18. Mean girl

The winter break is dragging. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. We don’t go anywhere, we try to stay put in the apartment, not risking running into my father, grandfather or uncle. December 25 is still in our recent memory. Everything, all boxes, clothes and furniture, are now unpacked. I play the piano and practice, but even that feels wrong. I read, watch TV, and ironically stare out the window a lot. I want to go back to school. Time cannot move fast enough.

Joseph is still staying with us. He is clearly in a relationship with my mother. He is recently divorced and a man of position, status. He is about 10 years older than her. They are funny, thinking that if they deny their relationship, my brother and I won’t figure it out. He tries to sneak out of the apartment in the middle of the night, then comes back in the morning. It’s ok. We are ok with it. We want her to be happy. She is trying to put 18 years of dealing with a delusional, paranoid, and psychotic person behind her. Also, she is still very uptight, not able to loosen up her learned routines that were obsessively drilled into her by my obsessive father.

We finally venture out to a store for some groceries, leaving the new apartment for the first time. “Ok, let’s check the apartment. Let’s do the stove first.” She is already checking all the knobs on the stove, going through them and touching them three times.

“Mom, goodness, stop this! He is not here!” I laugh at her.

My father had a “safety check” routine every time we were leaving the apartment. We checked every knob 3 times, making sure the stove was not on. He had to touch each knob individually and then again and again. Then he checked the window handles too. European windows have handles and so he had to pull on each one to make sure they were all secure. Next up were the water faucets. We had to make sure the water was not running or dripping. Finally, the last step in the routine was to lock the front door. Locked it once. Took the key out, put it back into the keyhole and locked it again. He had to be certain it was still locked. Then relocked it once more because maybe it still wasn’t locked a second ago? “Are you watching, Jarka? Is it locked?” He wouldn’t let me look away. The routine wouldn’t work without a witness.

“Uhm-hm, all locked.” I am always bored out of my mind. It always took us at least 20 minutes to get out the door.

“Wait, did I turn the stove off?” He would ask me in doubt, unlocking the door that he so carefully locked 3 times. And now we go through the routine all over again. 

“Mother!” I want to shake her. “We are not doing this anymore!” I want her to snap out of it.

“Right, right,” she mumbles to herself and then laughs too. “This may take a while. I need to break these silly habits. Give me some time,” she smiles at me. 

“I can’t believe how these habits get stuck on you, it’s understandable. It was years and years of unreasonable routines.” Joseph chimes in. “You all had it pretty rough,” he continues, concern on his face. 

Pictures

I slowly get used to Joseph’s presence, even though having a stranger living with us feels odd at first. When we are out shopping, he is very cautious, constantly looking over his shoulder. He always walks first, ahead of us, assessing the situation. When we get back, he enters our apartment building first too, walks up the stairs,  and enters the apartment ahead of us. He is our personal bodyguard.

We are back home from the store and I am back to my boredom. Yawn. At least I can go back to the dorms in two days. I rummage through the drawer in the living room, looking through some random stuff and I see a box. It is full of pictures. Pictures of our family, my childhood, my mother and father, all of us. I pick one of the photos up. It has my father and me standing by the piano. I stare at it. I stare at his face, trying to examine my feelings. About him and about our current situation. And then, I don’t know what comes over me. It is an impulse. Split second decision. I tear his face out of the picture. Whew. I am relieved. In some weird way, this feels good. He is out of the picture now. Except he is not. But for now, he is. I pick up another photo, and another. I go through them all and tear his face out of each one. I do it so fast, I am not even thinking about it. I find some of my old piano diplomas and certificates from all the years of competitions and performances.  I tear them all up too. Add them to the pile of shreds. I am looking for relief and I think this spontaneous act of cleansing works. I do want him out! Out of my life!

And then I cry. The job is done. The fury is over. I look at the picture carnage around me. I slowly pick up the pieces and put them back inside the box. I immediately feel bad, as the sneaky empathy lurks at me again from around the corner. At the same time I am so hurt. I want to hurt him back!  In my own little way, I want to get back at him.

************

I return back to school, whew. Several weeks go by and I hear that my father got a new job, working at a pet supply store, owned by his brother, my uncle. It is a new store, right in the center of Presov, my hometown. 

Now that we don’t live with him anymore, he comes and sees me at school a lot. I try to take charge of our meetings and always meet him away from the school building, just in case. I don’t want any unnecessary drama in front of my friends or professors. I can tell that he is slowly slipping into his disheveled self and one day I even suspect he may have soiled himself. It is difficult to be around him.

“You know, your mother never wanted you. She wanted a son. I wanted a daughter.” He starts with his old tunes again. He is still angry at my mother. “You know she took my piano! She took everything! How am I supposed to live?”

My father stays with my grandma now and she has a piano too.

“You need to tell her to give me my piano back!” he urges. 

“But dad, you understand that I need the piano so I can practice for school? Won’t you just let me keep it?” I plead.

“No, I need to compose my music! I am a composer, I am famous. My songs are being played on the radio and TV. I need my piano back! Tell her! Tell her to give it back. How does she dare to take it away from me?”

“Dad, you don’t want me to practice? What will I practice on if you take the piano back?” I attempt to reason one more time. I already know there is no point to ever reason with him, but perhaps he can see that having a piano is essential for me to finish school? 

“I need the piano. I have my tapes here,” he points at his bag full of recordings. “I need them to be on the radio and TV. How could she take it away from me?”

I give up.

I wish I could give him the piano back and never touch it again. At the same time, the anger bubbles up and resurfaces in me again. The one person who wants me to play the piano the most….that person is the one wanting to take it away from me.

It’s already Friday and after my father’s visit, I pack up and travel home for the weekend. When I get to the apartment in the afternoon, my brother is already home from school. I shuffle through the living room drawer and find the box of torn picture shreds. “Let’s go,” I tell my brother. He follows me as we get on the bus. “Where are we going?” he asks.

“We are giving this back to the father.” I point at the box.

We get off the bus in town and walk to the pet supply store. The store is on the second floor. We walk up the stairs.

“My songs are on TV and radio, I am a composer,” we hear my father’s voice, talking to a customer. My brother and I look at each other, and we giggle. How can one person keep saying the same things over and over so much? To everyone. Every person in the vicinity knows about this composer genius.  

“So, uhm,” I nudge my brother with the box in my hands. “Take this and put it right by the door.” I hand him the box of pictures. He takes it, slowly and quietly puts it by the entrance to the store. On the top of the box lid, I scribbled my father’s name to make sure he knows it’s for him. All of the pictures inside have his face cut out from them and I brought them here for him to keep. Will he understand what this means? He is cut out of my life now. 

“Let’s go,” I whisper to my brother and we run away before we get caught. 

Now I feel better…….maybe…..I think.