chapter ten - special occasions
The three beatings that I remember most clearly are one in which my parents double-teamed me, one that John got after I tattled on him, and the last time my step-mother lit into me. They are all memorable for different reasons.
My half-sister, Pyur – supposedly some kind of exotic Asian name, but I have never been able to find any record of it and, with our last name, I find that hard to believe – is a year and a half older than my step-sister, Aurora, and seven years older than I am. She is a bookworm to beat all bookworms. She wanted to do nothing but read and read and read some more, was a kind of quirky, square peg type in high school and, outwardly at least, was not much interested in socializing with her peers, whom she surely found to be largely boring, petty and trite. She is undoubtedly at the genius level on the intelligence scale. Aurora, in contrast, was not much into academics and wanted nothing more than to be popular. I don’t mean that she was the brainless Barbie type, only that like most high school students it was important for her to be accepted by her fellow students and have a crowd of her peers with whom she could hang out and have fun.
My parents put constant pressure on Aurora to include Pyur in her social activities and to invite her to hang out. Aurora resisted. Although they had been close when my parents first married, as they grew older and came into their own personalities Aurora simply didn’t particularly enjoy Pyur’s company and didn’t like feeling as if she had to watch out for or babysit her, socially speaking. I’m sure the feeling between the two was mutual, but I suspect that Pyur was more open to hanging out with Aurora than vice versa.
One afternoon I overheard Aurora complaining to her mother about something Pyur had done or said, or not done or said, and how she was tired of bearing the cross of her step-sister’s social awkwardness, how it embarrassed her, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can’t recall the specifics of the conversation now, but you get the idea. It was standard fare. I made the grave mistake of repeating it to Pyur. I didn’t do it to be malicious. I felt she had a right to know. I also had a foolish desire to protect Pyur from a lack of awareness of Aurora’s true attitude toward her and the unpleasant consequences that might thereby result. The dynamic struggle between my half-sister and my step-sister – how to still be sisters, one grade apart and sharing the same school and same bedroom while being as different as night and day – was apparent to anyone who had eyes and ears and a brain. It is highly improbable that Pyur was unaware of it and for me to have thought that she was must have been wholly a product of my imagination – or wishful thinking.
Pyur naively confronted Aurora about it. Naively in the sense that she must have known on some level that Aurora would deny it, and that it would do nothing to change the situation, and that no positive outcome could come out of doing so. Aurora did deny it, nothing changed, and what happened is that I got one of the worst beatings of my life.
My step-mother was absolutely livid. My revelation threatened the image that she cultivated and in which Aurora actively colluded, that all was well and good between the girls and that they were the best of friends. One didn’t expose her pretenses without paying a heavy, heavy price. Of course, this was a sub-charade of the principal family charade, so my father was equally insulted and incensed. This time my step-mother didn’t even have to work her magic act to set my father off. My parents came downstairs to my room and confronted me, asserting that I had misinterpreted what I heard, or made it up, or had no business repeating it, or all of the above. They quickly commenced the true task at hand. I don’t know who threw the first punch. Or was it a kick? I was dragged by whatever hair or limb they could grab and pulled up the stairs and into the kitchen, with them beating me all the while. I’m not sure why the kitchen was our destination. Were they looking for more room to maneuver? Were they concerned that if they stopped in the living room they might end up with blood on the carpet? Or had their sick minds already plotted their next move? I’ll never know.
As previously noted, my father was good at this monstrous business, ever the creative disciplinarian. He decided to grab the hose from the kitchen sink, turn on the water, and add some liquid fun. He kept the device trained on my face. I honestly thought that they were going to drown me, that I was going to die right then and there. I was yelling at the top of my lungs, with what I thought would be my last breaths, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”. I heard my father’s voice, calm, collected and cold as ice, say, “If you couldn’t breathe, you wouldn’t be screaming”.
It was nice of them to help me clean up the kitchen afterwards.
