Chapter 22
I couldn’t eat my breakfast. My intestines writhed like a bag of snakes.
Dad saw that I was in distress, but of course I couldn’t tell him what was wrong. I insisted that I was fine, just a nightmare. He didn’t buy it, not for a second, and instead of going to school he took me to the emergency room. I told them I was fine, too, and of course they found nothing wrong.
After that, they brought a therapist to talk to me. She was clever and persistent, and started asking about how I felt about Jessie. That worried me, so I told her how devastated I was by the fire and losing Mom. It was true; it hadn’t even been a year. I concentrated on losing Jessie to make myself cry. It was genuine, and she didn’t dig further.
She asked if I ever felt like hurting or killing myself. The obvious, if dishonest answer was no. There was no point in talking about it. As attractive as the idea was, it just wasn’t an option.
My misdirection worked. I could hear her talking to Dad in the hallway.
“I think that your son is having a delayed grief response,” she told him.
Dad sighed heavily. “The fire and the loss of his mom were really traumatic for him. I can’t even imagine what he went through. I’m not surprised that he’s still struggling with it. He has really bad nightmares still.”
“You should watch for signs of depression.”
He sighed. “I know exactly what to look for. I have to fight that every day.”
“Are you getting help for it?”
“Yeah, but some days it’s still hard to get out of bed. If it wasn’t for my kids I’d probably just give up.”
I couldn’t tell if Jessie was playing her part, or really was going insane. She became withdrawn, sullen, and moody. I tried to talk to her in private, when Dad wasn’t home, but she shut me out.
“Leave me alone, you fucking faggot!” she hissed. “You make me sick!”
Everything I said and did, no matter how well intended, was taken badly. She picked fights with me, even with Dad. She swore and threw things. The house was in an uproar for days. Then she’d be happy and fine, as if nothing had ever happened. The next day it started all over again.
I used to help her practice her martial arts. I was terrible, but that’s what made it funny. Now it wasn’t fun, and I gave up when I started getting bruises.
One time during an argument with Dad, she said she wished that we hadn’t adopted her, that it had ruined her life. She kicked her bedroom door closed so hard she put her foot through it. I think that was the only time she was contrite. But she wasn’t even sorry about the broken door exactly; she apologized for using her skills in anger.
Dad talked her through measuring and buying a new door. He instructed and supervised while she measured and cut notches for hinges, and drilled the holes for the handle and latch. The only thing he did to actually help was to slip the pins in while she hung the door.
That night Dad had a long talk with Jessie in her room. I laid by the heat vent and overheard as much as I could.
They were discussing hormones and different kinds of birth control. They agreed on some kind of shots. He said he was going to take her to the doctor, but that got a bad reaction. In the end, Beth’s mom took her.
No matter how awful and nasty she acted, though, my feelings for her never changed. I was desperately in love with her, and thought about her all the time. She haunted my every minute, and my hormones didn’t help matters at all. I worried because my attraction was now powerfully sexual as well as romantic.
It was one issue that I loved her with all my soul. But I lusted for her, and I hated that part of me. What if I was a danger to her? What if one night I just went crazy and attacked her? What really made me any different from those boys at the orphanage?
I started reading about psychology, and how abnormal my feelings were. If ever acted on them, I’d be a molester. I also read how being molested affected the victims. I could never do that to Jessie – she had already survived so much. I’d sooner kill myself than ever harm her. Much sooner.
But when I thought about her, which was constantly, my insides hurt so bad that it was like getting kneed in the groin with every heartbeat. I couldn’t sleep, and was exhausted all the time. Every morning I put on a happy mask, and wore it the best I could all day.
But sometimes in class, when I couldn’t concentrate on the subject, I’d write lists of all the things I hated about myself, then tear them up into tiny pieces and throw them away. I fantasized about suicide, how I’d do it so that it looked like an accident, because that’d be easier for Dad and Jess to get over.
At home I was burning myself with matches just to feel a pain that I could cope with, a pain I could control. I did it at the edges of the scars on my left forearm, where the pain was sharp but the marks barely noticeable. I knew it was crazy, but it brought relief for a minute.
The nights... The nights were unspeakable. I ached with the need to wake Jessie up, admit that I had lied, and tell her how I truly felt. I’d stand at my bedroom door, sometimes for half an hour, just shaking with anxiety.
I always went back to bed eventually. In my fantasies, though, I’d wake her and she’d return my feelings, and that was worst outcome of all. Scandal, our family destroyed. By then I’d spent hours researching psychological trauma, laws about under-age sex and statutory rape. I knew what was at stake, and I couldn’t risk any of that. I was her big brother, and I’d protect her.
Even from me.
Especially from me.