Crime and Punishment

My parents have always been trying to instill in me the virtues of honesty. But deceit comes so naturally to me, and has always felt like an integral part of my life. Lying makes everyone happier, because the truth is for selfish people who haven't the compassion in them to care about how damaging it is to the people you love. I lied constantly, faked grades, cheated, at times counterfeited entire report cards using the special watermarked paper that my schools actually printed report cards off of, just to escape the disapproving sigh that accompanies another bad grade. (I even had the principal's signature scanned from a different document then superimposed on my own version- it was pretty amazing.) I've always had a talent with graphic manipulation, and like geniuses who turned to lives of crime, my untethered passions took me towards the path of unrelenting deceit and a habit of taking the easy way out.

Of course, most times I didn't get away with it, and pay with blood I did. I don't know how other kids got punished, and I suppose most Chinese families hit their children when they misbehaved. Being whipped (actually belted is a more accurate and efficient usage of word; it conveys both the action and weapon in question) by my father was a memorable fixture of my childhood. I'd be thrown on the linoleum floor while leather connected with skin in bursts of cracks, each one leaving an inch-thick welt that requires two days to subside. (Bathing in cold water afterwards was preferable as hot water just made it sting like crazy.) A ten-year old me cried in very loud raspy sobs while strangely entranced by the gray accents that raced throughout the white floors. It was like everything else in the world was too fuzzy and horrible to pay attention to, so my mind chose this mundane pattern to focus on. 

"If we didn't hit you, who knows what you'd become." 

Maybe I wouldn't have any of the shivery, cold-sweat inducing bouts of panic I used to get when waiting for my dad to return from work. Teachers used to always ring up my mother when I've been a smart-ass in class, and mother would call up my dad, and I'd have the rest of the day till 6 to worry about it. I've been sent out of class more than any decent student should, and probably spent more than half my Chinese lessons either standing at my desk or outside. The camaraderie forged with your fellow insubordinate classmates while outside the classroom is fleeting. They'd sell you out in a heartbeat for a chance to get back inside. I wondered if teachers would be that quick to call if they knew the treatment waiting for me at home, but I'd much rather endure physical pain than the humiliation of begging for mercy from any of those minimal-wage losers in dead-end jobs teaching primary level.

Bleeding from a belt-induced wound is uncommon. Usually, angry red welts that raise about a centimeter off your skin forms in criss-crossing patterns but that is, of course, entirely dependent on the way you got struck. Bleeding usually occurs only when the metallic parts of the belt breaks your skin, but as my parents weren't striking to kill, that only happened occasionally when they completely lose it in a fit of rage and fury. Sometimes I wondered if neighbors could hear me screaming, so I screamed louder. But no one ever did anything about it, so I screamed louder still. I suppose we have this way about us in apartment buildings that no one is ever going to admit to hearing anything undesirable. Sometimes I can hear other kids in the building, or in the next building, yelling and crying as they got hit, so I suppose someone heard me too. 

I suppose the thing that made me saddest wasn't being hit. Even when friends asked me at school about the zebra-like markings, I didn't feel embarrassed or anything, but instead was strangely proud that I've got scars that signified something. Maybe survival. No, I was saddest when my older sister would yell that my beatings and my crying was too noisy for her to study, and she'd rather go sit outside on the steps with her assigned reading. Then again, I didn't do anything when our dad broke her bedroom door's lock with a hammer to get at her for one thing or the other, so it's not as if I have any sibling-loyalty points to reclaim.

It brings me to the question of hereditary patterns. Parents who hit had parents who hit, who in turn had parents who hit. I personally don't believe in inflicting that much pain in a being that I brought into the world. Besides, I remember what I felt towards them after each beating, and I never want my child to feel that kind of betrayal, animosity and distrust towards me. I admit I was a nasty little shit for creating my web of lies, but getting hit never really fixed anything, I just learned to hide it better. 

I don't harbor any lingering hate for my parents, of course; I love them very much. But their mentality and methods are truly incompatible with me, which was one of the main reasons I had to get away from that house that badly.