I sometimes wonder what Stone would have done. When we found out that Grasp was molesting children, when Stone found out Grasp was molesting his grandchildren, what would he have done? I do not know. I cannot say, but if he had made that call, things would have been different.
In the face of pleasing her daddy, Rose would have let Grasp burn. As is, the call was made by the only one that would have ever done it. It was made by me.
That made me. That was the moment I was the head of the family. Wrath should have been. He should have heard about the call, and the very next thing he did should have been to pick up a phone and call me. He should have given me support. Come to Springfield to check on me.
When Grasp’s friends showed up the day I was packing his room, it never should have been me and Little Man standing there. It should have been Uncle Wrath with a fucking hand gun. But he pulled away. He was nowhere when his family needed him. He disappeared because he could not handle the horror of it all. And I was the only one left to fight.
When I came home from college, before the call, Ball was always home. He was always ready to hang out and say inappropriate things to Bekah and laugh as she deflected them. But after the call, every time I was there, he was either hiding in his house, not answering the door, or he was gone. He would just leave, pick up and fuck off, and they all left me with the duty of holding things together.
The call was my duty. Uncle Ball had let those kids suffer under Grasp for years. Rose had covered for Grasp and hired him as an employee at her day care. By then, she knew what he was, but so many years ago she had told him it was fine. That he would be fine. That he needed to not tell anyone and it would all go away.
She couldn’t make a big deal about it now. She couldn’t stand there damning him for doing the thing she allowed to happen to him. She made a monster. At that point, she had to feed it.
Grandma did as I told her to. I do not know what she did behind my back, but when I was in a room with her, she kept her head down and she followed my lead. Ball did as I told him to.
I had in one moment of sheer force of will and honor taken the throne of the family. The fight was at Rose’s house, and I was staying there every weekend. I went so that I could fight with her. She was defending the one that was raping family members. She needed to be defeated. She needed to face my wrath.
There was a new king now, a wartime king, and under his reign, things were falling apart. All the strength of the entire family drained away and everything evaporated around me.
Honed’s mother died. I loved him, even though he was siding with Rose, who was siding with Grasp, but I wanted to be there for him at his mother’s funeral. He told me I didn’t need to come, but Rose grabbed the phone from him.
“You absolutely are coming, you hear me? You are going to come support the man that I love and you are not going to bring your hate with you,” she said. “Now Grasp is going to call you and you two are going to work it out. You’re going to make a plan so that you don’t have to bring that hateful nonsense to this sacred occasion.”
She does not have the power to tell me anything at this point. I could easily have dismissed her words and just not come. But Honed had always been good to me. He had always treated me with respect. So when the phone rang I picked it up.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, mom told me to call you and try to—”
“Yeah, I know. Look, don’t bring your shit and I won’t bring mine,” I told him. I said, “Don’t come around me and I won’t come around you and you stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine.”
“Fine.”
“We’re done here,” I said.
“No mutha fucker we are absolutely not done.”
“Fuck you.” I was hanging up the phone when I realized he was winning this fight. If I hung up this phone, the word would be that I couldn’t face him and I ran from him. “What the fuck do you have to say?”
“First of all, watch your mouth, Jesse. I don’t take shit from you anymore.”
“You piece of shit. Watch my mouth. I will rip your fucking dick off. Say what you have to say because I’m going to need a shower after talking to you.”
“You have no idea what you did to me,” he said.
“I know exactly what I did to you.”
“No, fuck you,” Grasp said. “You are going to listen to this or I am coming to your house and jerking you out onto your lawn and screaming it in your face.”
I got deathly quiet. Still. He was just about to start talking. I heard his inhale to speak when I said very calmly, “Missouri is a Stand Your Ground state. I have already called the police and told them you are not welcome, and this is what they said, ‘If he comes onto your property unwanted, you can do anything you want to him.’” I cleared my throat and spoke with the slightest of trembles. “If you come to my house and I catch you here, I will kill you.”
He said nothing.
“If you come to my house when I don’t want you here, I will kill you.”
Quiet on the other end of the receiver.
“Are we clear on that?”
“Yeah. Are you ready to listen now?”
“Hit me. This will be entertaining.”
“You made that call and lied about me to the cops just over some bullshit those little fuckin—”
“Keep a civil tongue when you speak of my sisters or I will rip it out of your mouth.”
“Anyway, you don’t even know what kind of hell you unleashed on me. I was at work talking to my coworkers when the cops came to take me. They handcuffed me in front of my friends at work. They took me down to the station and they asked me questions for five hours. I had just worked a shift and I was exhausted. I had no way to call for help, no one to talk to, and they asked the same questions over and over again.”
“Cool.”
“I can’t go back to work. Business fired me. She said she believes you before all things and she tossed me out on my ass. The church won’t let me in. I can’t even go home to get stuff because Horrid won’t let me in the house. I have been living in hell for almost six months now, and I want you to know. I want you to know what you did to me. So you have to live with it. So just try to live with that, you bastard.”
“I’m happy you are suffering and I am going to do everything in my power to put you in prison for the rest of your life. See you at the funeral.” I hung up.
The funeral had Ball, Grandma, but no sign of Wrath. I never expected him. I came in, gave my respects. My mother talked my face into a rag trying to stall for time so that I would not miss Grasp.
And it worked. There he was. She grabbed Honed, took him into the hall, and she grabbed me and stared at Grasp. “Now you two shake hands. This is not about you. This is about Honed. You two shake hands.”
I put my hand out, he put his out, and they brushed each other. No grip. No shake. I wanted to boil my fucking hand knowing what that flesh had done, and I walked out.
I felt as though I had in some way compromised my principles by touching him. I had looked him in the eye. He couldn’t meet mine. I talked to Bekah about it and she assured me I did great. I drank when I got home that night, and I walked the streets, telling the stranger out there watching that I had touched him. That I had compromised myself, and the next day I couldn’t think about it. For a long time now, I haven’t been able to talk about it. It was a memory almost shuffled away in the wisps beyond the edge of the Wasteland.
But that was Rose. That was Rose being a monster. She grabbed Honed and took him into the mix so we couldn’t walk away from each other. She used her husband to force a situation that very easily could have blown up. Rose did that to her husband at his mother’s funeral. She made that woman’s funeral about her sons getting back together. It was just another crime in a long line of crimes she committed against that man.
Well the word was out. The Mocking Family had a terrifying new king leading it. No one would challenge me. No one would look me in the eye. It didn’t matter what Stone would have done. Because I was there to do it.
When I saw that family descend into chaos and grime, I had to walk. The king went home, and without me, they have floundered.
Wrath tried to live in that town with Grasp, but when Grasp’s girlfriend got pregnant, Wrath took his wife and moved out west to where her people are. The last time I talked to him, he came in yelling and left begging me to just not ever come talk to him anymore. He couldn’t take it. Anymore. He said, “Just please leave me and my family out of it.”
Rose has taken over as the queen. She rules Ball now. She rules Grasp. She has so many times tried to force me to make up with him. Tried to manipulate me into making up with him. Tried, with every bit of dignity she possesses, begged for me to make up with him.
But if I pretended that any of it was okay, if I pretended just long enough for a BBQ, I would be letting the entire family down. And the last tower the kids have would fall.
I have one other thing to say. When the Battle of Normal Street ended, I walked away from the entire family. I lost everything. I had nothing to give them at all, nothing to offer those kids except a broken man. But still, every time I looked back on what I had done, I never regretted it. I did it to save my generation. I did it for my family.
Jesse Teller 
Leave a comment