Get the lead out....
I’ve got my pencils and paper strewn out on the Formica kitchen table, ready to start drawing or writing.
I’m 7. Frankie, my brother who is 6 years older than I am, is sitting across the table from me. My mother is sleeping in the next room after having worked the all night shift at the White Tower. Her threats to me and Frankie are loud and clear-“Wake me up, either one of you and you’ll get a backhander”. Don’t have to tell me twice. Been there. She has a perfect backhand. She should play fucking tennis.
Frankie is taunting me. Nothing new.
He starts by calling me “gums.” When I smile my gums show. He then singsongs into “Linda Leaky, Linda Leaky, Linda Leaky”. He finds the fact that I still wet my pants at the age of 7 very amusing and he has given me yet another name. No matter he’s partly to blame for this older age, you should be ashamed of yourself, pants wetting, but we won’t go into that here.
It’s all about Frankie.
Frankie you see is perfect.
Perfect hair, perfect teeth, and perfect freckles. Perfect, perfect, perfect.
As we got older he would refer to me as “his afterbirth”. Nice. What an ass.
With no more names to call at that point, he decides to start pushing my pencils and
paper off the kitchen table. My pleas of asking him to stop are even funnier to him than my looks or pants wetting. He then takes my pencils and starts breaking them in half.
I scream at him to give me back my pencils.
He looks at me with an evil grin, gets up, moves to my side of the table and says, “Want the pencil? Here’s the pencil.” With that he takes the # 2 Ticonderoga pencil and sticks the pencil in my forehead. I start to scream, sitting there with a pencil sticking out of my forehead.
My mother wakes up, sees me with the pencil protruding out of my forehead, yanks it out and gives me that perfect backhander she has promised and sends me to bed. Frankie is left unscathed.
I still have that piece of lead in my forehead. It’s a little blue tiny dot. Why no one has ever removed it, isn’t really a mystery to me. Why I haven’t removed it, is.
I’m 7. Frankie, my brother who is 6 years older than I am, is sitting across the table from me. My mother is sleeping in the next room after having worked the all night shift at the White Tower. Her threats to me and Frankie are loud and clear-“Wake me up, either one of you and you’ll get a backhander”. Don’t have to tell me twice. Been there. She has a perfect backhand. She should play fucking tennis.
Frankie is taunting me. Nothing new.
He starts by calling me “gums.” When I smile my gums show. He then singsongs into “Linda Leaky, Linda Leaky, Linda Leaky”. He finds the fact that I still wet my pants at the age of 7 very amusing and he has given me yet another name. No matter he’s partly to blame for this older age, you should be ashamed of yourself, pants wetting, but we won’t go into that here.
It’s all about Frankie.
Frankie you see is perfect.
Perfect hair, perfect teeth, and perfect freckles. Perfect, perfect, perfect.
As we got older he would refer to me as “his afterbirth”. Nice. What an ass.
With no more names to call at that point, he decides to start pushing my pencils and
paper off the kitchen table. My pleas of asking him to stop are even funnier to him than my looks or pants wetting. He then takes my pencils and starts breaking them in half.
I scream at him to give me back my pencils.
He looks at me with an evil grin, gets up, moves to my side of the table and says, “Want the pencil? Here’s the pencil.” With that he takes the # 2 Ticonderoga pencil and sticks the pencil in my forehead. I start to scream, sitting there with a pencil sticking out of my forehead.
My mother wakes up, sees me with the pencil protruding out of my forehead, yanks it out and gives me that perfect backhander she has promised and sends me to bed. Frankie is left unscathed.
I still have that piece of lead in my forehead. It’s a little blue tiny dot. Why no one has ever removed it, isn’t really a mystery to me. Why I haven’t removed it, is.
posted by Suzy at 12:14 PM
3 Comments:
You're killing me now, GET the lead out! Step one in the detox. of Frankie program! Then a salt bath, then some tapping. Tell me when you've scheduled your appointment with whom, a dermatologist? I don't know, just do it!
Hey, are you a writer???!!! What the heck, look at you go.
Great writing Suzy. Too bad it's not fiction. I'm with Carrie, get the lead out. I know a great derm in LA.
You're on a roll...
Post a Comment
<< Home