Because I Am Furniture

I got an A on the third quiz in American history, an A, dammit. Last time I got a B up from a C and my father said, "if you can get a C you can get a B, if you can get a B you can get an A."- I got an A and my father said, "grades don't mean anything.

I never realized till now how hard the brain has to work to make the body do what it asks. Or maybe how hard the body has to work to ignore the brain.

People are most honest when they don't know you are listening.

I am always there. But they don't care if I am because I am furniture. I don't get hit I don't get fondled I don't get love because I am furniture Suits me fine.

Then why don't I tell on him? If they don't, why don't I? Because. Because I am safe this way, silent unnoticed.

I'm sure you were mistaken," Yaicha says to her brush. My ears pin back - "MISTAKEN? I know who Angie is, Yaicha. I know who our father is, Yaicha. He hurts people, he hurts you, you never do anything!" My claws scrape the wall paint. She turns with soft rabbit eyes. "He'll kill me." "He's already doing that!" I am growling, grabbing her sleeve, "Every day, every day he rips you open, chips off pieces week by week, till a few years from now you are not even a mouthful of sawdust. A drawn-out killing. Well, I'm tired of all of us doing nothing. He has to be stopped." Yaicha's eyes have flinched a few times but soften again. "Nobody can stop him." My teeth show. "Nobody can stop him? Good. To him I have always been Nobody.

With all the dizzy galaxies hot gases dust at the speed of light neutrinos running through everything, no matter how powerful someone is here on Earth they are just as small as me to the vast greatness of outer space.

I'm sorry, I had a meeting" I stand behind his chair. "Liar," under my breath. "You weren't at a meeting," take a breath, gain speed, bursting, "You were with Angie in the office. I saw you. I saw you. You clamp us down, you think no one knows. You hurt my brother! My sister! You hurt my friend! Small trusting prey, huh? You had to squash some weak person already in pain, thinking she loved you. You could have chosen to hurt me! But I'm not worth enough, I never am and you picked poor Angie, you were going to RAPE her, I SAW YOU TRY TO RAPE ANGIE, you fucking MONSTER!

Why am I not good enough? At least he loves Darren and Yaicha in some way even if it's horrible, he shows them attention and I am furniture I get nothing nothing nothing no thing

If all this tree is from mom and all this tree is from him where do I grow my own branches?

You've always been skinny, always will." I can feel each reclusive bone poke through, the bones of Embarrassment, Anger, Relief. I push some back in, but leave Anger sticking out.

I think that is supposed to be good, that I get less from him but I feel worth less.

Yaicha and Darren told me that I was the mailman's child, and I got so angry, stalking away, hot steam in my ribs. Yaicha and Darren told me that I was the mailman's child and now I am thinking how wonderful it would be to have the mailman as my father.

Yaicha runs. He sits down, tired, and says to mom, "I'm sorry you had to see that." Inevitable that he does it. But he doesn't really want a witness.

Or maybe I am just outside enough, being the footstool observing from the corner, that I have a view of reality.

The foam cushions on the old couch downstairs disintegrate daily in a hush, like each of us, small flecks of hardening puffs raining mute to the floor when I flop down to study. And the more the couch gets used, the less foam it keeps-- someday just an uncomfortable frame, springs and other inner workings exposed. Silent.

Yaicha is named after a song by some group from the last century called the Pousette-Dart Band. Something about a girl, a candle in the falling rain shining amidst the pain. I kind of surprise myself when I can picture Yaicha as that candle. My father named Yaicha after the "haunting melody." I wonder if he ever listened to the lyrics.

I like her explanation better than just being a diminutive of someone else.

Not scared. But excited in that jiggering-on-too-much-hot-sauce kind of way that it's time to step out of my old framework, raw and amorphous, to become something I've never thought of before.

If I could just open my mouth wide enough to allow those gagging blobs of truth their slow, tar-seep passage up through my gullet, with barely enough oxygen to keep from passing out while they glorp over my tongue, those truths would reach my teeth, where if my jaw weren't unhinged, I might bite them off so I could breathe again.