She expected alcohol in my breath and a cigarette in my fingers. She thought that I would have a background of an absent parent. With some broken hearts and a tattoo hidden in my body. She hoped that my behaviour could be explained. That my savage language came from fistfights and my demons had a reason like the hand of my parents. But, after thirty minutes of talking with me, she realised that there was nothing of that in my life. That I was a soul that has seen hell by observing.
By seeing the cuts in the arms of a stranger, the fatigue of my cousin. The fear of my friend in men, with the cautious words from my professor. I learnt how to see the flaws in every human. Like how sometimes my sister would arrive late at night and that my father was more time at home that my mother.
It was there that my story was born, they weren’t mine, they were from others and I was the storyteller. I stoled them to share them with those who wanted to read them.
It wasn’t my fault that she believed that in me she would find a companion. Someone who could guide her in life and tell her how to translate her demons.
It was a classic mistake that I had seen made in each person who had ever read one of my works. But in her, in her, there seems to be a break, destruction. The moment that she realised that in me there was no empathy and only a hunger for her pain. There was a defeat in her eyes as if I was her last attempt.
In her simple:
“Please”
I understood, that I was the last chance she found help her get peace. To find an explanation about why she got this life, how to survive. How to set herself free, how to find someone that didn’t feel pity for her, that didn’t hold her. That could only be there and understand her, who was in tune with her.
Yet, I had never been at that level, I had been lucky, my childhood and adolescence had been happy. I had friends, I got left and I left people, I tried smoking but I never liked it, alcohol was too bitter and I read.
Sometimes I found it interesting and others I found it boring, I had decent grades. And the only time I actually knew what depression was, was when my dog died from a bus that passed during a green light. In me, there was no understanding.
I ordered a glass of whisky for her and gave it to her. She drank it with closed eyes and without a cough. She sat with me for another hour, we didn’t talk, we listened to music and we saw the people come and go.
She was still waiting for me to confess some hidden secret. That was the reason as to why the silence lasted so long. Until she sighed and accepted that I was a soul that knew how to talk with the demons of others. Without the need to understand.
I knew to see and translate, and that was why when an hour and a half passed. She told me about the absence of her mother, about her father that drank. He never raised his hand or his voice, he drank.
All the time.
She had only one friend and she had discovered the cigarette at the age of fourteen. She had sex for the first time at sixteen. She was drunk and she doesn’t remember, She thinks she said no but she also remembers saying yes. So she prefers not to remember it. She was in an abusive relationship that lasted six months, it was after high school. When she still didn't know what to do about her life, it was her co-worker who had honey eyes and blond hair. He taught her how to drink and how to drive, the first two months were good. Until one night he had drunk too much and she might have raised her voice when she shouldn’t. Maybe it had been her fault, maybe not, she doesn't know what to think about that.
Her friend was the one who got her out of there. The same friend that took her to Alcoholics Anonymat the age of nineteen. He helped her to inscribe in a public college, he was the only good thing on her life.
But even then he didn’t understand the bad days she had and he didn’t understand the need of her to avoid psychologists. Of not walking through the streets of Palermo and her hatred to the songs from the 50s. He didn’t understood why loud noises left her tense. And how sometimes she needed to lock herself in the bathroom for hours.
He did tried but he never succeed, and she read my stories. The ones about abuse, about betrayal, with abandon. Then she found my poems about toxic love and unrequited love. About the pain in the bones and flaws in the mind. And she thought that she had found her voice on my words, a friend in my stories. Poor kid.
Of course that at the end she threw me a glass of water to my face and she called me a fake and son of a bitch. That I should go to hell, it was her right to treat me like that, and at the end of the day, I didn’t care that much.
When she was leaving, still cursing my existence, I held her hand, and I saw it. The glimmer of a last hope, of maybe, perhaps, probably, there was something broken in me. Because I had the crooked smile, the dark eyes and the cold fingers:
“Would you let me write your story?”
That earned me a slap, my glass of soda in my hair and that she spit on my table. With another son of a bitch, although this time in a higher voice.
“I change the names”
She look at me with repulsion and disgust, as the few who knew the truth used to do, she kicked her chair and she left the bar.
The waitress, Samatha, moved to pick up everything. Leave a towel, I took a few sheets with my pen from my bag and I started writing the story of a girl who had her knees burned. Blood on her fists and a dirty mouth, I started to translate her demons.
T.A.