Oil On Troubled Waters
Clare Tanner
Published by Clare Tanner at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Clare Tanner
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Oil On Troubled Waters
How long are they going to leave me in this room? It’s so small and claustrophobic. I feel as if I’m going to explode. I press my hands as hard as I can against my ears and clench my eyes shut and grit my teeth. It’s the only way I can stop myself screaming and kicking the wall. I can’t stop pacing round the room though, not that there’s much space to pace. What are they going to do with me? I’m still angry, but I’m starting to feel the cold finger of fear creeping up and down my spine as well. Am I in real trouble? I didn’t mean to lose it, but it’s so hard when she riles me all the time, day in day out. It’s enough to make anyone angry. Oh God, I can’t take it any more! When is someone going to come in and tell me what’s going to happen?
I hear footsteps. Is someone coming? The door bursts open and in walks the scariest policeman I’ve ever seen. He looks old and tough, like he’s seen it all before and won’t believe anything I say. What am I going to do?
“Right, Lad. No need to look like a rabbit trapped in the headlights. I’m not going to eat you.”
His words sound kind, but his face is telling a different story. He has deep hard furrows in his forehead, and he is frowning so hard they look like crevasses. His eyes are small and hard. He knows what he thinks of me, that’s for sure.
“I’m sure you know that you’re in serious trouble. We take a very tough line on violence against women, and raising your hand against your own mother is about as bad as it gets.” He pauses, and stares at me.
I gulp, and look down at my feet.
“The good news, as far as you’re concerned, is that your mother doesn’t want to press charges. I think that she is as shocked as I hope you are by what’s happened. The bad news is that she doesn’t want you back in the house, not now, not ever. And I’m not going to let it drop either." He is glaring at me, but now he pauses, and breaks eye contact. "But I’ve got kids myself, and I don’t think you’re bad, deep down. So I’m going to give you a while to think things through, and when I come back I want answers. And they’d better be good. How did it come to this, eh?”
With this parting shot, he is gone. The door slams shut behind him.
* * *
How did it come to this? I never meant to hurt Mum, but I’ve felt this anger rising up inside me for years now, but it’s been getting worse and worse recently, and it’s been getting harder and harder to control. Mum doesn’t seem to understand. She’s so tied up in all her own problems that there’s no time left for me, except to criticise me. I can’t remember the last time she actually asked me how I was feeling, or said a kind word to me.
I’ve never found it easy living in my family. I’ve never really felt right or comfortable. It’s as if I don’t belong like the others do. And I guess you could say we’re dysfunctional. Not that that makes it any easier to cope with. My older brother, Josh, he’s the goody-goody. He’s always got on well with Mum, and he’s really laid back. So if she does go on at him, he seems to be able to switch off and not get angry. My younger brother, Mikey, well he’s a bit wild, but he gets away with it because he’s the baby, and he's cute. He can do no wrong. And then there’s me, Ben, the difficult one, or so everyone tells me. I feel like I’ve been labelled as the awkward, middle child, and that I can’t escape from that, whatever I try to do. There are two years between Josh and me, and then only another eighteen months between me and Mikey. I don’t think I ever really got a chance to be the baby. I was just shunted off when Mikey arrived. Then, when I was five, Dad walked out. I don’t feel I ever really knew him. He didn’t keep in touch. We keep hoping he’ll turn up some day, but I’m sixteen now. I guess I’ve got to accept that I have to find out how to be a man without his help.
That’s what I find the hardest. I really don’t know how I’m supposed to behave. I’ve got no-one to watch and learn from. I look at Josh, but he’s so different to me. I really can’t relate to him. And then there’s Mum. But for as long as I can remember, all I ever got from her was anger. She was always ranting at me for not being ready for school, for making a mess, for fighting, for getting bad marks, for being rude. You name it, she’s told me off for it, over and over again. It’s not as if it does any good. I don’t know how to become better. She tells me, again and again, what I’m doing wrong, but she never tells me how to get it right. I feel lost and alone.
That’s probably why I started to hang around with the boys who seemed older and really streetwise at school. I thought I might learn something from them. Apparently I didn’t learn the right things, because that became another stick for Mum to beat me with. I was mixing with “the wrong crowd”. But at least with them I felt that I belonged to something or someone. It didn’t help my grades at school though. They hadn’t been brilliant to start with, but they got worse and worse. And then I totally messed up my GCSEs. Mum was furious with me. But I really did want to do well. Mum seems to think that I did it on purpose, to spite her, but I didn’t. I don’t want to be a loser, but I really needed help and encouragement. She practically ignored me for the whole year of GCSEs. I don’t think she even really noticed that I was doing the exams. She was so busy with her job, and her boyfriends. I was the inconvenience, the one that got in the way. She still spent plenty of time going on at me about my results, of course.
Since those results came through, things have gone from bad to worse. Mum said I had to pay rent for my room, that she couldn’t afford to keep me for nothing in return. Anyone would think I was about thirty. But I haven’t got enough money. I’ve managed to get a part-time job, but you try finding a well-paid job when you’re sixteen. It’s impossible. So I started to fall behind with the rent, and I guess I got a bit defensive when she demanded it. But she’s always so angry with me. I don’t feel I can get through to her. So she gave me an ultimatum, pay up or move out. I didn’t have the money, so she kicked me out. She can’t see how scary that is at sixteen. I don’t have a dad and now I don’t have a mum either. Of course, I said that I could go and stay with my mate, because I didn’t want to look like a loser, but then when she said alright, off you go, I actually had to go and ask him. He has let me, or rather his mum has, but neither of them were too keen. But I think that they felt sorry for me. It’s a shame my own mum doesn’t.
Then, tonight, I needed to go back to pick up some stuff. I left in a bit of a hurry when she chucked me out. I thought I’d go when she wouldn’t be home, because I didn’t want to face her and have her go on and on at me again. But when I turned up, my key didn’t work. She’s changed the locks. I couldn’t believe it, locked out of my own house. So I climbed in through Josh’s bedroom window. That catch has been dodgy for years. I was grabbing a few things when Mum arrived back from work, earlier than usual. She was furious with me, called me a criminal and a burglar. All I’d done was get into my own house. And then she went on about how she’s let my room out, to a proper lodger who was paying real rent. That’s when I saw red. It was as if she’s written me out of her life. I’m too inconvenient. I don’t fit. Therefore, I’m out of the story. I didn’t hit her, either. I shouted at her, sure, just like she was shouting at me, but I didn’t hit her. I just sort of grabbed her. I wanted to shake her, I was so angry and hurt that she didn’t want me in her life. But she started screaming, and she picked up her mobile and called 999. I couldn’t believe it, my own mother.
So that’s how it came to this. But I can’t tell the policeman that. It sounds like I’m whingeing. It’s not a justification, is it? And no-one’s going to believe me against my mother. He thinks I’m some low-life lout, destined for the rubbish heap.
* * *
The door opens. Here he comes.
“Right, Ben lad. I brought you a cup of tea.” He is carrying two steaming polystyrene cups.
“Thanks.” I don’t like tea, but I guess that now is not the time to tell him that.
“Have you had time to have a think?”
“I suppose.” I don’t look at him, but stare at the floor instead.
“Now look Ben.” The furrows in his forehead don’t seem quite so deep now as he sits down and leans towards me. “I peeped in through the door a couple of times, and you looked as if you were thinking so hard your head was going to fall off. Now, as soon as I come in you clam up and behave like Kevin the teenager. You know I’m not going to charge you, thanks to your Mum, but I can try and help you. I really don’t want to see you again in a few months because you’ve done something even worse. I don’t like to give up on people.”
I look across at him. He doesn’t look so hard now. He looks more like a… well a Dad.
“So Ben, you don’t need to tell me your whole life story, but try to tell me why you think you ended up doing what you did today."
I hesitate. I know what’s inside my mind, but usually I can’t express it to other people. I end up getting angry or staying silent, thinking that it’s not worth the effort, that no-one will understand. But something deep inside tells me that here is an opportunity that I shouldn’t waste. Well, here goes nothing.
I look at this now not so scary policeman, and try to maintain eye contact as I speak.
“I think because I was scared.” This sounds stupid as soon as I say it, and I look away, but he doesn’t seem surprised. He even looks more sympathetic.
“Scared of what, exactly?"
I look at him again, and dig my nails into the polystyrene cup. “Scared of being on my own, I suppose. I’m just a kid. I don’t know how to be a man, and look after myself. My Dad’s not around, either.”
“So what happened to bring it to a head tonight?”
I think for a minute, and bite my lip so hard I can taste blood. “It was when I found out that she’s changed the locks and rented my room out. I felt that she had written me off, and I was petrified. I went home because I needed some stuff, but I was homesick, too. I wanted to see the house, and I thought that eventually, if I did the right thing, Mum would let me come back. But when I got there and found that I couldn’t get into my own house anymore, I freaked. I really felt that she had given up on me for good.”
He nods, thoughtfully. “I can see that, but what on earth made you hit her, your own mother?”
“I didn’t really hit her. I sort of grabbed her. I was angry and I wanted to talk to her, but she was shouting at me. it made my head hurt. I couldn’t get through to her, so I reached out to her, to get hold of her. I wanted to make her listen to me. I never meant to hurt her, but she went berserk and called you lot.”
He's looking at me and nodding his head. I can imagine how it must sound to him. I can hear a clock ticking somewhere in the room.
“Why do you think she did that, if she knew you weren’t going to hurt her?”
“Because she was angry with me," I say. "She wanted to get me out of her life.”
“Do you really think that?” he asks, screwing up his eyes.
“Yes, I’m sure of it," I say, but suddenly, I'm not.
“What if I told you that she called us because she was scared of you?”
“Scared of me, but that’s ridiculous. She’s my mother.”
“How tall are you, Ben?”
“About 6ft 2.”
“And how tall is your mother?”
“5ft 4, I think.”
“And you don’t think she’s scared of you?”
This brings me up short. “But I’m just a kid," I insist, "and I’d never hurt her.”
“But she doesn’t know that.” He’s sounding exasperated now. “Do you know if your father was ever violent to her?”
“Yes, he was. That’s why she kicked him out.”
“So what your mum sees is the danger of history repeating itself, and she knows she can’t go through that again.”
I'm angry now. I start to stand up. “I’m not my father. I’m not like that.”
“Of course you’re not." He gestures to me to sit back down and I do. I feel stupid. "But your mum has had to be mother and father to you and your brothers. That’s hard enough when you’re little. But when you become teenagers, if a gulf grows between you, it becomes impossible. And that’s when the communications break down and things start to go wrong. That’s when the anger starts and the understanding goes out of the window.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Well, I’ve been talking to your mother, for a start. That’s why I’ve been so long. She’s been doing some soul-searching too. Sometimes it takes a crisis to bring things into focus. And, I see problems like yours every day. But I think your family problems can be helped. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. It’s been bad for a long time.” I'd love to believe it, though.
“Do you want to be back with your mum?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“Do you think she wants you back?”
“I doubt it, after this.”
“Well, let me tell you that she does, whatever she may have said earlier. Although she saw anger on your face, she saw pain as well, and she wants to make it better.”
“She does?”
“She does. I would like the two of you to talk to each other now. But if it’s going to work, you’ve got to leave your anger and hurt outside the door, so the two of you can communicate, and see the other person’s point of view. I’ve said exactly the same to your Mum. She knows that she made a mistake too. Do you think you could handle that?”
“I could try.”
“You need to do more than try. Your future depends on it. Are you ready?”
“OK”
“Come with me then.”
He leads the way, out of this room, down the corridor and into another room that looks exactly the same. There is my mum. She gets up and comes over to me. I can see that she has been crying. She gives me a hug. I can’t remember the last time she did that. I hug her back, again the last time for this is just a distant memory, if that. I notice that Mum has to stand on tiptoes to hug me. I see no anger in her face now, only regret and confusion. I wonder what she can see on mine. We’ve got a long way to go, but for the first time in a very long time, I don’t feel scared.
~ ~ ~
Clare Tanner is the author of The Tranquillity Project, a novel set in the near future.
Sample or purchase The Tranquillity Project at:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/103439