A Father's Gift

I can remember waking up in the middle of the night to the sounds of my mother's high pitched screams of pain and pleads for him to stop, please stop. To this day, when someone mentions childhood to me I have a vision of lying curled in that bed staring out into the darkness and listening to the thud of a kick, the whack of a slap, or the sound of my mother weeping.

The next day we would sit around the kitchen table eating breakfast. He would be so kind to her then, so gentle. She would have a hat drooping low down her forehead, or would be wearing sunglasses despite the overcast in the sky. He'd help her fix us something to eat, begging her to just sit tight, that he would take care of everything. I'd catch them alone together sometimes. He was always so tender to her during the day. So loving.

When we were very young we didn't know any better. The sounds at night frightened us, but in the day everything was calm and we were no longer afraid. But, as we grew older the fear began creeping into the daylight as if it were tainting the sun with its poison.

That is when David started talking about The Plan. David was my older brother and he became aware of the wrongness of our life long before I did. He would often talk about it during the early evening before father came home.

"You mustn't," Mother would say. "You mustn't say such things. You mustn't think those things. You mustn't do anything."

David could never understand our mother. He would argue with her for hours about how things must change, how things must stop. Mother would first yell at him, then plead to him, and finally beg him.

"It isn't his fault, David," she would say. "It isn't him that is doing this to me. You must believe me. He really does love me, but he can't control himself. You don't understand, it is better this way. Please…"

Mother's tears always seemed to break David's spirit. It was the love he felt for Mother that made him want to strike back at Father, and it was that very same love that reached out through those salty tears and held him back.