Page 117 of Coerced Kiss
Anya balls her hands. “I come here because I’m the only one in the world you have. There’s nobody else who’ll take care of you. Sadly, Mom, I’m not doing it out of love. I’m doing it out of duty because I’ll never be like you.” Turning on her heel, she says, “Come, Saverio. I’m done here.” She stops at the door. “You won’t see me again, Mom, not until you behave like a civil personand at least pretend to respect me. I have other priorities to worry about now.”
Not waiting to see if I follow, Anya walks through the door.
“That’s right,” Mary calls after her. Raising her voice, she continues, “She’s going to have another man’s baby. Did she tell you that? Let’s see how much he wants to fuck you now.”
In two long strides, I’m in her space, gripping the armrests and putting our faces a hairbreadth apart.
Fear bleeds into her eyes.
Yeah.
A monster recognizes a monster.
“I have two things to say to you. One, another word from your mouth…” My grin is sinister. “And I’m going to kill you.”
She flattens herself against the back of the chair, not so keen on kicking the bucket now. Not like all those times she tried to kill not only herself but also her daughter. Like all bullies, she’s a coward when confronted by someone bigger and stronger.
“Two, if you swear one more time in Anya’s presence,” I say, “I will cut out your tongue.”
Her face transforms with horror.
“If you do ever see your daughter again and you’re not the perfect example of the Virgin Mary herself with impeccable manners and filled with so much love that it shines like angelic light from your asshole, I will cut off your fingers one by one, mince them, and make you eat every morsel of that steak tartare.Ifyou do see your daughter again, you better have a halo hanging over your head.”
She makes a choking sound.
“I may come for you in the night.” I straighten. “So don’t sleep too deeply.”
She gags, struggling for breath when I walk from the room.
Anya waits outside next to the Corvette. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” She sounds apologetic. “She has better days. Bertrand normally warns me when it’s this bad.”
I open her door. “Get in the car.”
She bites her nail as she obeys.
If I felt like killing Mary before, the urge is now a thousand times greater. She’s a waste of space, but she’s still Anya’s mother. Blood is sacred. For that reason alone, I won’t off her until she gives me a reason, and I hope to God she does.
Instead of driving home, I head to the Bronx.
“Where are we going?” Anya asks.
I don’t reply. She doesn’t speak again until I pull up at the old house with the cracked walls and peeling paint and park across the road. The number still hangs askew on the rusted gate, the nine drawing a six. An old man with a crooked back is hunched over on the lawn, hacking at the weeds with a pair of garden shears. It’s a lost battle. They’ll be twice as high tomorrow.
“Why are we here?” Anya asks in a soft voice, but I think she already knows.
I clench the steering wheel, not turning my gaze away from the man who’s too stooped for his age. “This is where I grew up.”
My gut twists, memories assaulting me. Most of those memories are only fragments now, disjointed pieces from my earliest recollections. I keep them like the childhood treasures I hid in the hollow of a tree trunk. Like those chipped marbles and broken costume jewelry with mud-encrusted cracks, random bling that I picked up in the park, they’re pretty to look at, to take out of their hiding place from time to time and admire in the light of the sun. Like those fake diamonds and broken glass, their only value is sentimental. As factual data, they’re worthless, full of holes and missing information. Full of sad parts I fight hardnotto remember.
Yet I cling to those shards of my past that are like blurry black-and-white flashes from an old movie projector—my mother rubbing eucalyptus oil onto my chest when I cough through the night, a five-year-old me mowing the lawn to surprise my father when he gets home from work, and the look of pride on my mother’s face when I made my first cup of tea and served it to her with a dandelion from the garden. I’m not even sure if those glimpses of a loving family are real or if I simply fabricated them. If you lie to yourself for long enough, you eventually believe it.
Anya puts a hand on my arm, pulling me back to the present. “Is that him?”
I know who she means. “My father.”
“I’m sorry, Sav.”
Turning to her abruptly, I cup her cheek. “You don’t have to be.” Urgency infuses my tone. “This is who I am. This is where I come from. That man over there? That’s the man who hates me. So, you see, we both have pasts that we’d rather sweep under the carpet and pretend they don’t exist. You never have to be ashamed of who you are, not with anyone, and especially not with me. The only thing you should feel is pride.” I tear my hand away from her face and put the car into gear. “I sure as hell do.”