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Is there still magic in the midnight sun / Or did you leave it back in sixty-one
His ma looked old. That was the thought that pushed its way into Bill’s head as he watched her wash dishes methodically. Her shoulders curled inwards, the shoulder blades piercing outwards, her pale, green dress hung limply just like it had done for three years now. He remembered when she bought it, from the second hand store, it was in a 40s style with small daisies printed around the bottom. It was the small smile gracing her lips that caught Bill's attention, when she brought it into the kitchen. It had a few stains and holes, but she hadn’t seemed to care. She didn’t do that much. Then again, Mrs Bailey didn’t buy a “new” dress often either.
She must be cold, it was nearing November now. The leaves had changed two weeks ago, falling all across the Lafayette sidewalks and the wind beat against bare skin. Bill hated winter, the cold air would brutalize open cuts and falling on icy, pavement would only torture already purpling bruising. Bill also hated winter because it meant Chrtistmas was approaching.
Most people were joyous this time of the year, waiting for hot chocolate under the christmas tree, watching whatever movie was on the television (not that the Bailey household has one of those) and delicately wrapping presents in the corner of the living room. Bill wasn’t.
The last November Bill could remember his heart beating with happy anticipation had been 1973. It still beat with anticipation, only in fearful dread.
That year there had been enough money left over for an actual christmas dinner, not just a pitiful imitation of Thanksgiving. There had been presents. Yeah, they’d been forced to go to service, but there had been no fighting that year, no scrapes and bruises by an”accident” and they had actually watched the Christmas broadcast on the television. He remembered his ma pushing her nails through his growing hair with such a gentle touch, that the house actually felt like home.
Her hands had calluses all the way from the tips to the knuckles, a consequence of washing blood, cigarette ash and grass stains from clothes. He loved the comfort he found in those calluses, when she would run them through his strawberry hair, pat his leg with encouragement after a bad day at school and, sometimes, when she would brush away tears after a particularly terrible service.
That had been years ago.
That had all changed on Christmas Day 1974.
He would never forget the Christmas morning he couldn’t lift his head from the pillow, the clouds of purpled bruises hammering down onto his forehead.
He would never forget the Christmas morning, where he woke to thunderstorms of tears and gushing tides of blood, the cherry red color blending in with his crimson strands.
He would never forget the Christmas morning, where instead of his mother coming to tend his wounds, she bitterly entered with her own, an ugly map of blue and green, above her left eye.
"Why couldn’t you leave it Bill? Why do you push him? You know what he is like! You could have just stopped! I look out for you Bill, but you, you don’t look out for me, or for Amy or for Stuart. Why did you hurt me?”
He’d played Stu ‘Blue Christmas’ on the piano, he had played all hymns as well, ‘Silent Night’, ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sings’, ‘O’ Little Town of Bethlehem’, the full lot. He hadn’t even sang the fucking lyrics, but no, the bastard heard the devilish Elvis Presley and narrowed his scope at him.
There had been no presents that Christmas, or the Christmas of 1975, or any Christmas after that.
People were preparing for the happiest time of the year. But no, he was here staring at the hunched shoulders of his frail mother, still washing dishes.
All he did was fold and unfold the yellowed paper in his fist. He didn’t know why he looked for it, it was just for renewal of insurance, he hadn't wanted this. Not the agonsing heartbreak, the simmering, cackling, lucifer fuelled anger. He would never be able to fully stop the hellfire, not until he made it there himself.
Father: William Rose
The bastard. The fucker. He had no right. He didn’t…no…he never had the right. All the bloody noses, broken bones, missed school assignments, hoarse voice from screaming, begging and pleading like he would to God. But the fucker wasn’t his father, let alone the Father of Christ.
And all she had done was watch. As he had curled up in this very corner of the kitchen, like a frightened mouse being pulled back by its tail, he had sat in a warm pot and made to squirm while the burner was turned, up and up and up. As he scratched his own nails into his legs, watching the vermillion tears form a stream, making a lake on the floor. Hit after hit after hit.
God, he felt like Christ!
Like Jesus feeling the nails be hammered into his soft tissue, pushing through his bones, forcing his veins to burst and bleed. Raised on the cross, tears draining from his eyes and air being pulled out of his lungs like empty lyrics. All while the innocent, justified, good people watched.
How she had watched, how Mother Mary had watched while her son fell. How she watched the belt move through the air like a viper, lashing down with poison.
And now she stood, placing the last mug on the strainer, it still had coffee stains around the rim. It sat perfectly in line.
“Why are you here Bill? I told you to stay in your room ‘till dinner,” Her voice was soft, it had never been commanding or loud, but it sounded like a slit tongue. She had forced him back to his room this morning, apparently his bruised face was a trigger for her bastard husband, it would remind him that he existed. No wonder every time he asked himself what father could treat his son like that, well the fucker wasn’t even his fucking father.
He couldn’t hold the weight of that paper anymore, the weight of 17 years of hurt, of loss.
“When were you going to tell me?” It wasn’t a scream, a shout or a venomous whisper. It was just a sentence with a voice crack, that barely happened anymore, only when he was nervous. Or afraid.
She knew the question, her hunched shoulders pulled backwards like a puppet on a sting, her methodical washing froze, yet she did not answer.
“Why? Why’d you…you not,” He breathed “not stop him ,”
He doesn't stop the tear that slips through.
Her back remained straight; she did not turn. Her knuckles grabbed the worktop.
“How could I? It would make him worse, I didn’t want him to turn on Amy or Stuart. You, push…you, have always been…you’ve always been different…”
He expected his anger, the burning rage, the passionate furor. But it didn’t come, he just remained. Maybe it was the none answer, maybe it was because he understood where she was coming from, because he couldn’t stop the bastard either. He couldn’t stop him pulling his collar or snatching at his hair. But, the bastard had always turned on Amy and Stuart anyway, in 1971 Amy had to get rid of her dolls, apparently they were “provocative”.
The stinging winter winds. The empty christmas tree. The bleeding cuts. The tired heart. The burning lungs. The broken dreams. The trip-wires of love. The egg shells cracked into his soles. Broken sleep and souls reaped.
He had to leave. The walls of this house were eating him alive, he couldn't paint over the pain and the anger that crawled out of his skin like sin, they were already black and rotting.
“I’m leaving.” He stated it with a finality he never thought he’d get. He always thought he’d die in this house.
If anything, he felt relief fill his hollow body, he could go. Go to a land of eternal sun, one of blistering summers and non-existant winters.
He thought of the Queen vinyl stashed to the far corner under his bed and The Clash record in the shop. Maybe even London, so far away, the homes of punks, Sex Pistols, Freddie and Elton. No, London was too rainy, always having a gray skyline, but a boy could dream.
Her back remained straight; she did not turn. Her knuckles grabbed the worktop. Her head dips.
“Collect your things and go then.” She put no emotion in her voice, no anger, no sadness, hell, even no happiness.
“What about Ames and Stu?” He thought of Amy’s bright eyes when he held her hand walking home from church, her mary-jane’s kicking happily. He thought of Stu's soft hair, always ready to be ruffled, and how he was getting older and more likely to start having opinions.
“They don’t need any more upset or confusion…you already see what it does to them. I’ll tell them you’ve gone away for a few months.” He thought he could hear her voice quiver.
They both know that’s a lie. They both know the moment he walks out the door, will be the last time he’ll be mentioned in this house, the devil will finally be banished.
He trudged down the hall, feeling heavier and lighter than he’s ever been.
He crawled under the bed that was too small for him and picked up the dusty Queen record and pushed it in his worn rucksack. Along with an old journal, old clothes that he didn’t fit, an old leather jacket of Izzy’s and $75. That’s all he had, all that showed who Bill Bailey was. No, no more Bill and definitely no more Bailey.
He reached the door of the prison that had held him in chains for years. They were broken, he was free. Jesus had finally reached his salvation. His mother was long gone, back in her room, where she always ran when pain filled the air.
He slammed the door, the frame shook, he hoped the fucking thing would finally fall down. The house that had dragged his brain through hell and spat it out a mangled mess of anger. He left the house and William Bailey.
W. Rose’s last thought about his mother was her smiling over that daisy dress and fingers pulling through her hair. He wondered if she used to smile more, if lights sparkled in peridot irises, if there was magic in the soul. Before she was broken, before she was shattered, before she was left with a baby at 16. Maybe back in ‘61.