At thirteen, I was taken to psychologists
because I was disobedient.
I remember the wooden scale.
I remember the stick.
I remember my mother's hand,
the kitchen,
the sudden importance of standing still.
Before that, there was an argument.
There must have been.
I had answered back.
I wouldn't listen.
I had been told.
I had been told.
I remember being told.
I don't remember what.
I remember what happened after.
The part before keeps changing.
At thirteen, I was taken to psychologists
because I was disobedient.
I remember the journey.
I remember why we were going.
I don't remember their faces,
their questions,
my answers,
whether my parents were in the room.
I remember my parents.
Perhaps I told them everything.
Perhaps I told them nothing.
Perhaps I told them what I had learned to call the truth.
Perhaps I was disobedient.
I have no memory of the verdict.
I remember being taken there.
Years later, I remember my mother feeding me.
The plate.
The meal.
Her hand bringing food to my mouth.
The wooden scale.
The meal.
The wooden scale.
She was feeding me.
She was hitting me.
I keep trying to put one memory after the other.
The meal before the hand.
The hand before the meal.
If she fed me afterwards,
perhaps I had been forgiven.
If she fed me beforehand,
perhaps I had been loved.
If I had been loved,
perhaps —
I don't know what comes after that.
Sometimes I remember being loved
and spend the rest of the day
trying to establish what that proves.
I have spent years trying to put the sound
in the right place.
Before the hand.
After the argument.
After I had been told.
I had been told.
I wouldn't listen.
I had answered back.
I had answered back.
Somewhere in the order
there must be a reason.
Somewhere in the reason
there must be a version of me
who deserved what happened.
I have not found him.
I have not stopped looking.
At thirteen, I was taken to psychologists
because I was disobedient.
I don't remember what I said to them.
I remember what I must have said
because I know what was wrong with me.
Difficult.
I don't know who first called me that.
Perhaps my mother.
Perhaps my father.
Perhaps the psychologists.
Perhaps I had already learned the word before anyone needed to say it.
Difficult.
The word fits inside the mouth
without leaving a mark.
Years later, someone goes quiet.
I know this silence.
I begin again.
I reconstruct the conversation.
I revise my tone.
I find the sentence that might have sounded wrong.
I apologise for the sentence.
Sometimes I apologise for the tone
I might have used while thinking the sentence.
Nothing has happened.
Nothing has happened.
I am relieved.
I hate how quickly my body understands.
I remember the wooden scale.
I remember the stick.
I remember my mother's hand on an ordinary afternoon.
I remember the meal.
I remember being told.
At thirteen, I was taken to psychologists
because I was disobedient.
I don't remember the misdeed.
I don't remember what I did.
I must have done something.
I had answered back.
I wouldn't listen.
I had been told.
I had been told.
I remember it was for my own good.
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