Amia
My eyes snapped open, my subconscious bleeding away into the darkness as I woke up. Something shattered in the other room and my mom’s muffled scream echoed down the tiny hall to my room. Half asleep I reached for my phone on the bedside table, fumbling around something fell to the ground. The screen lit up and told me it was an hour before sunrise.
The fun was starting.
A door slammed announcing their arrival next door. Something exploded against the wall to my left, my instincts kicked in and I covered my head as I ducked. My eyes were squeezed shut and I gritted my teeth as I dropped my hands and straightened my back. I swallowed the thick lump in my throat and tried to focus on the rain splattering against my window sill.
Pitter-patter-pit.
Pitter-patter-pit.
Pitter-pat.
I lowered myself until I was laying flat on the bed. The silence in my room was chased from the room as angry voiced bounced off the walls, down the hall, and slip beneath my door. My room is filled with the sound of my heart pounding in my ears and my heavy breathing. Just when I think things are finally calming down after a few minutes of silence. It’s interrupted by his angry shouting followed by my mom’s sobbing. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve woken up to their fighting in the middle of the night.
When I was little, her crying made me frantic. My hands would shake and I would wet the bed as a child. There had been nights where I would pluck up the courage to turn the door handle and take my first step out into the hallway. Somehow I placed one foot in front of the other making my way down the hallway. I would run up to her and throw myself on top of her and wrap my arms around her.
The image of child me trying to take on the role of parent to my mother. It was her job to protect me from him, not my job to protect her from him. I had been a stupid child. It took years of taking his beating for her, countless hospital visits just to watch her lie to the doctors, and begging her to leave him before I realized it was pointless. The begging, the pleading, the fighting was useless.
My mother would never leave him. She cared more about him and his needs than she did herself. She put him before me. Fast forward to the present, teenage me lays numbly in bed cloaked in darkness listening to her plead with her boyfriend to stop. The reasons for his abuse never made sense. That or they didn’t matter.
Sometimes it would be because she took too long to get his drinks from the store, or it was because she said the wrong thing, other times it was because he was having a bad day. I chuckled sourly to myself. There were days it was because of me and the fact that I wasn’t his. It was on those days he would come looking for me. He would bang on my door and- I shake my head and push those thoughts from my mind. That wasn’t today and I wouldn’t visit that hell if I didn’t have to.
The loud sound of his hand meeting her skin resounds. My mom cries and I bite my lip until the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. I already know what’s going to happen if I go out there. It’s happened so many fucking times before that it plays in front of me like a movie. I’ll help her, he’ll beat me, and maybe break a few bones. When he feels better and leaves me alone, she’ll give me medicine and help me shower. Just when I think I’ve gotten through to her, I’ll beg her to leave and she’ll look me in the eye and say no. She’ll leave me alone, bruised, and broken. So no, I won’t go out there. I refuse to move, I refuse to run to her rescue, I refuse to take the beatings for her, and I refuse to cry over her rejection and this goddess-damned abuse.
My dad passed away shortly after I was born. I was too young to have any memories of him or be sad about his death. Growing up I thought about him, wondered about him, and had questions. Every time I would ask my mom about him she would get this look in her eyes. I’ve never seen her look at Greg with that look. As a young child, I didn’t like it when my mom would cry and I didn’t like being the reason she was so sad. I decided to stop asking and accepted that it was just me and her.
Despite my father’s passing, I grew up loved and taken care of. As a little girl, she would tell me it was me and her against the world. I didn’t have to worry about anything because I had her. I didn’t need anyone else but her so I tucked the word dad away and never thought about him. And it was just me and her against the world until it wasn’t.
