Chapter Text
1984
Mac is seven years old. He’s not the brightest, his teachers say, but that doesn’t make any sense. He’s a human, not an angel, and only angels are bright. Charlie offers to get him a flashlight, but Mac thinks that sounds a little like going against God’s wishes.
Mac is seven years old, and he’s not very good at expressing himself, but he is good at watching.
He watches Charlie, agitated and afraid and grimy; a greasy splotch in the center of the cleanest house Mac has ever seen. He watches Mrs Kelly go upstairs with a man, and come back down smiling. He wonders why she smiles like that for men but not for Charlie.
For Charlie, she only ever seems to cry.
He doesn’t think he likes Charlie’s mom.
Mac watches his parents argue, the only times they seem to actually get along. His father blocking the television and his mother standing, aggressive, lit cigarette brandished. Mac covers his own arms. Starts wearing jeans, just in case, because sometimes he doesn’t see the hand until it’s too late.
He doesn’t want his dad to see. Weak. His dad doesn’t deserve a burn like that. Never. Not ever.
Sometimes, Mac studies the teardrop tattooed on his dad’s cheek, and he wonders why his dad is always crying. Men don’t cry, his dad says, with a permanent tear stuck to his face. Men aren’t weak.
One day, when he’s seven and a half almost to the day, he watches his dad punch his mom square in the face.
She reacts. Just slowly turns back to the giant that is his dad, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. His dad is so tall that Mac can barely see his face.
“Fuck you,” his mom says, voice flat, spitting. She rears back, punching his dad in the stomach, hard enough for him to take a staggering step back. “That’s for bringing that shit into this house. There’s a kid here, asshole.”
It’s the most he’ll hear his mom speak, in a row, for the rest of his life.
(He’ll never remember it the way it was, with his mom saying something else, something that didn’t have to do with him at all. He’ll never know that she doesn’t love him, now or then. She wouldn’t even know where to begin. )
Mac is seven and a half years old, and he watches his father clutch his stomach, groaning, doubled over from the blow.
The perfect height to kiss his mom.
Mac thinks they look like they’re gonna eat each other. His mom’s cigarette burns threateningly by his dad’s ear as she grips his head.
Mac runs upstairs to his room, hiding under the covers from the darkness, wondering why he didn’t ask Charlie for that flashlight.
He needs it more than I do, Mac thinks. It makes him feel a little better, that, at least, he’s kinda keeping Charlie safe.
When he prays, he asks God to send him an angel. Something bright.