1. Talk to Him
“Do you want to say hi?” My mother asked, extending the phone out to me. I hesitated and the cord rattled against the wall as she shook it impatiently.
I wasn’t that old, but I was old enough to recognize that I did not know this person. Stranger danger had already imprinted on me. And so, I shook my head no and hid under the dining room table.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” my mother responded flatly. Something was said on the other line and my mother rolled her eyes. She huffed and shot me a warning look, “Just talk to him for 5 minutes.” I shook my head and began to cry. Her lips grew tight as she mouthed, “Just. Do. It.”
Knowing what she’d do to me if I refused, I dragged my feet and took the phone from her hand. She walked away but didn’t go far. She would listen to anything I had to say.
“Hello?” I mumbled into the line.
“Hi, Alicia,” a warm male voice said on the other line. “I miss you,” He paused, hoping that I would respond. I didn’t. “How are you? How is school?”
“It’s okay,” I shrugged. I felt my face flush as my mother’s eyes bore into me. She wanted me to say more so that I wouldn’t have to do this again… or rather, so that she wouldn’t be accused of preventing me from trying.
“How are things at home? Are you happy?”
“They’re good… Mom, has it been 5 minutes yet?” I asked while pulling my face away from the phone.
Her lips grew tight again, “Just talk to him.”
“I miss you so much, Alicia. I love you.” Again another pause. Those weren’t words I was comfortable with - let alone with a stranger.
“Say it back,” my mother snapped in a hushed whisper.
My face grew hot again, but I uttered out the words, “Um… I love you, too.”
This made the man’s on the other end melt and raise, “Oh, I miss you so much. I love you. I promise I’ll visit soon. Can I speak with your mother again?”
Without hesitation I handed the phone back to her and went back to my hiding spot under the table. They spoke for a little while longer. I could hear shouting on the other end. My mother only responded with exasperated anger and impatience. A few minutes later, my dad walked in. He saw the phone against her ear and gave her a questioning glance. She sighed, gave an excuse about my dad just getting in and dinner, then hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” He asked as soon as the phone sank onto the hook on the wall.
“Sam,” she scowled as the name passed her lips.
My father nodded, but said no more.
With very few words I was charged with setting the table and my mother served us dinner. For a short while, the only sound anyone heard was the clinking of silverware on plates and whining from the dog who was begging us to share our meal. The silence was thick and relentless. It was almost time.
“What’s wrong?” My dad finally asked.
“She’s just being difficult again.” He nodded understandingly to this. “Is it really so hard for you to just say hi? Just be polite?” She didn’t look up from her plate as she asked, but this was directed towards me.
“I don’t know him!” I spat back.
“It doesn’t matter. You were rude. All you had to do was say hi.”
“I don’t know him.”
Taking her gaze off me and instead using it to recruit my father to her side, she spoke over me, “She hid under the table and played her games.” Another eye-roll.
“Why would you do that?” He asked, obviously cross.
“I. Don’t. Know. Him!” I shouted.
My mother slammed her hands down on the table. She pointed her short, unpainted nails at me and growled, “Don’t talk to him like that. You don’t need to be a bitch.”
Hot tears began to prick my eyes, “I don’t understand. I don’t know him. Why do I have to talk to him at all? Why does it matter?”
“We don’t need to have a reason for you to be polite. He has never spoken to you. You don’t have to be so difficult!” My mother hissed.
My dad’s voice went up an octave, but didn’t grow louder, “Just say hi. Just cooperate. What’s so hard about that?” He was trying to play the mediator again. Trying to calm the situation down, but it didn’t matter, they weren’t listening. I wasn’t getting any answers. I would never be heard.
“I don’t want to! I don’t know him. Why is that so difficult to understand?!” I spat back, imitating the way he spoke to me.
Crack.
My mother’s hand met my cheek. I threw my hands up to guard myself from more. She sprang out of her chair and I did the same. She chased me into the corner of the room, green eyes honing in like a hawk on my every movement. I cowered and covered my head.
“Put your hands down.”
I sobbed then. I shook and heaved and hated her with every tear that streamed down my face.
“Put. Your hands. Down.”
I complied, knowing it would be worse if I didn’t. Her hands beat down against my head over and over again until her fury was satiated. She growled at me to go to my room and go to bed. I hesitated at first, fearful of being struck again. She threatened to hit me again and I ran to my room, shut the door, sank down to the floor, and sobbed. My dad hadn’t moved. He just remained in his seat wondering why things had to escalate as much as they had.
Fuck. Her.
She treated me as if she hated me. I always thought growing up that I must have reminded her of my biological father. That he was so mean and so awful that I was nothing but a walking reminder of her past with him. It is hard to think otherwise when she, my father, and my half-brother were all white, tall, and light-eyed. Then there was me. Short, tan skinned, dark brown eyes, dark brown hair, and a face that didn’t match the others. I often wondered if I hadn’t looked the way I did, would she love me? Would that have been all it took for her to be kind? But in my heart of hearts I always knew she was nothing but vindictive, controlling, and cruel. A viper that would coil around every word you spoke, every face you made and twist it into something she could use to victimize herself and use me like the punching bag I was for her.
The story she told was that she moved across the country to follow her best friend. Her best friend at the time was dating someone and they (for whatever reason) were escaping to the complete opposite coastline. While the two of them grew closer in their relationship, my mother struggled. She then met my father and saw him as a means of financial stability. It wasn’t long before they got married and had me. She would go on to say that somewhere down the line she realized how awful and crazy his family was. How controlling they were. That Sam was abusive and the final straw for her wasn’t when he held her at gunpoint and ripped the phone out of the wall during one of their many fights but when he kicked me because I was crying. After one of their many fights he disappeared and she filed for divorce via the newspaper. The announcement was posted for two weeks. Without any response she was allowed by the courts to take me back home to New York and Connecticut to be closer to her family.
Sam never called. He sent gifts a handful of times, but eventually stopped. My mother would talk about him coming to visit. She would ask me how I felt about it, how she was worried he would try to take me and how I could never be alone with him. That she would send me with my uncle or my eldest cousin to keep me safe with him. That he was an abuser and I should only meet him if I really wanted to. Same never visited. The entirety of my childhood I thought he didn’t want me. How could I think otherwise? The man never showed up, never wrote, never called, never did much of anything aside from a few presents and pictures of his blossoming family back West. How could I ever think of anything else? So then, to receive a phone call from Sam, as a young child, after years of never hearing anything from him, why on earth would I ever want to pick up the phone and tell a, basically, stranger, that I love him?
Call me a bitch. Hit me. Hate me. Abuse me. My walls were up and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was not crazy. That my feelings made sense and were logical. That my mother hated me and I would never serve anything more than some pawn she could use. She could take my accomplishments and beam and tell the world, but only so she would look good. She would have a bad day and beat me for it. I was her property and my dad - my step-dad, had no power over her or what she decided to do with me.
I suffered years of this. Always waiting until the end of the day for her temper to finally get the best of her. Waiting for her to unleash her anger from the day upon my head or back or arms or legs - never leaving a mark. When I was 10-years-old my homeroom teacher had us watch a set of videos. Two were on basic sex-ed and the last was on abuse; the different forms of abuse. Eventually, tired of hearing my mother’s assaulting words and enduring her physical blows, I confronted her about it.
“This isn’t abuse. What I give you is discipline. It would only be illegal if I left a mark or used objects to punish you,” which she did on many occasions. “If you think this is abuse then you don’t have a clue about what real abuse is like. You’ve never been hit by your father’s belt buckle or a hot iron pressed to your skin. Be grateful you have me.”
Given what the school had just taught us, logically, what she was saying was untrue. But she had provided enough doubt for me to never question it and leave it alone. If I tried talking about it to my family then I must have deserved it. If I tried talking to friends, however… It was obvious that this was not a regimental part of their lives. They did not live in fear of their parent coming home or eating dinner across the table from them. They did not try to eat in silence or eat in another room to avoid confrontation and have it inevitably fail. The growing sense of how abnormal my life was was glaringly obvious to everyone except my own family and therefore, inconsequential.
“You could run away,” my cousin whispered, trying to console me while I cried on the steps. What I was punished for, I will never recall. Probably some variant of talking back, saying no, or being my usual self in front of my mother with guests. A multitude of events could have set her off.
Forbidden family members would ask how I’ve been only to have my aunt respond, “I don’t know. We get there and five minutes later she’s sent to her room or the stairs for the rest of the night.”
I could run away.
“And then what? Where would I go? How would I eat? How would I get to school?” I shook my head. “I have nowhere to run. I am trapped here.”
“I don’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere has to be better than this.” He meant well, but I knew realistically that was untrue.
College was really my only way out. Everything I did was to get into college. I thought that if I just worked hard enough, got good enough grades, broke times in the pool, and participated in extracurriculars that maybe, just maybe, I could get a scholarship and escape the hellhole. But college was a long way away. I would have to endure my mother’s wrath for years before that would happen. And so, my cousin and I came up with alternatives. If I was sent to my room, we played in my room. If I was sent to the stairs, we played on the stairs. Nothing could keep us apart. Except, well, my mother. Eventually, she did.
