The Day It Went Down
Dear diary,
This is my first time writing in a diary, so I’ll be cautious about what I write because my siblings are very nosy. The reason I even decided to get a diary was that I heard it was therapeutic and a way to let things bottled up inside me out without talking to someone. Another reason I chose this option instead of talking to someone is that if I say too much, they’ll send me somewhere, and I’m afraid that if I go, I won’t come back the same or even worse than before. Anyway, I’ll start to explain why I was traumatized at the early age of 7.
So, it was at night, and I couldn’t sleep. I figured that if I could get a glass of water or warm milk, I could fall asleep more easily. Before I left my room to go downstairs, I looked at the clock on my wall and saw that it was 11:46 PM. It was really late, but I needed something to drink, so I took the chance of getting a scolding rather than being thirsty.
I quietly tiptoed out of my room and down the stairs. After getting downstairs without anyone noticing me, I see my parents arguing in the living room. Before they could notice me, I ran into the closet closest to the living room entryway. They were arguing silently, but not silently enough for me to still hear them. I don’t know what they were arguing about, but it must have hurt them both.
They got a bit louder as the argument became more heated by the minute. I was getting thirstier than before, so I quickly moved to another spot closer to the kitchen. When they had their back turned, I hastily tiptoed out of the closet and into the pantry outside the kitchen. I could still hear them even from there. It’s like they weren’t even trying to be quiet.
From that moment, things got worse at one point when my mom brought up his drinking problems. She told him that if he kept drinking, it would tear the family apart, and she was worried for everyone’s sake if that man continued. I guess my dad was drunk, but I just didn’t notice before. When speaking to my mother, his words were slurred, and he couldn’t walk straight anytime he paced around the living room. I guess that even after everything they fought about, bringing up his drinking was the line that she “crossed”. This is the first and only time that I’ve seen that man so furious over some dumb argument about my mother being worried about him and his problems.
He wasn’t thinking straight. I like to tell myself that after what I saw him do to my mother. He slapped her so hard I heard an echo that lasted about 4 seconds. I guess that slap he gave either wasn’t hard enough, or he was just fed up with her. He kept hitting her so much to the point where she was balled up on the ground, and some of the bruises he left from hitting her started bleeding.
After his temper tantrum, he said, “I wish I’d never married you and wished I had never started this family.”
Ouch, that was mean. Nobody told him he couldn’t wear a condom, but that wasn’t the breaking point for my mother at that moment. Something else he’d bought up during those last words of his made her explode with rage.
“I should’ve left you at that damn street corner and brought you back to that house where you originally were.”
Those words made her snap. I don’t know what it was. She just stopped crying and shakily got up from the ground. She walked into the kitchen, got a knife from the drawer, and ran out of the kitchen, stabbing him immediately. He fell over after the first stab, but she wasn’t done.
All of her years of pent-up rage finally spilled out. She got on top of him and stabbed him multiple times in the chest, a few times in the head, and the final blow was to slit his throat and let the blood spray onto her face. She sat there for a few moments, allowing the blood to seep into her clothes and shoes before realizing what she’d done. She got off of him and cried after realizing her abusive, manipulative husband was dead.
As she continued to cry, I snuck out of the pantry and quickly but quietly tiptoed back upstairs. I tried to run as quietly as possible, but you can’t run quietly, so I crawled as fast as I could without making any noise. I locked the door and dashed towards my bed. I hid myself under the covers. I took a deep breath, calmed myself, and took a quick peek at the clock on the wall, and it was now 12:13 AM. I didn’t even realize that that much time had passed. I wanted to flush what I had just seen out of my mind. I grabbed my stuffed animal, Peri, cried a little bit, and fell asleep.
When I woke up, it was about 9:27 AM. My pillow and some blankets were covered in dried tears. Even the stuffed animal I cuddled last night was covered in dried tears. I was too scared to get out of bed for the fear that I’d be killed next. I got out of bed and grabbed a stuffed animal so I wouldn’t be scared. I went into the bathroom, took a shower, and got dressed. Then, I walked out of the bathroom and went downstairs. Everyone was dressed, and my brothers were eating cereal while my mother made me a bowl of cereal and packed snacks from the kitchen pantry.
I looked around downstairs and noticed that many of our bags were packed. Most were my brother’s bags, while my mother’s were near the front door, sitting on the shoe cubby. Some more bags were packed, which, now that I’m writing this, were probably food from the pantry.
I asked my mom why there were bags packed, and she was packing everything from the pantry into bags. She had told me that our father walked out on them last night because of an argument. So to get revenge on him, she burned his clothes and said to us that we were moving away today, so that I’d have to get packing before 2:00 PM.
Now, as I’m writing this and looking back on what she told us as an excuse, it was quite weak. Yes, my father was a jackass to my mom, but the chances of him leaving my mom were slim to none. After my youngest brother, Damien, was born, I can admit—his drinking got worse, and so did his attitude toward the family—but divorcing my mom to leave with another? Not even the first thought in his mind. It was so odd to me when that realization set in in 1954, he would hit Mom, cheat on her, drink(despite having strong opposition to it), and so many other bad things. He wanted to give up, but he was attached to her. Not in an unhealthy way, but maybe more like he was scared of losing her, which is sweet, but they were toxic.
Regardless, I asked why we had to pack and leave before 2:00 PM. She said that she had to go shopping for more things. She also said we wouldn’t have to worry about school because she called the principal last night and explained that we’d be moving away. This was a lot to take in, considering it happened in a couple of hours. Wait, I just realized something. Where exactly are we moving to?
I asked my mom where we were moving since she said we had to go shopping before we left. She said we were moving to Canada. We were moving to Canada. We live in Maine. I decided to stop asking questions and go pack. I went back upstairs with Peri. I placed him on the bed to open my closet, and grabbed all the suitcases that I had from when we went shopping for new ones. In total, I had around 8 suitcases. Now that I’m looking back on this, I’m so glad we had a big car that could fit everything because I didn’t want to leave anything behind.
I got all my pillows and blankets into the same suitcase, knowing they’d be easiest to pack. After folding and packing pillows into some travel bags, it was time for the real stuff: clothes, shoes, stuffed animals, etc., and all of this was under a time limit, oh boy. After finally stuffing everything in my room into suitcases, I made sure I could move them around by myself and roll them, too. I got all my suitcases out of my room and moved them all downstairs.
Since my brothers were done with breakfast, I got a pint of yogurt from the cooler and ate that. My mom grabbed my youngest brother, Damien, from the booster seat in the kitchen and my brother, Sammy, from the couch and sat them on the shoe cubby near the front door. My mom asked me to help Damien put on his shoes while she put our things in the car. I hated having to help Damien put on his shoes because he never stays still. After taking 5 minutes to help Damien put on his shoes, I picked him up, grabbed Sammy’s hand, and walked outside. My mom finished putting our bags in the trunk.
Since it was Winter, it was freezing outside. She made us get in the car and sit in the back. She strapped Damien into his car seat and buckled Sammy’s seat belt. I put my seatbelt on and noticed a blanket on the seats across from us. I picked one of the blankets up and covered Damien and Sammy with it so they wouldn’t be cold. I grabbed another blanket from the seat and wrapped it around me because even with the coat on, it was still freezing inside the car. Oh, wait, there’s one more thing I have to ask.
I asked my mom if she had even moved any furniture out of the house, from the basement, or the attic. She said she did all of that in one night, the moment that man left. She called a moving company to help her pack up the stuff, and most of the furniture would be moved to our new house in Canada once we got there. All of this was in one night??? This all happened just because she was tired of him, huh!
My mom pulled out of our now old driveway and drove out of our now old neighborhood. While she was driving to the store, I noticed it started to snow. The way the snowfall slowly began to cover the cedar trees, almost making it look like a dream. It looked so beautiful, I couldn’t believe we had those kinds of trees here. After a few minutes on the road, we finally made it to the store and brought more supplies. Then we were back on the road. 11 long hours to get to Canada and to get to our new house. When we arrived, it was so much bigger than our old house. When we got there, the moving trucks with our furniture were there. A new country, this’ll be exciting.
