They never spoke to their neighbors.
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hen the door opened and my mother came running into the room: “Howcould you have done this to your mother?” The tears were running down her face. I felt guilty. “Wait until your father gets home!” She slammed the bedroom door and I sat in the chair and waited.Somehow I felt guilty... Iheard my father come in. He always slammed the door, walked heavily,and talked loudly. He was home. After a few moments the bedroom dooropened. He was six feet two, a large man. Everything vanished, the chairI was sitting in, the 38 wallpaper, the walls, all of my thoughts. He was the dark covering the sun,the violence of him made everything else utterly disappear. He was allears, nose, mouth, I couldn’t look at his eyes, there was only his red angryface. “All right, Henry. Into the bathroom.” I walked in and he closed the door behind us. The walls were white.There was a bathroom mirror and a small window, the screen black andbroken. There was the bathtub and the toilet and the tiles. He reached andtook down the razor strop which hung from a hook. It was going to be thefirst of many such beatings, which would recur more and more often. Al-ways, I felt, without real reason. “All right, take down your pants.” I took my pants down. “Pull down your shorts.” I pulled them down. Then he laid on the strop. The first blow inflicted more shock than pain.The second hurt more. Each blow which followed increased the pain. Atfirst I was aware of the walls, the toilet, the tub. Finally I couldn’t see any-thing. As he beat me, he berated me, but I couldn’t understand the words.I thought about his roses, how he grew roses in the yard. I thought abouthis automobile in the garage. I tried not to scream. I knew that if I didscream he might stop, but knowing this, and knowing his desire for me toscream, prevented me. The tears ran from my eyes as I remained silent.After a while it all became just a whirlpool, a jumble, and there was onlythe deadly possibility of being there forever. Finally, like something jerkedinto action, I began to sob, swallowing and choking on the salt slime thatran down my throat. He stopped. He was no longer there. I became aware of the little window again andthe mirror. There was the razor strop hanging from the hook, long andbrown and twisted. I couldn’t bend over to pull up my pants or my shortsand I walked to the door, awkwardly, my clothes around my feet. I openedthe bathroom door and there was my mother standing in the hall. “Tt wasn’t right,” I told her. “Why didn’t you help me?” “The father,” she said, “is always right.” Then my mother walked away. I went to my bedroom, drag- 39 ging my clothing around my feet and sat on the edge of the bed. The mat-tress hurt me. Outside, through the rear screen I could see my father’s rosesgrowing. They were red and white and yellow, large and full. The sun wasvery low but not yet set and the last of it slanted through the rear window.I felt that even the sun belonged to my father, that I had no right to it be-cause it was shining upon my father’s house. I was like his roses, somethingthat belonged to him and not to me... 40 By the time they called me to dinner I was able to pull up my clothing andwalk to the breakfast nook where we ate all our meals except on Sunday.There were two pillows on my chair. Isat on them but my legs and ass stillburned. My father was talking about his job, as always. “T told Sullivan to combine three routes into two and let one man gofrom each shift. Nobody is really pulling their weight around there...” “They ought to listen to you, Daddy,” said my mother. “Please,” I said, “please excuse me but I don’t feel like eating... “You'll eat your FOOD!” said my father. “Your mother prepared thisfood!” “Yes,” said my mother, “carrots and peas and roast beef.” “And the mashed potatoes and gravy,” said my father. “Tm not hungry.” “You will eat every carrot, and pee on your plate!” said my father. He was trying to be funny. That was one of his favorite remarks. “DADDY!” said my mother in shocked disbelief. I began eating. It was terrible. I felt as if I were eating them, what theybelieved in, what they were. I didn’t chew any of it, I just swallowed it toget rid of it. Meanwhile my father was talking about how good it all tasted,how lucky we were to be eating good food when most of the people in theworld, and many even in 41 America, were starving and poor. “What's for dessert, Mama?” my father asked. His face was horrible, the lips pushed out, greasy and wet with pleasure.He acted as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t beaten me. When Iwas back in my bedroom I thought, these people are not my parents, theymust have adopted me and now they are unhappy with what I have become. 42 10 Lila Jane was a girl my age who lived next door. I still wasn’t allowed toplay with the children in the neighborhood, but sitting in the bedroom oftengot dull. [would go out and walk around in the backyard, looking at things,bugs mostly. Or I would sit on the grass and imagine things. One thing Iimagined was that I was a great baseball player, so great that I could get ahit every time at bat, or a home run anytime I wanted to. But I would de-liberately make outs just to trick the other team. I got my hits when I feltlike it. One season, going into July, I was hitting only. 139 with one homerun. HENRY CHINASKIIS FINISHED, the newspapers said. Then I beganto hit. And how [ hit! At one time I allowed myself 16 home runs in a row.Another time I batted in 24 runs in one game. By the end of the season Iwas hitting .523. Lila Jane was one of the pretty girls I’d seen at school. She was one ofthe nicest, and she was living right next door. One day when I was in theyard she came up to the fence and stood there looking at me. “You don’t play with the other boys, do you?” I looked at her. She had long red-brown hair and dark brown eyes. “No,” I said, “no, I don’t.” “Why not?” “T see them enough at school.” “T’m Lila Jane,” she said. “I’m Henry.” 43 She kept looking at me and I sat there on the grass and looked at her.Then she said, “Do you want to see my panties?” “Sure,” I said. She lifted her dress. The panties were pink and clean. They looked good.She kept holding her dress up and then turned around so that I could seeher behind. Her behind looked nice. Then she pulled her dress down.“Goodbye,” she said and walked off. “Goodbye,” I said. It happened each afternoon. “Do you want to see my panties?” “Sure.” The panties were nearly always a different color and each time theylooked better. One afternoon after Lila Jane showed me her panties I said, “Let’s go fora walk.” “All right,” she said. I met her in front and we walked down the street together. She was reallypretty. We walked along without saying anything until we came to a vacantlot. The weeds were tall and green. “Let’s go into the vacant lot,” I said. “All right,” said Lila Jane.
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