Chapter 2 run with scissors (1)

My mom stood in front of the bathroom mirror, twisting her waist.She stared at her image in the mirror, letting a smile slowly float on her face, a little reserved, a little artificial, a little strange.Her lips were painted red and seemed to exude a secret and sweet breath.In this way, she really has the temperament of a big star, such as an actor like Jane Natta, an old singer like Dippet Du, etc., in short, she is that kind of person.Many people said that she looks quite like the actress Lauren Bacall when she was young, especially her eyes. I looked at her feet, hidden in the red patent leather heels.She always wears slippers at home, so now it seems that those feet don't belong to her, they look like other women's feet, I am not used to seeing them, this is a signal that she is ready to send out.I was restless and flustered, as if I was about to be abandoned by her, at least for now.

I don't want her to leave, I'm afraid of being alone.I felt like I had just been born, still wet, with the little umbilical cord attached to her.I longed for her company, but she reached out and tried to tear the umbilical cord, and I was so sad. I went to the bathroom and stood next to Mom, trying to spend as much time with her as possible.Maybe she's going to Hartford, Connecticut?I guess.She could also be going to Bradley Field International Airport.I love that airport and the smell of the jet fuel that used to fly us south to visit my grandparents. My thoughts were interrupted by my mother.

"Turn off the lights," she said, walking upstairs.When she took a step, the clothes made a swishing friction sound, and a strange smell followed into my nasal cavity, which seemed a little sweet, and seemed to smell like some kind of chemical.This made me sad again, because the smell would come at no time when she was about to leave the house. "Okay, I see." I said.The dehumidifier next to the wicker laundry basket, glowing orange, stared at me like eyes, and I couldn't help looking back at it.It scares me, but when Mom is here, I don't feel nervous.But now she was walking like the wind, she crossed most of the floor of the room, approached the fireplace in that corner, and was about to turn there and go up the stairs, so I had to stay alone near the dark bathroom, let Those eyes of the dehumidifier stared at me, how scary, so I started running.I went after my mom and I was sure there was something coming after me and it was coming at me and it was going to grab me!I passed by my mother, ran up the stairs quickly, climbed and climbed with my hands and feet, and rushed with my life. I rushed to the front, rushed to the top of the stairs, and looked back at my mother in a overlooking posture.

She slowed down and lifted her skirts as she climbed the stairs.She seemed to be doing this on purpose, as if to remind me what is elegance and grace.Look at her posture, she looks like an actress, walking slowly on the red carpet and on the podium to accept the Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences!At this time, my mother's eyes looked at me, and the smile on her face bloomed in front of my eyes.She reminded me: "You look exactly like Kerim when you go up the stairs." Kerim is our dog, we all love him, and he is the property of me and my mom.I was like Kerim in some other ways too, for example, this little blond terrier, which pleased my mother by delivering the kill to her at the slightest command.

My mother looked at me, and I also looked at her, with a smile on my face, a completely flattering expression. My loneliness is so strong that I still don't want her to leave the house. "You can get a good night's sleep before I go home," she told me. "Good night and see you tomorrow morning." "Where are you going?" I asked this question so many times. Mum's gone to Northampton for a reading.She's a great future poet, and I'm looking forward to my mother being a star, and she has the luxury of being, for example, a TV presenter like Maud.

My dad played another character very well, he was an alcoholic, and he was a professor of mathematics at MIT.He had psoriasis, which covered his body and made him look like a mackerel, a mackerel that walked upright and wore tweed.And, his warmth, his kindness, his friendliness are palpable—like petrified wood. "Can you play checkers with me for a while?" I begged with tears.He sat at the kitchen table, grading papers and drinking a tall glass of vodka.He is playing the role of a judge at this time, and I know that some students must be unlucky under his pen. "No, son, I have a lot of work to do."

"Can you play with me later?" Dad didn't look up, his eyes were fixed on the paper, he held the red pen in his hand, and wrote the score in the blank space. "No, son, I can't play with you! I told you, I have a lot of work to do, and I'm tired now, and my knees are hurting." The only thing my dad and I did together was take the trash out to the dump. "Augustine," he would greet me in the basement downstairs, "if you can load all the trash in your car, I'll drive you to the dump." My mood ring fell to the floor and I stepped on it and nearly slipped.I quickly rushed downstairs to the basement.He was wearing a black and red checkered overalls and was carrying two green plastic bags over his shoulders. "You're going to check to see if the top of the bag is tied tight," he warned me. "You don't want the bag to burst and litter all over the place, don't you? There's so much rubbish to get off the floor, that It's a nightmare!"

I grabbed a trash bag and dragged it across the floor toward the door. "Oh my son, don't drag that bag, you will wear the bottom of the bag, and the garbage will fall everywhere, didn't I warn you?" "You're telling me to tie the top tight," I argued. "Yeah, that's what I said, but do I need to remind you extra—you can't lug garbage bags across the floor." He's not right, I've seen commercials for this "powerful trash bag" on TV. "It won't break," I retorted Dad, continuing to lug the trash bag. "Look, Augustine, you gotta pick up the trash bag. I'm not going to take you to the dump if you don't obey and pick up the bag."

With a deep sigh, I shouldered the bag and drove it to the pickup truck outside the door.Then I headed back down to the basement to pick up the next trash bag.We let the trash accumulate for weeks, so there are usually at least twenty bags of trash that need to be hauled away. The pickup truck was finally full and I got in and sat in the front seat between Dad and a garbage bag.The musty smell of long-stored milk cartons, eggshells, and discarded ashtrays thrills me, and my dad loves the smell: "I quite like the smell." Dad couldn’t help but add, “I don’t mind living with the garbage at all.”

When I get to the dump, I can just drag the garbage bags down at will, drag them along the ground, and throw them down at will. As we were driving home, we passed a recycling station.People leave all kinds of junk here: broken baby carriages, rusted electric stoves, toy huts that are no longer needed. "Can I take it home?" I settled on a chrome coffee table with cracked tops and blackened glass inlays.I wanted to keep it, so I begged my father. "No, you can't take anything here. You don't know where all this garbage comes from." "But they're still fine!" I knew that if I filled the coffee table with magazines, I could cover the cracks, as I saw in a doctor's office.Moreover, as long as I wipe it with Windex brand cleaner for three hours, the table will be as clean as new, and the dirt will disappear.

"No, son. Listen, stop touching that mess and get back in the car right away. Also, stop touching your face with your fingers full of coffee table germs. " My mood ring turned black. "Why can't I take this table back? Why?" Dad sighed, annoyed. "I told you all," he said through gritted teeth, "we don't know who throws all this filth, they don't come from anywhere. We just took the trash out of our house, and we don't need to bring any more trash with us." into the house." I leaned heavily on the unlocked car door, feeling extremely depressed.I had a secret expectation that the door would fly out on the freeway and I would roll off the car and onto the freeway a big Barstow truck full of onions would just pass by, its The tires crushed my little body to pieces—my dad would have regretted not letting me take that coffee table home. My dad and my mom had an unhappy marriage, they hated each other and the life they created together.It is incomprehensible that they quarreled all day long about nothing. "You're an idiot, you're a tyrant." Mom's voice came from the couch, her legs staggered, the upper half of her body on them, "You fucking bastard, you don't think about anything else all day, just Wait and see when I cut my pulse and kill myself." She unconsciously twisted the tassels of her crocheted underwear around her fingers. Dad's face was as red as a monkey's butt as he poured the tonic into his wine glass. "Deldra, please, please be quiet! You are hysterical, completely hysterical!" Because he was a professor, he was used to repeating his words. Mom stood up from the sofa and walked slowly on the plush white carpet, as if performing an emotional monologue in a studio. "I'm hysterical?" She said in a low and calm voice, "You think it's hysterical?" She laughed exaggeratedly, throwing her head back. "Oh, you poor bastard, you're not a man." She stood beside her father, leaning her back on the teak bookshelf. "Your heart has been in a state of repression. So, you mistook creative passion for hysteria. Don't you realize that this is why you drove me to death step by step." She closed her eyes, looking sad , a look often seen by her favorite opera singer, Edith Pilf. Dad hurriedly walked away from Mom.He lifted the glass to his lips and took a long gulp.Since he had been drinking all night, his words were somewhat slurred. "No one is going to drive you to your death, Deirdre, it's all your doing." The fire eventually spread from the adjoining room to the kitchen.They were provided with better lighting, and a variety of weapons at their disposal. "Look at your damn face," Mom said, "it's the kind of face that only a man twice your age can have, huh, at thirty-seven years old, he doesn't have the same face as an eighty-year-old man. respectively." By this time Dad was very drunk, and the only way he could think of to bring the family back to peace was for Mom to stop breathing. "Get your damn claws off of me!" Mom screamed, desperately trying to get Dad's hands off her neck. "Shut your mouth, bitch," Dad said through gritted teeth. I heard the voice and rushed into the kitchen.I'm standing in the doorway in my pajamas embroidered with Snoopy. "Stop!" I yelled, "Stop it now!" Taking advantage of Daddy's drunken stupefaction, Mom pushed him away, forcing him to spin in a circle and fall toward the kitchen counter.He hit his head on the dishwasher and suddenly dropped to the kitchen floor, motionless, a small stream of blood trickling down his ear, and I was sure he was dead. "He's not moving." I said, and started to move closer to him. "The spineless bastard, he's doing his poor bluster again." She touched her father's useless knee with her bright red toe. "Get up, Norman, you're going to frighten Augustine, stop playing tricks!" Dad finally sat up and leaned his head on the dishwasher. I found that my father was still alive, and I began to worry about my mother: "Please don't hurt her," I said, "Please don't hurt her." Dad's indifferent character scared me.His face was always expressionless, which was not the same as the calm expression of the man on the Taster coffee box.I moved my body closer to Dad again: "Please don't hurt her!" "Your father won't kill me," Mom said, opening the burner of the electric stove, pulling a Moore from the pack, leaning forward, and lighting it on the glowing metal coil. "He would continue to control me with his horribly oppressive methods, suffocate me, and wait for me to slit my own throat." "Shut your dirty mouth, Deldera," said Papa.He looked tired and drunk. Mom sneered at him, and a puff of smoke came out of his nostrils. "When you fall into hell, I will shut up." I was terrified: "Are you going to cut your throat?" She laughed and stretched out her arms to me: "No, of course not, this is just a metaphor." She kissed on the top of my head and scratched my back a few times: "It's one o'clock in the morning, you should go to bed I'm gone, I have to go to school tomorrow." Then, Dr. Finch came into my life. When my family atmosphere turned from pure mutual hatred to potential murder, my parents had to seek the help of a psychologist, and Dr. Finch came into our lives.He is so much like Santa Claus.He had a mass of white hair, a thick, comical gray beard around his mouth, and eyebrows as thick as toothbrush bristles.Instead of a bright red robe with white fur, though, he was wearing brown polyester trousers and a short-sleeved white shirt with buttons at the collar.Sometimes, though, he does wear a Santa hat. Every Saturday, I drive to Dr. Finch's clinic in Northampton with my parents in a brown Dodge Aspen minivan.We sat in the car without saying a word, and occasionally my mom would comment on the smell, like feces, released from my dad's ears.Sometimes Dad reminds Mom that she's a nasty bitch, but they don't say a word otherwise. The treatment went on for over a year, but as time went on, my mom and dad's relationship got worse instead of better.My dad, who was increasingly hostile and distant, loved being in the basement and seemed fascinated only by the jagged metal objects that were put there, while my mom was becoming more and more like a lunatic. When I say she's crazy, I don't mean she likes to paint the kitchen walls crimson, which is nothing.She likes to turn on the gas stove from time to time, silently staring at the flames in a daze; she likes to swallow toothpaste like a sandwich, saying that she is the only God, which makes me believe that she is running farther and farther on the road of madness.In the past, she could stand on the balcony and light a lemon-scented candle, but at least she wouldn't eat the candle—now, such a situation is gone forever. The weekly sessions are over as well—now, rain or shine, my mom sees Dr. Finch nearly every day. My parents' divorce was explosive because all their relationships blew up, leaving a clean, flat area where I could see the horizon.The fight between my mom and dad is over because they don't talk anymore, the tension in the house is gone, because there is no such thing as a family anymore, the canvas of "family" is clean and there is no trace of it anymore. Now, my mom and I have to fend for ourselves, what happened to us, our situation, is similar to the movie "Alice Is No Return" or my favorite TV show "Glory Days". We've moved into a new apartment in Amherst, and my mom might be in a better mood.I might go to a new elementary school, then middle school, then high school, then Princeton, become a doctor, and maybe accidentally become the star of some TV comedy show I always admire. So what about our dog, Kerim?It refuses to move.We took him to Amherst with him, but he trotted all the way back to his old house.The new residents there swear that they will take care of Kerim, so like us, Kerim will live a new life. Fabric softener is still required for laundry, tuna salad and white bread are still a must for breakfast, parent-teacher associations are still held regularly, and the so-called new life is still the same. Dr. Finch was leaning back in the rattan swivel chair with his hands crossed behind his head, my mother sat on the loveseat opposite him, and I sat in the armchair between them. I am twelve years old, but I feel mature, at least fourteen years old.My parents have been divorced for more than a year, and my mother often visits the doctor.Not only does she come every day, but even for several hours at a time, if she does not come to the door for help in person, she also receives treatment over the phone.Sometimes—as it is now—I'll be part of their therapy as a bondage.She felt that it was important for the doctor and me to get to know each other, and that Dr. Finch might be able to help me with my troubles at school.The trouble was that I refused to go to school and she couldn't control my every move.I don't think I have friends my age to upset her.In fact, I have no friends of any age. "My emotions, my spirit, have indeed come to a considerable maturity," Dr. Finch sighed, his eyes somewhat comical, "but I have always been a person, a man. I am a very typical man." My mom blows a puff of smoke over her head. "You're a pure son of a bitch," she said.She uses a teasing and teasing tone, in stark contrast to her usual tone.Like, whenever she says to me, "Come on, let's go to the store and get something," my God, her voice is so annoying. The doctor chuckled, his face flushed red. "Maybe you're right," he continued, "men are sons of bitches, so you're a son of a son of a bitch." He smiled at me. And he said, "You're a bitch." That's what he said to my mom. "I'm the biggest bitch in the world," my mother said.There was a pot of "Qingsuolong" (a kind of plant) on the coffee table, and she stubbed out the cigarette butt in the soil of the flower pot. "It's right to think so, this is a healthy mentality." The doctor said, "As a woman, you are a bitch." My mother's expression was a little proud, she raised her chin slightly: "Doctor, if being a bitch is healthy, then I'm the healthiest woman bitch on earth." Dr. Finch burst into laughter and kept patting his thigh. I don't see what's funny about that.But in my opinion, calling my mother a bitch... well, that's pretty much it, no big deal.Rather than saying that she is a poet, it is better to say that she is a pervert. She is not a normal person, maybe she should be classified as a salmonella? "Are you really there...doing that?" I asked the doctor.I shifted the subject from "Mama's relationship with the bitch" to my previous conversation with Dr. Finch, referring to the room behind the office. Dr. Finch smiled and said to me, "Of course, as I've said, I'm a man and I have my needs." I tried to understand the meaning of his words. "Well, if you really think of that room as... what time do you usually do? Is it when you see patients?" The doctor laughed again: "While I see patients, or maybe after I see them. Sometimes, if a patient is particularly tired, I will leave for a while and go into that room." He got out of his chair Picking up a copy of The New York Times from the low, glass-paneled rattan table in front of me, "I've been reading this morning about a woman who is a remarkable woman. She's so mature, to be honest. Well developed... I mean the spiritual level. Logically speaking, she is the kind of woman who should be my wife." His face was slightly flushed, and he adjusted the buckle of his belt, "So, Reading about her has had a huge impact on my libido (psychological term for the underlying force behind the sexual instinct). I was admiring her photo in the newspaper five minutes before you guys got here. Anyway , after the two of you leave, I need to let myself go." To think of fat Dr. Finch leaving his patients alone to masturbate in a back room with his eyes fixed on pictures of naked women in magazines was disgusting, bah, bah, bah! "Would you like to travel with me?" he asked. "Where are you going?" I asked. My mother coughed a few times. "Of course it's my masturbation room!" he exclaimed proudly. I couldn't help rolling my eyes.I'm one of those people who loves to travel, but I'd be a little sick if that kind of travel excites me.And a few months ago, his daughter Hope had shown me that room.On the surface, though, I have to pretend I've never been there. "Okay, then I'll take a trip with you." Opening the door of that room surprised us: Hope had left his job as a receptionist and was sleeping on the sofa in the room! "What's going on here?" Finch growled. "Hope!" he said aloud. Hope was awakened: "My God, what are you doing? Dad! You scared my soul out!" The light at the door made her eyes open a little, and she blinked vigorously. "Oh God, what's the matter with you?" The doctor looked very angry: "You have no right to come here, this is my masturbation room. And you still use my blanket!" He pointed to the blanket embroidered with colorful patterns, and his daughter was wrapping the blanket in it. body. The blanket is crocheted and the tassels are messily tangled around the edges. "Dad, I just took a nap." "This is not where you sleep." He reprimanded loudly. Mom turned around, wanting to leave. "I want to drink a glass of fresh orange juice." "Wait a minute, Deldera," said Dr. Finch. Mom frowned: "Why?" "Tell me, why is her behavior wrong?" he asked his mother.