you your coat, Rain, and your mask, and I let you go. I knew you’d wait in the car—that you wouldn’t leave me or go to the police. Because I knew you—your heart, your mind, or thought I did. I knew when I left that house, you’d be waiting for me with the engine running, just like we planned.
I was ready. He was in charge—and I wanted him to be. That part of me that didn’t care what he did, or who he hurt, who wasn’t afraid and who didn’t have nightmares.
I watched you walk down the hall, small, slim—not much bigger than you had been when we were kids. I want you to know that I was—that I am—sorry. For how I treated you, for what I made you do. It was wrong.
Then I heard Kreskey, shuffling through the leaves outside, the groan of the stairs as he climbed onto the porch. All the blood drained from my body, my throat went dry. He moved so slowly, huffing with effort, then pushed the door open. He stood a moment, the night filling the corners of the doorway. Christ, he was more vile, uglier than he had ever been.
He was the boogeyman.
The monster in the closet.
I wasn’t prepared for the rush of emotion, the dry suck of pure terror. The knife in my hand was too heavy; my arm filled with sand.
He regarded me. All the time I’d been watching him, he presented like a zombie. But when he looked at me, his eyes were bright and alert. His hands clenched in fists.
I felt my insides loosen. I was frozen. The beast inside me was gone and it was just me in my skin, a beaten, traumatized boy grown into a weak and fearful man.
“You,” Kreskey said. He knew me, his mouth twisting into a hideous smile that revealed gray and crooked teeth. “You came back to me, you little bitch.”
It took me a second to realize that he wasn’t talking to me.
He was talking to you.
You came to stand beside me. I felt your cool small fingers wrap around mine.
You took the knife from my hand.
And, then, before I could stop you, you were running for him, a great warrior’s cry exploding from your open mouth.
I feel my way up the narrow staircase, and come quickly to the locked door, which I foolishly try to ram with my good shoulder, causing myself so much agony that I nearly black out. I almost take another tumble down the stairs. The door won’t budge.
“So, Billy,” I say, slinking against the wall, back down the steps. “How did you wind up in this mess?”
I’ve asked this question of countless traumatized children. It’s not as flip as it sounds, though maybe a little. It’s more a light way to get a young person to think about the journey. To think about the journey from the perspective of a person who had at least some control over the way things went. Responsibility. Not guilt. Not blame. Responsibility is the ability to respond better to our current situation, to consider ourselves the actor in what comes next—not just a victim of what happened to us.
“So, Hank,” says Tess from the emptiness in front of him. “How did you wind up in this mess?”
Fair enough.
“My dad died,” Billy whispers. I know what he looks like from the pictures I saw. But now, he’s not even a shadow. We are two voices in the black. “And my mom got married again.”
“That’s rough,” I say. Acknowledge how hard it is, but don’t encourage wallowing. Whether we survive trauma is all about how we narrate the past, the future. “How were things with your stepdad?” As if I have to ask.
“I hated him,” he says. “He hit me.”
“Did you tell your mom?”
“He hit her, too.”
“And what about your father. Was he a violent man, as well?”
“Sometimes,” says Billy. “But I knew he loved me. He was just—I don’t know—he just got sad sometimes.”
Depression. Violence. Abuse. How many of us grow up this way? A lot, with approximately 3.5 million claims of abuse or neglect investigated annually. Neglect is by far the most common maltreatment. Then physical abuse, then sexual. Some children are what we call polyvictimized, suffering more than one maltreatment. Four in five abusers are parents or stepparents. That’s a lot of damaged people walking around. Not to mention the abuse that begat the abuse.
“So how did you handle the situation with your stepfather?”