Page 69 of Daisy Chain
Do I remember?I’ll never fucking forget it. I show her the faded, childlike drawing of a knife on the inside of my forearm.
She runs her fingers back and forth over it. “I can feel a lump. Is that a scar?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get it?”
“A guy my mother was seeing thought it would be funny to put his cigarette out on my arm.” My jaw tightens. After so many years, the memory of that night burns like acid in my gut. The way he gripped my wrist in his hand. How he stared at me with a malicious gleam in his eyes, urging me to scream or cry as my skin singed. I was determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me in pain. But itwasso painful. “When I whimpered from the pain, he laughed in my face and called me a pussy.”
Daisy props herself up onto her elbow. “That’s horrific. What did your mother do? I hope she reported him to the police.”
Laughing mirthlessly, I say, “She was too high to care.”
“Your mother should feel ashamed of what she let happen to you. Do you ever see her?”
“She overdosed after I got put into foster care.”
“And your father?”
“Never knew him.”
Her eyes glisten with tears. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not.” And it’s the truth. “She was the woman who gave birth to me. That’s all. The only thing she loved was drugs, and she loved them to death.”
She rests her head on my chest and places a hand over my heart.
Can she feel the way her touch is making it pound against my ribcage? I would’ve sworn it had stopped beating years ago.
“Why a knife tattoo?”
“Because it was what I wanted to use to kill him.” I’d imagine burying it deep into his heart so many times. Taking satisfaction, watching him breathe his last breath.
She looks me dead in the eye. “You would never have done it.”
“I wanted to. I’d gone to his apartment and waited for him. He’d come home with a drunk woman hanging off his arm, and they stumbled inside. As much as I hated him, I couldn’t do it.”
She links her fingers with mine, lifts my hand to her lips and kisses my fingers. “You don’t have it in you. You’re a good man.” What does she see in me that I don’t?
“Anyway, I didn’t have to. I heard he’d died in a house fire.” And did the world a favour. Ironically, he liked playing with fire, and it caught up with him.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
I shrug. “It was years ago. I’m over it.”
She gives me a skeptical look.
“I’ve got better things to focus my energy on than my past trauma. The shitload of therapy I put myself through helped.”
“You went to therapy? That’s great.”
“I wasn’t going to try and act all macho and pretend it never fucked with my mind. If I wanted to run my life and business with a clear head, I had to get a shrink to help me fix it.”
“Not many people would admit that. I’m proud of you.”
I shrug like her comment doesn’t mean anything. In fact, it means a lot. No one has ever told me they’re proud of me. All the effort to get myself well, the doubts of whether I could, the moments I almost gave up have finally been seen. And she’s not judging.
Once again, her fingers glide over my skin. “Why all the chains? Do they mean something?”
