I’m going to explain this as plainly as I can.
I don’t know where to begin. It’s like it never began, like it’s always been there, like the sun and sky.
I know the sun and sky had to begin sometime but I wasn’t around for that.
I was around for this, though I wasn’t grown yet, wasn’t entirely myself yet.
I was fifteen.
My favorite band was Devo.
I read for fun but didn’t dare tell anyone, because when you’re fifteen, you want your peers to think you’re cool, but your peers don’t think, or they pretend not to, because they think that thinking makes you uncool.
I needed reading glasses but went without while at school.
I played tennis tournaments in short white shorts and long tube socks.
If I couldn’t find a partner, I hit against a wall.
I bought a pair of parachute pants that made me cold but didn’t make me cool.
Cold and cool are synonyms but not always and not the way I’m using them.
I wanted to wash the dishes, but Mom wanted to fight.
What fifteen-year-old wants to wash dishes?
A bookish, tennis playing fifteen-year-old with ten Devo albums and one pair of parachute pants wanted to wash dishes, but his mom wanted to get in his face and involve him in a lifelong argument she had with the world that never got sorted out.
Rimbaud said “Self is an other,” and so grownup Tom used third person to identify his younger self.
I wanted to be left alone, so I ignored my mom and tried to finish washing the dishes.
She got between me and the last few dishes, including silverware and particularly including our butcher knife.
I reached for the butcher knife to put it in the dishwasher, but I never touched it.
I never touched the butcher knife because of Mom’s piercing screams and her hands pushing my chest.
I never touched the butcher knife because she fingernailed my cheek.
I never touched the butcher knife because she drew blood and I went to my room to wipe the blood off of my cheek.
At fifteen, I had a waterbed and a History test to study for, so I floated on my waterbed, History book in my hands.
In my mom’s head, I’d been reaching for the butcher knife to stab her with it.
In my mom’s head, her most recent ex-boyfriend was the actual Green River Killer, my older sister, gone to live with out dad, was a streetwalking call girl, and in my Mom’s head, she herself was so close to God that it made perfect sense to change our last name to Christian.
I went to my room to clean the blood off of my face, to study for a US History test, and to escape the dystopia that existed only in my Mom’s head until she did everything she could to make it my whole world.
My mother was borderline psychotic, undiagnosed and unmedicated.
Right after I memorized a whitewashed version of the 1832 Battle of Blood Axe, two police officers entered my room without knocking.
One called me a little shit.
The other asked, “Do you think you intimidate your mom?”
At fifteen, I wasn’t yet very good with words.
I enjoyed writing but didn’t speak well at all.
The cops handcuffed fifteen-year-old Tom, put him in the backseat of their cop car, and went back inside to hear more of what was in his mom’s head.
Neighborhood kids riding bikes around the cul-de-sac pedaled up to the cop car to see fifteen-year-old Tom handcuffed in the backseat.
At fifteen, you don’t know who you are.
When he was seventeen, Rimbaud wrote, “No one’s serious when they’re seventeen,” but by the time I was fifteen, I had serious problems at home.
At fifteen, Tom became an other.
His parachute pants couldn’t keep him from falling and breaking.
The cops drove me to the station.
They wrote up a report full of words that came out of my mom’s head that described the world that existed only inside her head, though she was well on her way to making it my entire dystopian world.
They drove me to the juvenile detention center in Seattle, where they put me in a six-by-six holding cell.
I sat there, fifteen, wishing they’d let me bring my American History textbook, worrying about the test.
A boy in an adjacent cell wailed, “The judge is gonna give me a sentence I can’t handle.”
Grownup Tom can barely handle writing these sentences.
I’ve spent my entire adult life studying language, looking for the words that could make sense out of my mom’s madness and the chaos I’ve lived in because of it.
At fifteen, I’d never had a girl or even a date.
I hadn’t even masturbated yet, not once.
At fifteen, I’d never had a cigarette or a joint.
I’d never cut class or gotten detention, but now I would have an arrest record.
My younger sister called our older sister to tell her what had happened.
Our older sister called our mom, who chirped cheerily about ordinary pleasant things, the November leaves turning beautiful colors and hanging on as long as they could, shit like that.
A guard called me a little shit.
After hanging up, Mom drove to the juvenile detention center in Seattle.
They released me into her custody.
I got into the passenger side of her shitty Chevette.
I sat there, fifteen, as she said, “Now you’ll do what I tell you to do.”