No Dichotomy Between Half-Full & Half-Empty

CHAPTER 8: Arrow

With his head bowed and arms clasped in front of him, Arrow had no choice but to bite the inside of his cheek until a metallic taste eroded his taste buds. He swallowed it down, which aided in keeping the destructive words he wanted to say at bay. He really was hearing his parents, but it wasn't his fault that the words jumbled whenever they entered his ear.

"Do you understand me, young lady?" his mother asked.

"Yeah, Mommy."

"Then what did I just say?"

Arrow's entire body froze. He didn't expect her to ask that. As expected, she wasn't a force to be reckoned with. But he dared not lose to her. So he straightened out his frilly, purple church dress and said confidently, "Probably something about being on my best behaviour and going to seek forgiveness from God and yada yada."

His mother sent a stinging pain to his upper arm with her palm. Okay, he'd admit it. He deserved that one.

His mother turned to her husband. "Do you see how Sacha's talking back to me? She turned nineteen and suddenly she's acting ghetto by interfering with people's children and getting herself arrested."

"Hey, that wasn't my fault," Arrow protested with a slap to his chest. "I didn't do nothin'. Those teachers be picking on me just because I'm a nigger. They think I dunno, but I be hearing and seeing what they be doin'." He wanted to continue, but a low gruff came from his father's throat.

The man was towering, with a chiselled face to make your knees buckle at the sight alone. It was a look Arrow was envious of, but scared of more. There was no way he would keep rambling when his father looked at him that way. The practical giant for a father figure pushed one side of the double doors to the church. The moaning of the hinges made his expression creepier. "When you get inside, you'll wash clean of that dirty place you found yourself in." He turned but faced his child as if he'd gotten an afterthought. "And ask for forgiveness for all the other things you have in that messed up head of yours."

When his father entered, his mother huffed. "Don't think that your punishment ends here," she informed. "When we get back home, you'll be doing most of the redecorating. If we want to sell that house for a high price, we have to make it look as European as possible. Understand?" She took the chance to pinch his ear. "And speak better than that. It's 'I did nothing'. Not, 'I didn't do nothin'." She sucked on her teeth. "So damn ghetto."

Arrow nodded and followed behind her. After dipping his hand in holy water to cross himself, he picked a fan up from its display and sat with his parents. He slipped into a wooden pew where a bible glared at him on the shelf behind the pew in front of him. The minty scent of cough drops mixed with the hairspray of ladies decked up for the Lord was unbearable. For most of the hymns sung, he kept the fan open and hovered it over the lower half of his face. He couldn't let anyone see the way his lips trembled to prevent the baby tears from falling. He struggled to get control of himself again, but he managed.

What he referred to himself as was not his birth name—Arrow. His birth name left a bitter taste in his mouth and it would make the cochlea spasm and burst into his ear every time someone called him. It was spasming right now.

His mother told him to stop spacing out and pay attention to the pastor. But he wasn't spacing out. It was more like his mind had taken him somewhere else for a moment, but he didn't know when it happened and then he would suddenly come back to the present. It was like all activity in his brain had ceased, with his sensitivity and awareness dropping. Or, in more fantastical terms, he would mentally teleport to a range of a few seconds to minutes in the future. This type of leaving the body experience was happening to him a lot, and he'd tried to explain it to his mother a lot of times. "You probably need more water and sleep," she would tell him. Then she'd tilt her head as if finally remembering something. "Ah, when are you going to get yourself a job, young lady? You can't expect these old folks to baby you forever."