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My mother realized that my father used to hit me. She apologized. I was thirty-six years old. She talked to me the way she used to — gentle and quiet. I was her delicate child.
My poor baby. She was crying. Why didn’t you tell me? We would have left him sooner.
I remember that night. I remember the beating. He almost killed my mother. He could have killed us all. We left my father soon after. We moved from relative to relative. We all learned to hide. It sucked, and it was all my fault. I let my emotions get away from me.
I deserved the beating. I know it. I opened my mouth. I wasn’t supposed to. I lit the fuse on a giant stick of dynamite that exploded all of my living. It left my life in fragments and shattered. How could I be so stupid? I wrecked my family.
Nothing really happened that way. I know. I remember through the eyes of a child. I remember with a grammar school mind. My mother can’t remember at all. That’s trauma.
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