Transgenerational Wickedness

Realistic Fiction | Exploring Generational Trauma

My father spoke with a tar tongue and a mouth full of shards. My grandfather, if he spoke at all, spewed Agent Orange. It’s the only explanation for the spiritual numbness–genetic destruction and why I think I am genetically predisposed to wickedness.

My grandmother was not made of glass but she sure did appear to be. At my grandfather’s funeral, I thought she would cry. We watched her a porcelain doll holding our breaths fearful she would shatter. When they closed the casket I swear to god she smiled. I had never seen her eyes light up like that you know three thousand exploding suns twinkling at the destruction, twinkling at the freedom of death and owing nothing to no one, especially their former selves.

The week after, when all the leftovers had been eaten or thrown away and when he was well along with his decomposing, I visited her. Sat down. She gave me freshly brewed cinnamon and bay leaf tea.

“It clears you up you know. Gets rid of any lingering dark stains.”

“Dark stains like what?”

“You know… the wickedness. Now that he’s gone it’ll be easier.”

“Why did you stay?”

“The thing about darkness is it is rarely ever sudden. It sneaks in slowly and one day you look up and your whole house is in the shroud, your hands are covered in sticky tar darkness, and your spirit, well your spirit is fighting but it too has been touched and then you think to yourself how? How!? What of my children? What of my womb? And your only answer is to be a lighthouse because the hooks are in you but you know enough to shine a light but not enough to eradicate it. I should’ve killed him myself. I should’ve a long time ago but then I’d become him and that… that would just be too much.”

She says and then sips her tea.

“But he’s dead now. He’s dead and I am free. We are free.”

I watch her then. I wonder how many of the deep wrinkles in her forehead were carved by his wickedness. I want to lean in and kiss every fold. I do not. Instead, I reach across the table and grab her hand. We stare at each other and let the silence say all the things we never could. I sip the tea and feel the warmth sliding through me liquid light– a balm.

Elias
The Grandfather
Once he was young. He had a strong jaw and a broad back and spoke like he knew something about the future. He met Teresa at the beach. In the beginning, they went to the beach many times. He liked the way her deep brown skin glowed under the sunlight when drenched with seawater. At first, he would fantasize about licking the droplets off her shoulder, the crease between her breast, the oh-so-soft slope of her neck, he needed to. Then, one day, he did. He did, but only after much courting, many a tender word, holding of hands, a beer, small gifts, repetitions of kindness. She leaned in, eyes heavy with lust and mischief, pecked him right on his strong mouth. It was an invitation, and he accepted it.

She leaned back on her hands glad to be far away from prying eyes. He took his time despite the nerves, despite the fear, despite the pounding of his heart in his 18-year-old ears. He suppressed the thought that his father would fuck him up if anyone saw them. He drowned it with the droplets of seawater. He suppressed the thought that he was inadequate. He drowned it in the taste of her ripe and tart and his. He decided then with his tongue on the right side of her neck that he would never let her go and until his death he never did.

Teresa
The Grandmother
When Teresa was young and well along in her first pregnancy was when she realized she had fucked up. It was the seventh or eighth month with a seedling expanding inside her. Elias had been kind at first. At least she thought he was kind. He liked to plan things for her. He would have food picked out, clothes, everything in order, everything in a place. She enjoyed it, the thoughtfulness until it soured into control. She had spent many days of her late-stage pregnancy trying to remember when it turned. She could not place it. Indeed, she had even begun to blame herself. Had she fucked it up? Had she just not been fast enough, kind enough, attentive enough, just… enough? Even her swelling belly and memories of beach days with him did not ease the anxiety that the thought of him caused to balloon. Sometimes she thought it grew proportional to the little seedling in her belly. The two were siblings the baby and the anxiety. Perhaps they were even twins.

One twin was fed by her the other by Elias. She was always “too slow”, “too loud”, or “too lazy”. She swallowed the insults because she was married to him and there was no leaving. No one left their husbands… not in her family at least. They were only words after all, only words so she swallowed them and swole with the aggression and shame of it all. It confused her because at times she could still see his beach self. When he caressed her belly with calloused fingers, brought her expensive cuts of meat, and told her how her beauty stunned him. She was 17 again and he was 18 and none of the cruelty had touched them… touched her.

She thought of his beach self when she was exposed thighs spread apart pushing and pushing and screaming and wishing that she could’ve shoved the insults, the anxiety, the cruelty out instead. She did not. She gave birth to a 6.2 lb boy, Jackson, her first and last.

She had been pregnant again but by then she knew some things. She knew what tea to drink and how often to flush life out of her. He was undeserving of more than the one and even the one was too much. There was no tea for flushing out the anxiety and shame though. She had looked.

Jackson
The father
When Jackson was seven he realized his dad was an asshole. It was also then that he realized if he was not an asshole he’d get swallowed up and spat out. He had deduced as much by watching his mother wilting under the dark shade of his father. In his destructive wake, he left emotional debris and carnage. His mother would leave little shards of her broken heart behind her. He would collect them storing them underneath his tongue for a day when he would need them.

He did need them. He needed them in school when Thomas thought he could talk shit to him. He was surgical with his mouth full of glass shards. The two came to blows and Jackson won. There is no beating someone eager to prove they are better than nothing. There is no beating someone who feels there is nothing to lose. Each punch to Thomas was a punch to his father. A punch to the stomach for the days he came home smelling of old bourbon and self-hatred. Another punch for the cruel words he spoke to his mother. Two swift kicks to the stomach for the shame his father made him feel and the way he sucked the joy out of any room he entered.

By the time he was 16, he had leveled out. He still kept the shards tucked beneath his tongue, but he had learned to suppress the rage. He had even begun to hope that perhaps there was more for him. Then she entered. Helen with her widow's peak and eyes that cut right through the bullshit. He felt exposed. She made him feel exposed, and some part of him loved it. It was an odd feeling how powerless he felt under her gaze and how much it made him feel at home. He was lucky she did not use her power for evil. On occasion, she would strip him bare and make him face himself. Force him to rise to her standards, be better, be kinder, be sweeter, be a fucking man in ways his father never could teach him.

So, she married him. They played house him with his mouth full of shards and her with her gaze that made him crumble. They persisted. They loved, and they fought, and they fucked. He loved it. He loved knowing he had forced a change in her, and she was glad about it. Every morning, he would press his lips sealed together against her belly and swear kindness and love only. To the baby, it sounded like the crunching of glass.

Franco
The Son
Franco’s birth was his mother’s death and so he was cursed with the hatred of his father. It was no fault of his own but to look at him was to see his mother’s powerful gaze and it made his father feel that powerlessness again. Franco had no Helen to reign his father in, so his father, filled with the self-loathing planted by his father and the heartbreak of his lost lover turned the vitriol to Franco.

He provided food, shelter, and clothes but love was not there. The absence festered a canker on Franco’s soul. He would find himself searching for a balm for the tiny cuts from his father. It was futile. His mother was dead and his father never thought to spit the shards out. He had forgotten he had stored them there and he had the power to take them out.


Three weeks post-funeral
Franco had never spent this much time with his grandmother. In many ways, the last few weeks made him thankful his grandfather had died. In his absence, his grandmother had come to life. She wore bolder makeup and brighter colors. Her laugh took on new light and stretched into every corner of their old home. Her laugh had also found its way to his core. If you asked her, she would say it was the tea, the death, or the time spent together, but he knew it was her, a bright light slicing through the heaviness.

“I always thought you hated me,” he says as he sweeps her kitchen floor.

“You know, I think your dad in his way was trying to protect you from your grandpa. I think in my own way I was too. The distance, the coldness… it was…” he did not push her to finish the statement he understood. He did.

“Was he always that way, dad?”

“I don’t think he had much of a choice. I’ll tell you what though I’d sell my left tit to see what he’d have been like as a father if Helen was around. She’d whip his ass into shape. He’d never hear the end of it,” she looks off into the distance sipping her tea. “But you, you boy you have a choice. You have a choice and you need to choose better. Now, come sit. This tea is not gonna drink itself.”

So he sits and sips thanking God for a mouth free of shards. There is no way to enjoy tea with glass under your tongue or with so many cuts in your mouth.

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TELL ME:
Did you see yourself in any of the characters? Is there one family member that is notoriously bad vibes and fucks the thing up for everyone else? In what ways are you breaking generational shit? What was your favorite line/lines?

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Read some of my other pieces here:

1. SUBSpace
2. Darkling
3. Fuckin Alive
4. The Everything Thief
5. Soil Keeps The Score