Running for Home - 28. November 25, 2021

November 25, 2021

It’s Thanksgiving. Another holiday I’ve always hated. As a kid, it meant having to get together with my Dad’s family and have this big formal dinner. It meant having to deal with all my bratty cousins that made fun of me because I was small for my age before puberty, because I wasn’t very strong, because I cried too easily, because my clothing was all second hand from them or from the thrift shop, because I didn’t play any school sports, because I couldn’t catch and would get hit in the face if they threw a ball at me, because I threw like a girl, and on and on like that. They’d say all this shit, sometimes even in earshot of the adults and no one would yell at them. No one would make me feel better. If I let my father know about it, if I cried to him, he’d smack me good for not being a man about it and tell me to stop whining like a baby, like a girl. He’d tell me to man up and give it back to them, and clobber them if I had to.

I dealt with that bullshit until the year I was ten. My father, in one of his typical belligerent drunken stupors, had said something unacceptable to my grandfather one too many times and we were no longer welcome in his home. That Thanksgiving we stayed at our place in the trailer park. My mother burnt the turkey. My father got drunk and passed out, then drank some more when he came to. My mother went out to buy smokes and while she was out I accidentally knocked over my dad’s beer. He was so drunk and so angry that he beat me, then locked me in my room. When my mother got home and came to my room to check on me, I pretended to be asleep under the covers until she left. If she’d been there while he was hitting me, she probably would have yelled at me for the spill and let dad have at me anyway. He wouldn’t have beat me as bad, but I still would have had gotten a few welts and bruises on my behind. My mother left the door to my room unlocked when she finished checking on me.

I don’t know exactly where she was after that, whether she went to the TV room and was drinking with Dad, or whether she just was in their bedroom. I just kind of laid there, trying to find something to be thankful for, hoping that there weren’t any fights between them tonight. They’d been fighting a lot, lately, screaming at each other at dinner or after I went to sleep. My mother even threatened to leave me here with him and go home to Australia, but we were dirt poor and there’s no way she would have been able to cobble together money for the flight. It hurt me a lot when she said she’d just leave me with him, because up until that point I still thought she loved me. That I was important to her. I started to think that for sure one of their fights was going to happen again that night. My father got too drunk earlier and those nights were when the fighting was the worst, especially if my mother had been drinking as well.

A couple hours later, I was still scared. I had started remembering some of the presentations they did at school, some of the commercials on TV between cartoons. My parents weren’t supposed to hurt me like this, not like my dad did that night. Sure, I’d got some heavy spankings probably at least once a week, but nothing like this ever before. I clawed at my mind trying to remember the number for Kids Help Phone, but I couldn’t. I was only ten, after all. My parents threw out any handouts like that, so I didn’t have it anywhere. I thought about using the phone, but what if they caught me? Who would I call, anyway? I didn’t know any numbers, other than 911. For some reason I didn’t think this was emergency enough to call that number. Worse, though, was the fact that the two telephone handsets were pretty much inaccessible – one was beside my parents’ bed and the other right next to the recliner where my dad was passed out. The phone book was there too.

I was scared, but I needed to do something. I needed to leave, to run away. Not forever, I didn’t want to leave forever, but I was so scared. Where would I go? I thought about my friends from school. My friend Tommy’s mom was really nice and they lived only a few rows away in the trailer park. Maybe she’d let me stay over for a couple nights? By this point I figured both my parents were probably both passed out, so I quietly snuck out and walked to Tommy’s house. It was pretty late by then. His mother answered the door and then freaked out when she saw the dark bruises forming on my face. She called the police. I never saw my parents again after that night.

I still remember the interviews, the questioning. I remember the meetings with social workers and child psychologists. I remember how scared I was, even more scared than when my parents were fighting, when my father was hurting me. I was scared because I’d opened a can of worms that I wasn’t expecting, and the uncertainty was different than the kind of tiptoeing I had to do around my parents when they were drunk, fighting or just in a bad mood. I didn’t realize how serious the consequences of my actions were. I know now that they must have sent my father if not both of my parents to jail for a while, but I don’t know for how long. I don’t know whether they did a plea deal or if they went to court. No one made me testify in court after the questioning. My parents never made any effort to get me back into their custody, either, as far as I know. Twenty-six years on, I know objectively that it was probably for the best, but part of me still aches for the family we could have been, the family we should have been.

I was in foster care for about two years. I hated it. I wasn’t like a lot of the kids there, and didn’t get along with many of them. I’m not sure if I was just less fucked up than my peers or if we were all just expressing our issues in different ways. I was in a completely new school district, and didn’t have any friends any more, either. It seemed like the parents in the area all knew who the foster families were and didn’t want their kids to associate with us trash. To make all of it worse, my powers started to come in during that period and the whole time I was wondering what was going to happen to me.

Every night I’d lie in my bed wondering if going to Tommy’s that night was the right decision. I’m certain I really hurt my parents, and back then I felt incredibly guilty about it, even if now all I feel is a numb resentment. The same questions would run through my head, too: How long would I stay in foster care? Why didn’t any of my aunts or uncles, or even my grandparents on my Dad’s side take me in? I know my Dad had burned bridges, but was it truly so bad that no one loved me, either? My mom didn’t have any family left in Australia that I knew of. She was an only child and my grandparents on her side were killed in a car accident when I was in kindergarten. I remember going to Australia for their funeral. I remember it was nice there, and I saw kangaroos and koala bears. Everyone talked like my mom did with her accent, which I thought was so cool. My father was pissed at the amount of money it cost to go there, though, and made a stink about it both then and any time they argued about money for years afterwards. If my Dad’s family wouldn’t take me, would someone else adopt me instead? If that happened, would that mean my parents had renounced ties with me, wanted nothing to do with me anymore? And, once my powers manifested at the age of twelve in what was to be my last year of foster care, what do I do if someone finds out I can play with fire? That I’m a mutant?

I spent two years living with those questions, and then I was sent here. Xavier’s. Old Baldy and his idealistic idiots brought me here with the promise of a new, better future. It sounded good, a lot better than foster care and a shitload better than life had been with my parents. And, truth be told, it was. Even though I was a fuck-up, even though all I did was create trouble, it was better here than it had ever been anywhere else. After a while, though, I started to lose sight of that. I think between my self-loathing, my deep mistrust of adults, my internalized anger over my childhood, and my secret soul-consuming infatuation with Bobby, my negative brain just took over and created a sort of downward spiral of taking things for granted that I couldn’t escape until Stryker’s attack on the School. The shitstorm that followed in its wake broke the proverbial camel’s back, and I left all this goodness behind because I was too pissed off and blinded to see how lucky I was to live here.

I haven’t had turkey in years. The meal at the School was so fucking good tonight, and I took advantage of the feast in every way. Jubes made a joke that I was eating like Bobby the Bottomless Pit does and I flipper her the bird. He, for one, wasn’t there. I’m not sure where he went, whether it was to visit that insipid family of his or if he made some sort of other plans like visiting some of his old co-workers at the firm he used to work at in N.Y.C. Maybe I should call them current co-workers. I don’t know. Jubes told me that she heard Emma bitching him out the other day because he hadn’t handed in the latest set of student reports that were due last week and he was behind on other things too. He apparently said something about deadlines for some contract work for his old firm and Emma just about lost it, telling him he was being a child about his responsibilities here and that he shouldn’t have accepted the job here if he wasn’t going to put his all into it. That he could bloody well go back to being completely miserable with his dismal pedestrian life in New York if he couldn’t handle prioritizing his work here instead of side jobs with his old company. It’s not like he needed the extra money between what she was paying him to be there and the decent nest egg he’d built up over the years from good investment decisions!

Part of me wonders what kind of an effect that conversation had on Bobby. Would he take it as a slap to the face and start bitching and moaning like it was the world against him? Would he laugh it off in public, but be hurting underneath it all? Would he realize that he was being unfair to his students and get back to work? Or would he quit?

I guess it doesn’t matter either way, right?