SEVEN

~EAT of thy FLESH~

At some point between the first and third grade I realised other people could hurt me.
Obviously they could hurt me - I’d been abused for most of my life at that point. The kids around me remembered every little misdemeanour and one particular boy in my class had taken a special liking to making my life hell. But I suppose to put it simply, I never realised that one could be violent.
I sat on the couch at my Mum’s one night while my brother flipped through the channels. It was late, later than I usually stayed up. Jayden lingered on a crime show - two detectives were talking about a suspect in an office, trading statements back and forth like a duel. Then the scene changed abruptly - a jump cut - to a tan rope descending over a woman’s head and tugging on her throat.
Jayden immediately changed it with the urgency of an older brother realising he could get into trouble. I stared at the screen, now on a game of football, the image burnt into my retinas.
I laid in bed that night with my eyes still wide open. My sister slept in the twin bed against the opposite wall, loudly snoring. The curtain was slightly ajar, casting the shadows of branches across the carpet. I imagined a man jumping the fence and opening the window. I imagined him slinking in. I imagined him killing my Mum and step dad, my brother and sister, and then me. Me, last. Me, alone.
And then a second scenario came to me, one that caused the hair to stand up on the back of my neck and my eyes to burn - that someone could enter Daveed’s house while I wasn’t there. That they could hurt him. To lose him…I would have rather died.
The thoughts came again and again, every night, regardless of where I was. School camps, friend’s sleep overs, my cousin’s bedrooms. Daveed was out there and could be taken from me and I would be left without him. He always told my sister and I that it was the three of us, the three musketeers, the three of us against the world. If I lost him I would have nothing left. The depth of his manipulation is barely comprehensible to me now. Back then I had no words for the way I felt, had no questions as to why I felt that way, and only knew the permanence of terror.
It permeated through my waking life. I felt as though I were marching toward the end of my family, like I was forced to dance the line right to the conclusion. A constant stream of fear grew from my very core like the rotten carcass of a rat king. Its tails snaked through my organs and punctured my flesh.
Come nightfall it was impossible for me to feel safe, at either house. I’d always suffered from chronic nightmares but now to fall asleep meant deserting my vigil. I had to keep my family safe, I had to be on the lookout for anything. Zoya and I constantly changed the layout of our room around but I always kept my bed in a corner so I could sit up at night, scanning the room for potential danger. To go to the bathroom was to brave No Man’s Land. I’d quickly run down the corridor, through the kitchen, and into the toilet where I’d look over my shoulder every few seconds - not that there was enough room for anyone to lurk. It didn’t matter.
My dad took us to the Preston Market every Saturday. I dreaded walking through the meat market; people crammed together, the scent of sweat and fish, the sight of entrails and carcasses. Decapitated heads of pigs stared at me unblinking with glassy eyes. By the time my dad lifted me up into our truck I was usually shaking with nausea, my gaze on the bags of meat the entire ride home.
Blood pooling in plastic bags. Muscle and tissue breaking down. Bones marinated in the creature’s remains. At dinner I couldn’t think about anything but the fact that oxygen and blood had once pulsated through the slab on my plate. I would constantly dream that I was slaughtered, dismembered, and prepared for a feast. All too human faces would laugh while they swallowed me, bite by bite.
My aversion to eating meat became more resolved after my cat had kittens.
My sister and I had a dozen cats during our childhood. One of us would suggest it to the other and then we were in our Dad’s room saying, “please please please please please please,” until he caved in. We drove to breeders or rescues and he would adopt each of us a cat. They never lasted long once we arrived home; after a few weeks they would “run away,” leaving my sister and I in tears. Eventually we adopted two that lasted longer than the others. He kept letting them out, thinking they wouldn’t return, but they did. Obviously they got impregnated quickly.
We were thrilled. Kittens! Any little girl would be filled with excitement. One day I used the operator to call a local vet and asked what I could do to make sure the cats were taken care of during their pregnancies. The woman on the phone happily told me what to do and was saying goodbye just as Daveed walked into the lounge room.
He grabbed the phone from my hand, causing the cord to whip against the wall, and slammed it on the receiver. “Who were you calling?”
My chest felt like it was filled with enough air to burst. “I wanted to ask the vet how to take care of the cats.”
He grimaced. Once, when I was almost too young to remember, he was a handsome man. He would shower and dress for the day. Now he never did unless we had plans. His remaining teeth were covered in the grime of tobacco as he bared them at me. The curls that fanned out around his head like a halo trembled. “Why would you do that? They’ll take them away from you. How stupid could you be?”
I had nothing to say. The air in my chest grew wings and fluttered against my ribcage hard enough to make me flinch. When he sat on the couch I leaned over his legs. He pushed down my pants, exposing my skin to the cold air, and smacked me. Once, twice, over and over as I bit on my lip hard enough to taste copper. I laid in his bed that night, compulsively picking at the barely formed scab. I woke up the next morning and my lips were covered with blackened plasma. I had to pull it off to avoid questions, leaving me bloody. During my first class of the day the school’s receptionist walked in and handed me a tube of chapstick, saying that Daveed brought it to the front desk.
Weeks passed and eventually the morning came. My sister shook me awake. “My cat had her kitten! Just one but she’s so cute. Let’s see if yours had hers!” Electric excitement filled me, my exhaustion and nightmares instantly forgotten, as we tore through the house. Within seconds I was in the mud room filled with shoes covered in dirt and untended laundry. I approached the wicker basket I’d fashioned for my cat’s bed and peered over the side.
That was the first time I ever truly screamed.
The cat - a white cloud of fur I’d named Heavenly - licked the crown of a kitten. Like she didn’t realise it was dead. Like she didn’t realise they were all dead, all six staring up at the ceiling with their hearts on the outside of their chests. A thin layer of translucent skin kept their organs from spilling everywhere but I could see the little entrails, the twisted way their livers stood out. Even their paws were softly cupped like they had never stretched them.
My sister pulled me into her arms and caressed my hair. Soon her shirt was soaked. The thumping in my head disguised the sound of Daveed’s footsteps as he strode in. My sister told him that the kittens were dead and he only looked at me without pity and turned. As he left I heard him mutter something that made me wail louder; “I knew I should’ve thrown them out when I saw it.”
He’d seen them. Those poor little kittens. And he left them for me to find.
Later I watched from the window as he placed a plastic bag from the grocery store into the bin. He missed a part in my dress up closet. A single, little head.
After that the idea of eating meat no longer repulsed me; now the concept was one of complete horror. It never crossed my mind when I saw others eat it but the moment my Mum put lamb chops on my plate I would feel as though I was being asked to eat human flesh. I spent hours at the dinner table - at both of my parents' houses - refusing to touch meat. Let me starve to death. I couldn’t care less.
Then came the call we all knew was coming.
Americo’s treatment of my Nonna was openly known by our family. Bruises covered her arms almost permanently. They bickered back and forth in Portuguese until arguments erupted. My grandmother was not a docile woman and fiercely denied him whatever satisfaction he ached for. But, for all of her empowerment, she was a woman of her time. Of her faith. Leaving him was never an option. Separating was not even contemplated. To move in with us - like we begged her to do - was to turn her back on her husband and her God. She had to stay. She had to fulfil her marital vows to obey.
My grandfather was a drunken lout at his best. He was a monster at his worst.
He shoved her with enough force for her to stumble backward into one of the dining chairs. They owned the type that every wog family has, with the steel frame and cushioned vinyl. The corner cut into her arm, right at the crux of a neighbouring artery, and ripped deeply.
Zoya and I were inconsolable when we heard. We told Daveed we needed, “to go there, right now, please.” I imagined her dying. I imagined never hearing her laugh again, never smelling the rice she would make just for me. She’s been gone for years now and those are the two things I miss the most.
Daveed said that we could go after dinner. Our meals were usually one of two things on alternating days; one was a mush of various vegetables that he’d boiled down into a slop and froze. I’d put Vegemite in it to make it taste better, but I could manage. The other was bolognese pasta. It was pasta night.
I crossed my arms. “No. I’m not eating it.”
Daveed looked over his shoulder at me as he washed the dishes. A cigarette dangled from his mouth as he spoke. “Then we won’t see your grandmother. She might die, you know.”
The rebellion in me withered at the words.
I looked over at Zoya. She stared at me with huge, pleading eyes. Please, I could see. You have to do it, I could read.
My gaze dropped down to the bowl in front of me. So unassuming, so unthreatening, yet as I picked up my fork I felt as though I were plunging my hand into fire. The oil congealed on my lips, the texture of the ground meat suffocated my senses. I shut my eyes and swallowed. I ate every bite, even when I began crying.
Nonna was sitting up in bed when we arrived. Her arm was in a cast and she had two hundred internal stitches but she was okay. Americo sat next to her bed silently, flanked by Santos and Paloma. Their children were all talking and laughing like it was any family lunch.
No one ever talked about it again.