Tag: writing

Tales of a Scapegoat

I didn’t see it coming. Usually, I never did. There was a surprise, explosive pain to the back of my head, followed by a weird numbing sensation throughout my body as I was thrown to the floor. Suddenly, my older brother was on top of me. My shoulders were pinned to the forest green carpet by his knees, and he sat on my upper body, eliminating any defense or escape. It was a move he perfected over the years from all the times I got away.   

Just minutes before, I was arguing with my younger sister in the living room. She was on the stairs. My back was to the kitchen. …Something about sneakers. Despite being years older and a good foot and a half taller than her, we had the same shoe size. Only once had I mistakenly worn her sneakers; they were by the back door, and I thought they were mine. In a normal family, a simple, “Oh, sorry, my mistake,” would have been sufficient. In my family, it was another outlet. From that day forward, any dirt or new scuff mark on them HAD to be done by me because she believed I was secretly wearing her sneakers.

I wasn’t.

It was dumb sibling bickering.  

However, our arguing set off my brother, and I was his target. I was always his only target. The blows to my head started. Repeatedly. One after the other. Not to my face. Never to my face. Well, not since that time he couldn’t explain his way out of why I had a black eye. (He got grounded for a weekend, and I had to say I fell.) Left and right punches to my head, his face twisted with rage while screaming “I HATE YOU” over and over.

I screamed for help, but mostly I just screamed. My parents weren’t home. My grandmother was napping in her room. My sister continued to accuse me of wearing her sneakers.

Five, six, seven, eight. Maybe nine, maybe twenty fists to my head before they stopped, and he put his hands around my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t turn my head. I couldn’t fight back. I felt my face getting hot as I heard the thundering of my heart over the ringing in my ears. All sounds became muffled, and my sister, who was still yelling at me about her sneakers, sounded like she was at the end of a tunnel. My brother seethed one last “I HATE YOU” before spitting in my face.

His eyes were black with rage, and a Joker-like grin spread across his face. The panic. The fear. The complete helplessness. My vision dimmed. My thought, he’s really going to kill me this time.

Suddenly, air filled my lungs with one desperate gasp. I glanced up. Behind my brother stood my grandmother with a broom. She was hitting him with it, yelling at him to stop, to get off me, to leave me alone. She whacked him in the face with it, and he jumped up to grab the broom. She yelled, “RUN!” I scrambled to my feet, bolted up the stairs, and down the hall to my room. I locked the door, and as I pushed my dresser across the room, I heard the weight of his body slam against the thin wood.

The lock wasn’t really a lock. It was one of those cheap doorknobs that could be unlocked if you stuck your fingernail in the slit and turned it. But it was enough of a hindrance for me to get my dresser in place that when he got it unlocked, he couldn’t open the door. It was a move I perfected over the years from all the times I got away.

He was mad. Almost rabid. He threw himself against the door a few times, screaming that he was going to kill me, he hated me, and that I was going to pay. I heard the wood crack under each blow. The drawers rattled, but my dresser didn’t budge. I was safe. But I was also trapped. I had a phone in my room, but who could I call? Not my parents, they were at work. I’d get in trouble for bothering them. Not my friends. I couldn’t tell them about the routine violence. It was embarrassing. Besides, all my friends liked my brother. He was popular-ish. Good looking-ish. Funny. Nice. No one would believe me. And, even if they did, there was nothing they could do.

The police? No, no, I couldn’t do that. That would embarrass my parents.

I wrapped myself in my comforter and sat on the floor of my room, trying to sob quietly. A few minutes later, everything was quiet. Too quiet. I knew better. I pictured him hiding in the adjacent bathroom in the dark, waiting, listening for me to pull the dresser away from the door so he could charge in and finish the beating he started. I fell for that before. Twice. The second time, I waited over an hour, convinced he had gotten bored and left. I was wrong.

Because he couldn’t get to me physically, the psychological attack began. An hour would go by, and he’d scratch at the door like a rat, “I’m waiting for you. And I’m going to kill you.” Thirty minutes after that, “The longer you wait to come out, the worse it’s going to be.” Then came the insults, I’m fat, ugly, nobody likes me. I was stupid, a loser, and he’d be doing everyone a favor by killing me. My sister even tried to lure me out by saying he was gone. I fell for that once before, too.

At some point, I fell asleep. Maybe from emotional fatigue, maybe from a concussion, but when I woke up, it was dark. I could hear my grandmother’s TV through our shared wall. She only watches TV after dinner when she retires to her room for the night. That meant my mother was home. As quietly as I could, I pulled the dresser away from the door and listened. I heard noises in the kitchen, confirming my mother was home. I threw open the door and ran as fast as I could down the hall, past the bathroom, through the living room, and into the kitchen.

That night’s dinner had been cooked, served, and eaten. The remainder of it sat in casserole dishes on the table. The plates and silverware had been cleared except for the untouched setting in front of my chair. My father was still at work, but my mother had been home for hours. She stood at the sink washing dishes.

Her back was to me. I approached from the side, tears welling up in my eyes. “…Mom.” It came out as a raspy whisper with only a hint of my voice. She turned her head to me. I heard her gasp. And, for a split second, I saw her shock before she turned back to the dishes in the sink.

“Your brother already told me what happened. I don’t need to hear it again.” It was her standard dismissive response. He got to her first. He always got to her first with a watered-down version of what happened. He’d confess to just enough to make it sound believable but not enough to get in any real trouble. And she always believed him.

“No, Mom, you don’t know what he did.” She wouldn’t look at me. She couldn’t look at me because if she did, she would see the bruises on my neck or the terror in my eyes, still puffy and swollen from crying for hours.   

“Yes, I do. He told me. He admitted it was bad and said it won’t happen again.”

“Mom! He was strangling me! Ask Gram! She saw it! She stopped him!”

“She’s old. She doesn’t know what she saw. You always do this. You always make things bigger than what actually happened. And you know how he gets. Why do you provoke him?”

For as long as I stood there trying to tell my side of what happened, my mother continued to wash dishes without looking at me or responding. She had made up her mind and tuned me out. This, too, was another lesson I had learned.

As I headed back to my room, my mother said over her shoulder, as if an afterthought, “And don’t go to your father with this. He works hard and doesn’t want to hear any of this crap when he gets home.”

I went back to my room defeated and exhausted. Since I wasn’t allowed to wedge the dresser against the door at night in case of an emergency anymore, I set up my DIY booby traps to wake me up if someone opened my door while I was sleeping. It was the only protection I had.

*The provocation for my attempted murder was because, while arguing with my sister, my “big mouth” interfered with my brother watching TV in the adjacent wreck room.

Homeless Chronicles: R*ped by Venus

After spending hours on the road sweltering in traffic, I was in the home stretch, blocks away from my building. I pulled into the service road that ran parallel behind my building and Vineland. As I approached my building, I saw the bicycle Ice Cream Vendor, a staple of my neighborhood for as long as I can remember. I pulled to the side of the alley and eagerly flagged him down. It was the pick-me-up I needed. He stopped his bicycle next to my car, and both of us had the unspoken intention of making the transaction through my driver’s window.

Suddenly, a homeless woman in a tattered blue floral sundress jumped out of the street-level decorative shrubs below the first-floor balconies like a predatory animal. She quickly positioned herself between me and the Vendor and began an aggressive interrogation inches away from my face.

“What are you doing here? Are you with the Government? Did the Government send you to get me?”

“No. Not with the Government. I’m just buying ice cream from this man.” I recognized her. I had seen her trekking down the alley numerous times from my office window, having been drawn by her boisterous and chaotic rants.

“Oh, yeah?” She looked into my window and at my body. With disgust on her face, “You’re fat! You’re so fat!”

I shrugged, “I’m still getting ice cream. Do you want one?”

The Woman, taken aback, said, “You’re buying me food. You’ll pay for anything I want!”

The Vendor looked at me, and I nodded, “She can have whatever she wants. It’s okay, I’ll pay for it.”

The Woman verbally accosted the Vendor, snatched two bags of chips off the cart, and then spun to look at me, once again, inches from my face. “I was raped by Venus! My son is in jail! Sarah from the Government sees through my ears and controls my thoughts! …Are you Michelle?”

“No, I’m not Michelle,” I replied. The Woman’s complexion was the ashy color of road dirt and pollution. Her bushy hair didn’t fare much better. A three-inch from the scalp self-inflicted botch job, maybe once dirty blond, now gray with grit and loam. I aged her to be in her forties more by the intensity of her watery brown eyes than the lines on her face. She had all her teeth that I could see. They were straight, intact, and not terribly discolored. It was clear to me she wasn’t a hard drug user but had been on the streets for a while.  

“What’s your name?”

“Kristine. What’s your name?” I had been looking for a homeless woman named Red who hung out at The Alley Music Studios during the 2000s. I was told she was living somewhere in the area, but I didn’t know what she looked like. If this was her, an interview would be challenging.   

The Woman didn’t answer but eyed me suspiciously, “Are you friends with Stacey?”

“No.”

“I bet you are friends with her, aren’t you? Don’t lie! Don’t lie!”

Based on her hostility, I said, “Oh, God no. I hate that bitch.” Once again, the Woman was taken aback.

A UPS truck turned into the alley. The Vendor moved his bicycle toward the back end of my car. This unexpected interaction didn’t deter me. I still wanted ice cream—I deserved ice cream. I rolled up my window, turned off my engine, and grabbed my wallet. I got out of the car with my keys in hand. The Vendor struggled to keep the Woman from opening the freezer compartments like a game of Whac-A-Mole. He glanced at me nervously.

The Woman pivoted to glare at me. I stood at least a foot taller. She hunched her shoulders and recoiled as she raked me with her eyes. With the same previous look of disgust on her face, she declared, “You’re skinny! Ewww, you’re skinny!”

“You just said I was fat a minute ago.” As the Woman hesitated from my words, I smiled and pointed to a picture of a Nutty Buddy. The Vendor retrieved it, and, in what I interpreted as an attempt to conclude the escalating encounter, the Vendor handed the Woman an orange popsicle. The Nutty Buddy in my hand brought me a surprising amount of joy. But it was short-lived.  

“No! No! No!” The woman screeched, snatched the popsicle with one hand, and began battering the Vendor with the bags of chips in the other. He deflected the blows, and the seam of one of the bags broke open. The crunchy pinwheels fragmented and flew into the air like fried confetti.

I slapped a folded twenty onto the top of the freezer. “Here, I’m so sorry,” I said, making sure his hand was on it before letting go. He started to reach into his pocket for change. “No. Take it and go. Save yourself.” I felt bad for him. This had become more than either of us had bargained for.

Having seen the twenty-dollar bill, the Woman changed her demand. “Give me! Give me money! Now!” Her eyes darted between my hardcase wallet and my face.

As the Woman’s agitation escalated, the Vendor mounted his bicycle. Before he could pull the cart around, she threw the popsicle at him. He flinched as it bounced off his neck and peddled away without looking back.

I approached my car door, and the Woman abruptly cut me off. “Give me money! Give me money, or I’ll kill you!” She lurched her head at me like a deranged pigeon while baring her teeth.

“You’ll do no such thing,” I said dismissively and calmly sidestepped the Woman, but she blocked me again. “I have no more money.” I wasn’t lying. Twenty dollars was all I had in my wallet.

“I was raped by Venus! I was raped! My son is in jail, and they’re performing experiments on him! Give me your money, or I’ll kill you!” Her eyes fixed on my left hand, clutching my wallet, keys, and Nutty Buddy.

I had no doubt this Woman was SA’d. My heart broke for her…but I had questions—many questions—that I didn’t dare ask. “I don’t have any more money. I gave it to the guy.” The Woman stepped in front of me again and well into my personal space. I stepped back. She moved in. I stepped back again. She moved in again, this time menacingly. Her irrationality and anxiety vibrated off her, reverberating in the space between us. It made me nervous. I was further away from my car than I was comfortable with.   

“Give me money, or I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

I stepped back again. “No. You won’t. And I told you I don’t have any more money. I gave it all to him to buy this stuff for you.” I gestured to the Vendor, who had successfully escaped to the area further down where I found the human hand years ago.

“Oh, yeah? Fuck you! What do you think about this, you bitch?” The Woman pummeled the bag of plantain chips with a dirty fist, ripped it open, and violently scattered the jagged pieces everywhere. She then stomped on the pieces with both bare feet, jumping up and down, fists clenched, grunting on each impact. “How do you like this?”  

I crossed my arms and watched like a bemused parent assessing their child’s temper tantrum. “Makes no difference to me,” I said, stepping toward my car. “I have food at home to eat when I’m hungry.”

The Woman stopped, very briefly reconsidered her actions, and then bared her teeth in a snarl. “Oh, you think you’re better than me? Whaddya gonna do about this?”

Wide-eyed, I witnessed the Woman dash ahead to my car, hike up her dress, reach one hand around, defecate into it at will, and then smear the excrement onto my car door. She smiled in wicked triumph.

“Yup, you win. I’m done.” With my phone in my car, I walked back to the next block, looking for anyone to call the police on my behalf. No one in sight. I yelled out a few times, but the day was a scorcher. ACs were on. Windows were closed.

From around the corner, the Woman yelled, “Oh, you’re running away? You want me to take your car? I’ll go for a ride!”

An icy twang of panic ran through me as I asked myself, did I lock the door? I immediately returned to the scene to find her yanking on the handles and hitting the windows. It was locked, and I shuddered at the thought of how that might have gone if it wasn’t. After her assault on my car, the Woman retreated to the bushes. I saw my opportunity to escape. But as soon as I approached my car, the Woman launched herself out of the bushes and came toward me. I would have stood my ground, but with shit hands unexpectedly thrown into the mix, it was in my best interest to back away.

As I contemplated my options, two teen boys, Twins, maybe fifteen years old, cruised down the alley on their bicycles. I stopped them, quickly explained my situation to them, and said I needed to call the police for assistance. Boys with summer-sun lightened brown wavy hair, shaggy and in need of a trim, hazel eyes, and peach fuzz above their lips and on their chins. Were fifteen-year-old boys this cute when I was their age?   

One of them pulled out their phone, dialed 9-1-1, and then handed it to me with a kind smile. While on the phone with dispatch, the Woman saw me with the two boys and became irate. She collected garbage from the bushes and threw it all over my car.

“See,” I said, exasperated. “This has been going on for twenty minutes already. I can’t get to my car and she already beat up the poor Ice Cream guy. She’s going to attack me, and she has literal shit on her hands.”

“Don’t worry,” one of the Twins said. “We’ll put her on the ground if she tries anything.”

“You got that right,” the other Twin said and rode his bike up to her, yelling, edging her away from my car, “Get out of here! Go! Go away!”

“I was raped by Venus! My son is getting microchips put in him in jail!” Her arms flailed about.

“Take your crazy bullshit somewhere else, lady! Get out of here!” The Twin held his ground and continued to yell at her to leave, pointing away from my car with authority.

The Woman’s eyes found me as I was giving Dispatch my location. “Are you talking about me? Is that your phone? Is that your phone? Give it to me or I’ll kill you!” She charged like a bull and attempted to snatch the phone from my hand.

Her filthy hand clamped down on mine. “Hey! Let go! Let go,” I hollered, clutching the phone in an iron grip, imagining what she would do if she took possession. I kicked her in the shin, and she let go. The Twin closest to me jumped into action, putting him and his bike between the woman and me.

“Get out of here! You can’t grab people’s phones! Stop bothering her! Go! The cops are coming for you!” Somewhere inside, the fifteen-year-old girl in me swooned.

“You called the police?” She laughed wildly. “They’ll say mental health! Mental health! I was raped!”

More people began appearing in the area, intrigued by the spectacle. Miraculously, I was still connected to Dispatch. But the presence of other people and the tenacity of the Twins sent the Woman heading toward Lankershim, fists balled, yelling and ranting as she left. I told the operator the police were no longer needed. I returned the phone to the rightful Twin and said, “Thank you. Your parents would be proud of you guys.” Then I urged, “Please wipe this down with disinfectant as soon as you can.”

After thanking the Twins profusely and briefly recapping the event for the spectators, I got into my car and drove the remaining fifty feet home, feeling incredibly sad for the Woman. Later that day, someone posted on Nextdoor that there was a public disturbance and a garbage fire on Lankershim, not far from where my ordeal took place.