott said, “my only fix before going out is tying my shoes.” 

Danny started mocking Lanie in the mirror, puckering his lips, playing with his hair. Then Lanie grabbed his face and put lipstick on his face (a shade of red that suited his features). He threw his head under the faucet and rubbed his hands, only to smear it more, streaking it up and down his cheeks. 

“I always had a feeling you were different, Danny,” Scott teased. 

***

He remembered when you were different, Manning. When you became something he feared, not something he feared for. Your eyes narrowed, as did his perception of you. You had badges of misery down your arms and legs, new to this season of pitying woe. Your hand remained his misery. It rose, towered, and chastised Elias in that moment. His back was uncomfortably straight against the hallway wall. He shielded himself from the person he once ran towards.

Your agonized state of realization before you walked away left him on the ground but not grounded, and slammed the door you weren’t meant to shut, left him. Your eyes, the ones he studied, the look he spent years assuming alien, imprinted forever. 

I know when it gets closer, when the squinting begins in any of my friends, Danny gets closest. When it visits, I'm left hovering and shielding myself again. Dramatic, I know I am. Still, I wish you’d have hit me, Manning; I wish you left the ambiguity of my anguish alien.

***

That night, or morning, I should say, the apartment was quiet again. The tracks of snow were melted into the hardwoods, the empty cups and traces of perfume were absent from the room with bright walls, and the bats that lived in my mind all day, usually settled, woke up again. Their wings flapped, trying to take me back to the days I missed, the days that haunted, the days that lived only in the dark where I seemed to meet them. A routine branched the second I hit the cold tile with my feet. The bats flourished there. You’ll make yourself a burden again, Elias, the bats whispered. I hadn’t done this in years, so why do I crave this now? I did what I knew how to do: I picked up a razor. As meticulously as I was taught, I took it apart; my hands knew what they were doing before I did. Perpendicularly, I reached into my body: the one I could control, change. I lectured my body, staring down at my legs, covered in white stripes I kept covered and hidden, high on my limbs. I watched as the toxic blood left my thighs; I listened to the sound of metal scraping against my pale, freckled skin, then slowly and softly I replaced the invisible with a tangible, bright crimson. The image wasn’t at all foreign; it was nostalgic, comforting. Only, in my mind, I wasn’t watching my own blood emerge; I was staring at Manning’s. 

This was just something I did, and now do. Something deserved, and clung to. An ordinary thing. I felt the stinging water rinse away my sins, dizzy from the heat, rusted from the stains my iniquities left. The inner tremble and bodily shake were all I needed to move past this moment. Sometimes it seems more addictive than vodka, slowly melting your worry. The sting on my skin felt more releasing than the sting you get on your throat. It wasn’t trapped behind sealed lips; it begged for courage to push, but quietly, hidden behind my doors, I chose to lock safely. 

That night, or morning, I should say, the apartment was quiet again; now, so was my lurking mind, giving me reasons different from before but demanding to see the same result. Tomorrow, I promised the pile of blades I stuffed into a white pencil case with bandages, the same set-up I kept with me years ago. Thank you, I told the bats, thank you for making me feel normal again. The bats went back to sleep, in a cave sopping with my own inflictions, drowning their cries and pleas, kept still where they lay for rest: same as I. 

***

You would cut yourself, Manning, during the nights he selfishly rested. The next morning, you would show them to him– it was provocative and meant to be so, he assumed. Sitting in the car, you would pull your sweatshirt sleeves high and show him how much damage he’d done to you. Your eye closest to his side of the car would slowly move in the direction of sudden guilt. 

“It’s your fault, Elias,” you would tell him those nights. This is what happens when we fight, he reminded himself. You both relied on blame to get by; you both pointed the finger at him.

***

“Trust me,” Danny said. “Don’t crack open three energy drinks on an empty stomach." 

“I wasn’t exactly planning on it,” Scott said.

"I had a long shift," Danny moaned.

Lanie gave him a nasty stare, almost asking why but avoiding another rant on life as a surgeon. 

"Anything big today?" I asked.

***

“Why don’t you trust me, Elias? I’m telling you it’s me and you in this fucking house.” You screamed.

“No, Manning, I trust you, I do. But I'm with you almost every minute you're in this house, and they… they never do anything to you.” He tried to be careful, to not make you feel like he was just another person against you.

“No, Elias, you’re never fucking here. You always abandon me when I need you most, when they hurt me most!” You told him, and he knew exactly what you meant. 

When he reached the end of seventh grade, when he finally started doubting your reality, it became your worst year. 

Maybe it was his fault. He was to blame for school becoming an art exhibit, your skin your canvas. Each bone you pried out was a sculpture. Maybe he handed you the chisel. Maybe he was your clay. Something you crafted deliberately, to understand you, to go through what you had to. Your misery needed company; did he volunteer? Can a twelve-year-old volunteer?

Each cut was a step on the staircase to your mental fragility. Did he sit on the top step, waiting for you to join him so he could skip down? Did he build the stairs? They went up and down, all around your extremities, covering each blank space you thought proved you not worthy of worry. He resented you. He resented the look teachers and friends gave him after seeing your handiness with a blade, lightly pushed through every freckle. Deep enough to bring an ugly red, superficial enough to avoid any scarring. 

I have scars all over; was I the crazy one? I abandoned you. Manning, I’m sorry. 

“Manning, when I abandoned you was when I feared you. Don't you remember? Mom even made me watch you then. You almost hit me then? Don’t you fucking remember?” He asked you. 

“No,” you said. “That’s not what happened.”

Maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe you never slept in his bed the night he went over to a friend's house. Maybe it didn’t feel like someone poured toxic gas all over his bed; maybe it wasn’t tainted with your complexities and poison.  

Maybe Dad really did throw you down the stairs. Maybe, somehow, while Elias was watching from the window, Dad didn’t just yell at you. Maybe the bruise you showed him that night, a green splotch on your kneecap, really was from him, from something he gave you while Elias looked away at just the right moment.

Maybe Mom never made him watch you while she was on the phone, trying to figure out what to do with you, how to handle the grief you put in our lives, how to handle the grief in yours. 

I don’t remember it that way, Manning. But what does my memory serve if it contradicts yours?

***

“I can’t believe we haven't been here yet,” Lanie said, as I pulled out her chair. 

“I love the building,” Scott added.

“Of course you do, Scott; you sold it for a shit ton of money to a fancy chain.” Danny laughed.

Scott smiled, “I had good taste; they just paid me to prove it. And we get a discount.” 

The table behind us was loud. Children's giggling spewing out through their crooked teeth echoed through the brick building, towering over the sport’s game playing on the TV’s. 

***

I often think of him, Manning. His kept hair, frequent smile. Little Elias. Known to him, only the promise of joy, the promise of tomorrow for everyone he loved. A stuffed sheep in his hand at all times, beady fist tightly grasped. Almost the way you grasped his arm when he tried to leave your room some nights. Wasn’t it? When he tried to abandon you. You held tight because you had nothing else to hold on to. 

Kindness was easy then. I miss those years, and I hardly remember them at all. Nothing remains outside of those bright lavender walls. 

He tried to pry his way out, intentionally, thoughtfully. Convincing you of your own wrongdoings never worked, so he tried to convince you of his own–I suppose it worked on both of you.

“I don't think you realize how much I'm hurting you,” Elias said, standing by your closet. “And I don't think you're lying; I trust you.”

“What?” You said, grossly.

“We should stop doing all of this,” He searched for the word, “This. I'm hurting you.”

“Am I making you worse?” You asked. “You’re fucking up my life; you don’t get to blame your shit on me now, Elias!” You grabbed his arm, your fingers gripping tight to his bony wrist. “Get the fuck out.” Through your teeth, he heard the voice in your head decide to cut yourself. Rather, he heard his own words, his own failure, make you cut yourself. 

Wasn’t this my fault? What’s ‘this’ anyway? Why would you cut yourself, Manning? 

One time, in his bathroom with wet cheeks and an inner panic loud enough to mask a foghorn, he noticed the razor. The thing he’d seen you deconstruct many times, seamlessly, with ease. The thing he already knew you’d be using tonight, and flaunting the repercussions from tomorrow. 

You need to understand why he does it, he told himself. You deserve the pain; this is a fair punishment. Wasn’t it? If he could blame Manning for his hurt, why couldn’t Manning blame him?

My actions forced you to take a blade to your pretty skin; why was I getting off easy? An eye for an eye, right, Manning? You stay, I stay. You cut, I cut. 

***

"Elias, are you okay?" Lanie asked. The string lights, the noise, the screaming children-they all overwhelmed me. My wrists were pressed neatly against my untucked shirt, feeling the smooth buttons rub against my freckled arm. My watch dug into the skin high on my forearm.

"I just need some fresh air," I said, darting my eyes. I stood up, almost turned around, but the bats stopped me. No one will believe you, they said.