InsaneJournal

Current mood:	morose
Entry tags:	story

Welcome home


In 1933, I am just turned 19 - and have come home from Berlin to Weisbaden with unkempt hair and ragged clothes. My mother embraces me tearfully, shields me a while from my father's uncontrolled rage. His screaming and her crying mingle until it is just noise and I hear none of it. My head and heart are pounding, my feet and legs hurt so badly - I have walked half the way from Berlin when I could not hitch rides. My stomach is empty, but I heave as though I might vomit and my mother presses her cool hand to my forehead and declares it feverish.

The screaming stops, a glass of water is pressed into my hands. I drink in long greedy gulps that make me feel somehow sicker. My mother is leading me up to bed, the first bed I have slept in for weeks. So soft, I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to see the face of my sister peering nervously at the door. I manage a smile for her before I sleep. I wake to my father's rough hands, shaking me. He has brought the priest. "Confess!" my father demands, "before you die in sin." No son of his will burn in hell.

Confession comes tumbling out of me, of the cabarets where I did menial work for board and low pay - of the opium and jazz music, and the boys who looked like girls who I loved for their androgynous beauty and for how they laughed and taught me to wear eyeliner and how they dressed me in their clothes like a doll. I talk of the men who provided a meal when meals were scarce for me, of the Russian who took me to work with him - taught me to work with my hands, of the Jew who showed me how to use a switchblade knife and took me in off the street. I offer my feverish honesty unto God, that he might forgive me and teach me to forgive myself for wishing I could still be there, for wishing that my fear had not brought this beautiful sin to a crashing end.

Whether the priest has told my father, or my father has listened at the door - I do not know. I recover from my fever and maybe a week has passed when my father calls me into the yard, with his voice that will not be disobeyed. I stand before him, and it is clear that I have not been forgiven as his fist smashes into my face. I do not defend myself, even as he takes off his belt and starts beating me with the leather first, soon followed by the heavy metal buckle. I suck in my cheeks and bite down on them, not to cry out. It is worse when I cry - he considers this a sign of weakness. "Arschficker!" my father screams as he beats me. "Drecksau! Schwanzlutscher!" I have bitten through my cheeks and I taste the blood in my mouth. Still it goes on.

When I fall over, he kicks me with his good leg - his heavy boot. I hear something crack - I will later learn it is my rib. I am floating above the pain now. I wonder if the confession still counts, if I die. I consider begging my father for forgiveness, but even as I open my mouth, no words come. Only a whimper which seems to infuriate him more. "Du machst mich krank," he hisses, and kicks me again, this time in the jaw. I slip into the welcoming blackness.

I am not aware of who has dragged me back to my bed, or what they told the doctor. But when I wake again, my ribs are bandaged. My right eye is swollen shut. I hurt all over, but worse, I ache with shame. If only he had beaten the shame from me, I could have taken the pain as a fair trade.

Two days later, I hear raised voices. My mother crying "Look what you have done to our son!" My father screaming "I have no sons! Two dead, one as good as dead to me!"

Gretchen comes in, sometime later - knowing I have heard. "I still love you," she assures me. "You're still my brother. I'm glad you're home, Hansel."

Welcome home, I think to myself. I turn away and close my eyes so she will not see me cry.