Home: Part 11

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

January 1958 

My father hit my mother only once, as far as I know. He didn't drink, but he was prone to brooding silences that occasionally ended just at the edge of violence. With me, over the course of my youth he crossed that edge more often than I ever revealed. 

Superman ended just before dinner time, just after my father returned home from the Sears Roebuck where he was currently in charge of major appliances. He enjoyed his job, I always believed, and he seemed to enjoy taking me to work with him on weekends when he went in early to "get things in order." At the table that night, though, he was happy about nothing: not the casserole, not the biscuits, not the canned green beans. Cindy and I sat on one side of the table, our parents on the other. Tiger was under the table, and my father kicked at the dog with enough force that Tiger cried out and scrambled out of the room. 

"That's nice," my mother said without emotion.

My father didn't say a word. I saw his arm flash out, the fork slipping from his fingers and clanging against the wall. Then, the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and something connecting with something less hard. My mother's head jerked back, and she made a sound not unlike Tiger's when my father had kicked him. I didn't know what to do. Beneath the table, Cindy's hand squeezed my knee. My mother's upper lip had started to drip blood, and she blinked her eyes as if to make sense of it all. My father's hand was now a fist, and he looked down at it where it lay on the table. My mother reached into her mouth and pulled out half of a tooth. She set it on my father's plate, wiped her mouth with a napkin, then rose from her chair and left the room.

I suppose it was a time when men thought they could--or maybe actually should--do such things without fear. They could kick dogs, they could hit women, and who even in such a small town would care? The neighbors and friends would know, but nobody who really mattered.

"Finish eating," my father said. "Your mother works hard feeding you two."

For years afterward, whenever my parents argued, I sensed that my father had become afraid--not of my mother, but of what he might do. If voices became loud, my mother would raise her upper lip to display what he had done, perhaps mocking him or daring him to strike again. He was always the first to back away from the argument, throwing up his hands and announcing, "I guess that's just the way it is, then."

Sleepless in bed that night I listened to Tiger whimper and snore, and I wondered what world he was in. My bed was just beneath the window, and toward dawn I finally rested my chin on the sill. I could smell snow. Tiger bit at his paw, then lay beside me and put his head beside mine. He must have smelled more than snow. I heard footsteps in the hallway: my father getting ready to leave for work. A few minutes later I watched as he dusted light snow off the car, then backed slowly into the street and turned toward the highway. The car's tires crunched against deeper snow. When he was out of view, I closed the window and settled into my bed. My palm hurt where half of my mother's tooth pressed into my skin.