The Family Crest

One hand to the mirror, as if placating the glass for the intrusion, you carefully prod the bruise on your cheek. Briefly, you wonder if you can truly cover it up with a mere smattering of Foundation. Your hand pauses, gently probing the purpled skin. It is a Coat of Arms, you realise. A Crest. A Crest crafted of darkened lilac hues, blooming like an oxbow lake over your freckles.

Perhaps your freckles are the reason he did this. After all, you’ve never liked them either.

The mirror offers you a skeleton girl with sunken cheekbones crowned by sallow hair. Dishwater red, if you’re not mistaken. As if someone has poured raspberry jelly down the sink. Looking down, you spit blood into a tissue which rests atop the toilet seat. It isn’t so bad, you tell yourself.

The bruise is your symbol. Your badge of honour.

No, you realise as you hear him storming through the kitchen, screaming your name. It is evidence. It is a reminder, the click of your phone as it tells you to visit a friend, an enemy, your Mother, anyone. Anyone at all.

Ducking your head, you reach for the hoodie which hangs in spectral blue on the back of the bathroom door. You slip it over your head.

There is no honour in this. No medal will be given if you make it through the next ten years. You cannot dodge. You cannot move.

You tiptoe over the carpet, as if treading on blown glass. Most days, you barely have the time to speak, let alone breathe.

Your thoughts bunch like an over-crowded locomotive at a living museum. You smile. The Black Country Museum. The day when he took your hand and led you around each wonder, a smile on his face. A smile wide enough to match the new cut on your neck from where the plate smashed the night before. Now, it is covered with a butterfly plaster. Somehow, you can still see it. Peeling back the collar of your blouse, as if trying to wave.

He’s moving downstairs. You hear him, each step like a rogue pendulum swinging into the side of your skull. Inside, your organs shiver, seem to rattle your bones. Your entire body is a sheet on the washing line, torn by the wind. Eagerly, you prod the bruise again. Pain flushes up into your forehead. A reminder. A stark, bright purple and black reminder.

You think of your wardrobe, where your clothes are ripped at the seams. Where your summer dress is scrunched at the back, resting languidly on a coat hanger. It is still splattered with mud from where you fell. Where he pushed you. You can’t remove it yet, can’t put it in the wash. You can’t. But there is something you can do.

At first, you balk at the prospect. You stare at the ghoul in the mirror, wishing your reflection would reach out its hand and pull you into the glass. The bruise on your cheek rears it head.

You know what you must do.

“Where the hell is dinner? Is the oven on? Get me a beer!” You hear him shrieking from the kitchen table. You wait. Only for a few seconds. But you wait them out.

“Forget it. I’m heading out. Useless,” he’s shouting. A moment later, the door slams. You are alone.

In front of you, the mirror flashes, illuminating your purpled cheeks. His hand, behind you. His skin smacking against your jaw. No, you realise. You are never alone.

Half-stumbling, you fumble for the bathroom door. Emerge onto the landing, where the salted caramel carpet is almost slippery beneath your toes. You manage to make it to the wardrobe, where you yank out a suitcase. You packed it two months ago, the third time you decided you wanted to leave. It has remained packed ever since, sitting in the dark. Waiting to be used. Slowly, you lift it out of the blackness. It is surprisingly light, and it is Atlantic blue – almost anthracite. Plain, no stickers. Your sister is the one who loves coating objects in geographically themed posters. The wheels are cleaned; it has never been used before.

Snagging a coat from the edge of the bed, you begin to lug the suitcase downstairs. Your heart jostles against your lungs, your ribcage, waiting for him to return with his face flushed from beer and his fists hungry for your skin. When the kitchen remains a cemetery of empty corkboard, you rush to the back door.

You do not bother to close it behind you.

The outdoors hits you like a feather – soft but crammed with textures. The summer breeze seems to whistle through your ears. A ring of bells, trying to blind you. You stagger away from the semi-detached, taking the back roads through the park to the train station. The suitcase drags behind you like an anchor, pulling you all the way back, back to the house. Back to him.

A lump in your throat, you keep walking.

Sliding your hand into you coat pocket, you yank out the address. The paper is gnarled, almost crusty from the time you threw it out into the rain. But the address remains readable. She told you to visit, but you kept making excuses. Reasons why you wanted to avoid stepping back into her life. Why else had you traded her love for something which was meant to be akin to love but became twisted and wrong?

The train station is an angular rectangle constructed of red metal beams coveting glass walls. The doors are automatic, swallowing you as you drag your suitcase onto the tiles. You do your best to hide your face in your coat collar, but the ticket officers still offer you odd stares as you shuffle through to the platform. Your train is on Platform Six, right at the bottom of the staircase, next to a sandwich shop. Your stomach rumbles, but you ignore it. You don’t have time. Besides, you know if you eat now, the food won’t remain in your stomach for long.

The train arrives late, so you know that this time, leaving isn’t a dream. Dragging your suitcase onto the nearest carriage winds you instantly and you flounder like a fish in a desert before rushing for a chair. The seats are hard, not plush. The cushions seem to dig into your spine. You look around, wide eyed. Expect to see him coursing through the aisle, hands crushing the foldable arm rests in his wake. Even the Conductor’s voice seems to scream for you to return home.

You try to close your eyes, to sleep the journey away. After half an hour of unfit full shuffling, you remain awake, staring at the countryside as it flashes by in tufts of green. Little lambs, bouncing away, unaware of the horrors which will befall their brothers and sisters.

Breathing hard, you return to the past. To your destination – the little redbrick house on the street corner, near the bookshop where you grew up, a little girl with pigtails, jumping in puddles on a drizzly April afternoon.

It isn’t raining when the train stops. Instead, the sun remains pulsing like a heartbeat in the sky. Perhaps it’s yours. You always wondered where that pesky organ went.

Carefully, you manage to stand for long enough to lug the suitcase out onto the platform. This station seems plastic, as if it’s made of Lego. You stumble to a bench and sit for a few minutes to watch the train leave. It slithers out of the station in snake-like serpentine.

Twenty minutes later, your drag your suitcase up the steps, keeping to the left as the yellow lines dictate. Soon enough, you emerge into the spitting smog. Cars line each side of the pavement outside the station – red Ford Fiesta’s, black Skoda’s, orange Kia’s. The houses are a mixture of bungalows with manicured gardens, crowned with detached terraces, some sporting cherubs spouting fountain water.

You know the address off by heart by the time you pull the suitcase across the road to the main street. You head up a set of stone steps, the case a led weight on your arm. Around a corner, you nearly stumble over the pavement. Around another corner and it’s there. A small semi-detached, the one near the bookstore.

The driveway has been partially eaten by succulents.

You knock on the door and step back. For a moment, you hear scuffling through the letterbox. The door is opened by a small woman who should not be your Mother. She is almost weightless, with hollowed cheekbones. She is not your Mother. A ghost of your Mother, perhaps. But her skin is peppered with bruises.

“Who the hell is that at the door?” You jump, and a large man with a scruffy beard emerges from the darkened hallway. Your Mother seems to shrink when he appears.

“Hello,” you manage to grind out of your throat. The man sneers, using the entirety of his upper lip, like a horse. He touches your Mother’s arm, which is bruised beneath her semi-transparent blouse. Your Mother flinches. Your eyes widen and you understand.

Folie à deux, you think. A madness shared by two.

After all, bruises are the Family Crest.

“Sorry,” you say. “Wrong address”. You turn from the door without making eye-contact. Your Mother doesn’t speak and the man only spits at your back, muttering something under his breath.

Suitcase in hand, you return to the station.