Love Punch (alternative) (written in late 2008)
Jaylen is four years, twelve weeks, three days and five hours old and playing with marbles. He’s crouched low on the floor in front of the library fire, his cheeks glowing red and his breath coming out in excited gasps. Every time he succeeds in knocking two marbles together, a grin of pure delight escapes him. This is where he goes when there is nothing else to occupy his time.
They’re his of course, the marbles, just like everything in the bright yellow room upstairs is his. Over the years Jaylen, a naturally engaging and happy kid, has come to appreciate these things for what they truly are. Things that no one else can have. Things people have given him as a pretence to getting in closer to his father, not understanding that once they leave their hands Jaylen makes them his. He has a lot of things, and forgets about some of his toys from day to day, but when it’s new and shiny he treats it like it’s precious and plays with it even when he doesn’t quite understand what it is.
He likes other children well enough. They help in the play sometimes, to the point where they forget where and who they are and lets themselves be snared in boyish laughter. He doesn’t like to go play at someone else’s house, because then there is always someone in the room with them. Jaylen doesn’t understand why other parents don’t put as much trust in their children as Jaylen’s father puts in him. He never casts worried glances at whatever new companion Jaylen has acquired for the day; not like the looks shot Jaylen’s way. He figures it’s because they know he has more things than they do.
It’s Friday afternoon and his mother should be done soon. They’re going out for tea today, to celebrate Jaylen’s results in class earlier this morning. He doesn’t quite know why they didn’t go out for tea the day he read his first book, or solved his first mathematical question, but his father is out of town and he looks forward to spending some time with his mother. She’s almost as busy as his father is, only she stays at home to do the things she does. “Have you been good today, Jaylen?” is what she always asks when he sees her at dinner, and she puts emphasis on ‘good’ while looking as if she wants him to answer in a way he has yet to do. But Jaylen is only four years old, so he can only grin widely and nod his head. Of course he’s behaved in class, better than any other child he knows. His tutor says so.
His favourite marble is blue and red, given to him by his grandmother. It’s bigger than the others, and he holds it in his hands now and sees the fire reflected there. Every ten minutes someone checks in on him, other than that he is alone. He has named every one of his marbles. His favourite is called Blinky. He has a plan to show it to his mother and father tonight, after he’s gotten Sarah to help him clean it. Maybe then they can all play together.
***
Next to him, a short heavy-set man lets out a quiet guwaff of laughter. When Jaylen turns to stare at him, the man sneers and adjusts his formal tie to fit looser around his neck. On his other side his mother gently squeezes his elbow to remind him to look as his father takes the stage.
Jaylen doesn’t like these things. There is always someone there to look down on him, even when he didn’t do anything. People should give freely and without restraint, his mother says, and “people respect your father for doing that, so much they can’t even look him in the eye – you see, they know he’s so much better than they are”. But his father never notices how when everyone avoids looking at him, they invariably end up looking at his son instead.
He had tried to convince his mother that he didn’t want to go to this one, and that they should stay home and play with his new train instead. When she had said no, he had confided in her that he’d rather play with his teddy anyway, but that he didn’t want the train to feel alone in a new house and wouldn’t she please make tea so they could celebrate like they did last week? When that appeal went denied as well, Jaylen had thrown an unusual temper tantrum that left a worried look in his mother’s eyes. She had mumbled something about it being good for him to see his father accept this reward, and that he should behave and be a good boy.
What his mother doesn’t know is that these functions have people telling him things he doesn’t want to hear. Last month, there had been an older lady who’d smiled at his father the one second, only to turn up later when Jaylen was going to the bathroom with Sarah. She’d grabbed his arm so hard, so hard he’d bruised, and had brought her mouth down so close to his ear that he could smell the sweetness of her powder and feel the drops of spit spilling out as she hissed at him that his family was filth. “Nothing good will ever come from your family, boy. It’d been better if none of you ever stepped foot on this planet to begin with. You will never be anything but evil and worthless in the eyes of God.”
There is never much talk of this God person in Jaylen’s house, but he cried the first time someone told him how much He hated Them. After the old lady stomped off, he decided that it might be because he had too much of everything, and if he changed God and the other parents would like him more. He’d set out to his house with the intent to carry all his things down to the basement, but his blow-up castle was too big for him to pick up, and then he looked at Blinky and changed his mind. If all his things were locked up in the basement he wouldn’t have anything to do in the afternoons. He would just try not to talk about them anymore.
***
It takes three years for Jaylen to gradually but surely break his promise. He is seven when he first enters school along with the other children, and by then he is boasting about his possessions every chance he gets. He has come to learn that this is the only way he can catch their attention.
“Do you really own the new transformer or are you just saying that because your daddy doesn’t love you?”
This upsets Jaylen, because his father has always loved him. He has never done anything to prove otherwise, no matter what the children in school says. He has never hit Jaylen, or made him go to a summer camp to become a real man like Peter’s dad. Jaylen knows his father has done stuff to other people, but he has known that since he was four years old and overheard the maids talking. And what does that have to do with how he feels about Jaylen?
He talks to his grandmother about it before she dies. She tells him that his father bears a great responsibility to the world, one that he has failed to live up to. Jaylen asks what that responsibility is, and why it concerns only his father. His grandmother just shakes his head and tells him that he’ll understand once he’s older.
Jaylen sulks in his room for five hours after this conversation – he is a master sulker by now – and pretends that he is King over a country where the water is sapphire and the roads are made up of marbles, and no one dares speak to him for fear that he’ll make everyone’s love turn to hate with the mere gesture of a hand.
***
Jaylen is eleven years, thirty two weeks, one day and thirteen hours old when he comes to terms with the fact that everyone will always hate his father.
After he realizes this he sets out to eradicate all traces of his father in his own behaviour. His father is charming when the mood strikes; poised, articulate, polite. Jaylen is short-tempered, nasty, vicious, spoilt and the older he gets the more he speaks in sneers rather than in words. His father hurts people through and with the use of others, Jaylen makes sure people knows it’s him telling them all the horrible things they never wanted to hear about themselves.
He only ever feels sorry when he catches his mother looking at him. She never understood, or, maybe the problem is that she did. Maybe she was just naive enough to think that people could forgive him. He doesn’t know if this is really who he is, he wants to say to her. Or why it’s so much easier having people insult her name.
But at least now people hate him because he’s a son of a bitch rather than the son of his father.