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We Are The World was on every radio station and The Breakfast Club had every teenager trying to act cooler.
1985 wasn’t very fun for either of them though. He was 15 and she was 11. Both of them were having their personalities built, trauma by trauma.
School had already started and he hadn’t left yet. His mother had rarely woken him up in the morning so he’d never gotten into the routine of doing anything on time. In fact, he was often the one who had to wake her up.
He got dressed, into clothes that should’ve been washed a couple weeks ago. It was embarrassing at school. He put his sneakers on and one shoe had blood on it from helping the Tonys beat someone.
He nearly tripped on clutter when he went into his mother’s room. He’d done the same thing last night when he’d helped her to bed.
“Ma, wake up.”
No response.
“Ma.” He kicked the bed frame impatiently. “Ma!”
Nothing.
He got worried she might be dead. “Ma?” He shook her.
She looked annoyed at him for waking her. “What?”
“You gotta get up, your shift’s at 10.”
She put her head on the pillow to go back to sleep.
“Ma, you’re gonna get fired again! Get up.”
She ignored him.
“You gotta go to work, ma!”
She turned her back to him.
“They’re gonna take me off you if we don’t got nowhere to live,” he assumed the idea of losing him would be enough to get her out of bed.
“Fuck off, Chrissy. I’m tired.”
He slammed his fist into the door as he walked out of the room, already into the habit of hitting things when he was emotional. He had to walk down the stairs carefully because there was stuff everywhere.
His shoes were sticking to the floor when he got to the kitchen. He went to the refrigerator but slammed it closed because there was nothing to eat.
It had been over seven months since she’d relapsed and he felt less parented and loved every day. He glanced at his father’s picture and missed a man he couldn’t remember.
There were past due bills on the kitchen table, among all the clutter. He knew he had to make her go to work.
The bottles of alcohol in the living room caught his eye as he walked past them, tempted to drink some. It had to be good if it was worth his mother ruining their lives over.
“Ma!” he yelled up to her. “You getting up?”
She didn’t respond.
“Ma!” He put his jacket on, that he’d grown out of recently. “Ma! You up?”
Nothing.
He sighed angrily and went back up to her room. “You’re gonna get fuckin’ fired!”
“Just go to school, you’re gonna be late.”
He opened the drapes. “I am late!”
“Then what you still doing here then?”
“Tryna get you outta bed!” He picked her uniform up off the floor and tossed her it. He knew she had the shakes in the morning. “Come on, I’ll help you.”
She pushed him away when he tried to help her sit up. “I don’t need your help.” She sluggishly sat at the edge of the bed. “I can get dressed on my own.”
He kicked stuff away from the doorway so she wouldn’t trip when she came out, then lingered in the hallway to make sure she was really getting ready.
He leaned against the wall and banged the back of his head into it while he waited. “We got no food.”
“Get some money out my wallet.” She expected him to feed himself.
He heard the sound of a bottle being opened. That happened every morning but he missed when it didn’t.
“Ain’t there that meeting you can go to on your way back from work?”
“Will you shut up about AA? You’re driving me crazy.”
“You need it, ma! I can’t keep doing this.”
“Tough shit.”
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “I fuckin’ hate you! I wish I lived with Tony!”
“Why don’t you then?”
He stormed downstairs and slammed the front door behind him so forcefully that the surrounding walls shook.
He really did wish he could live with Tony, with anybody but his mother. It made him feel incredibly rejected that nobody would let him live with them. He wanted to be a real part of the family, not just a visitor.
He decided not to go to school, his day had been stressful enough already.
Their neighbor was out hosing down his car and was concerned about him. “You all right, son?”
He wanted to say no, cry, ask for help. “You seen either Tony?”
A few hours later, he was hot-wiring a car for the Tonys. Most boys got taught how to fix cars by their fathers, he’d been taught by his uncle how to steal them. He got the car started but had to adjust the seat a lot because his feet couldn’t reach the pedals.
The risk of juvie didn’t scare him because it felt like nothing could be worse than home.
He had no idea he was being groomed and exploited. Tony was trying to help him because he loved him, that was all.
His chance of having a normal life had been stopped before it had had a chance to start. He wasn’t born a sociopath, he was being made into one.
Later that same afternoon, Adriana came home from school. She rang the doorbell but nobody answered so she checked if it was unlocked and let herself in when it was.
“Ma? I’m back.” She was looking forward to telling her about her day.
Her smile fell when she heard her parents arguing. It was like this all the time. She put her backpack down and eavesdropped.
“I’m busting my ass at work all day and you can’t even fuckin’ clean the house?!”
The house was clean anyway, her father just took any excuse to yell at her mother.
“I didn’t have time today!”
“What the fuck else were you doing?!”
“All I know is I wasn’t out there being a thug like you!”
“You wanna see a thug? Huh?!”
Adriana heard a crash, then the sounds she recognized as the fight turning violent. She quickly went to her room to hide, but felt guilty for leaving her mother alone with him.
She closed the door and sat against it while she cried. She wished she lived with her uncle Jackie, he never yelled, never hit Aunt Ro. She’d even live with her uncle Richie even though he yelled sometimes. Anywhere but here.
She heard her mother shouting for him to stop, almost screaming. She wanted to cover her ears but was scared of not knowing if it got worse.
She got her diary out and wrote with tears in her eyes:
when i grow up im gonna go somewere far away from here and get married and have kids and a big house and a dog and nobody will be like daddy every one will be happy and love eachother
She closed the diary and put it back in the hiding place in a box under her bed. She knew what her father would do if he ever found it - not to her, he’d take it out on her mother for no good reason. Nothing felt secure in this house, she was always expecting something bad to happen because it always did.
She was perpetually on edge but would ironically feel the need to replicate this atmosphere when she got older, because it was all she’d ever known. It was familiar.
She fidgeted with a stuffed animal as she waited for it to stop, she’d basically picked all the fur off the poor thing over the years. She felt like she was too grown up for stuffed animals but she needed something that made her feel safe.
The fighting stopped but she was too nervous to go out there. She wanted to hide in her room forever.
She eventually came out after she heard her father leave the house. She went to check on her mother. “Ma?”
Her mother kept her back turned to her because she had bruises forming. “Go back to your room, baby.”
“You okay?” She tugged her arm.
She prepared dinner. “I’m fine, sweetie. Go play or something.”
She tugged her arm more. “Did daddy beat you up?”
Her mother paused cooking for a moment because the fact that Adriana knew to ask that was depressing. “You know how he gets.”
“Why?”
“That’s just how he is.”
“No, why d’you keep letting him do it?”
She built the courage to turn to her. “We’re a family, you need a mother and a father.” She couldn’t leave him even if she wanted to, you couldn’t divorce a mobster.
She nodded but looked upset. She was used to seeing her mother injured but it was still hard. Why would her own husband hurt her?
“Put your bottom lip away, you’re gonna trip over it.” Her mother stroked her hair. “Your daddy loves you very much, sweetheart. Both of us… He’s just got his temper, that don’t mean he loves us any less.”
She nodded, having that seed planted in her brain even if she couldn’t understand it. You could hurt people you loved. That was okay. Bad tempers couldn’t be helped.
Her mother hugged her and kissed the top of her head. When Christopher was this age, he knew what liquor smelled like, he could even identify which liquor it was, but Adriana didn’t know yet. She scrunched her nose and wondered what that funny smell was.
“I love you, sweetheart,” her mother sounded like she was holding back tears.
It felt like she was absorbing all her mother’s pain. “I love you too, mommy.”
As adults, he’d suffer from addiction just like his mother, and she’d suffer from abuse just like hers. Their traumas fed into each other’s, they were doomed from the moment they met.