![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
backdrifterKathy’s birth marked the start of a new era in his life. Out with the old Respa, he who took people’s shit with a barrel of salt, he who wasted away while Tanya ate every crumb in the place in front of him. In, then, with the new Respa, who took charge around this goddamn dump of a studio apartment that they could only afford because he literally busted his ass every night for some sweat-dampened cash. Tanya challenged him less and less when, in daytime, he wanted to hold his daughter. When she did, he pulled her away from the baby, and things didn’t go well for her then.
Sometimes, as he wrapped his bony fingers around her soft neck, he saw in himself his own father, and his fingers would flex for a moment before he pulled himself off in disgust.
And other times, when he sent her reeling with a hard punch to the cheek, all he could think of was all the ways she’d fucked him over. All the heroin, the angel dust, the having to deal with withdrawal more than once. At all, even. The way Ryan had used to look at him when drugs made an appearance in any way. Coercing him into supporting her, and then trying to steal away his own daughter.
And then he’d punch her again, harder if possible.
When he came home at night, though, and saw her with her swollen purple eye and her damp pillow, the self-loathing would settle in deep, like an incurable disease. He would think of his father, of being hit until he was too dizzy to stand and his knees gave out; of crawling under his bed later and trying to salvage his dignity as a man, if he could be called that.
He would think of his father and he would see what was happening to him. And then morning came, and Tanya would piss him off all over again, and he’d forget his epiphany as he kicked her feet out from under her.
He couldn’t take all her control away, though. Tanya kept breastfeeding Kathy, and when they put her on the floor and beckoned her together in an effort to get her crawling, she looked glassy-eyed and pale. Her breath came heavy, with her little tongue sticking out, like she was always thirsty. She spent more of her waking hours crying than anything else, and sometimes it seemed like she was trembling.
“You’re killing her,” Respa would comment again and again, watching Tanya walk around the room trying to get Kathy to settle down.
“I’m not,” she would say, though the edge had dulled in her words. “Breast milk is a free source of food for her, so why waste it?”
“Because it’s poisoned,” he would counter. She would glare, and then go on her way, bouncing the baby gently.
Kathy was, developmentally speaking, the slowest baby Respa thought he might ever meet. Her response time to her parents talking to her was more than a few seconds off, and it seemed to take her all her energy to sit up, when she finally did master that skill. Crawling didn’t come until she was over a year old, and each movement was slow and measured, like she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep up with herself.
He took Kathy to the playground, sans Tanya, in the mid-afternoons, and it pained him to watch her try and fail to interact with other babies. She seemed to exist in slow motion; when other children grabbed her few possessions away from her, she would reach for the missing objects anyway, and cry when she discovered their disappearance.
Older children figured out she was the “retard,” and would do things like pour sand on her head, or steal her toys, or push her on her side, which always led to delayed crying. When Respa entered the fray, slapping small hands and shouting adult words, women nearly ten years older than him would come hurrying over to call him a coward for bullying children. It took some convincing to make them understand he was the father of “the slow baby,” and even then they gave him lectures that he tuned out on, about how if he had a problem with children’s behavior he should seek out the parent of the problem child, blah blah blah.
Kathy took her first step days before her second birthday. Tanya was asleep, exhausted and depressed after crashing on an exceptionally bad trip, and Respa secretly delighted in the fact that this special moment was his alone. Tanya didn’t deserve to be part of it. She had pulled herself up on the couch that Respa had so often pinned her mother to in shows of dominance, and then taken careful, snail-like steps toward him. He’d scooped her up when she gave up and fell back on her diapered butt, and then pulled the teething ring he’d bought her out of the freezer for her to chew on and keep her quiet for a little longer.
She was still mute save for her constant crying, and the occasional gurgle, and it seemed like no amount of pointless chatter encouraged her to talk. The other children Kathy’s age at the playground seemed obnoxiously vocal, even if most of what they said could only be understood by their doting parents. She was at least becoming better about dealing with playground bullies, though when she snatched back a shovel only to brandish it as she chased the thief, he wondered if she wasn’t turning into a bully herself.
And then, of course, there was still the breastfeeding. Kathy was a full-blown toddler, now, but Tanya never weaned her. Respa tried to keep Kathy from Tanya at what seemed to be feeding hours, but Kathy would become unbearable then, shrieking and scratching until she got her hit of heroin milk. Tanya would only stare at him with cow’s eyes now when he brought up that she had to go clean for Kathy. She got fucked up nearly every day, and it was like he was flushing money down the toilet. She would try her old juju tricks on him, sometimes, to try to get him to take a hit too, but these attempts weren’t common after he beat her stupid for one.
He kept working every night. It killed him, when he was going down on a john, to think that only a small portion of the money he was going to make would go toward actually caring for Kathy, and the rest would go toward Tanya’s drug habit. When it came to buying heroin, there was no amount of violence, threatened or real, that could get Tanya to back down. She became violent herself, finding super strength to pick up furniture and hurl them his way until he left her alone and let her visit her dealer.
With Tanya half-afraid of him and usually fucked up, Tanya was no longer in sole possession of all the food in the place. For ages she had hogged every crumb that came through the door; the elvish-looking girl she’d been before the pregnancy was gone. She had gained a lot of weight during her months pregnant, and she showed no inclination toward losing it. He gained a little bit of his own proper body weight back, and with it came strength he hadn’t felt in months.
He was sorely tempted, some nights, to use this newfound strength on his customers, to take their treatment of him and their money and then rend them limb from limb. But of course, that would be stupid; the john would call the cops, and the cops would believe a middle-aged, middle class man over a dirty skinny street kid any day.
So instead, he took all that anger and resentment home to Tanya. Some nights he and his conscience tried to fight it; he would take long detours underground, transferring to trains that could still potentially get him home, if he transferred three more times, in an effort to calm down. He tried to take up smoking, but the hacking cough on the first one he tried only angered him further, which seemed counter-productive.
Most nights, though, he gave in. He came crashing in at four in the morning, and though it woke Kathy up, at that hour he was past caring. He woke Tanya up completely when he would yank her up by her hair, and god but it felt good to see her cower, after all the months of her bullshit that he’d taken. He felt power surge through him when he straddled her waist and held down her wrists until they bruised, felt godhood incoming when he kicked her in the stomach until she was nothing more than a whimpering little curlicue of humanity on the creaking floor. Then he’d grab Kathy, fix her some boxed macaroni, and rock her back to sleep. A good night of parenting.
“God, look at you,” he said sometimes, during daylight hours when Respa couldn’t make money and Tanya sat around, completely lit. “You’re such a sadsack now, you know that?”
“Shut up, you pathetic faggot,” she’d croak with a half-hearted flipping of the bird, and then she’d stare morosely at the floor some more.
“You got so fucking fat. It’s been years since you were pregnant, can’t you lose some fucking weight?” he’d continue, and Tanya would put her hands over her ears, a strange and depressed look on her face. If she didn’t react after that, he’d shrug and take Kathy out for a bit, but half the time these little confrontations turned into fully-fledged fights—which Respa always won.
And then he got a letter.
“I don’t remember telling anyone where I live,” he grumbled as he studied the envelope, flipping it back and forth in his hands.
“I put you down on the lease, just in case,” Tanya said from the mattress, though her tone of voice indicated that she’d done it when she thought she’d always have control over him, and she certainly regretted it now.
“It’s a letter from the state,” he said as he took a seat on the couch.
“Maybe they found out what you’re doing to your family,” Tanya said, glaring at him with tired eyes as she stroked Kathy’s side.
“You’re not my family,” he snapped. “And Kathy and I are great together.” He tore open the top of the envelope, taking a corner of the letter with it as he did, and pulled out the folded-up letter.
“Dear—” and his name was filled in over a long underscore, Thomas Wilkins. “This is to inform you, as per your re—your request…”
It took him a moment to process the information on the sheet, and by the time he had he’d paled considerably, licking his lips and swallowing nervously. Tanya sat up. “Babe, what is it?”
“Parole,” Respa whispered.
“What?”
“That motherfucker’s out on parole,” he hissed. “I can’t fucking believe it, he’s out—”
“Who, who’s out, what—“
“Shut up!” he shouted, grinding his teeth as he crumpled the letter in one fist. Seconds later he was uncrumpling it, scanning the information on it again. He crumpled it a second time, threw it across the room, retrieved it, checked it again. He made unintelligible noises of rage and knocked things off the kitchen counters, and all the while Tanya held a frightened Kathy closer.
“Rez, you’re scaring her,” Tanya breathed, watching him with wide eyes. “Talk to me, please, what did that letter say?”
Respa collapsed, finally, on the half-destroyed piece of furniture they called a couch. “My dad,” he said after a minute of staring at her and biting his lip. “The bastard’s out, now. The letter has his new address and everything.” He held the thoroughly-distressed pieced of paper up, though it wasn’t like she could really make out what it said at that distance.
Tanya pursed her lips, and Respa knew exactly what she was thinking.
“I’m not him,” he muttered, but she said nothing.
“So what’re you gonna do about it?” she asked.
“I’m gonna make my peace with the old motherfucker,” he said, though not a single word sounded confident. “I’m gonna go see him.”
Sometimes, as he wrapped his bony fingers around her soft neck, he saw in himself his own father, and his fingers would flex for a moment before he pulled himself off in disgust.
And other times, when he sent her reeling with a hard punch to the cheek, all he could think of was all the ways she’d fucked him over. All the heroin, the angel dust, the having to deal with withdrawal more than once. At all, even. The way Ryan had used to look at him when drugs made an appearance in any way. Coercing him into supporting her, and then trying to steal away his own daughter.
And then he’d punch her again, harder if possible.
When he came home at night, though, and saw her with her swollen purple eye and her damp pillow, the self-loathing would settle in deep, like an incurable disease. He would think of his father, of being hit until he was too dizzy to stand and his knees gave out; of crawling under his bed later and trying to salvage his dignity as a man, if he could be called that.
He would think of his father and he would see what was happening to him. And then morning came, and Tanya would piss him off all over again, and he’d forget his epiphany as he kicked her feet out from under her.
He couldn’t take all her control away, though. Tanya kept breastfeeding Kathy, and when they put her on the floor and beckoned her together in an effort to get her crawling, she looked glassy-eyed and pale. Her breath came heavy, with her little tongue sticking out, like she was always thirsty. She spent more of her waking hours crying than anything else, and sometimes it seemed like she was trembling.
“You’re killing her,” Respa would comment again and again, watching Tanya walk around the room trying to get Kathy to settle down.
“I’m not,” she would say, though the edge had dulled in her words. “Breast milk is a free source of food for her, so why waste it?”
“Because it’s poisoned,” he would counter. She would glare, and then go on her way, bouncing the baby gently.
Kathy was, developmentally speaking, the slowest baby Respa thought he might ever meet. Her response time to her parents talking to her was more than a few seconds off, and it seemed to take her all her energy to sit up, when she finally did master that skill. Crawling didn’t come until she was over a year old, and each movement was slow and measured, like she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep up with herself.
He took Kathy to the playground, sans Tanya, in the mid-afternoons, and it pained him to watch her try and fail to interact with other babies. She seemed to exist in slow motion; when other children grabbed her few possessions away from her, she would reach for the missing objects anyway, and cry when she discovered their disappearance.
Older children figured out she was the “retard,” and would do things like pour sand on her head, or steal her toys, or push her on her side, which always led to delayed crying. When Respa entered the fray, slapping small hands and shouting adult words, women nearly ten years older than him would come hurrying over to call him a coward for bullying children. It took some convincing to make them understand he was the father of “the slow baby,” and even then they gave him lectures that he tuned out on, about how if he had a problem with children’s behavior he should seek out the parent of the problem child, blah blah blah.
Kathy took her first step days before her second birthday. Tanya was asleep, exhausted and depressed after crashing on an exceptionally bad trip, and Respa secretly delighted in the fact that this special moment was his alone. Tanya didn’t deserve to be part of it. She had pulled herself up on the couch that Respa had so often pinned her mother to in shows of dominance, and then taken careful, snail-like steps toward him. He’d scooped her up when she gave up and fell back on her diapered butt, and then pulled the teething ring he’d bought her out of the freezer for her to chew on and keep her quiet for a little longer.
She was still mute save for her constant crying, and the occasional gurgle, and it seemed like no amount of pointless chatter encouraged her to talk. The other children Kathy’s age at the playground seemed obnoxiously vocal, even if most of what they said could only be understood by their doting parents. She was at least becoming better about dealing with playground bullies, though when she snatched back a shovel only to brandish it as she chased the thief, he wondered if she wasn’t turning into a bully herself.
And then, of course, there was still the breastfeeding. Kathy was a full-blown toddler, now, but Tanya never weaned her. Respa tried to keep Kathy from Tanya at what seemed to be feeding hours, but Kathy would become unbearable then, shrieking and scratching until she got her hit of heroin milk. Tanya would only stare at him with cow’s eyes now when he brought up that she had to go clean for Kathy. She got fucked up nearly every day, and it was like he was flushing money down the toilet. She would try her old juju tricks on him, sometimes, to try to get him to take a hit too, but these attempts weren’t common after he beat her stupid for one.
He kept working every night. It killed him, when he was going down on a john, to think that only a small portion of the money he was going to make would go toward actually caring for Kathy, and the rest would go toward Tanya’s drug habit. When it came to buying heroin, there was no amount of violence, threatened or real, that could get Tanya to back down. She became violent herself, finding super strength to pick up furniture and hurl them his way until he left her alone and let her visit her dealer.
With Tanya half-afraid of him and usually fucked up, Tanya was no longer in sole possession of all the food in the place. For ages she had hogged every crumb that came through the door; the elvish-looking girl she’d been before the pregnancy was gone. She had gained a lot of weight during her months pregnant, and she showed no inclination toward losing it. He gained a little bit of his own proper body weight back, and with it came strength he hadn’t felt in months.
He was sorely tempted, some nights, to use this newfound strength on his customers, to take their treatment of him and their money and then rend them limb from limb. But of course, that would be stupid; the john would call the cops, and the cops would believe a middle-aged, middle class man over a dirty skinny street kid any day.
So instead, he took all that anger and resentment home to Tanya. Some nights he and his conscience tried to fight it; he would take long detours underground, transferring to trains that could still potentially get him home, if he transferred three more times, in an effort to calm down. He tried to take up smoking, but the hacking cough on the first one he tried only angered him further, which seemed counter-productive.
Most nights, though, he gave in. He came crashing in at four in the morning, and though it woke Kathy up, at that hour he was past caring. He woke Tanya up completely when he would yank her up by her hair, and god but it felt good to see her cower, after all the months of her bullshit that he’d taken. He felt power surge through him when he straddled her waist and held down her wrists until they bruised, felt godhood incoming when he kicked her in the stomach until she was nothing more than a whimpering little curlicue of humanity on the creaking floor. Then he’d grab Kathy, fix her some boxed macaroni, and rock her back to sleep. A good night of parenting.
“God, look at you,” he said sometimes, during daylight hours when Respa couldn’t make money and Tanya sat around, completely lit. “You’re such a sadsack now, you know that?”
“Shut up, you pathetic faggot,” she’d croak with a half-hearted flipping of the bird, and then she’d stare morosely at the floor some more.
“You got so fucking fat. It’s been years since you were pregnant, can’t you lose some fucking weight?” he’d continue, and Tanya would put her hands over her ears, a strange and depressed look on her face. If she didn’t react after that, he’d shrug and take Kathy out for a bit, but half the time these little confrontations turned into fully-fledged fights—which Respa always won.
And then he got a letter.
“I don’t remember telling anyone where I live,” he grumbled as he studied the envelope, flipping it back and forth in his hands.
“I put you down on the lease, just in case,” Tanya said from the mattress, though her tone of voice indicated that she’d done it when she thought she’d always have control over him, and she certainly regretted it now.
“It’s a letter from the state,” he said as he took a seat on the couch.
“Maybe they found out what you’re doing to your family,” Tanya said, glaring at him with tired eyes as she stroked Kathy’s side.
“You’re not my family,” he snapped. “And Kathy and I are great together.” He tore open the top of the envelope, taking a corner of the letter with it as he did, and pulled out the folded-up letter.
“Dear—” and his name was filled in over a long underscore, Thomas Wilkins. “This is to inform you, as per your re—your request…”
It took him a moment to process the information on the sheet, and by the time he had he’d paled considerably, licking his lips and swallowing nervously. Tanya sat up. “Babe, what is it?”
“Parole,” Respa whispered.
“What?”
“That motherfucker’s out on parole,” he hissed. “I can’t fucking believe it, he’s out—”
“Who, who’s out, what—“
“Shut up!” he shouted, grinding his teeth as he crumpled the letter in one fist. Seconds later he was uncrumpling it, scanning the information on it again. He crumpled it a second time, threw it across the room, retrieved it, checked it again. He made unintelligible noises of rage and knocked things off the kitchen counters, and all the while Tanya held a frightened Kathy closer.
“Rez, you’re scaring her,” Tanya breathed, watching him with wide eyes. “Talk to me, please, what did that letter say?”
Respa collapsed, finally, on the half-destroyed piece of furniture they called a couch. “My dad,” he said after a minute of staring at her and biting his lip. “The bastard’s out, now. The letter has his new address and everything.” He held the thoroughly-distressed pieced of paper up, though it wasn’t like she could really make out what it said at that distance.
Tanya pursed her lips, and Respa knew exactly what she was thinking.
“I’m not him,” he muttered, but she said nothing.
“So what’re you gonna do about it?” she asked.
“I’m gonna make my peace with the old motherfucker,” he said, though not a single word sounded confident. “I’m gonna go see him.”