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PROUD FLESH:  The Resurrection of Baby B

 

 

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Chapter 8:

 

A Heavy Burden

"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older, they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."

                                                                                                                                                         Oscar Wilde

 

It was July, and I was well into my summer activity schedule in Austin. A creature of habit, I found comfort in an orderly, predictable life. I grew up in a chaotic household with an alcoholic father and a chronically depressed mother. Somehow they managed to get through the week, teetering on a tightrope of normalcy balanced by an array of passive aggressive slights and swipes at one another. But by the time Friday arrived, that tightrope had stretched to a snapping point and all of that pent up animosity and alienation sent them thrashing through the house. Whatever disappointments or demons my father had simmering during the week reached the boiling point when he poured his first Friday drink. He was movie star handsome with a charming smile and engaging personality. Whenever I heard someone say, "...but he seemed like such a nice guy" after the "nice guy" committed some brutal act, I knew exactly what kind of person they were describing.

 

Sometimes when he beat her, I hid and dialed "O" and laid the phone down, hoping the operator would hear my mother's screams. One night two police officers actually came. When my father heard the sirens, he ran into the schoolyard behind our house. My mother hated the siren broadcasting her plight to the neighbors more than being beat. "What happens in the family, stays in the family."

 

The police strolled through the house past the wreckage to the back yard. My brother and I stood behind my mother, watching the police question her: "Which way did he go, ma'am?'

 

"I don't know," she replied. "That way, I think." She pointed in the opposite direction that he had run.

 

"No, Mommy," I began, "he went...." I raised my hand. She grabbed it, crushing it in her grip as I looked up into her bruised, battered face.

 

"She didn't see anything; she doesn't know what she's talking about," my mother shot back.

 

The policemen turned and retraced their steps. At the front door, one paused. "You might want to tell your kids to stop playing with the phone, ma'am. We don't want to have to come back here again."

 

My mother peeked from behind the curtain and watched them leave. She turned to me and bent down, pressing her mouth next to my ear, squeezing both of my cheeks hard with her hand, she whispered, "Never, ever tell them where your father is."

 

Sometimes my parents would separate my brother and me like felons, taking each of us to a different room. "Who do you want to live with, if we get a divorce?" My father didn't know that my mother had already warned my brother and me that if either of us said we wanted to live with him, we would never see her again. "I stay for you," she told us. "So you can have a father." It was a heavy burden to chain to a child.

 

My father always responded the same way, when we said without hesitation that we wanted to stay with my mother. He cried. Triumphant, my mother gathered us around him and patted his shoulder like a toddler. "Tell your father you love him," she purred. I was more bewildered by his tears than disturbed because those were the only times that I considered it a possibility he might actually love my brother and me. I hated my father for his brutality and my mother for bowing to it. Still I loved them.