Wormtail

My dad was screaming. Chasing me. Hitting me with a piece of wood. He was so angry. So scary. I was gasping for breath and trying to explain and then I woke from the nightmare, sweating and shaking on my plastic mattress, my children crying out in the dark:

“Mommy, what’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? The legacy I tried to outrun is painted on these walls in blood. The only inheritance I had any hope of, and a sum that wasn’t worth its weight in feathers. Three decades ago I saw my mom with tears streaming down her cheeks, and said “Mommy, what’s wrong?”. Three decades ago I was doubled over in pain, whimpering to the god of the bathroom floor as I fought through another debilitating stomachache. Three decades ago I was so, so careful as I carried my bowl of lucky charms to the big velour recliner, and despaired when some of the milk betrayed me and I caught a sharp but well-meaning rebuke from the volunteer in the kitchen. I was already ashamed to admit I enjoyed watching Barney. Making a mess in this strange place was almost too much to bear.

I have no memory of our room in the shelter all those years ago. I have one flash of another family’s room, four children and a mother, because my little sister opened the wrong door and a boy smaller than us was startled with no diaper on. I have some memory of my bouncy horse flying off of the porch, hurled by my dad in a rage. “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill the kids, and I’ll kill your entire family.” To this day I don’t know what set him off.

It was a terrible rage. An honest rage. A rage that made my mom run. It took her longer than normal to soften; to look back.

I can’t blame her. I know what he would have done. We would be hunted down. There was no safe refuge. There were worse monsters to be swallowed by. With him there was danger AND protection, rage AND love. We had little hope of leaving and staying alive. Staying meant living, and living meant being left with deep, lasting scars, dredged into us like trenches in the deep.

When the cosmo-not, the fauxton, the predator came along, the surface concealed what lived underneath, and I was distracted by his whirlwind endeavor to touch every sail, every line, every map. We were drifting off the path, almost from the moment we cast off. Eventually I could see, with more and more clarity, the divergence. Perhaps an unscarred and unscathed daughter of a safe father would know about anchors, and flares, and the coast guard. This daughter knew only how to weather the storm. How to set my jaw so that the gales didn’t rattle my teeth. How to deftly navigate a treacherous route to nowhere, nothing, and never.

I found myself alone as he disappeared below deck, emptying our vessel of innocence and hope right under my feet. I fought to keep my eyes open as I clung to the rudder. He set off on his own, careening wildly from port to port, a reckless, unscrupulous wretch, with a whale of a tale for every unsuspecting soul he crossed paths with. The hero of every yarn, sometimes pirate, sometimes admiral, but in reality always the antithesis of both.

As he traversed the waves, a mutiny was swelling in the Bermuda Triangle that became more jagged and opaque by the day, and I sacrificed more and more to secure safe passage. I was drenched by the spray, battered by the wind, and the sun beat down on my back day after day, but I faithfully honored the intent of the voyage.

It was only at the last, slumped against the railing and dazed by his blow, that I finally sent out an SOS call.

Little did I know I would be dashed upon the rocks, and made to answer for the wreck and the wreckage. Loyal as a bilge rat, he scurried out of sight. A pathetic Pacific Peter Pettigrew. Licking boots and scrounging crumbs, and squeaking on and on about the villain he so narrowly escaped.

Oh Wormtail…you forgot, but I did not.

I have the Marauder’s Map.

And I solemnly swear I will end you for good.