Small Boy

ONE

Small Boy

I was born a small boy to a resentful woman. Others would call her a mother. I called her Olivia for that was what I was taught. It was also her name. I had a father. His name was Kristof. That was the name I used too when I spoke to him. He was also resentful. Lots of people are resentful of me. Why? I’m not certain. But as for my parents, I know their resentment first hand.

Olivia was resentful for many reasons. Kristof had impregnated her when she was 18. He was an old man of 57 at the time. I remember my father mostly as an old man sitting in a rocking chair smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper. When I learned about Abraham Lincoln, that’s who he reminded me of. He had a gray beard. A bushy beard that only seemed to grow from the lower half of his face. He had no mustache and the thin fish-like lips that Lincoln had.

I learned later that my father had fashioned himself to look like Lincoln. Like Lincoln, my father was a tall thin man. Though he was taller than Lincoln. My father stood 6 feet and 6 inches. That’s a foot taller than I am. I was born a small boy only to grow up a small man. That has not been my problem for a long time.

But I was telling you about my mother. Let’s return to her resentment. Olivia was 18 when she had me. Having me I don’t believe was part of her resentment. For when the baby was born, she had come to terms with the pregnancy. I don’t want to suggest she was raped. Though perhaps in the broader sense of it she was. My mother was purchased as a bride if you can believe it. And believe it you must for it is paramount to the story. These things still happened in the late 20th century. Even in what you’d consider civilized society.

My mother was an Armenian woman of Armenian gypsies. I don’t use that word unkindly. It’s what she was. In the sense a free-spirited daughter to free-spirited parents. Yet she was sold for the sum of 1111 dollars. This is an interesting number. We’ll come back to it. She was sold somewhere in the Midwest sometime in late 1998. I’ve heard it was Missouri. I’ve also heard it was Nebraska. I’m inclined to believe it was Nebraska, for it might have taken place in its capital of Lincoln. That would wrap things up nicely. But things don’t often wrap up nicely.

Most of what I know about my parents and my history I’ve gleaned from my own research. Without trying to exaggerate I can’t imagine either of my parents spoke more than a total of 1000 words to me in my life. But then my life ended when I was 11 years old. But we’ll come to that.

So Olivia’s resentment was not because she was impregnated by an old man who sat in a corner and took what he wanted from her including food and sex as he saw fit. Other than that they hardly said a word to each other. To most, it might have looked like the relationship was one of servant and master. And I suppose that is exactly what it was. Now that’s not to say Kristof was a cruel man. He wasn’t. I never saw him assault Olivia. At least not often. Whatever that might be in your mind. But then again he didn’t have to. She was ever so compliant.

I like to think the best gift I gave her was his murder when I was 11 just after my life had ended. But we won’t jump ahead.

I was trying to tell you about her resentment. It wasn’t because of the pregnancy. No. It was because I was a boy. And not because I was a small boy. She wanted a girl. After she had come to terms with the pregnancy she’d started hoping for a girl. And that’s the problem with hopes. They create resentment more often than not for they very seldom come true. Call them hopes or dreams or wishes. They’re all the same thing really. Perhaps this is man’s greatest folly or his hubris. For he thinks that hoping so will make it so. And that’s just patently false.

Perhaps the biggest source of Olivia’s resentment with me being born a boy was the old man smoking a pipe in a rocking chair. She saw me as another version of him. And in some ways perhaps she foreshadowed accurately. For in one way I am like the man that sired me. I do not have much to say. I am not shy but rather just retiring. People bore me.

By the time Olivia realized that I was not like Kristof I suppose it was too late. I think the wall of resentment she had put up between us just became too high to climb. Or she was too tired to try. It must have been tiring for her to live with Kristof. His incessant needs for food and sex. He never worked a day in his life. Olivia worked every day of her life.

I have also entertained the idea that perhaps her resentment was simply because she didn’t like me. Not at first, of course. I mean can you dislike a baby when you know not how they’ll turn out? I suppose so. Kristof just didn’t like me from the beginning. And maybe Olivia didn’t either. I was certainly work for her. Just like all babies are. But I was never breastfed. I only had the bottle.

Kristof took the breast for himself. He treated her like a resource. Thinking that he had paid for her he believed he owned her. And much like cattle whom we think we own he felt all of her was his. So he milked her dry like a dairy cow. Every day and several times every day he put her on a breast pump. And that was the milk he used for his coffee and his cereal and his beverage. A woman can produce almost a liter of milk per day. And he took it all.

Was that part of his resentment over me? I don’t think so. I think that was one of the small, if only, blessings of Olivia having had me. It gave him her lactations. How do I know all of this? By observance. I have had the uncanny ability to observe and retain those memories since I was born. You might call it an eidetic memory. But it’s more than that. Needless to say having experienced the selfishness and twisted nature of Kristof I do not imbibe on the secretions of animals. In fact I do not use animals at all for food or any other means. Many call me a vegan, but that’s not what I call myself. I call myself Shoeng.

Being on the bottle worked out well. It allowed Olivia to work to keep Kristof an idle man. She cleaned houses and she took me with her. She did it for herself. In many ways she was self-employed. With a bottle and some spare diapers she’d plop me in a cage. They call them playpens but I know a cage when I see one. Not that I minded. I had a little blue rabbit I played with. I was not a fussy baby. I haven’t really ever been fussy. For you see, being as observant as I have, I have always tried to be well liked. And I have always failed. At least until my life ended when I was 11.

Let’s leave the talking about me for a while and talk about my father. My father in seed only. Not in spirit. I call him Kristof.

TWO

Pointy Ears

KRISTOF was born on the 4th of February 1942. By now you’re probably getting an idea for when I was born. You’ll recall that Kristof bought Olivia in 1998. I was born in 1999. We’ll get more specific later. Kristof was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. His parents were immigrants from Holland in the 1920s with their parents. In fact, his parents were cousins. First cousins. Though none of this is important.

Kristof was the 11th child that his parents had. He was the only child that survived infancy. His parents were named Abraham and Sara. I was named after Kristof’s father. His family name is Elf. That is my family name too. It is a curious name for it fits me well in more than one way. It fit Kristof well too. In English, we all know what an Elf is. My dictionary says it is a supernatural creature from folk tales. A creature that is small and human in appearance with pointy ears as well as capricious. I have pointy ears. It was a birth defect that Kristof did not have corrected and has been the brunt of much scorn I have suffered. I was called ‘Vulcan’ and ‘Spock’ when I was small. And they were not used as terms of endearment.

Capricious is an odd word. It means given to quick and sudden mood changes. To be fickle or mercurial. I have been called that also, though I do not think the cap fits. Though it is understandable. Those whom I’m about to kill think me capricious. If only because I had befriended them ahead of time.

Nevertheless, I get ahead of myself. You’ll learn enough about me in time. Let’s get back to Kristof. Elf is our family name. It suits me to a T for I am small and have pointy ears. It also suits me in the Dutch meaning of the word. But first Kristof.

Kristof was the 11th child of Abraham and Sara. In case you’ve missed the irony, Abraham and Sara were religious people. They were staunch followers of the Dutch Reformed Church. Elf in Dutch is the word for the number 11. Kristof being the 11th child and only surviving child of Abraham and Sara gave him a special place in their hearts. He was spoiled rotten. Seen as a miracle child. My grandparents never knew I murdered their son. Because I killed them first.

In case you’re wondering why I might have murdered a sweet old couple you’re misinformed. There was nothing sweet about them. They spread the message of hatred through their church to the Afrikaners of South Africa. They did this primarily through Afrikaner Calvinism and the Afrikaner Broederbond. This is not a history text and so I will not defend the merits of my actions. Some might call Afrikaner Calvinism and the Broederbond as natural outgrowths of the Afrikaner’s struggle for independence. I am not one of those people. Nevertheless, Abraham was personally responsible for the death of many in Africa.

But more than that, he and Sara created the man I call Kristof. My father by seed alone and not by deed. Kristof was a spoiled child and an undeveloped man. It was Abraham and Sara who gave him the money for buying Olivia. Abraham and Sara were ranchers in Nebraska. Many miles from Lincoln where Kristof was born. I can’t remember when they never had blood on their hands. And they taught Kristof their bloody ways. He was 11 when he slaughtered his first pig and 16 when he slaughtered his first cow.

I can’t say if he enjoyed it. Though I always knew him as a man without emotion. Like I’ve said. I remember him as a man who sat on a rocking chair smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper. But perhaps that is only because it is the last memory I have of him before I killed him.

Abraham and Sara resented me too. But I’m lunging ahead where I shouldn’t. This part is still about Kristof. I had told you that he resented me. He resented me for many reasons. The first of which was that he never wanted any children. And when he had almost come to accept that, he was having a child he wanted. A robust strong child. I was not. I was the runt of the litter, though there was no litter, just I. I was deformed with my slight build and pointy ears.

To a tall man like Kristof, I was an embarrassment and a mark against nature. I was a failure, something that should not survive. And yet in spite of his best efforts at ignoring me I did indeed survive. Yet whenever I caught him passing his eyes over me I saw nothing if not contempt and resentment.

Kristof’s full name was Kristof Lincoln Nebraska Elf. My full name is Abraham Elf. That is enough. Abraham and Sara as you can probably tell were both proud Americans and Nebraskans. That’s why he had the middle names of an American president and an American state. You’ll find that immigrants can often be more patriotic than those born upon a nation’s soil. Almost to a fault. Though I won’t fault them for their patriotism for patriotism alone is a fault in and of itself.

Kristof attended school until he was 12. Then Abraham had him work on the farm. Abraham had no need for school past the learning of rudimentary mathematics and reading. I happened to like school, but I never got past grade 6. You’ll recall that my life ended when I was 11.

When Kristof first bought Olivia, they lived with Abraham and Sara. Kristof worked on the farm a little, though by that time there was not much of a farm to work on. Farming by then had long become the domain of large agribusiness. This was in 1998. By the time I was born in 1999 we had moved to Lincoln and lived in a run down house in a bad part of town where Kristof spent his days on the porch or in front of the television while I was out with Olivia as she worked dawn until dusk. I remember all of this because I’m very observant. Always have been.

When she came home she started dinner and after dinner she took a bath for she needed to make herself available if Kristof wanted her. You might ask how I could stand any of this. And you’d be within your rights for asking. But how do we stand any drudgery? We mark time. And that is what I did. I marked time until my life ended when I was 11. And then I murdered him. It was one of the greatest moments of peacefulness I had felt in my entire life to that point. Murdering my grandparents had given me a similar peacefulness.

I say this all because it is true. You may judge me, but you have no right, and I’ll not be held accountable to you. I did murder them. It’s plain and simple. It was premeditated too. Did they deserve to die? Yes. Did they commit what you’d consider a capital crime? Abraham certainly did. Sara did not. And neither did Kristof. Yet I murdered them all eagerly. Well, perhaps that is a slight exaggeration. It was not so much eagerness as a willingness and readiness. I had my reasons as you’ll find out by the time we’ve finished the telling of my tale.

To give you a little more information. I am now 44 years old. I have been murdering human beings since I was 11. I try to murder someone every day. But like many people I am lazy and slothful at times. However, as I write this I have just murdered my 12,345th human being. It’s just a number. But that’s a lot of people. It includes men and women and children. Yes, children. But I am not a sadist. In fact, they die quickly, painlessly. We’ll get to all of that in time. But all 12,345 of those deaths I recall with perfect clarity.

But that’s enough about me. We’re talking about Kristof. I am certain that if Kristof had not died when he did he would have sought to buy more wives. I have no brothers or sisters. I came into this world alone and I’ll never leave it. My life is a heaven of aloneness. Aloneness envelopes me. But then it envelopes us all. For we are all alone. There is vast emptiness around us. Some of us know that. Many do not. I have found in my time here that those who know it I usually do not have to murder.

THREE

Heaven Alone

ABRAHAM and Sara had long ago sold the farm by the time I was born. Kristof worked on a small part of it. The part they had kept for themselves. It was 11 acres and they had no mule. They kept some pigs and chickens. They ate the eggs and they killed the pigs and made bacon and ham. Until I was 11 this is what I ate. We ate vegetables too. Those that we grew in the backyard. When I was 8 Kristof tried to get me to help him kill a pig. I couldn’t do it though. He thought it was because I was a small boy and weak. But that’s not it. Even at that tender age I knew the difference between those who deserve death and those who don’t. Those pigs didn’t.

Nevertheless. He stuck a knife in that pig’s throat right in front of my eyes. You already know that I’m very observant. I remember everything. And I can still hear those squeals and see those flailing limbs and the blood squirting from the neck like a broken fire hydrant. I cried for days. It was very upsetting. It still upsets me when I think about it.

It made Kristof detest me even more. Though he never beat me for I was always compliant. But he manhandled me more than I needed. And being manhandled is not what anyone needs let alone a small boy. But I have experienced my fair share of violence. It started with Abraham. He thought that the child spared the rod was spoiled. And though he never laid a finger on Kristof in anger, he never laid a finger on me in kindness.

Abraham seemed to dislike me for the smallest infraction. Here is an example. When I was 3 we were over at the farm. Kristof dragged Olivia and I back to the farm every so often to visit with his parents. Abraham and Sara doted on him even as an old man. And you’ll recall he was 57 when I was born. He was sixty when this incident occurred.

Like most children of 3 years old I was not in full control of my motor skills. And at dinner I dropped some peas on the floor. Abraham took that opportunity to smack me across the face sending me crashing onto the floor onto the handful of peas that were seeking my commiseration. I was dazed for several seconds and couldn’t hear anything out of my right ear for some days afterwards. It hurt, I won’t lie. But it was the shame and embarrassment that was worse. And perhaps to add insult to injury, neither Kristof nor Olivia chose to say anything. And that was just the beginning of almost 8 years of violence at the hand of Abraham who was supposed to be my grandfather.

Though it wasn’t all bad. I had one friend at the farm throughout my trials and tribulations. Her name was Kaffir. She was a black lab who also suffered at the hands of Abraham though she had learned to read him well and kept mostly out of his way scrounging for scraps out in the farm