| Fiction |
“Memoirs of a Whispering House”
by Kevin Steele
Part III
There are not many details Christian could recall of his
childhood but he could always remember the open
hostility his parents held towards him. He never really
understood why until his sixteenth birthday when his
father, Robert, had confronted him in the narrow hallway
of their two-bedroom ranch-style home. Christian had
been brooding all day in his small room when Robert
burst through the door-- cracking the thin plywood in
the process-- and yelled at the boy for not cleaning the
dishes in the kitchen sink. Christian, feeling the surge
of teenage angst boil into rage from somewhere deep in
his loins, railed at his drunken father-- even mustering
the strength to shove Robert aside. As Christian stepped
past his bumbling father, Robert slugged him hard
between the shoulder blades. He gasped as the air rushed
from his lungs and he stumbled into the hallway,
clutching at the wall. Thin, pastel-patterned strips of
cheap wallpaper scraped ;.l away beneath his fingernails
as he fell to the floor.
Christian rolled over quickly,
preparing himself for another attack-- lungs sucking
deeply for air-- and Robert loomed over him. The
callused fists of his blue-collar father didn’t fall
upon him but the beer-and-cigarette breath did as Robert
spit out a string of curses at his prone son-- and then,
the last words Christian had ever again cared to hear
from his abusive father came out.
“We never wanted you, you little
bastard! But the minister said it was the Christian
thing to do, you ungrateful little shit! You’re just the
bastard son of some fucking pervert that raped your
momma!”
The phrases seemed to hang in the
poisoned, adrenaline-heated air between the two men
before it slammed deep into Christian’s ears like a
shotgun blast, leaving a deafening ring. The last verbal
punch left a throbbing, red scar on Christian’s
consciousness and he never again let his parents, or
anyone else, tell him how to live his life-- much less,
tell him how they felt about him.
Robert left his bastard son broken on
the floor and went out to his garage. When he returned
he threw a set of keys at Christian-- his mother,
Maggie, now at his side tending to his wounds-- and told
him to get out. Christian rushed to his feet, gathered
some of his clothes and books into an over-sized, Army
backpack and ran out to the waiting ‘65 Mustang. His
anger grew as he remembered a father and son’s mutual
love of muscle cars that lovingly rebuilt the growling,
black street-beast.
He couldn’t recollect much of the
time between escaping his raging father and collapsing
into the bed of the dingy motel room, but he did recall
the hatred that swirled in his brain all that evening.
Christian called his girlfriend, Morgan, and spent the
rest of the night drinking and screwing. Luckily, he had
some savings for a trip to California he’d planned for
later that summer. Instead, he used the money to rent an
apartment and find a new job. The next few years were a
succession of jobs, apartments, and girlfriends but
Christian was rarely happy. His mother would
occasionally call to plead with him to forgive them,
leaving messages on his voicemail-- her voice cracking
under the strain of her emotions, breath chiseled away
by decades of smoking-- but he could never return the
calls, or the emotion.
No matter how hard he worked, drank,
or fucked he could not escape the final hateful words
that his father had hurled at him. Years later, his
father on his death-bed, Christian reluctantly called
his mother. With each ring, his childhood would flash
through his mind-- images like Polaroid snapshots in the
dark, the years of being forced into his closet and
being mocked by the laughter of his parents as they held
“dinner parties” with their pretensious, artist-hipster
friends. No matter how kind or pathetic his mother would
later become, he could not forgive the sins of their
mutual past. He didn’t care about her rape, or her years
of abuse from his father-- he didn’t want to forgive her
for being a good enough person to bring him into the
world, but not raise him with love. He couldn’t forgive
her selfish refusal to rip his unwanted, fetal body from
her womb simply because she couldn’t bear the permanent
stain to her immortal soul. How could absolution from
an unwanted son ever matter anyway?
Christian looked out again at the
modest, weed-infested backyard and saw the boy but the
other children had vanished. The boy’s spindly arms were
caked up to his scarred elbows in dirt and blood. The
scent of pennies and wildflowers drifted in the balmy
air.