Prose, I suppose - [View all]

Ponies & Grandpas


“How about a scene from your youth: where you grew up, what you did, what a friend or relative did?” It seems a simple enough request, but I am at first unclear what it is he means exactly. But attached to this request is a short story he’s written. About his pony.

Oh. So this is what he means, something like this.

I sit for a moment and try to remember childhood lessons learned or feelings that might be appropriate for this sort of “scene.” Tears roll down my cheeks. There is nothing that I care to share that I can think of.

Not all stories are happy ones, I tell myself, as I swipe at the tears. I could do all kinds of things with the imagery: blinds drawn to hold in the darkness; a stray light ray slipping through long enough to illuminate the wisps of smoke that meet and blend, and then finally settle like a blanket of despair around me. Tommy Dorsey, or maybe Frankie Laine, providing the background music, an unsuccessful attempt to cover up the cursing or crying, or breaking of glass. I was so ashamed. So alone.

I hate their stories of ponies and grandpas. I hate their normalcy.

My sister locks herself behind her bedroom door. I pace, stealing an occasional glance through the crack in the blinds at the outside world. It’s daytime and the sun is out. You would never know it inside the room. My sister and I make no attempt to offer the other any comfort. We are too miserable to comfort anyone, including ourselves. Sometimes, though, I make and unmake my bed several times over in a futile attempt to release the knot of tension that lays like a brick inside me. It never seems to help.

The smell of alcohol permeates the stale, smoky air. Sometimes, when the blinds are open and the sun streams in unabated, my mother irons. I think about how much better I like that smell - the smell that comes when the heat from the metal iron meets the moisture in the water-sprinkled clothes. It smells normal in the room then. My mother never irons when she is drinking.

My parents always loved me. It is this dichotomy that tears me apart. I was never abused. Well, not in the ways I ordinarily think of abuse. I get so tired of all the victims in the world. Their ceaseless whining and their ugly, public baring of their souls. Who wants to hear it? Not me. We have to get beyond it, the sins of the father, the sins of the mother. Our own sins.

I hate their stories of ponies and grandpas. I hate their normalcy.