28. MERCY. #2
I used to think my father was the angriest man in the world, but it turned out that he was only one of them. And even when I wanted to hate him, all I found was a hole inside of myself where he used to be. I didn’t quite miss him, but I knew that I didn’t feel like hating him anymore.
In my mind, I made myself believe he was better than Mr. Walters.
The shelter I built inside of my head had my mother and father there with their arms wrapped tight around me.
My father’s violence was directed toward those who caused me pain.
My mother’s whispered words soothed the shakes my body bore when I tried to fall asleep on a cold floor.
They promised safety and an ending that would accept me if I wanted it enough.
Mr. Walters ran the house like a boot camp.
We couldn’t speak unless spoken to. I quickly learned just how much he enjoyed giving punishment.
He’d force us to go without a meal when he didn’t like the form of our push-ups.
When Jasmine cried about losing her stuffed rabbit, he backhanded her and told her she was too old for it anyway.
She had only cried harder. He locked her in a dog crate until the next day.
Elise and Ryan tried to intervene, but I could see the look in his eyes that I often saw in my father’s. Any mercy in him was unreachable.
“You two think you’re tough, don’t you?” he taunted. “Get hit too many times over the head and turn stupid?” The sicko laughed.
I stepped in front of them, blocking his path. I’d taken plenty of hits to know that I could take a few more. I looked him in his dead eyes and told him, “You’re the one that belongs in a cage.”
He froze, a strange, silent rage coming over him—the kind that oddly felt like home. It didn’t scare me like I knew it should have. “What’d ya say, boy?”
“You heard me,” I said, my voice steady.
“Don’t hurt him, Freddy, please,” Elise pleaded, but we all knew it was useless. He favored her and she was usually good at placating him. That wasn’t going to happen this time.
I expected the pain to come so I braced for it, maybe even grew an appetite for it. When the blows came, I welcomed them in the way one would an old friend. It’s what I’d known my entire life.
After that, he beat me more often, but the bruises on Elise, Ryan, and Jasmine faded over time, while mine multiplied.
It brought me peace of mind to know that for a while I was his main target. I didn’t mind taking his attention off the others. My mother had done it for me. I could do it for them.
But there was only so much a body could take before it reached a breaking point.
The first time I was sent to the hospital, I’d gotten into a fight with a few guys at school after being cornered in the bathroom.
Mr. Walters decided to teach me a lesson for having him called up to the school.
He lost his temper and broke my arm. One of his neighbors had overheard and called the cops.
I had to tell my caseworker I had fallen down the stairs.
The second time was when I caught him with his hands around Elise’s throat and his pants down.
I thought of finding my mother in a similar position and reacted before I could think.
I grabbed the wooden bat from where it leaned against the wall of her bedroom and started swinging.
I got him in the center of his back first and then wherever else I could.
I was blinded by my rage—my throat raw as I screamed at him .
Being a scrawny twelve-year-old kid, he managed to overpower me eventually by snatching it from my grasp. His face was coated in blood, but that didn’t deter his strength.
The bat was thrown to the floor with a loud clunk and then his meaty hands were around my throat, squeezing so hard my vision went dark in the corners.
I tapped his hands to get him to let up, but he only squeezed tighter.
My ears rang and time slowed—the universe witnessing my end and doing nothing to stop it.
Spit flew past his clenched teeth as he spoke, but the words were lost to my ears.
It could be so easy , I thought to myself. Just let go and fall .
And so, I did—ignoring the flicker of fight left in me. I let my body go lax and waited. The room faded away from me slowly, a heaviness bearing down on me. It felt like my head was going to explode until the weight disappeared in a sudden movement.
On instinct, my lungs gasped for the air they needed, and I cried out in both relief and regret.
“No,” I said hoarsely, and then Elise was there patting my cheek.
“Julian, open your eyes,” she hissed, slapping me harder until I obeyed. “The cops are here. You have to get up.”
I shook my head and tried pushing her away, but my limbs were weighted. “No,” I croaked.
She pinched my arm, and I winced. “Get. Up.”
I didn’t. “I don’t want to.”
“They’re going to send you away again,” she told me and when I didn’t respond, she stood with my hand in hers and pulled. My body lifted and then fell back onto the floor, her effort failing. “Ryan, help me!”
“What’s the point?” he asked her. “They’re going to take him, anyway.”
“Where is he?” I asked. My voice sounded strained as I stared up at the cracked moldy ceiling.
“He’s talking to the police,” Elise said and where her voice usually lacked emotion, it was burdened then.
I roll my head to the side—take in her ripped shirt, the red marks on her hips, and the mascara tear stains running down her cheeks. “I don’t care what happens to me. He was hurting you.”
Her thumb ran over my hand as she shook her head. “Not as badly as he’s hurt you.”
Ryan growled as he walked back over from where he stood with his ear pressed against the closed door. “He’s lying . He’s saying you attacked him in his sleep.”
“Which is why he needs to get up,” Elise insisted, but she didn’t try to force me this time.
“And then what?” I asked, snorting.
With a sigh, she released my hand to run hers through her tangled hair. “I don’t know, maybe run. Anywhere is better than what will happen to you if they believe that lying son of a bitch.”
“I don’t care,” I told them, meaning it. I slowly lifted myself into a sitting position, my body aching and my throat tender as I swallowed. “If you’re backed into a corner and it doesn’t look like they’ll believe us, whatever Mr. Walters says go with it.”
“What?” Ryan scoffed. “No!”
I looked at Elise and she watched me closely, chewing on her bottom lip. “Promise me.” Survive . Reluctantly, she nodded. “And if he ever touches them or you again, drag a knife across his throat.”
An hour later, I was in the back of a cop car. One of the officers who goes by the nickname Red “accidentally” drove an elbow into my right eye. I’ve seen Mr. Walters talk with him a couple of times before. They played poker together on Monday nights at the fire house.
At the police station, I could hear some of the officers calling me names when they thought I wasn’t listening.
I’d grown up being called trash, so it didn’t phase me in the slightest. What I didn’t understand was why they liked to shove me around or why being unkind to me brought a smile to their faces.
There was one nice lady—a woman in a suit who brought me a warm cup of cocoa.
She had a pretty face and a softness about her that had me relaxing around her.
She didn’t make me speak, she only sat with me.
There was a slight push in my head, telling me to say something and I almost did.
But then my caseworker showed up with a grouchy look on her face.
My silence haunted me more than the truth as I walked away from her gentle smile.
Michelle somehow talked Mr. Walters out of pressing charges for my “violent behavior”, but it was still on my record. I couldn’t tell if she believed his lies or if she liked to hate me for hating him.
“No one wants you,” she told me in the car after a long sigh. “Did you hear me?”
I didn’t respond.
She sniffed. “You’re only making it worse for yourself. Your history is driving you further and further away from getting adopted. Do you know how quickly people look over your file?”
I started counting every yellow car I saw.
One.
Two .
A continuous ding sounded in the car. I’d forgotten to put my seatbelt on.
Three.
Four.
Michelle didn’t tell me to.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
The car slowed at a stop sign; across the street was a park. There was a group of children playing on the Merry-go-round, pink balloons surrounding a picnic table, and a mother sitting on a bench, holding her baby close to her chest.
“I want to go home,” I said quietly, feeling a deep yearning for it. Even as I said it, I couldn’t pinpoint it to a person, place, or thing. Whatever it was, it was where I wanted to go. I wanted it so badly that it hurt.
I saw her glance at me out of the corner of my eye. “Children like you will never find it.”
The shadow of my soul became a monster in the dark. My tainted heart was shredded to pieces inside my chest, the shards buried in my ribs. I was not good enough to make anyone stay. What was it about me that disgusted people to their core?
There were nearly eight billion people in the world, so where were mine?
When I got to my new placement, I imagined making a wish on a dandelion. I wished for the only thing a boy who had never met mercy could—death.
I closed my eyes that night, searching for my mother and instead, I found a vast and empty darkness.