Toyo Carter

Glass

My mother and step-father thought it a good idea to remove the door to my room from its hinges as punishment for my absent-mindedness. In a rush to get to school or just because of an error of memory, I repeatedly forgot to lock the front door to the apartment. Sometimes, I would hilariously leave the key in the door. Their rationale for said punishment was that I was compromising everyone's safety. I thought not. Regardless of whether the door was unlocked or not, if someone's intentions were to hurt us, they would go out their way to break down the door. Besides, as a sixteen-year-old teenager, I valued my privacy over collective values. I could not stand to be punished. I especially loathed the fact that it was my step-father's idea. It sounded like something my biological father would do. Maybe the punishment was not as extreme as it was in my mind. The idea of a man-a man I barely knew or trusted having precedence and authority over me was too much to bear. The idea was made worse by the fact that he was not the best person. I often witnessed him yelling at and berating his kids over minor discrepancies. He went as far as to laugh at and mock my mom when she was crying because he had hurt her feelings. I was uncomfortable with the amount of control they wanted over my behavior. No eating in the room. No sleeping on the couch. I also needed an overseer as I washed and put up the dishes. How humiliating and condescending. My mom tried implementing more structure and discipline in my life by having her boyfriend be more instrumental. However, I was not interested. I was free to be myself. I had gotten used to my autonomy and free thinking style, so much so that I refused to go to church when the both of them tried forcing me to go. It felt like coercion and indoctrination more then anything. The fact that I was gay did not help matters either. Everything boiled up in that moment. All I could see was red, so I waited until my mom left the room after giving her an earful of nasty words. I looked for something. Anything. Then I saw it. A glass frame. I punched straight through it, not feeling a thing because of the adrenaline pumping through me. I stormed out the house to catch my breath. I thought about how glass had become a motif in my attempt to control my anger. I would later down whole glasses of Heineken and violently through the bottles into the street or smash them against a rock or brick. I went as far as collecting the bottles in case I got into an argument with my mom. Most notably, I would choose a non-fatal part of my body to scrape the broken glass against. It was surprisingly relaxing, though I knew it was unhealthy and self-destructive. Though I had left the house to avoid the situation escalating, it was too late. My mother had called the constable and my grandmother, which only infuriated me further. I calmly played along until everyone left. I spent the next week or so cleaning up shards of broken glass that had splattered everywhere around the apartment. At certain times, my mother and step-father would step on a piece of glass, and I secretly took pleasure in the tiny amounts of pain I caused them-that I thought they deserved as retribution for my suffering.