When Tiny Dick finally finishes, he pulls out and shoves me forward onto the floor. I land awkwardly, my shoulder hitting the wood floor first. I force myself to ignore the pain as I scramble into my jeans and top, totally ignoring my underwear and only grabbing my bra as an afterthought. As I dress, Gem tells me that she left Ian in the motel room by himself. That she didn't know what to do. That she was close to calling an ambulance.
"We leave at eight," Tiny Dick says as I rush out of the room and toward the motel as quickly as I can. I don't even stop for my shoes--a cheap pair of dollar sandals I bought at Goodwill in the last city we stayed in--and run out of the clubhouse barefoot. It's close to midnight, but thanks to record highs, the ground is still warm to the touch. I stumble just slightly as I step into the busy road but don't let myself fall. Correcting myself quickly, I dodge an oncoming motorcycle and run at full speed across the hot blacktop, over rocks and other sharp objects I can't see, through the motel parking lot, and up the stairs to our second-floor room.
I stop only when I'm at the open door. I should run in. I should ignore the desperate cries and the crashing sounds. But I can't. Ian's moods range from sweet and quiet to destructive and insane. He's been through hell, and he's not quite back yet. I can't blame him, but I know better than to barge in on him when he's losing his shit. The last time I got him to a doctor, they said he was tall for his age. That was a while ago, and it's been at least six months since I needed to get him back in. It's not easy finding a free clinic to check him out when we have no permanent address and my driver's license is from New York and has been expired for a year.
Slowly, I walk into the room and call out to my boy as I survey the damage. The two bedside lamps have been knocked over, one completely broken and the other just tipped. The Bible that sat in the bedside table is scattered around the room, the back and front half of the book on the floor near the TV, with the rest of the pages covering the floor and the bed. I notice the word sin scrawled in Ian's messy handwriting etched into the pages. And on the white walls. And even on the dresser, though it's hard to tell there since all he had handy was a black ballpoint. This is everything I fear but nothing surprising. Six months we've been doing this--cycling through one meltdown after another--and no matter what I do, it's never enough. One psychologist said my boy needs to be hospitalized, but we tried that and he only regressed. They wanted him to talk about his trauma, to explain in detail what happened to him. Fuck them and their bullshit. My boy won't talk about it, and I won't make him. It's bad enough he had to live through what that sick fuck did to him. They always want to know where his scars come from. I always want to ask which ones they're talking about--the ones they can see or the ones they can hear.
It's bad enough that I can't down enough Jack or take enough dick or do enough lines to block out the memories of that bastard touching my son. I won't make Ian talk it out with a goddamn stranger, even if it means we handle this on our own and in our own dysfunctional way.
I stop just before I reach the closed bathroom door and try to get Ian's attention again. He's still screaming, frantically, at the top of his lungs. His voice is hoarse, but he doesn't stop. He never does, not until he's good and ready. Knowing this could be a while, I take my place on the other side of the door and clear my throat. This is our routine--the only way he'll recognize me when he's like this. I start to sing. It's a stupid little song about bunnies in the forest, and I think its message is about not being a bully or some shit. I don't know, but when Ian was in kindergarten, he taught it to me, and he likes it when I sing it to him. In the last year he started telling me he likes the song because it's about getting back at someone. I don't think it is, but I let him believe what he wants, even if it is totally fucked for an eight-year-old to believe in vengeance. I should be teaching him better, I should be giving him more. I should be doing a lot of things, but instead, I just sit on that dingy motel carpet and scream-sing at the top of my lungs. Eventually Ian's voice falters and lowers, though he doesn't stop. I'm coughing through what I think might be the hundredth rendition of the song when Ian quiets and then stops. I lower my voice but keep singing. Tears sting at my eyes, but I hold them back when he opens the door and crawls out of the bathroom. His brown eyes are filled with tears, and he's got bright red, raised streaks across his cheeks and arms. My heart sinks at the sight, but I only bumble the words a little before I get back on track and force myself to keep singing. If I get too upset, he'll turn around and go back into the bathroom, and then it'll take another hour to get him out. This isn't about me--this is about a little boy who's scared and traumatized and doesn't know how to express any of it, so he just flips out and destroys everything, including himself.