Window

[furtherfield.org]

                                             Window
                                             (Memories
                                             of
                                             a
                                             Bastard)


Witness my personal depiction of a male’s deep unresolved insecurity.
Reach deep inside of your soul and
acknowledge the truth. Open that window a little wider for you are about
to see a micro situation of every day life
that occurs all over the world. Of course my story is not unusual. You
too may have memories of personal pain
wrapped up in twisted and dysfunctional angst. I dare you to open your
arms out to me, hold me, thus holding
yourself, whilst accepting deep torment. Kiss my pain, become part of my
memory, live it for a moment. Yes open
that window, that’s it, a little wider…

My father lays stony cold and wrinkled by times uncaring scars. I could
smell his raw shit wallowing around the shuttered
room. Even though pride was an asset that pushed his chauvinistic
attitude to the limits. His eyes penetrated through me
as his mouth released an angelic smile conveniently forgetting all the
torment that he had created. It was as if he felt
forgiven. I suppose he was. He can now claim his honour and of course
death forgives. Now I can feel guilty for wishing
him dead. A wife beater and a child hater has turned me into a father
hater and a man hater.

I left the hospital room and sat outside not able to deal with the
confusion. My mother stayed in the room. I pulled out
my small personal radio set from my coat pocket and then inserted the
single earphone into my ear. I listened to the
music blaring its independence. It felt warm. As if it wanted to be a
part of me putting my mind some place else. It
seemed as if the music was deliberately whisking me away out of the
battlefield of dysfunction and placing me into an
environment of virtual love.

It had escaped me what the day it was today.  The music suddenly ended.
A solemn voice announces the time and the
date. 11 o'clock. 11/11/77. A silence followed....

I thought of my father and his relentless one-dimensional onslaught on
all our family. Perhaps you've had a father like that
too. As the silence reigned its power over me it offered a sense of
timelessness. The sensation to cry began to take hold
but I couldn't. I had to be strong. For today is a special day. At this
moment in time a window is open and it is waiting
for the inevitable change. A feeling dominates giving me the sense that
life is going to be different from now on.

I turned the volume up and the silence was loud. The crackle of the
radio's white noise was cutting deep into my
cranium.

                      Two minutes silence...

As I received the signal of that silence it expounded a loudness so
penetrating that I began to imagine the ghosts of
Slaughterhouse 5, Nagasaki, Hiroshima and all the other killing fields
where many men took it upon themselves to make
the decision to kill others. My witness to all these deaths have always
been via the television screen, eyes catching the
visual demolition of millions. People that I have never met and never
will. It felt as if I had an affinity with these dead
people in my own small way. I also new what it was like to be tortured
and exploited by an insecure male. I knew that if
my father had a gun and a deluded cause, he would be happy to
exterminate others at whim. He would carry any flag for
the chance to wield his wrath upon the unfortunate.

Dinner had to be placed on the table at the same time every day at the
hour of six o'clock after he had finished a day's
work without fail. If my father's demand was not delivered he would
stuff my mothers head in the oven. "You're nothing
but a fucking, selfish bitch." My brother and I would watch helplessly
as this ugly man physically abused our mother.

"You miserable slut!" Like animals we were all beaten down into a
position of a state of submission. If we tried to stop
the violence his fists would hammer into mine and my brother's stomachs
until we were sick. Often after the event of
being punched in the gut we would huddle together, clinging to each
other inside our frightened world of tears. His dad
used to beat him to a pathetic whimpering pulp so he thought it natural
that he should do the same to us.

Sometimes when hiding in the bedroom. With my crayons I would inscribe
the image of my father. He would be held
captive in a cage surrounded by strong iron bars. This image was always
on my best paper. His face would be
contorted, snarling at me with his relentless vicious hate and anger.
The colour was always red mixed with a deathly
black. I would slowly scratch him out with a blunt pencil while he was
snarling at me. Soon he would be completely
gone. It would signify the end of the drawing and the end of him.

Once dad got carried away with hitting me and my face was battered and
it was covered with cuts and bruises. Mother
took me to the hospital. I was told not to mention how the marks had
come about. Mother told the doctor that I was
always getting into scuffles and fighting at school. A male Doctor
patched my wounds. Instant fear arrived as I
associated the Doctor's authority with my fathers. When mother left me
alone my screams filled the ward.

The Doctor asked if my dad loved my mother and me? Love was a word that
at the time could not be comprehended.
All that I could relate to was that love could mean need. I was
certainly needy. So the answer was yes he did love us.

Life turned into a dream as soon as I returned and the family was
laughing together again. Country walks became a
regular event and mother and father kissed in front of us. This made my
brother Steven and I feel happy. It felt as if the
pain put upon me was of some significance and influence to this positive
outcome. Mother said that Dad was very sorry
about how horrible he had been to us all.

However time soon ate away the glorious joys and smiles that we had
suddenly grown accustomed to. Pain re-entered
killing off the hopefulness that had flourished and turned into just a
memory. A past-dream. I soon woke up.

As soon as the marks on my face had faded, my father possessed an
urgency to renew them. Arguments filled the air
between my parents, mother seemed to be getting stronger against the
ogre. Yet he sustained dominance using his
predictable unimaginative bullying tactics.

Here my father lies on the hospital bed unable to move. While he was at
work some scaffolding had collapsed onto him,
breaking his spinal cord. Clamps were inserted into his forehead
suspended by weights. We were told that a bone at the
back of his neck was no longer working. The nerves that usually transmit
signals to the arms and legs are now incapable
of functioning due to this mishap. Never again will he be able to walk
or move his arms and legs. My mother asked the
nurse in the room to leave us with father for a while. The nurse nodded
and then left the room leaving my mother and I
alone with my father.

We sat in silence staring at the once strong monster now helpless at the
mercy of fate's deciding conclusion. Not
knowing how one should act I decided to cry because that's what people
do.

"Blow your nose Sammy." Mother handed me a handkerchief. I grabbed the
piece of pink cotton and placed it over my
nose. Muffled, sniffles passively filled the room.

"Is he dead mum?" "No." A shudder leapt into my bones, I cried again.
Mother clasped my hand and guided me into the
corridor, shutting the door behind me. Nurses and doctors were rushing
by and tending to various broken people in the
building. My feet decidedly wandered the length of the corridor,
shuffling meekly. So many people in pain. A smell
aroused me. A smell that now can only be associated with a hospital. And
now my mother also...

"Sammy!" I turned round, my mother was standing in the middle of the
hallway. A couple of nurses were rushing into my
father's hospital room. Mum knelt down onto the sparse, spotless,
corridor floor with her arms open. I ran into my
mother's arms as she wrapped them around me.

"He's gone son, he's gone."

END


An extract taken from a larger book called frailty. By Marc Garrett
1999.

http://www.furtherfield.org
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