1. Transistor Radio
I spent one night in a youth shelter after insisting to my case worker that I needed to be out of the house. I remember nothing about the conflict that drove me to that conclusion, but it’s arbitrary against the longstanding pattern in that environment.
The building felt sterile, detached, and the other wards of the state were like cold little lab mice. Their immediate needs were met, but there was something missing for all of them. I was allowed very few belongings as I was placed into a white room with the door left open, and harsh light beaming in from the hallway all night. Any younger and I could have confused this place for prison.
The next day, it was determined that there was no verifiable reason for me to remain outside the home, and I was brought back. I climbed out of the car, somber, tense, but watching. It was then that one of my parents said something to the echo of “Are you done throwing a fit?”
I pulled my brand-new glasses from my face and shattered them against the concrete stepstone.
I looked my dad in the face as he stood entirely still in the yard. Within moments of his teenage daughter returning from the quieter of two oppressive places she did not feel safe, a man who was known to react aggressively and engage in frequent, looping fights with anyone who reflected him negatively was in one of the calmest states I had ever seen him. He didn’t ask why I was upset, or even what was wrong with me. Instead, he watched me snap in silence and without expression as if I was a dog on a chain.
The person with the real power need not flinch.
_____
My mom and I were engaged in another loud conflict in the living room one evening. I saw her as the central antagonist in a household where arguments would accelerate quickly, and as I grew older, I would point at the behavior that only seemed designed to provoke reaction. One moment she’d be light and engaged in banter. The next, she would go unresponsive to a comment or a quip, and my muscles would calcify. From here, she’d scoff, or narrow her eyes at me, and sometimes, my dad would respond with a grenade, like
“What is your problem?”
And the whole room would go up in flames—each of them spitting fire until she would retreat to her room for the night, either before or after something would be thrown, broken, flipped, or I would step into the middle. It wasn’t effective, but I was growing into someone who could not remain idle. When I raised my voice at her, she’d at least be pulled out of combat with the person with the record of physical violence and take it out on me instead. I’d raise my shield as she’d shrill about how little I knew, how “sarcastic” I was being by speaking up.
Even as I was dead serious.
During one particular fight, though, something I had said struck a nerve deeply enough that she stepped closer to me than she ever had. Rage consumed her face with those narrowed eyes encircled red. Like she had tripped a wire, I slapped her on the cheek for the first and only time. As my mind screamed that I had just made a critical misstep on hostile soil, she froze. Her face softened slightly, in a way that seemed to say this isn’t what was supposed to happen.
I don’t remember that I was ever disciplined for that, yet I had been for much less.
During this same period, I do remember the exact moments when I would begin to cry as her verbal assaults landed on me, and the first night that I did not. She lost authority over my emotions once I stopped showing them to her. The pause was palpable then, too.
As my power over myself grew, she became even less predictable. Even as I can hardly remember the subjects of our arguments now, there is but one appeal I made to her as I tried to contact the part of her that was still my mom.
“You’re supposed to be our role model!” I shouted.
“No, I’m not!” she yelled back.
The command over who I was going to be,
was permanently forwarded to me,
as my dad became oddly docile on the couch.
_____
In late winter of 2013, when I had turned 18 but had not yet finished high school, my parents kicked me out after another dispute. I moved in with a boyfriend I had only had for a couple of months, and his family. Not long after that, my dad called me and said that I could return. But I had noticed that there was again no trace of awareness that anything about their behavior was a problem. They spoke like I had been forgiven.
So, I said no. I knew this was not a misunderstanding, and it would not be a one-off event. Now, I had no legal protection from a roof over my head being contingent on my silence.
My dad said he’d give me the documents to the car that my grandpa had given me once I had insurance in my name, but the insurance agent could not issue a policy without the documents. He only gave them to me once enough pressure was applied from other adults.
After all of it though, he told me I could not say I was kicked out because I was given the chance to come back, and I chose not to. The sharp, quiet little voice rolled in like smoke through the cracks to the sound of this is your fault.
And my mind called all available forces to the front line.
I will the machine. 