The Wise Child (BNHA x OC)

12. Enough

(TW!! Abuse and truama are heavily mentioned!)

My mother did not love me. That’s something I knew, and refused to admit, for a very long time. But it was times like these, when her voice was thunder and her eyes were storm clouds, and the lava in her hair was melting through the wooden floors of our home, that I was harshly reminded. 

“I told you to do better!” a wine bottle smashed against the back wall. “I told you to be the best!” this time a tall champagne glass. “You’re our only way up, Enji! You want us to keep living like this? Running from the law, barely managing to pay our bills? You think that’s what I deserve?” 

She stomped over. Shorter than myself, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like looking at a giant statue, unreal, smoothed over into a single moment, a single feeling. Rage. 

“I’ve given up everything for you!” her voice was shrill. “I didn’t want a kid! Ever! But I kept you, you understand that? Because that’s what family does!” She slammed her fist against the table next to me. I felt my body flinch unwillingly. I was supposed to not move, not talk, not think. 

“And you can’t even pass a single fucking class?”

“I tried, mom! I’m always trying! Why can’t that be enough!” 

Her eyes lit up, and I was backed against the wall. A mistake. I made a mistake. And her hand lashed out, forcing my head to bang further into the wall so that I felt my skull vibrate. 

“You aren’t! You don’t give a damn about me or anyone else but yourself! I see you hanging around all those bratty girls! You think I don’t know what you're up to?! Are they worth your family? Because it sure as hell seems like it!”

“What the fuck do you mean? They’re my friends! I can’t have friends now?”

“Oh please! They’re distractions! Unnecessary! We’re drowning and you’re off twiddling your thumbs with a bunch of prissy brats!” 

“Don’t talk about them like that! You’re just bitter because no one can be around you without wanting to hurl themselves off a roof!” 

I felt the pain before she made contact. The air snapped with her and her eyes tightened into steel. 

“You don’t treat your mother like this! You treat me with respect! You understand that? Only ugly people hurt their mothers. You understand that, Enji? You wanna be ugly, Enji? Ugly like your bastard father? Ugly like your sister?”
“Shut up! Shut up! I’m trying mom! I’m never enough! Why can’t I be enough? Tell me! I want to know!”

Her eyes changed for a moment. She seemed to be lost. As if I hit something. Something painful. She took a breath. Stepped back. She looked soft. Warm. 

And then she looked boiling. Like a kettle. “You’ll be enough when you're on top. And you’ll know it then. You’ll know what it means to be better than dirt, when there’s no one left to step on you.”

My son was dying slowly. The withered build of his burnt arms. The way only muscle clung to them. He wouldn’t eat. Not enough anyway. His mother wouldn’t stop begging me to talk to him. Saying It would make a difference. She didn’t know anything. 

But I was tired of her shrill voice. Of her eyes. They were dying too. The look in them, some days I thought they were coal. Brittle and cold and dead. It was cruel to see them. I’d do anything to get them away from me. Even something pointless. Something like convincing a skeleton to jump out of its grave.