Just Desserts
When I was around 10, my mom started dating this complete jerk, let’s call him Gary. Gary adored my younger sister and my mom. He would take them out for dinners, and buy my sister new toys and stuff. I was fine with that, since I honestly loved being alone, and got more time with my books. I don’t know if he noticed and decided to escalate, or if he didn’t even notice, but he began cornering me when I was alone.
He’d call me fat, ugly, stupid. I was wearing clothes for 12-year-olds, but I had “hit puberty like a brick wall” as mom put it. Literally boobs and butt nearly overnight, and I hated it. I don’t think I’m ugly and looking at pictures now I think I was a pretty cute kid. Also, I was top in all of my classes. So screw you, Gary. But like I said I was 10, and at that age, you’re just beginning to build your own self-esteem and all that, and I was also being teased at school.
You get the picture; I had nowhere “safe.” Now, at this point I know I should have told my mom, but she had been going through a rough patch on her own and even if he was a complete jerk to me, my mom was smiling again. So I just took it. Well, I didn’t tell her anyway. Instead, I would put stuff in his coffee as I made it. I would put salt and vinegar in, I’d spit, particularly when I had tonsillitis, I’d sprinkle washing powder in.
Basically, if I could get it to dissolve, in it went. Also, at 10, my mom had started letting me cook dinner on my own. Nothing fancy, pasta, frozen food. It made me feel grown-up. So I’d put stuff in there too. Once I’d dished it up, I’d spit, sneeze, and I even mixed 1/2 a teaspoon of bleach in once. Basically, once in a while he’d get ill, and I felt better knowing that he was eating/drinking my spit or whatever.
Anyway, just after my 11th birthday, he and my mom broke up and he seemed to vanish. I didn’t want to upset my mom, but I found out that he was doing substances in our house in secret, and that was a no-no. So I told my mom about him calling me names and all that. She cried and said she was sorry and made me swear that if anyone ever does that again I had to tell her.
She’d rather I be safe than have me insulted at home. When he tried to get back with her about a month later, she told him to screw off and threatened him.