Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > Just GO for it, Already!
“Hey, Gerard.”
He was struck with that certain familiar, pointed pang of nervousness, of guilt. His arm was outstretched as he stopped in mid-motion, halfway through putting the cordless phone back on its base. Gerard gave a surprised little jump, a tiny twitch cramping in his neck, at the sound of his name. He put the phone back on the base as he turned to see his mother, sitting at the kitchen table, her hands folded together as if in prayer, her fingers looking long and somewhat withered, spidery, and he vaguely realized that that was something they had in common.
He didn’t like the way she said his name. There was this sort of faux sweetness to it, as if his mother may have actually been trying to lacquer some genuine charm over her words. Sort of as if it was made from sweetener instead of sugar. It sent unpleasant guilt through his stomach and made him want to hide. She said it too smoothly, too carefully, words dripping with the oily slime of her knowing something she shouldn’t. Gerard breathed through his anxiety, the sensation like blocking his nostrils and breathing through a very thin straw.
“Hi.”
The yellow light that hung above the kitchen table made it look as though his mother was sitting in an interrogation room. The shadows and contrast made him feel sick, made her look sinister and angry. She gave a sort of sideways nod and didn’t unclasp her fingers, the lines on her forehead stiff and her mouth like a line drawn on the firm clay of her face. Her voice was a force sort of light, suspended by helium or string instead of natural sensitivity. “Sit down.”
Gerard didn’t want to. He didn’t want to sit down with her because that meant she was going to talk to him, going to pry into his brain with those spindly fingers and make him sick and he knew that she cared but she was hurting him. He wanted to say no, he wasn’t going to sit, he was going to go back into his room and hide under his blankets and read some of his old comic books and lick the wounds on the inside of the hole that stored his emotions before they got infected with razorblades and drink and drug, but instead he hesitated- began to move, then stopped, only to start again- and sat down in the seat across from her. His head felt tight at the temples and he suddenly remembered that he was still a little drunk. She glared at him but he stared at the table, and he could feel her gaze like the pressure of two hands on the top his head. Gerard heard his mother breathe then open her mouth and his head became light, his stomach twisting and hot like a fish without water.
“How’ve you been?” she asked. Gerard’s answer sounded a lot less half-assed in his head. He mumbled the word ’good’, and stared away from her. She didn’t respond immediately, and in the silence Gerard felt his brain begin to drift, to float away, from the fear his mother seemed to be pouring into him. Half of him waited for her to speak, while the other wandered into some abstract part of his head, retreating into the darkness of random, disassociated thoughts. Gerard’s first thought, the first thing his mind brought forth from the deepest part of his subconscious, was the realization he looked nothing (save for the thinness and length of their fingers) like his mother. While she stared burning holes through his hair, he realized that there was a distinct possibility that with her curling, russet hair and browned skin, that he was an illegitimate child. Because she was thin, although mostly boney and sharp, and he was soft- not round or big/, but just /soft/. Gerard had no idea why this thought occurred to him, was sucked from the depths of his thoughts and forced to the surface of his consciousness, but it appeared and smiled at him and it took all his self-restraint not to giggle. He bit the inside of his cheek, laughter tickling behind his teeth, while he simultaneously tried not to keel over from the unyielding pressure of mental stress. He hoped his hair -/he couldn’t help but notice how long and shaggy it was getting/-covered his twitching mouth. His mother made a sort of short /’hmm…’ as if she was thinking to herself.
“You have?” She asked, and it was almost rhetorical, almost whispering in a raspy voice, ’You’re lying’/. But Gerard nodded. He hated this feeling. Hated feeling that she was playing with him, coaxing some sort of confession out of him about something he wasn’t even sure about. Snakes were twisting and hissing and biting inside him and all he wanted to do was lean over the table and vomit right in front of his mother. Just purge himself of this fear and hate and sadness and let her see everything and know /he hasn’t been doing fine under that yellow interrogation light. And as he imagined every ugly emotion spewing forth, sour and hot and yellow and thick, from his retching mouth, Gerard felt his stomach clench and twist and thought he might actually throw up. He wanted his mother to just speak again, to cut that God damn silence because it was killing him. It was tearing his insides in half and he just wanted to scream ’ Say it! If you know something just say it!.’ but he kept silent because she had somehow tied his lips shut with an invisible line of thread. And she should have spoken, should have broken the silence and saved him.
But she didn’t. Gerard hated her for it. She just sat and stared at him and waited for him to talk while they sat under those ugly yellow lights and his brain swerved in and out of concentration, of rational thought.
“What do you want, mom?” he finally said. It was more of a statement of resignation than a question.
“/You/ tell /me/.”
Gerard had heard this before. He knew this. He remembered this. He heard this after he first started hurting himself for feeling. And suddenly he was taken back. Back to that time, that worrying, nervous week before the hateful ninth-grade when he stared in the mirror with those self-loathing thoughts of /’i hate my body i hate my body ihateitihateitihateit/. Gerard forgot that he was in the kitchen with his mother because a black sheet of memory had been placed over his eyes.
And he was back there. Two and a half years in the past when the scars were gone and the worst marks on his arms were thin little cat scratches that only dribbled blood. And that was when he cut for punishment. Because he was the fat kid/. The fat, stupid, nerdy kid who never had a girlfriend and liked boys and didn’t have friends because he liked comic books and Star Wars and drawing pictures of friends he didn’t and never would have. And he cut to punish himself for being that way, not because he couldn’t control the hate and pain. He couldn’t hear her if she was speaking now, but he was sure she repeated her statement. /YOU tell /ME/, Gerard.
“…I dunno.”
He didn’t want to do this again. Not again. And those scars were so fresh and so deep in his arm and he didn’t want her to see because she’d send him away. She’s send him to that place with sterile walls and machines with a pulse and away from Finch and Frankie and everything that kept him from going completely, utterly insane and just ripping out the veins in his wrists as he lost it. And he wanted to believe that she wouldn’t but she would- she would. She told him she would the last time she made him tell her. Those few weeks after he wanted to stop being the fat kid/; when panic and fear forced his fingers down his throat and made him retch over the porcelain toilet three times a day and skipped his meals and carved metal into his screaming nerves. And he didn’t need to do some of those things anymore (not /always/), but he still needed to feel. She was going to send him away because he needed to /feel.
Gerard’s mother leaned her elbows on the table and leaned her chin on her folded fingers, pursing her lips. He could feel that she wasn’t…/angry/, but rather some other confusing emotion that he couldn’t exactly comprehend.
“I was making dinner and I noticed something,” she said. The way her voice broke his thoughts, his memories, made something bitter slosh inside him. Gerard didn’t say anything because he didn’t quite understand her point. He realized that she should have been cooking at this time, should have been in her normal place by the sink chopping or mixing something. But she wasn’t, she was sitting there hurting him and scaring him and making him want to fall apart. She was looking at him with large eyes and he had to look away because he was afraid she might somehow be able to see into his head, to see the screaming thoughts of /”yes yes ive been cutting myself drinking smoking feeling i need it ineeditineedit”/.
“I went into the freezer,” she continued. Gerard realized how delicate her voice sounded and some angry, hurtful part of him wished she would cry, hurt. “And I noticed that the bottle of vodka your dad keeps in there had some of it missing.” She sort of cocked her head to the side and for a split second, Gerard wanted to hit her.
“Gerard?”
And suddenly he didn’t feel anything. Didn’t feel afraid or angry. Didn’t want to tell her that he’d been drinking. Didn’t want to move or think or even cut or puke. He just wanted to look off into space, staring at the memories in the back of his eyelids until the feeling finally returned to his body. A vacuum of numbness- no, not numbness; numbness meant that there was feeling beneath it, but there was no feeling, just /blank/, it was something else- had sucked up everything. He didn’t feel and he didn’t answer her because he wasn’t afraid not to.
His nerves felt alive. Every time he inhaled and exhaled his sleeve rose and fell against his arm and the scabbed wounds screamed to show their existence, their life and the fact that he could feel that pain while the rest of him felt so dead and sick was so incredible and welcome that he was almost positive that it was better than sex. And if his mother hadn’t pierced his thoughts with her needle of a voice he might have just sat there breathing in and out, stimulating those sensitive wounds, until the tightness of his pants cut off the circulation to his lower half.
”Gerard.”
Gerard opened his mouth to argue, to lie, to say anything despite the fact that he hadn’t mentally prepared some sort of argumentative sentence and despite the fact that he was now trying to speak through some sick, spontaneous masturbatory urge, but some sort of brick had lodged itself in his airway and all that came out was a sort of thick choking sound. He glanced up through the open spaces in his hanging hair at his mother to gauge her reaction (she didn’t appear to notice or care be surprised by the fact that he nearly choked on his own fluids) and cleared his throat before he attempted to speak again.
“I don’t know,” he said. And that was it. And although it may have potentially benefited him somehow, he simply didn’t feel like exerting the energy to create an elaborate lie about why the vodka bottle was about twice as empty as his half-drunk brain remembered. His mother’s painted-on lips seemed to tighten further and her features almost turned to stone. Something about the lines forming around her mouth made him pointlessly angry. He hated how they formed on her skin, cutting through her flesh like crevices in firm dirt. He hated- hated/- how she wasted this time, this /energy on scowling at him, being so angry at him.
”Gerard.” She said his name again and all he wanted her to do was just shut up.
“You’re….” Gerard started to speak and yet again his throat was blocked, thick with mucus or fear or something that made him cough and sputter. “You’re jus’ like-”
“-Are you /drunk?/”
Gerard felt a sudden explosion of contempt erupt inside him, and if he hadn’t been so emotionally raw from the screaming and crying and emotional beating he’d experienced only hours before then he might have actually gotten up and struck her. And he may have regretted it afterwards, but the idea of slapping the judgment right out of her tight little mouth so it flew like spit borderlined orgasmic.
”Mom! I-”
“-Gerard, please, tell me the truth, I know-”
“Why are you doing this t’me?” he pleaded. His tongue felt much too large inside him, as if the muscle was swollen and wet and spongy and flapping uselessly against the roof of his mouth. It was nearly choking him, making him nauseous and frustrated. “I’m- I’m your /child/, mom! Why are you trying to /hurt me?/”
“I’m not trying to hurt you!/” she cried back at him, unfolding her hands and placing the palms flat on the table so the tips of those familiarly long fingers touched the table and the joints bent upward. Her mouth looked ugly and partially open in a tiny /’o’ shape now, her eyes large, like the face of an angry cat. “You’re sick/, Gerard! /Sick! I’m trying to /help you!/” She paused for a moment- only a moment- to watched him before she snapped, “Get your hair out of your face!”
Gerard gave a flippant mental ”Well, screw that” and kept his dark hair in front of his eyes. He actually gave his head a little shake to allow more hair to fall and impair his vision. His mother spat out another, ”I said, get it out of your face!” and, deciding that he may as well go for broke because there was no way he was going to convince her of anything, quickly stuck out his tongue with a little ”Nyuhh!” sound before pulling the muscle back behind his lips. His mother gave an agitated snort.
“How freaking old are you?” she hissed rhetorically. Gerard couldn’t help but giggle, giggle at her question, giggle at her frustration, the sound coming through his nose breathily. With the thick hair in his face he couldn’t see, but he heard his mother slam her fists on the table and push out her chair, the wood of the legs making a groaning, squeaking sound against the linoleum floor. Gerard heard her stomp towards him with a Clack Clack Clack sound that meant she was wearing heels. The sudden image of her holding him down on their immaculate kitchen floor and penetrating his eye with her high, sharp heel burst into his brain like a firework and his insides were sent into a spasm. His head snapped up as she stormed over to him, and he felt himself sink defensively into the chair away from her, afraid she might hit him, hurt him. But she didn’t, and he should have known she wouldn’t. Instead, she stopped right next to him, her fury pulsating like radiation, and he pushed himself against the chair as far as he could, the wooden arm pressing painfully into his side.
“Show me your arms,” she demanded. Gerard felt his heart deflate, become a withered balloon inside him and fall against his ribs. He felt so physically sick, that before he opened his mouth to speak he had to mentally will himself not to vomit. Almost compulsively, he pulled in his arms away from her, cradling the wounded one like a child. He shook his head and swallowed away the sick feeling, shunning it to the depths of his stomach.
“No,” he snapped, more than aware that every word he said was digging him a deeper and deeper hole. At this time, the hole was so deep that if he stretched his arms above his head, his fingertips would barely reach over the edge, barely scrape the dirt back into the narrow, suffocating aperture. He supposed that if he dug his feet into the sides he might be able to pull himself out, but it was more likely that he would fall even deeper inside. His mother grabbed his shoulder, her fingers feeling sharp and angry like dying tree branches and he couldn’t help but give a tiny whimper and turn away. She tugged on him and growled, almost yelled, ”Give me your arm!” but he whined and shook his head.
Gerard’s head was trying to take him somewhere. He didn’t know where, but it was away from this. And he suddenly remembered his dream about the park where he and Frank were kissing and rolling in the scattered dirt and woodchips and he would have given anything in this world to disappear into that place. While his mother shook his shoulder and tried to pry his arm out of his grip, he clenched his eyes shut and tried to get back to that place, praying, begging any that God would knock him out, kill him so that maybe he could get there. He tugged away from his mother and a little, helpless ’mmm…’ sound squeaked inside his throat. His throat and temples felt so tight, his stomach feeling hot and gnarled like an old tree branch.
“Gerard, just give it to me!/” his mother nearly screamed at him, and with one final tug she pulled his arm free, pulling so his body twisted to face her as she pulled his left around over the right of his body. He tried- God, he /tried/- to pull it away from her again, jerking the appendage so hard he thought it might dislocate, but she pushed down his sleeve and all those red cuts and dark, half-healed scars smiled at her with jagged, broken teeth. There were so many, so /many/, that the inside of his lower arm was an enormous sleeve of scars and wounds. They both stopped moving, even Gerard stopped tugging, and she stared at them. Gerard felt the nauseated feeling well up inside him again, so thick and so /real that he couldn’t will himself to speak in fear that his stomach would jump and he would just be sick.
He didn’t know what her expression meant, couldn’t comprehend her narrow eyes and tense brow and didn’t really want to. He bit down on his lip as his stomach lurched and his mother didn’t notice. She looked down at him and it took the actual seeing of her eyes for him to vaguely realize that his hair wasn’t in his face anymore. She looked at him and then went back to staring at his arm and he realized with fear and hatred and sickness inside him that his mother, although her motives were very, very different, was doing exactly what the kids and bullies and bastards did to him that day in the hallway. When she spoke, Gerard felt himself pushed over the edge, thrown violently over his limit.
“Who’s /Frankie?/”
It took the sound of splattering for his mother to realize that Gerard had thrown up.
He was struck with that certain familiar, pointed pang of nervousness, of guilt. His arm was outstretched as he stopped in mid-motion, halfway through putting the cordless phone back on its base. Gerard gave a surprised little jump, a tiny twitch cramping in his neck, at the sound of his name. He put the phone back on the base as he turned to see his mother, sitting at the kitchen table, her hands folded together as if in prayer, her fingers looking long and somewhat withered, spidery, and he vaguely realized that that was something they had in common.
He didn’t like the way she said his name. There was this sort of faux sweetness to it, as if his mother may have actually been trying to lacquer some genuine charm over her words. Sort of as if it was made from sweetener instead of sugar. It sent unpleasant guilt through his stomach and made him want to hide. She said it too smoothly, too carefully, words dripping with the oily slime of her knowing something she shouldn’t. Gerard breathed through his anxiety, the sensation like blocking his nostrils and breathing through a very thin straw.
“Hi.”
The yellow light that hung above the kitchen table made it look as though his mother was sitting in an interrogation room. The shadows and contrast made him feel sick, made her look sinister and angry. She gave a sort of sideways nod and didn’t unclasp her fingers, the lines on her forehead stiff and her mouth like a line drawn on the firm clay of her face. Her voice was a force sort of light, suspended by helium or string instead of natural sensitivity. “Sit down.”
Gerard didn’t want to. He didn’t want to sit down with her because that meant she was going to talk to him, going to pry into his brain with those spindly fingers and make him sick and he knew that she cared but she was hurting him. He wanted to say no, he wasn’t going to sit, he was going to go back into his room and hide under his blankets and read some of his old comic books and lick the wounds on the inside of the hole that stored his emotions before they got infected with razorblades and drink and drug, but instead he hesitated- began to move, then stopped, only to start again- and sat down in the seat across from her. His head felt tight at the temples and he suddenly remembered that he was still a little drunk. She glared at him but he stared at the table, and he could feel her gaze like the pressure of two hands on the top his head. Gerard heard his mother breathe then open her mouth and his head became light, his stomach twisting and hot like a fish without water.
“How’ve you been?” she asked. Gerard’s answer sounded a lot less half-assed in his head. He mumbled the word ’good’, and stared away from her. She didn’t respond immediately, and in the silence Gerard felt his brain begin to drift, to float away, from the fear his mother seemed to be pouring into him. Half of him waited for her to speak, while the other wandered into some abstract part of his head, retreating into the darkness of random, disassociated thoughts. Gerard’s first thought, the first thing his mind brought forth from the deepest part of his subconscious, was the realization he looked nothing (save for the thinness and length of their fingers) like his mother. While she stared burning holes through his hair, he realized that there was a distinct possibility that with her curling, russet hair and browned skin, that he was an illegitimate child. Because she was thin, although mostly boney and sharp, and he was soft- not round or big/, but just /soft/. Gerard had no idea why this thought occurred to him, was sucked from the depths of his thoughts and forced to the surface of his consciousness, but it appeared and smiled at him and it took all his self-restraint not to giggle. He bit the inside of his cheek, laughter tickling behind his teeth, while he simultaneously tried not to keel over from the unyielding pressure of mental stress. He hoped his hair -/he couldn’t help but notice how long and shaggy it was getting/-covered his twitching mouth. His mother made a sort of short /’hmm…’ as if she was thinking to herself.
“You have?” She asked, and it was almost rhetorical, almost whispering in a raspy voice, ’You’re lying’/. But Gerard nodded. He hated this feeling. Hated feeling that she was playing with him, coaxing some sort of confession out of him about something he wasn’t even sure about. Snakes were twisting and hissing and biting inside him and all he wanted to do was lean over the table and vomit right in front of his mother. Just purge himself of this fear and hate and sadness and let her see everything and know /he hasn’t been doing fine under that yellow interrogation light. And as he imagined every ugly emotion spewing forth, sour and hot and yellow and thick, from his retching mouth, Gerard felt his stomach clench and twist and thought he might actually throw up. He wanted his mother to just speak again, to cut that God damn silence because it was killing him. It was tearing his insides in half and he just wanted to scream ’ Say it! If you know something just say it!.’ but he kept silent because she had somehow tied his lips shut with an invisible line of thread. And she should have spoken, should have broken the silence and saved him.
But she didn’t. Gerard hated her for it. She just sat and stared at him and waited for him to talk while they sat under those ugly yellow lights and his brain swerved in and out of concentration, of rational thought.
“What do you want, mom?” he finally said. It was more of a statement of resignation than a question.
“/You/ tell /me/.”
Gerard had heard this before. He knew this. He remembered this. He heard this after he first started hurting himself for feeling. And suddenly he was taken back. Back to that time, that worrying, nervous week before the hateful ninth-grade when he stared in the mirror with those self-loathing thoughts of /’i hate my body i hate my body ihateitihateitihateit/. Gerard forgot that he was in the kitchen with his mother because a black sheet of memory had been placed over his eyes.
And he was back there. Two and a half years in the past when the scars were gone and the worst marks on his arms were thin little cat scratches that only dribbled blood. And that was when he cut for punishment. Because he was the fat kid/. The fat, stupid, nerdy kid who never had a girlfriend and liked boys and didn’t have friends because he liked comic books and Star Wars and drawing pictures of friends he didn’t and never would have. And he cut to punish himself for being that way, not because he couldn’t control the hate and pain. He couldn’t hear her if she was speaking now, but he was sure she repeated her statement. /YOU tell /ME/, Gerard.
“…I dunno.”
He didn’t want to do this again. Not again. And those scars were so fresh and so deep in his arm and he didn’t want her to see because she’d send him away. She’s send him to that place with sterile walls and machines with a pulse and away from Finch and Frankie and everything that kept him from going completely, utterly insane and just ripping out the veins in his wrists as he lost it. And he wanted to believe that she wouldn’t but she would- she would. She told him she would the last time she made him tell her. Those few weeks after he wanted to stop being the fat kid/; when panic and fear forced his fingers down his throat and made him retch over the porcelain toilet three times a day and skipped his meals and carved metal into his screaming nerves. And he didn’t need to do some of those things anymore (not /always/), but he still needed to feel. She was going to send him away because he needed to /feel.
Gerard’s mother leaned her elbows on the table and leaned her chin on her folded fingers, pursing her lips. He could feel that she wasn’t…/angry/, but rather some other confusing emotion that he couldn’t exactly comprehend.
“I was making dinner and I noticed something,” she said. The way her voice broke his thoughts, his memories, made something bitter slosh inside him. Gerard didn’t say anything because he didn’t quite understand her point. He realized that she should have been cooking at this time, should have been in her normal place by the sink chopping or mixing something. But she wasn’t, she was sitting there hurting him and scaring him and making him want to fall apart. She was looking at him with large eyes and he had to look away because he was afraid she might somehow be able to see into his head, to see the screaming thoughts of /”yes yes ive been cutting myself drinking smoking feeling i need it ineeditineedit”/.
“I went into the freezer,” she continued. Gerard realized how delicate her voice sounded and some angry, hurtful part of him wished she would cry, hurt. “And I noticed that the bottle of vodka your dad keeps in there had some of it missing.” She sort of cocked her head to the side and for a split second, Gerard wanted to hit her.
“Gerard?”
And suddenly he didn’t feel anything. Didn’t feel afraid or angry. Didn’t want to tell her that he’d been drinking. Didn’t want to move or think or even cut or puke. He just wanted to look off into space, staring at the memories in the back of his eyelids until the feeling finally returned to his body. A vacuum of numbness- no, not numbness; numbness meant that there was feeling beneath it, but there was no feeling, just /blank/, it was something else- had sucked up everything. He didn’t feel and he didn’t answer her because he wasn’t afraid not to.
His nerves felt alive. Every time he inhaled and exhaled his sleeve rose and fell against his arm and the scabbed wounds screamed to show their existence, their life and the fact that he could feel that pain while the rest of him felt so dead and sick was so incredible and welcome that he was almost positive that it was better than sex. And if his mother hadn’t pierced his thoughts with her needle of a voice he might have just sat there breathing in and out, stimulating those sensitive wounds, until the tightness of his pants cut off the circulation to his lower half.
”Gerard.”
Gerard opened his mouth to argue, to lie, to say anything despite the fact that he hadn’t mentally prepared some sort of argumentative sentence and despite the fact that he was now trying to speak through some sick, spontaneous masturbatory urge, but some sort of brick had lodged itself in his airway and all that came out was a sort of thick choking sound. He glanced up through the open spaces in his hanging hair at his mother to gauge her reaction (she didn’t appear to notice or care be surprised by the fact that he nearly choked on his own fluids) and cleared his throat before he attempted to speak again.
“I don’t know,” he said. And that was it. And although it may have potentially benefited him somehow, he simply didn’t feel like exerting the energy to create an elaborate lie about why the vodka bottle was about twice as empty as his half-drunk brain remembered. His mother’s painted-on lips seemed to tighten further and her features almost turned to stone. Something about the lines forming around her mouth made him pointlessly angry. He hated how they formed on her skin, cutting through her flesh like crevices in firm dirt. He hated- hated/- how she wasted this time, this /energy on scowling at him, being so angry at him.
”Gerard.” She said his name again and all he wanted her to do was just shut up.
“You’re….” Gerard started to speak and yet again his throat was blocked, thick with mucus or fear or something that made him cough and sputter. “You’re jus’ like-”
“-Are you /drunk?/”
Gerard felt a sudden explosion of contempt erupt inside him, and if he hadn’t been so emotionally raw from the screaming and crying and emotional beating he’d experienced only hours before then he might have actually gotten up and struck her. And he may have regretted it afterwards, but the idea of slapping the judgment right out of her tight little mouth so it flew like spit borderlined orgasmic.
”Mom! I-”
“-Gerard, please, tell me the truth, I know-”
“Why are you doing this t’me?” he pleaded. His tongue felt much too large inside him, as if the muscle was swollen and wet and spongy and flapping uselessly against the roof of his mouth. It was nearly choking him, making him nauseous and frustrated. “I’m- I’m your /child/, mom! Why are you trying to /hurt me?/”
“I’m not trying to hurt you!/” she cried back at him, unfolding her hands and placing the palms flat on the table so the tips of those familiarly long fingers touched the table and the joints bent upward. Her mouth looked ugly and partially open in a tiny /’o’ shape now, her eyes large, like the face of an angry cat. “You’re sick/, Gerard! /Sick! I’m trying to /help you!/” She paused for a moment- only a moment- to watched him before she snapped, “Get your hair out of your face!”
Gerard gave a flippant mental ”Well, screw that” and kept his dark hair in front of his eyes. He actually gave his head a little shake to allow more hair to fall and impair his vision. His mother spat out another, ”I said, get it out of your face!” and, deciding that he may as well go for broke because there was no way he was going to convince her of anything, quickly stuck out his tongue with a little ”Nyuhh!” sound before pulling the muscle back behind his lips. His mother gave an agitated snort.
“How freaking old are you?” she hissed rhetorically. Gerard couldn’t help but giggle, giggle at her question, giggle at her frustration, the sound coming through his nose breathily. With the thick hair in his face he couldn’t see, but he heard his mother slam her fists on the table and push out her chair, the wood of the legs making a groaning, squeaking sound against the linoleum floor. Gerard heard her stomp towards him with a Clack Clack Clack sound that meant she was wearing heels. The sudden image of her holding him down on their immaculate kitchen floor and penetrating his eye with her high, sharp heel burst into his brain like a firework and his insides were sent into a spasm. His head snapped up as she stormed over to him, and he felt himself sink defensively into the chair away from her, afraid she might hit him, hurt him. But she didn’t, and he should have known she wouldn’t. Instead, she stopped right next to him, her fury pulsating like radiation, and he pushed himself against the chair as far as he could, the wooden arm pressing painfully into his side.
“Show me your arms,” she demanded. Gerard felt his heart deflate, become a withered balloon inside him and fall against his ribs. He felt so physically sick, that before he opened his mouth to speak he had to mentally will himself not to vomit. Almost compulsively, he pulled in his arms away from her, cradling the wounded one like a child. He shook his head and swallowed away the sick feeling, shunning it to the depths of his stomach.
“No,” he snapped, more than aware that every word he said was digging him a deeper and deeper hole. At this time, the hole was so deep that if he stretched his arms above his head, his fingertips would barely reach over the edge, barely scrape the dirt back into the narrow, suffocating aperture. He supposed that if he dug his feet into the sides he might be able to pull himself out, but it was more likely that he would fall even deeper inside. His mother grabbed his shoulder, her fingers feeling sharp and angry like dying tree branches and he couldn’t help but give a tiny whimper and turn away. She tugged on him and growled, almost yelled, ”Give me your arm!” but he whined and shook his head.
Gerard’s head was trying to take him somewhere. He didn’t know where, but it was away from this. And he suddenly remembered his dream about the park where he and Frank were kissing and rolling in the scattered dirt and woodchips and he would have given anything in this world to disappear into that place. While his mother shook his shoulder and tried to pry his arm out of his grip, he clenched his eyes shut and tried to get back to that place, praying, begging any that God would knock him out, kill him so that maybe he could get there. He tugged away from his mother and a little, helpless ’mmm…’ sound squeaked inside his throat. His throat and temples felt so tight, his stomach feeling hot and gnarled like an old tree branch.
“Gerard, just give it to me!/” his mother nearly screamed at him, and with one final tug she pulled his arm free, pulling so his body twisted to face her as she pulled his left around over the right of his body. He tried- God, he /tried/- to pull it away from her again, jerking the appendage so hard he thought it might dislocate, but she pushed down his sleeve and all those red cuts and dark, half-healed scars smiled at her with jagged, broken teeth. There were so many, so /many/, that the inside of his lower arm was an enormous sleeve of scars and wounds. They both stopped moving, even Gerard stopped tugging, and she stared at them. Gerard felt the nauseated feeling well up inside him again, so thick and so /real that he couldn’t will himself to speak in fear that his stomach would jump and he would just be sick.
He didn’t know what her expression meant, couldn’t comprehend her narrow eyes and tense brow and didn’t really want to. He bit down on his lip as his stomach lurched and his mother didn’t notice. She looked down at him and it took the actual seeing of her eyes for him to vaguely realize that his hair wasn’t in his face anymore. She looked at him and then went back to staring at his arm and he realized with fear and hatred and sickness inside him that his mother, although her motives were very, very different, was doing exactly what the kids and bullies and bastards did to him that day in the hallway. When she spoke, Gerard felt himself pushed over the edge, thrown violently over his limit.
“Who’s /Frankie?/”
It took the sound of splattering for his mother to realize that Gerard had thrown up.
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