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The Screaming Summer of 2003
By Lee Nelson
I was broken.
We both were
but could she
be broken?
She had learned
to scream
with exceptional
success
elsewhere.
Co-parenting.
It happens.
It's challenging
and Linda Blair
arrived
for the summer
and I was hardly
a man of God.
I was hardly
a man at all.
She would scream
screams
perhaps heard
on D Day
or in
factory accidents
or in the distant wings
of asylums
screams
from the 9th circle
of Hell's fluffy
pink bedroom
with a chronically
strangled
happy
bear
in a purple dress
screams
that would leave
Buddha
dragging a smoke
on a shorlline
with a 5th
skipping stones
defeated
incredulous
to reason
and she
would scream
some more.
Allowing her
to scream
without
acknowledgment
wasn't working.
She was winning
as I would
stand
at the
ends
of my property
to hear
what the neighbors
could hear.
The cops arrived.
They were
incredulous
too.
I knew few parents
other than my own
and the parenting
advice
of the
non-parent
is as
useless
as the
battle advice
of the
non-combatant
and I received
lots
of that
advice
and she
would scream.
My young son
began
to grow old
with me.
One day
finally
in a perfectly
dirty
white tank top
he entered
her pink
fluffy Hell
drew his arm
back
toward himself
in an untaught
backhanded
fashion
and clocked
her exhausted
blushing cheek.
She stopped.
She stopped
ever so
briefly
and we rejoiced
in the brief
moans
and hiccup
coughs
and guttural
exhausted
bewilderment
of perhaps
a goat
with an
upset
stomach
and in all my
brief
gusto
of suppressed
joy
I yanked his
guilty arm
and him
into the
hallway
and was at a
complete loss
for words
but preferred
silence
anyway
when he said
"Do you hear that, Dad?!
Do you hear that?!"
"Yes! Yes, I hear that,"
I replied.
"What are we gonna do, Dad?!
What are we gonna do,"
he asked
demanded
begged
beyond anyone's
years
of undeserved
suffering
of me
of an indifferent world
of an indifferent god
or an absent
child
psychologist.
"I don't know, son.
I don't know,
but we
can't
do
that."
I called him son.
So formal
so desperate
so never before
or since.
I sent him away
on his bike
hoping he'd
return
and grabbed a beer
and turned on
the tv
and began
to cook
Sloppy Joe
as she chose
to scream
again
until finally
like a faucet
she just
shut
off
and presented
hungry
in the kitchen
with her
strangled
delirious
smiling
purpled dressed
bear
wiped her snot
and tears
and said
"That smells good,
Daddy."
I drained the burger fat
into the sink
with hot water
and I was
drooling.
I don't think
she noticed
but I'm pretty sure
the bear did
and we both sat
as I made
plates
of
Sloppy Joe
and
Kraft
mac n cheese
and peas
and my son
arrived
just in time
hungry
sweaty
ready
to eat.
There were smiles
on all of us
as we ate.
We chewed
and looked at
each other
with the purest
smiles
ever to
fruition
within a family.
These battles
won
are the greatest
triumphs
of love
but they're
vile
victories.
We don't talk
about them.
We don't
know
how to.
