Life Poker

TW: child abuse

There was a stain of mold leeching across the wall from the right hand corner. Everyday it inched further and I had given up using the chemical bleach. No matter how far I pushed it back, the mold returned stronger and stronger. I’ve used insecticides, pesticides, hospital grade bleach and I’m running out of options.

In my science class, I’d learned about viral genetics and evolution. The reason we need a new influenza vaccine every year is because the influenza virus genetically adapts to the vaccine, and it evolves until the vaccine becomes irrelevant.

It evolves and it evolves.

It’s catching up to me.

Life is one big rat race and I’m two laps behind.

The day I was born, I was dealt a virus.

Bad hand, I guess.

4:57pm, Monday, 14^th June.

In exactly 3 minutes, my mother will come home. She’ll wait outside the door until it’s exactly 5 o’clock. She won’t open the door until the second hand reaches 12. She might be outside at this exact moment. Waiting for the exact moment. Excruciating, meticulous behavior.

Step. Shuffle. The keys were in the door. Click. Oh Lord, here it comes.

“Hi Mom.”

Wrong answer.

“Jackson Kazski, why aren’t you studying, haven’t you seen your marks at school?”

“Sorry, I’m washing the dishes,” I replied. Our dishwasher was being repaired.

“Couldn’t you complete them today? You’re not very good with time management, are you?”

Oh no, we’re a 5 out of 10 today.

“Sorry Mom, I finished work at the grocery, and I stayed out talking to…”

BLAM! She had an iron grip on my hair and slammed my face onto the table. Again. And again. She was screaming. And crying. I’m getting too independent. I don’t love her enough. I’m not grateful. BLAM! Again. And again. She’s given up so much for me. She works hard for me to study. She wanted a daughter. BLAM! Again. And again. I’ll abandon her. I’m a terrible son. I’m useless. Again. And again.

Now we’re both crying. The side of my face, bruised and bleeding, was not enough. I had to have my soul torn apart and then stitched together so that I could be chained up and controlled.

Through the tears, I can see the mold inching across the wall. It’s green and slimy. It’s crawling towards me. Its little roots are scraping across the wall and reaching with greedy hands, tearing across the plaster. I can’t get rid of it. I’ve tried gifts. I’ve tried therapy. I begged my father to come home and help me. But it’s coming for me, and it will take over my house.

On Tuesday nights, I work at Jamie’s Fruit and Veg Grocery. My boss is a very kind man. A person like him has the gift of knowing things that aren’t spoken out loud. He saw the swollen, broken face and let me have the night off with full pay. “Don’t worry, Jackie,” he had said, “the customers can’t see you like this anyway.” He winked at me and insisted that I leave.

I broke down crying in the parking lot alone.

With my free night, I drove to my best friend’s house, where a few of our friends gather to play Poker. My best friend, Penelope, is nicknamed ‘Lucky Penny’ due to her card-playing skills. She’s immensely talented, albeit a small gambling addiction. But for all her frivolity, Penny is remarkably intelligent. When I first met Penny, she wanted to learn how to play the violin simply because someone told her it was difficult. Within two years, she had been scouted for the National Symphony Orchestra to play a difficult solo as 1^st violin. She’s gifted, but she’s always challenging herself to strife further. I have never met anyone who glowed with such a brilliant magnificence. She’s a morning sunrise. I could only hope that some of that sunshine would wash me clean.

Everyone greeted me warmly at when I arrived and I sat down next to Lucky Penny. We ate. We drank. Penny won the final game with a royal flush. She fooled us all and raked in all our chips. I was stupid for thinking I could win with 2 Jack’s. We played Poker until everyone left and it was just Penny and me. I didn’t want to go home.

Penny was shuffling the cards. She held out the deck to me and I took the top card. She took the next top card. It’s a simple game of chance we play. The winner has the highest card.

“What do you have?” She asked.

“10 of diamonds.” I replied.

“Queen of hearts.” She laughed, “Gosh, you’re quite unlucky tonight, aren’t you?”

“I keep getting dealt a bad hand, I’m not as lucky as you. Bad luck sticks to me like the flu.”

Lucky Penny kept shuffling her cards. “It’s true that poker is a game of chance, and it’s true that you can’t control the cards you’ve been dealt. But poker is also about controlling the situation you have. It’s about bluffing and lying. You manipulate what people think so they do what you want. You can intimidate people into thinking you have a good hand when you have a crappy hand. You trick them into thinking they have a chance to win, and by doing so, you squeeze out every last drop. Then, at the right time, you snatch everything away.”

Manipulation… Control… Intimidation…

“Viruses are different from poker,” Penny continued, “you have to snuff them out entirely from the start. If you leave a trace of it, that snippet will grow and evolve into something new. Like strawberry plants, if a stalk is left, it will regrow into a new strawberry plant.”

Snuff it out from the start… Evolve…

“I don’t think it’s about luck, it’s about what you do with the cards you’ve been given. It’s easy for me to say, I suppose, I’ve always had a decent hand.” Penny looked at me to gauge a response, but I wasn’t looking at her, I was looking at the pictures of her family on the wall. Framed wooden photos of smiling faces. Framed captures of hugs and kisses.

A decent hand…

I looked in the top right corner of the wall. No mold.

I dreaded every step on the way home. I replayed every possible scene. Every slap. Every punch. Every crack of the whip. It was all waiting for me as soon as I stepped inside. My mother was waiting for me. At first, she seemed calm. Almost relieved that I was home safe. I know that deep down, my mother actually loved me like a mother should. I don’t know if my real mother was struggling to climb out and she was being suppressed by this psychotic woman, or if my real mother is the same person who bruises and breaks my body.

She was wearing a pretty nightgown and she had smooth long hair. She looked pretty. She smiled and said she was glad I was home safe. That she didn’t know where I was. She looked like she was going to give me hug.

Then, flick. Her face contorted into a twisted snarl. Her face was like a growling dog, twisted, crumpled and full of hate. All senses went numb in the light of this sheer malice. She slapped me across the face with a strong fling of her arm and I collapsed on the floor in pain. And she was kicking me. Now, she was on top of me, punching me, trying to pull my arms away from my face so she could look at her failure of a son.

All I could think of was Penny’s voice telling me to ‘snuff it out’.

Snuff it out… snuff it out… snuff it out…

Manipulation… controlling… intimidation…

This woman wasn’t my mother, she was a parasite and a virus I couldn’t get rid of. I’d been stuck with these cards ever since I was born. I wasn’t Lucky Penny. I have to do what I can with the hand I have been dealt.

For the first time in my life, I fought back.

I punched my mother in the nose and I broke her nose. Warm blood dripped onto my face and my dear, sweet mother stumbled back, clutching her bleeding nose. The sound of breaking cartilage was the most beautiful noise I’ve ever heard in this crumbling hellhole. The knot in my chest became undone and I tasted a deep breath for the first time. I suppose this is what falling in love feels like.

I gathered 10 years of beatings, bruises and broken bones into… Well, I don’t know how long I beat my mother... Perhaps it was 10 minutes. But I had her begging for her life by the time I was too tired to continue.

I thought of the mold in the wall. The never-ending mold that kept coming back. It was disgusting. Filthy. It made this house more wretched that it already was. That sickening fungal disease. It was consuming my life. Nauseating.

Snuff it out… snuff it out… snuff it out…

At this point, I lost control. I saw myself take a gleaming steak knife from the knife block on the kitchen table. I don’t remember much; I may have blacked out. I vaguely saw Jackie holding a steak knife. A knife that Jackie had been threatened with many times. Perhaps it was an idle threat, a bluff to make a disobedient child behave, but that didn’t matter anymore. I saw Jackie pull her hair back in the same way I have had my hair dragged. I saw Jackie drive the heel into her throat with one confident motion. And when I awoke in my body, I was the one holding the knife and I was the one covered in blood.

I have never felt prouder of myself.

Today, Jackie took one step to becoming more like Lucky Penny.

I freed myself from the cards.

I looked in the top right hand corner of the wall.

I think the mold stopped growing.