The Dangerous Art of Blending In

by Angelo Surmelis

Today when he came home between jobs, he found me in the corner of the living room. In a ball. Blood coming down my face from somewhere under my hair. It’s summer with a lot of midwestern humidity. We don’t have air-conditioning in the apartment, and the mixture of sweat and blood is such a weird, uncomfortable feeling. I’m too scared to get up and go anywhere else in the house. He calls to me but I don’t move. He walks over and places his hand on my head. He can feel the lumps. I know he can. At that moment, my mother walks into the living room from the bedroom. I hold my breath. It would be better if he hadn’t found me, because the fact that he has makes it into a “thing” with my mom. And once he leaves for his second shift, everything gets worse. He usually never says anything when this stuff happens. I want to believe that he secretly yells at her. But she’s usually the one yelling at him. Today is different. He lifts his hand off my head. My left eye must be swollen shut. I can’t see anything out of it. I turn slightly so I can see the action with my right eye. My shirt is drenched and sticking to my body. He walks toward her and grabs her upper left arm. I can tell the force of his grip on her bare skin by the way his fingers look—all red and white. They just look at each other. She starts to cry. Her crying no longer affects me. It stopped having an effect on me about a year ago.