“And if you had known I existed, would it have changed anything?”
I look at her small frame, built nearly identical to my late mother. The main difference being Nina didn’t look like a walking corpse or have track marks littering her arms. Plus, my mother had blonde hair and Nina’s is brown.
If you lined us all up together I would look like their child. The perfect mixture of blonde and brown in my hair, Nina’s eyes, my mother’s nose. There was no denying we were related.
“Of course it would have!” She furrows her eyebrows like my words are shocking.
“You’re my nephew for Christ’s sake. I would’ve raised you as my own. God knows what you have seen and been through growing up here.”
I inhale the smoke, letting it roll past my lips as I cut my eyes to her again. I may have only been sixteen but I was bigger than most grown ass men, and I know I was intimidating.
“No, God doesn’t know shit about what I saw. God didn’t dirty his shoes at the door of my home.”
God and I? We weren’t on good terms.
I just can’t get behind supporting something that puts so much evil in the world. Something that allows for small children to be hurt, killed, raped. If I was in a place of power like God, I think the first thing I would stop was the harm to children.
But obviously he is bothered with other shit, like flooding the earth and having a man build a boat or some shit.
Nina nods hopefully noticing my distaste for her last statement.
“Come back to the states with me. Let me help you finish high school and you can go about your way.”
“Why? So you don’t have to feel guilty for not knowing about me? Or is it about making amends with the dead?”
I’m being a dick, a certified asshole, but it’s only because I have to be. The world chews up the weak and spits them out for the strays to pick apart. I will never be weak again. I will never allow myself to lose my control.
I will never be a pet again.
She sighs, walking toward me, plucking the cigarette from my lips and throwing it out.
“Because you are my nephew, Malakai Adrian. I may not have known you for the past sixteen years, but I love you. You are flesh and blood. You deserve some stability, let me help you.”
This would be the time where I should say, if I had a heart, it would’ve squeezed or skipped.
You see I do have a heart. It pumps blood regularly through my body. It does its intended job. My heart does not skip, it does not break, it does not jump, if it did I would need to see a surgeon because it’s not normal for anyone’s heart to do that.
It’s all in everyone’s head.
So I guess I will say, if I had feelings, I would be happy.
My lack of an answer makes her continue.
“The local high school has a great hockey team, I hear you play?’
She would be correct. I wasn’t much of an organized sport person, I was more of the brooding lone wolf, but I liked hockey. Let me clarify, I liked being a goalie. I worked well on my own. I didn’t need a lot of teamwork skills to protect the net.
It also got me out of that hellhole longer. Away games were always my favorite because by the time I got home everyone was already asleep. Their pet was forgotten about.
“Listen, Nina. I appreciate the offer, but I think I’m better on my own. I can take care of myself. No offense, but I don’t need your help either.”
I push off the brick wall, jogging down the concrete steps to the sidewalk. I wasn’t sure where I was going from here. I had a little money saved, but not nearly enough to support myself.
Whatever I was going to do, I needed to figure it out quickly. I would make it out of this alive. I refused to let this life consume me like everyone else who falls inside of it.
I walk across the busy street to the brick apartments, each one filled with two to three girls, my mom luckily got her own because of me. However in a few hours it would have two new girls inside, probably my age, and they’d have no idea what they were getting themselves into.
I shove the door open with my shoulder, walking up the steps to our ‘home’ hating the smell of drugs and sex. It makes me nauseous. I step over the takeout containers and clothes. Slowly walking to my room, cringing at the sound of my feet stepping on something squishy. I don’t even bother looking down.
I open my door, everything still perfectly intact, just were I left it all. My books are alphabetized, my bed is made, it’s all in order, just like I like it. My room is the only one that doesn’t have cigarette burns in the carpets. The itch to get out of here is almost more intense than the fear of not knowing what I’m going to do with my life. Anything is better than here.
I dig out an old book bag, shoving my clothes inside as quickly as I can. The only time I am not annoyingly persistent with how my clothes are organized. I grab the pocket knife in my bedside drawer, flicking it open and slicing the mattress open to reveal my stash of money. I grab it all not bothering to count it right now, shoving it deep inside the bag.
I pull a hoodie off the hanger, shrugging it over my shoulders and tossing the hood on my head. I sling the bag over my shoulders, looking at my small room. I was born here. Raised in this room. A nostalgia lingers. It’s not a lot, but there’s a little.
Before the world introduced itself to me as cruel, when I was a young child, I was happy, I think. My mom would come home from work early in the morning and she would bring me one Mishka Kosolapy. I’d eat it while watching cartoons, then she’d go to sleep and I’d be left wandering around the apartment trying to find something to do to. Then my imagination was enough to keep me occupied, but adults have a habit of taking a child’s innocence.
“мой питомец, you were going to leave without telling goodbye?” Her smoky voice scratches against me like sandpaper. I don’t reply, talking isn’t something she liked to do much of anyway.
Yvonne, was one of my mom’s friends, another working lady and slightly older than my mom. One of the best at her job from what I heard and she made my fucking skin crawl.
Blonde hair, blue eyes, wrinkled complexion, and she wore this cheap perfume that smelled like roses, it would stick to me for days after she visited.
“Ответь мне, милый,” she hisses.
I turn around facing her completely, “I don’t answer to you anymore, Yvonne.”
A twisted little grin greets me as she shakes her head, moving toward me like the snake she is. Like all the other times when I was sleeping. I could smell her stench when she crept into my bedroom.
The cheap silk of her gown as she slid into bed with me. Vomit welled up in my throat, thick bile that tasted like acid.
Her lingering hands lay on my chest, drawing circles, it burns me. My jaw is wired shut as I snatch her fragile wrist in my hand. I stare down at her,
“Don’t you dare fucking touch me.”
“You’re so cute when you’re angry, my love.”
I have no reason for being here anymore. My mother is dead. I have nothing tethering me to this place.
I can finally leave here, and Yvonne.
“This is done now, Yvonne. You have no hold over me. Find a new pet.”
All the nights she forced her mouth on my small body even when I begged her not to. She was teaching me how to service someone, that’s what she would whisper. Showing me the ropes.