I did practice hanging myself yesterday, to make sure I could do it properly. I went out to the backyard and positioned the step stool under the strongest branch of the oak tree. Of course, I’d prefer hanging myself from a peach tree, but there are no peach trees in the backyard and to traverse the countryside looking for a peach tree would take too much out of me. And I don’t know if a peach tree is strong enough to support my weight. The last time I checked I weighed upward of two hundred pounds. You wouldn’t think someone that substantial could be so fleet afoot, but you’d be wrong in my case. Out of all the things wrong with me this isn’t one of them. People are always impressed by my speed and agility. They say I move well for a big man, usually right before they start beating me. So, I gathered my two hundred pounds, stood on the step stool, swung the noose around the branch, and slipped it over my head. Obviously, I did not kick the step stool away, but I’m certain I can do this later without expending too much effort. Even still, I was exhausted after this dry run. I had to go straight to bed afterward and wound up sleeping for eighteen hours straight. Theoretically, I should be well rested for later, but that isn’t always the case. I can sleep for three days and wake up spent. This was another thing wrong with me growing up. I would wake up after sleeping for a full day and go downstairs and ask my mother, What’s for breakfast? And she would say, What the fuck is wrong with you? She would say that I missed breakfast and lunch and it was almost time for dinner. I would always apologize to her, but she never accepted my apologies. She said my apologies were insincere. She was probably right. She’d say I was just like my father and I couldn’t argue because I didn’t know what he was like, having never met the man. At this point in a conversation with her I would grow weary and announce that I had to go to bed. I would tell her I might not wake up this time so it could be goodnight maybe forever. She’d say none of us was that lucky. It was true, none of us was that lucky, except maybe when it came to my father. We never knew exactly what happened to him. Mother said she got lucky when he joined the navy and got killed in action overseas. I’m not sure any of us believed her, but we knew better than to ask questions. As I walked up the staircase to my bedroom I would tell her, Someday this luck will change, and she’d answer back, Don’t count on it unless you join the navy. Sometimes she would tell me to wait up so she could tuck me in, but she never actually meant that. The only time she would come into my room was when she meant to beat me.
I don’t know why people always want to beat me, but they always have, from the time I was a small child. Back then they beat me at home, in school, at church, on the way home, the way to school, the way to church. Even when they took me to the hospital to mend my wounds, they’d beat me there, too. I can remember lying on a gurney in an ambulance and both the paramedic and driver taking turns. Then they’d hand me off to the doctors and nurses, who would continue the beating. Afterward I would get to rest. They would tell my mother, they would say, He needs rest.
I think I could withstand the beatings better when I was younger. I know I was always tired, but probably not as often as I am now. I remember trying to sleep away as much of the day as possible. The day had nothing in it I wanted or needed to be awake for and I’m sure the feeling was mutual. Now, I know full well that days do not have feelings. Please don’t think that because I have trouble thinking things through or that I have made a great many mistakes that this is one of them. What I am saying is that no one occupying any part of the day cared one way or another if I was a fellow participant, a member of the team. My mother was one of these. Sometimes she’d see me downstairs and say, Who are you again? I told her I was passing through, to pay me no mind. My mother didn’t like it when I was fresh like this. That’s what she’d say, she’d say, Don’t be fresh. But just as a day has no feelings, neither did I growing up. I think I cried once after my mother called me a chickenshit bastard, but that was it. I must’ve been very young, perhaps only four or five. She laughed at me and asked, Did I hurt your feelings? I told her I had no feelings. She said I was a chip off the chickenshit block then. I think she was referring to my father, but I told her I didn’t care, and she said, Is that a fact, and I said, I believe so, yes. She said, We’ll see about that, and gave me a sound beating. She probably beat me for a solid fifteen minutes and I am proud to say I didn’t once cry during that particular beating or any subsequent beating, either.