Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [12]
“All right, take down your pants.”
I took my pants down.
“Pull down your shorts.”
I pulled them down.
Then he laid on the strop. The first blow inflicted more shock than pain. The second hurt more. Each blow which followed increased the pain. At first I was aware of the walls, the toilet, the tub. Finally I couldn’t see anything. As he beat me, he berated me, but I couldn’t understand the words. I thought about his roses, how he grew roses in the yard. I thought about his automobile in the garage. I tried not to scream. I knew that if I did scream he might stop, but knowing this, and knowing his desire for me to scream, prevented me. The tears ran from my eyes as I remained silent. After a while it all became just a whirlpool, a jumble, and there was only the deadly possibility of being there forever. Finally, like something jerked into action, I began to sob, swallowing and choking on the salt slime that ran down my throat. He stopped.
He was no longer there. I became aware of the little window again and the mirror. There was the razor strop hanging from the hook, long and brown and twisted. I couldn’t bend over to pull up my pants or my shorts and I walked to the door, awkwardly, my clothes around my feet. I opened the bathroom door and there was my mother standing in the hall.
“It wasn’t right,” I told her. “Why didn’t you help me?”
“The father,” she said, “is always right.”
Then my mother walked away. I went to my bedroom, dragging my clothing around my feet and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress hurt me. Outside, through the rear screen I could see my father’s roses growing. They were red and white and yellow, large and full. The sun was very low but not yet set and the last of it slanted through the rear window. I felt that even the sun belonged to my father, that I had no right to it because it was shining upon my father’s house. I was like his roses, something that belonged to him and not to me…
9
By the time they called me to dinner I was able to pull up my clothing and walk to the breakfast nook where we ate all our meals except on Sunday. There were two pillows on my chair. I sat on them but my legs and ass still burned. My father was talking about his job, as always.
“I told Sullivan to combine three routes into two and let one man go from each shift. Nobody is really pulling their weight around there…”
“They ought to listen to you, Daddy,” said my mother.
“Please,” I said, “please excuse me but I don’t feel like eating…
“You’ll eat your FOOD!” said my father. “Your mother prepared this food!”
“Yes,” said my mother, “carrots and peas and roast beef.”
“And the mashed potatoes and gravy,” said my father.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You will eat every carrot, and pee on your plate!” said my father.
He was trying to be funny. That was one of his favorite remarks.
“DADDY!” said my mother in shocked disbelief.
I began eating. It was terrible. I felt as if I were eating them, what they believed in, what they were. I didn’t chew any of it, I just swallowed it to get rid of it. Meanwhile my father was talking about how good it all tasted, how lucky we were to be eating good food when most of the people in the world, and many even in America, were starving and poor.
“What’s for dessert, Mama?” my father asked.
His face was horrible, the lips pushed out, greasy and wet with pleasure. He acted as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t beaten me. When I was back in my bedroom I thought, these people are not my parents, they must have adopted me and now they are unhappy with what I have become.
10
Lila Jane was a girl my age who lived next door. I still wasn’t allowed to play with the children in the neighborhood, but sitting in the bedroom often got dull. I would go out