The Brighter Side of Things

bitter

I was always so jealous of our neighbors since I was young.

They were so innocent, so happy.

The sound of the kids’s excited shrieks, and giggles could be heard across the whole block, which was strange for a small neighborhood like ours on the outskirts of New York. I could always hear their laughter; it never seemed to stop, even when the sun had already begun to fall behind the blooming trees.

Their dad was how I imagined every dad should be.

I always found him patiently waiting for the school bus every afternoon on his wrap around porch with an excited smile on his tan face as if he was more excited to see his kids than they were to see him. But every day they would get off the school bus, and go barreling up the drive to go running straight into his open arms with ear piercing shrieks. He would hug each and every single one of them and I found myself growing bitter with every embrace as I marched up my own drive, my fidgety brother skipping alongside me.

I found myself detesting a man for loving his kids because my dad didn’t have the courage to love his own.

But I knew I only detested him out of jealousy, knew there was nothing more that I could possibly want than to have a father like him. I knew he was kind and welcoming and gentle and was all the things that my dad wasn’t. My neighbor looked as if he had been touched by the sun, with his auburn curls and freckled shoulders and loud, careless laughter.

I knew he was good when he excitedly waved at me over his son’s curly head as I yanked my obnoxious brother up the front steps with a slight scowl, hurrying inside to avoid the bitter emotions that knotted my throat, and slammed the door shut behind us.

My siblings, and I were young when we first watched Jonathan put his hands on our mom— grabbed her by her beloved dark curls, and shoved her hard enough against the counter top to fracture her hip.

The memory comes to my mind so easily still.

My dad’s angry curses; his spit spraying across her ageless face.

My mom’s cries; her rushed apologies for talking back.

I remember my freckled brother trembled against my rib cage while I held him as if I’d protect him from the world. He was little then, full of bubbly energy that would do nothing but get him scar flecked knuckles to the face if he didn’t learn to control it.

All my siblings slept in my room that night, curled up at my legs and sides— silently cried themselves to sleep as I watched my parents’s shadows cross through the light from the hallway under the bedroom door. I heard my mom weeping all the way from my room, heard her say she was sorry over the sound of my crying siblings, and I hated her for it when she said she would try to be better next time.

I knew people weren’t supposed to hurt good people like my mom.

I knew it deep in my gut that tickled with emotion when I heard Jonathan grunt, “Don’t make me angry, Olivia, I don’t like hurting you.”

I knew he was a liar and a coward and when I blew out the candles on my thirteenth birthday all I wanted was for him to be fucking dead.