Heartbeat

We are studying our own family’s history for the millionth time, since second grade. In class, Ms. Francis asks us what our ethnicity is. What country our ancestors came from. If we had grandparents that fought in wars. Old familial traditions.

Most kids in the class can easily raise their hands and say that they came from Ireland or Germany or Scotland or Canada. Almost all of them say their great grandparents fought in the World Wars. It makes me think about my own family. My background biography.

Once upon a time in a land far away called New Jersey, there was a tiny newborn baby named Frank who was messed up at birth in the hospital nursery.

I try to imagine my real family. My real mother. As I am positive these people I got stuck with are not my real family. I imagine my real mother is a beautiful red-haired woman who’s kind and sweet and has a really nice smile and bakes really good. My father is a nice, brave, handsome man who plays elegant sports you only see in England. I don’t really have a sister. If I wasn’t switched at birth in the hospital, I’d be with them right now and nothing would hurt. Now my real parents are raising a child who they think is the real kid, while I’m got left behind and got dumped into a family of blah-colored suburbanites with weird carpeting.

I imagine Hannah isn’t their real child either. Her real family doesn’t even live in this country. In her real family, she’s an only child. She’d grow up in a vast, impenetrable stone mansion in some English place like Winchester or Narnia, with turrets and stone walls and vineyards stretching on forever in the background. Her daddy walking around in nice, clean tennis outfits with nice, gray sweaters tied around his neck over his back. Her mummy sitting on an expensive tiny table out on the front lawn sipping tiny, porcelain, decorated cups of tasteless tea, while eating crumpets and biscuits and tittering in French while flipping through a romance novel.

I zap back to my reality.

I wasn’t switched at birth. Mom just must have pissed off a demon fairy or something.

Everybody in my World History class has interesting pasts with relatives that live all around the world and ancestors that helped build some of the world’s most historical monuments.

I look back at my own family, forced to admit I know nothing about them. And even if I did, I know I probably wouldn’t want to talk about them anyway.

I imagine we were all ugly. Fat, grizzly, brown-colored-cigarette-smoking men who needed to shave. We wore flat caps and swore a lot. Lived in a moderately cold European country where we herded sheep and ate a lot of cold potatoes and baked beans. We came over to America through Ellis Island because we felt like it, not because we had to like all the others. All my great aunts and grandmothers wore itchy brown-colored dresses and sewed and crocheted a lot. Baked over an open fire in a house made of dirt. Put their scraggly hair up in tight buns and smacked kids around with sticks when they acted out of line. We were as boring a hundred years ago as we are now.

I nearly fall asleep in World History, but the bruises pounding agony into my bones keep me just barely awake. I feel the part of my face where he smacked me hard and unexpected, and it still stings.

Once the bell rings I try to think of a way I can get out of the school and go home without Gerard giving me a ride.

I run through the halls and slip and slide my way through traffic, but it’s still not good enough.

He grabs me by the back of my shirt just as I’m about to go out the front doors. It nearly chokes me, he wrenches me back so hard.

“Hey, not so fast, Frankie-boy.” he smirks. Pulls me in and lips feel wet and clammy. I close my eyes so I don’t have to look back into his. When he disconnects, I have spit on the sides of my mouth. I causally wipe it away with my sleeve, act like it’s nothing. It’s like having somebody spit onto your face when they’re talking to you. You want to wipe it away so badly but can’t in fear that they’ll get insulted and say something like “You don’t want that there? Why would wipe my saliva away?!”

He runs a finger through my hair and pulls me in close by the back of my neck.

His lips are on mine again and the guy standing next to us gins teasingly.

“Hey, get me some, Gee-man! Woo!” I hear voices of taller, bigger high school students behind us who have more fun shouting lewd commentary than using physical violence to express their opinions on certain things.

“Hey, you guys like, smell each other’s cocks?”

“He smelled mine last Friday!”

Gerard finally breaks away after what seems like forever of his tongue fishing around in my mouth, scraping up my gums.

“How come you don’t ever kiss me back anymore?” Gerard inquired.

I shrug.

“Hey, yo.” A bigger, deeper voice behind us. I turn around. It’s a kid the size of a telephone pole who’s still dressed up in gym class attire, handing Gerard an orange slip of paper. “Saw that in the bathrooms. You coming?”

Gerard takes the papers and scans his eyes down it, still keeping his arms around my neck, holding me close to him the entire time.

“I don’t think I’m gonna stay very long,” he tells the telephone pole. “But I gotta go over there anyway and pick up some shit.”

I peak a glance at the paper. A flier about a party someone I don’t know is holding. You don’t need an invite. Just a cool reputation.

“Hey, come to my house,” Gerard tells me, taking a hold of my chin with his index and middle fingers and thumb, turning my head to face him. “I’m only gonna be picking up some shit and dropping stuff off at this place, but come back to my place after, okay? Cool?”

I nod my head.

Like I have a choice.

I sit in the passenger seat of his car I don’t know how many hours later. It’s dark outside, and chilly. But I have no jacket. I want to turn up the heat in his car but I’m afraid to mess around with anything in his car. He sits in the driver’s seat and fiddles around with things inside of his bag. When he finally thinks he’s ready, he slings the bag around one shoulder and gets out. I don’t know if he wants me to get out with him or not, but then he turns to look at me.

“You coming?”

I get out with him. He walks up ahead of the me towards the front door of the house. The music can be heard ba-booming through the walls, with special party lights hung up everywhere and balloons floating on the surface of the water in a pool. He opens up the front door and it all blasts at us at once. The music turned to maximum volume; people moving their hips slickly; red and dark blue Dixie cups filled with alcoholic beverages or just bare beer bottles with no drinking containers involved; older people chatting, slurred voices; drunken shouts and people making out up against fancily wallpapered walls.

This entire house is screaming Party Atmosphere.

There are people dancing while vomit spews all over nice carpets and two girls pass out on top of each other onto a comfortable-looking arm chair, slick with sweat and drunkenness.

Nobody has a theme on them. So it’s not like it’s a holiday party, like a Halloween Party or anything. Just something cooked up at the last minute because not even four weeks into the school year and we’re miserable already and want to party hard until we can’t feel feelings.

I pass by some kids I used to hang out with. Some kids who used to be my friends before Gerard came along. Once Gerard came, they were Assholes.

One of them waves to me. I want to wave back, but I know Gerard won’t think that’s cool, since he made sure I knew that he did not like them. I don’t wave back. One of them sees me, recognizes me, and waves his hand over in the direction they’re standing in, telling me to come over and hang out like we used to. Pull up a chair. Reminisce on the good, ol’ days.

I bite my lip and nip at the peeling skin with my teeth. My bottom lip stings with peeled-off skin and opens bite wounds; some from me, most from Gerard.

I follow him into a swarm of drunken idiots bouncing hips with each other, until he gets to a backroom, where another gym class telephone pole awaits him in a bathroom.

I watch the telephone pole take money out of his jean pockets and hand it out to Gerard. Gerard retaliates with a Ziploc baggie of something powdery-looking and white as vanilla ice cream. They trade their respective items and he leaves to go give out service to other waiting customers. I continue to follow him and struggle to not get lost in the crowd.

He does another trade-off and stuffs his back pockets with more money. He goes around two more times before somebody actually talks to him instead of just buying whatever their drugs of choice are and leaving him be.

“Whose your friend?”

His first girl customer. She smiles at me and her teeth are as white as snow. Whiter than the drug Gerard’s handing out. Her head is covered in fussy hair products and natural-hair color high lights. Huge, jingly earrings dangle from her ears and she wears giant, plastic bracelets on her wrists.

“Just Frank,” Gerard says. No emotion. No smile or arm placed around my shoulders or a kiss to achknowledge my existence and presence in the room.

“He’s kinda cute,” the girl says, like I’m not two feet away from her and can still hear her perfectly, even over the overly loud music.

Gerard doesn’t respond. He glances over at me for a moment, and I can’t tell if he’s giving me a look or just glimpsing over at me. He turns back to the girl and hands her the baggie she saved two-hundred dollars for. She gives me another smile and steps in towards me.

“So…” She brings a finger to my shirt collar and runs it along the inside of it. “You got a phone number you could give me?”

I don’t get the chance to converse with her much longer. I see the look on Gerard’s face and it’s clear that what he said about not staying very long is true. He’s finished his rounds and ready to go for the night. I step in close as quickly as possible and let him know that I’m not trying to dillydally and I’m ready to go whenever he is and I’m most definitely not in the mood to get whopped in the face for wasting his time.

But the look on his face still gives me shivers, no matter how hard I’m trying to cooperate with him.

I swallow something bitter and invisible in my throat when I think I’m going to throw up right there on the cement walkway, as I follow him close behind and stay real silent. He gets back into his car and I crawl back into the front seat.

Once the doors are closed, the sounds of the outside world are shut out completely and it’s silent and dark and making me tremble.

And then it comes out of nowhere again and for a moment I don’t feel a thing and my face goes numb and tingly like a body part does when it falls asleep and then I feel it and it explodes inside my head and makes red and yellow paint splotches begin to float up in front of my eyes and blur my vision while the sound of my brain being wrung like a sponge inside my head rings in my ears.

I do not cry.

I feel my hand slap up to the part where he hit, though. It doesn’t just sting, it pounds and aches and punches in pain with no mercy. My eyes seal closed and my face scrunches up in pain as I try so desperately to not shed a single tear, no matter how much the stinging sensation is making my eyes puddle up.

“What the hell was that?” he barks at me.

I blink rapidly but the tears won’t go away. The lump in my throat is forming from the pain and it feels like my skull is caving in. It makes my eyes hurt and my temple pulsate; my toes curling inside of my shoes and my jaws clenching together with my teeth grinding up against each other.

“Frank, do you even know how to be human?” he leers at me. I don’t say a word or move a single inch. “Why can’t you just act fucking normal for once? For God’s sake, talk!”

I can’t do as he wants me to do. No words form in my voice box because my brain can’t interpret anything good to say.

“Do you even know what they say about you? They say shit like you’re gonna come in with a gun! `cause you’re so weird and creepy! I mean, Tracy was talking to you and she was fucking hitting on you and just stood there like a retard and didn’t say shit! God, you’re fucked up!”

I can feel the back of his hand and his knuckles on my cheek and I think my teeth are going to disintegrate into bony powder right on my tongue. I bite my lip again and focus on the peeling skin that’s chapped.

“I told you to start talking more--don’t you remember that? I told you to start talking more and stop acting like a goddamn corpse! It’s so fucking retarded, and you know it! What kind of stupid, fucked-up child are you, huh?!” A bare, four-finger, backhand smack right up against my temple. My brain is screaming into my ears and my retinas are so blurred from different colors popping up everywhere that I can’t even see my own shoes.

I shrug because I don’t know what kind I am. I don’t know anything about myself anymore. Anything I used to know has been wrenched right out of me and hasn’t been given back.

He sighs, annoyed and deep. He puts a hand up to his eye and rubs his eyes with his fingers while he slightly shakes his head. When he brings his hand back down, he starts up his car and looks over at me and his face so angry in mine with dark shadows overlapping his features.

The whole ride is silent and my head is killing me. I don’t even get the chance to bother waiting because he’s leaning over picking up my backpack and dumping it on my lap, telling me with no words to get out.

I open up the front door and put one foot out onto the solid ground, before I feel a hard-knuckled fist bash into my shoulder and it feels like my arm has nearly popped right out of its socket. I freeze and slowly turn my head and wait for what he wants to say. He leans in quickly with a slick, long finger pointed in my face, and his face so close to mine.

“Don’t pull that shit…ever again…” he says lowly, his dragon eyes glowing red and burning fire in his jet black pupils. “Not around me.”

I nod. A smacking sound rings and my skull explodes in fireworks again as my cheek stings.

“Did you even listen to me at all?!” He screeches. “I told you to start talk--”

“Yeah,” I say quicker than anything, nodding my head, even when it hurts to do so. “I won’t.”

My hand is still clasped around half my face to defend the side that gets smacked the most, but I feel his fingers twist around my aching wrist and wrench my hand away, exposing my face fully.

His expression burns into me, angry and ready to kill. I swallow vomit that regurgitates in my throat.

“Yeah,” I echo myself in a voice that’s so soundless, it’s nearly a whisper, as I continue to slowly nod my head. “I won’t.”

I feel his fingers untangle from my wrists, and I fear just holding it like that would make the bruises that was hoping would fade soon, come right back.

There is a vile and dreadful silence in the car for what seems like hours, until eventually looks back over at me and continues his dragon glare.

“Are you gonna get out or what?” he spits at me.

“Sorry,” I say the second I hear him speak again. My backpack is around my shoulders in mere seconds and when I get back into my house, they’ve started eating dinner without me.

“Well, you’re home early,” Mom says sarcastically as she scoops a forkful of peas into her mouth. I just shrug and take my seat. My dinner is lukewarm and almost cold, no longer fully heated and nice, but it’s my own fault and I’m not going to bitch about it.

“What the hell is that?” I hear Hannah’s voice that was so acidic it could peel paint. I look over at her. Mom hisses at her for using mild swear words. Hannah ignores her.

“What?” I say with my mouth full of peas.

“That,” she says again, leaning forward to point her finger closer to my face. I bring a hand up to feel around where she’s pointing to, and Mom notices whatever it is as well.

“Oh, my god, Frank, your face!”

I watch her lean forward and drag my head half way across the table so she can cup my cheeks in her icy, cold fingers and gawk at me with concerned Mom-eyes.

“You’ve got a bruise!” she says.

I wrench back so fast I nearly topple backwards out of my chair.

“What happened?” Dad inquires. “You try to hit on those ladies and one of them slapped you?” I watch him chuckle at something I’m not sure is a joke.

I look back at my food and start whipping out excuses in my head. Got attacked with a bat by a crazed five-year-old escaped out of the children’s psyche ward in the hospital. Fell flat on my face on the stairs and smashed my face right into the new tiles. Went to a secret late night dentist appointment and accidentally bit the dentist’s fingers so she socked me one right in the eye. Got beat up by bigger, taller, stronger individuals, which makes sense because I’m a pansy.

“Got hit with the ball in gym,” I fling out. “Basketball.”

“It want’s on purpose, was it?” Mom asks. I shake my head without looking up from my food.

“Accident.”

“Did you go to the nurse?” Mom continues.

“Didn’t need to. It was fine. Can I be excused?” My words come out choppy and quick.

“For what? You haven’t even had a single bite of your chicken,” Mom argues.

“Gotta go to the bathroom. And I have homework. Math homework. Can I go?”

Mom lets out a stressed sigh, the kind of sigh she does when she needs a cigarette really bad.

“Go,” she said, flicking her hand at me a little to tell me to leave. I dump my food in the garbage and rinse my plate in the sink and pummel up the stairs where I can lock the doors and walk right into my closet and close and lock that door and find the thickest piece of clothing I have that I can stuff into my mouth and scream until I’m sure my throat is going to tear apart, just like everything else.