Sitting on the closet floor I re-lived him twice today. I willed the flashbacks to come like I used to will the stars to shoot in my grandmother's backyard so I could wish for a best friend. Someone who would understand.
I sat Indian-style in the deepest closet of my new apartment and doubled over first with nausea and then with sobbing.
Spreading my hands flat on the floor, I saw his hands over them. I saw how much they looked alike. How similar in shape and size. And then I felt his hands around my wrist. Strong like a vice-grip. Cold. Pulling me towards him visciously as he coaxed me with cavity-laden tones.
He has my father's eyes. My grandmother's eyes. I have his thin-lipped smile. My grandmother's smile. I forget when we stopped playing like children.
He used to tie me up. Hog-tie me. Wrist-to-wrist, ankle-to-ankle, wrists-to-ankles. He would leave me in my bedroom closet tied in that mangled fetal-position for hours. The first time he did it, I cried and screamed for help. I was four years old, but my bedroom closet was in the front of the house, and the grown-ups were in the back of the house, drunk and stoned and deaf. He was twelve.
The second time, he gagged me. I could hear the other children laughing, but they were relieved it was me instead of them.
The third time, I stayed in the closet overnight, wetting myself. I laid in my urine-soaked clothes until morning when he 'remembered' to let me out.
Sometimes he would shut himself in with me. He would untie my hands and pull them towards him, and I would clench my eyes shut wishing I were dead.
It's safer in the closet now--my hands and feet are no longer tied, and when I've forced myself to remember enough to keep the flashbacks from coming whenever they please, I leave the closet.
And whenever I begin to slightly feel his fingers around my wrist, I remind myself that I'm no longer in the closet, and I don't have to wish I were dead again.