41
Day of My Death
Nells is mumbling in her room. She does that sometimes, talk in her sleep. I snuck in once, hoping to get some dirt to harass her with. She was whimpering, jerking and twisting her sheets. She kept muttering no and stop it, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good. She looked defenseless, like a blind baby animal. I felt more ashamed standing there than if I’d seen her naked.
There’s nothing I can do about Nells’s demons now, but she has Mom, and that should get her through. For everything my father wrought, it was my mother I always saw as a god. She might have let my father hit her, might have covered his dirty tracks, but you’d be wrong in thinking she couldn’t take care of herself. Or us.
When I was fifteen, I woke on a Saturday to one of those rare March mornings when the sky was this surprising blue. You never expect it that time of year, and it could make you all riled-up happy. I got out of bed and kept my eye on that promising sky as I plodded toward the kitchen. Nells and Mom and Dad were in there, and I could tell before I got to the door that every bit of blue had been sucked out of the place. A ballbuster of a storm was building, and there was nothing I could do to keep from being swept in.
Nells was begging to go to a friend’s birthday party that afternoon. She’d waited till the last minute, afraid of what Dad would say. I was the one who convinced her to give it a shot. But Dad, who was chugging a Bud though it wasn’t even eight thirty, was saying no way. I guessed he didn’t want to cough up for a present. Nells must have thought so too because she said, “You won’t have to do anything. I’ll walk to town and buy a present with the ten dollars Grandma sent me.”
Dad was furious. “I’m not going to have you show up with some cheap piece of crap, even if it is for a kid who’s a spoiled brat.”
“You don’t even know Madison!” Nells said. “She’s super nice—”
“She’s a spoiled brat like her mom. I can tell you this: the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Dad was always saying that, how the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“You’re wrong, she’s—”
“It’s not the money. You’ve got your chores. I want every bit of mold off that shed out back.”
Mom, slicing ham into ribbons for scrambled eggs, said, “Can’t we give Nells another—”
His head snapped toward her. “Did I ask your opinion? Did I?” His tone was vicious, his face red and bloated with anger.
Dad didn’t usually talk to Mom this way, only when he was getting into one of his moods, which happened every couple months. Nells knew the signs. She should have been quiet, should have suffered her losses and left it at that, but she jumped up and shouted, “You’re a total asshole!”
Dad was out of his chair, lunging at her, slapping her hard, and she stumbled back. I rushed over, planning to hammer the crap out of him, but Mom beat me there. She’d come up behind him, pressed the carving knife to his ribs. When he went still, she said in a cool, low voice, “You hit one of our kids ever again, you hit me ever again, this knife is going to find you when you least expect it. You got that?”
Dad went all limp and pathetic like he did, started crying and sat down. But Mom wasn’t buying it. “Get out of here,” she said. And he went.
Mom ended up serving Nells and me the pile of eggs, though neither of us had much appetite. Dad came back at the end, saying Nells could go to the party and Mom would take her to buy a decent present. But Nells wasn’t going anywhere, not with half her face looking like she had the mumps or something.
The next day, when I was helping Mom unload the groceries, I said, “Dad deserved that yesterday.”
She kept unpacking. “Sometimes you need to be clear.”
LIKE I SAID, my mother could take care of herself. And I have to give her credit. Dad never did hit any of us again.
Of course, there are worse things than being hit.
