Inside Mary’s womb, the violence rocked the fetus’ world along with its fragile psyche, while the phonemes of its future name, screamed regularly by both combatants at the top of their lungs, assaulted its sensitive ears.
Finally, during one exchange, Steve ducked beneath the swing of a skillet and tackled Mary forcefully, sending her flying backwards onto the faded, mismatched tiles of the kitchen floor. As he pounced on her like some predator bringing its prey down for the kill, hands reaching for her throat, Mary glimpsed for the first time the true depths of his dangerous, violent nature. Instinctively fearing for both her own life and that of the fetus within, she finally capitulated, and agreed to take the Grub name.
The next day Mary took the afternoon off work and, like a martyr, dutifully performed the legal rites to exorcise her family’s surname. With her new documents stuffed into her purse, she sat empty and silent in the park across from City Hall as she contemplated her betrayal of the Flam heritage. There, on a bench in the Indian Summer sun, a plan worked its way into Mary’s brooding thoughts, as bright and warming as the dappled autumnal light beams piercing their way through the red and orange leaves of the overhead maples and oaks.
Flam was born just before midnight on a Saturday, and christened the following Wednesday. It was during the blessed event, which was attended mostly by Steve’s cronies in hopes of a free drunk-up afterwards, that Steve first learned Mary had surreptitiously reassigned the lost Flam surname as the newborn child’s first name. He said nothing to his pals, but when the couple returned home afterwards with tiny Flam, Steve immediately questioned his wife’s choice.
“Flam? Flam! What kind of name is that for a kid? It’s totally stupid.”
Mary put the baby down in its cradle, and then picked up a steam iron, waving it in front of Steve’s face to show she meant business.
“Don’t you dare say that. It’s better than Grub.” She spat out the last syllable, tightened her grip on the iron, and waited for the combat to begin. Steve, however, knew full well the strength of Mary’s resistance, and did not have the stomach for another prolonged fight.
“Whatever. I don’t really give a shit. Have it your way,” he conceded, and headed to the refrigerator for a beer.
Flam’s parents, having irrevocably lost any glimmer of affection as a result of their continuous combat, fell back and dug into a sort of long-term psychological trench warfare, with Flam an innocent victim caught in the middle of No Man’s Land.
Despite her son’s first name, Mary found she was wary of the dark-haired, brown-eyed boy child, believing its gender and genetics gave it a natural affinity to her husband. She returned with fervour to her former religious devotions, regarding Flam as evidence in the flesh of her fall from grace, and lavished her love on the baby Jesus instead. Nevertheless, like the dutiful Christian she was, she faithfully exercised the responsibilities of motherhood. As Flam grew, she seldom struck him, though she found herself constantly criticizing and rebuking him, despite the boy’s quiet, bright, and undemanding nature.
Steve, for his part, could not bring himself to show love for the child who bore his wife’s hated name, and who had cost him his freedom, casting him down into the pit of a loveless marriage to a Bible-brandishing harpy. The angry, resentful father soon took to long-haul trucking in order to be away from the fun-killing fetters of home as much as possible. On those occasions when he was at home, Steve found he could barely stand to look at the boy. He could see that his pathetic son tried his best to stay out of view, but when the child wandered into his sight, Steve couldn’t resist punishing the boy—even if it was only for the crime of being himself. And although Steve’s disciplinary encounters with his son were far fewer than were Mary’s, they were much more vicious, especially when Steve had been drinking, with any petty excuse sufficing for violence to suddenly be unleashed upon the boy.
Lashings with a leather belt were routine, as were whacks to the head, punches to the stomach, and twisting of the arm. Steve never showed any sign of remorse following these beatings, for inwardly he considered it proof of his parental devotion that the blows he delivered onto the child lacked the expert viciousness or intent to maim Steve would habitually employ when brawling in speakeasies or truck stops.
Still, there were times when Steve’s brutality bottomed out into sheer evil. On one occasion, Flam, barely seven years old, accidentally dropped his dinner plate to the ground while licking up the last of his gravy.
Steve leapt from his chair and whipped off his belt. To show he meant business, he turned it around, and lashed Flam across the shoulders with the buckle end.
“You little piece of shit! I’m going to teach you a lesson once and for all,” Steve bellowed. His second blow caught Flam across the back of the head, opening up a cut. The boy whelped and dove under the dining room table, leaving a trail of blood droplets on the parquet floor.
Steve, enraged by the escape, bent over and began flailing away in an attempt to reach Flam in the hiding spot. “Get back out here! I’m not done with you,” he screamed, but Flam’s small size and the proximity of the table legs allowed him to stay out of range of the belt.
Steve went to overturn the table, but Mary pressed her palms down on the tabletop and bared her teeth. “Don’t you dare break my table or smash any more of my dishes,” she screamed. “I paid for all of these, not you.” So, Steve yanked away the chairs and crawled under the table to chase the boy. Flam, however, nimbly scurried out back into the open, then immediately dove back under cover when his father staggered out and stood up to try to renew the assault.
This dance repeated itself a couple of times, and the entire time Mary stood leaning on the table with her eyes squeezed shut, praying fervently, although exactly on whose behalf she was petitioning the Lord was unclear. Finally it became obvious the situation had become a stalemate. Out of frustration, Steve resorted to mercilessly flailing a doorjamb for a while, until he ultimately stormed out of the flat in search of a liquid tonic for his anger.
Mary bent down to pick up the pieces of the plate Flam had broken. “It’s okay, Flam, he’s gone. You can come out now,” she urged her son, but Flam refused to leave his hiding place. He sat with his knees up to his chin, whining softly through clenched teeth and rocking back and forth. Mary tried several more times to coax the boy out, but he stayed put.
“Fine, then. Have it your way,” she finally shouted, more exasperated than angry. “Sleep there on the floor if you want. I don’t care,” And so Flam did, curled up on the faded, scratched hardwood.
Within the cramped one-bedroom flat that constituted the Grub family home, Flam had never had an anointed space of his own, other than a small camp cot shoved permanently in a corner, and unfolded at bedtime for him to sleep on. Thereafter, the space under the dining room table became the boy’s private refuge, and neither parent chose to forbid it. Steve actually preferred that Flam stay out of sight, and Mary secretly considered it a better use of the table than serving meals to her brutish husband. It soon became a moot point, as sit-down family dinners grew progressively rarer. Before long, the sight of Flam ensconced cross-legged and out of the way under the table became so common no one gave it a second thought.
Chapter 2
Just as at home he hid beneath the table from the constant acrimony between his parents, or Steve’s periodic assaults on him, so at school Flam chose to fade into the background. He had learnt at an early age that to try to make friends meant having to introduce himself, and so bring his accursed name out into the open. He could never quite figure out what there was about those two syllables that so titillated and inflamed his peers, but he was acutely aware of the probabilistic outcome. At best he would have to endure name calling—taunts of Flam Chop and Grubby were common even from the younger children. Sometimes, however, it meant physical violence.