Dirty Lens

“GET UP.”

My eyes slammed open to the hulking silhouette of my father looming over me, my big brother’s hand in his vice grip. I held my breath as he recklessly dragged us from my room, tripping down the stairs, skidding on the foyer. With sleep in my eyes I searched for my mother, craning my neck, desperately seeking her out as the pale morning light threatened to escape through the kitchen blinds. He whipped us around to the second set of stairs, the tops of my feet burning against the berber carpeting as they scraped the steps, our bodies tumbling down, unable to keep up. 

Skidding into the basement I saw it-hockey sticks splintered in two, my 45s shattered into impossible, jagged jigsaw pieces against the cold, white linoleum floor. My record player arm, a pendulum, barely swinging back and forth, one thin, red wire, unfixable. My treasured Shaun Cassidy album ripped in half, the shiny, black vinyl record buried, somewhere in the rubble.

I was beyond confused, brain on fire. WHERE WAS MY MOTHER?

Bleary eyed, I focused on a metal cake pan spinning - a giant quarter, slowly giving way, falling to its side, exhausted. I spied bright yellow plastic beneath the leg of a decapitated doll, her head nowhere to be found through this confusion.  My eyes followed the yellow that began to reveal my beloved EZ bake oven, shattered; one plastic amber shard pointing aggressively at me as if I had done something terribly wrong. I was seven. My brother, eleven. We had never seen anything like this before. A bomb went off and that bomb was our father. As my newfound seven year old rage slowly rose from my stomach to my throat I was instantly silenced, terrified, watching him in full eruption, screaming, accusing— my brain muted while I was trying to make sense of what had happened standing barefoot in my thin, Holly Hobby nightgown. My brother stood frozen, his dark blue Batman pajamas seeping into a darker hue as he slowly wet himself.

Our father had destroyed  e v e r y t h i n g.  He laid this confusion, his confusion at my delicate size two feet. He stood screaming, picking up pieces of anything he could find, throwing what was left of our toys against the wall. Once he had exhausted himself, he lumbered back up the stairs, muttering profanity only he could understand. My brother, unable to move, stared at his broken hockey sticks while my eyes frantically searched over the rubble for my Baby Alive. He left us there to sift through the detritus of what was left of what we knew of ourselves. We were to throw everything away, every beloved toy, every destroyed childhood magical possession, every broken piece dismantled with his rough, calloused hands. We, his children, were to pick up every shattered piece, pack it into garbage bags and leave the memories on the curb. We were bad and the neighbors needed to know. Shame was his instrument of choice that day. From the top of the stairs, he started up  again, screaming, his voice relentlessly pounding into us how bad we were… over and over and over again.

I was planted in the mountain of debris, my playground of imagination, the hills and valleys of where I created my worlds of joy, now desolate. My meticulously organized collection of Disney’s Golden books were roughly shredded, scattered on the ground in a blown kaleidoscope of vibrant confetti colors. Everything I held dear, my tools to escape into make believe were stolen from me in an instant. Last night was my birthday party. Five families of cousins running through the house, blaring Foreigner’s “DoubleVision” on my now destroyed tiny stereo. Nothing was left. Including my father’s wedding gift. A sculpture from Giorgio, his best friend, still in Italy, now with a hairline crack. This was his revenge. He left that possession in the basement, it was an afterthought. The night before a gang of cousins had full control of the beautiful chaos that was our 70s childhood. After that morning, I had been planted there for  45 years…stuck. If my father told me I was terrible, then I was. I was terrible. I was terrible. I was terrible.

—--------------

Trauma. It’s always a surprise attack; through seven year old eyes, it slices, it bleeds, it festers, it changes, it grows. It.is.relentless in the damage it does. At seven, there is nothing to hold onto. Our little bodies swept into his rage and only he decided our release; but when are we released? When the programming starts so early it takes a lifetime to untangle. Sometimes our brains wipe the entire event, but we were there… and when we’re ready, we remember. Our beautiful, innocent, trusting, hypersensitive souls finally allow our hearts to connect to our nervous systems and we suddenly remember everything. Brought back instantaneously to the unforeseen eruptions of the immigrant Italian blue-collar wrath; every piece of glass shattered, kitchen tables shoved into our chests, pinning us against the wall, for example. We begin to remember so much that the profound despair metamorphosizes into our own rage; however, before any awakening can happen, we internalize everything. We were so little, but we grow and see the world through a skewed, filthy lens that we can not actually see through- it is too cracked, too dirty…but it’s the only lens we have. We think we can see things clearly. We believed we deserved it. We believed we were the bad ones. We provoked these never-ending violent actions and reactions because we were the cause of the hairline crack in dad’s special sculpture. He convinced us we were terrible…

but none of that was true. We bought the lie. We carried it until we couldn’t; when holding it manifested into unfulfilled dreams, bad relationships and a complete loss of self.

Can someone so little, be so bad? No. My brother and I were powerless and forced to watch the show. 

Epilogue: I found my vinyl Shaun Cassidy. I pulled it out from under the rubble that day. I thought it was ruined-so many scratches, it skipped so many times.  With patience and tender care, it played. It still plays.  It took what seemed like a lifetime to pull myself out from under the rubble.  I appeared ruined too, skipped so many times, but with tender care, now I play…and I intend to play louder than ever.