Josie Guerrero is focused on one thing: getting accepted into the prestigious art studies program within the Art School at the University of Southern Washington. With thirteen weeks to create her sophomore portfolio, she knows she can't afford any d...
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I'm starting to wonder why I even answer these damn calls.
I know she means well, but I don't want to listen to my mom try to convince me to visit my dad in the hospital every time she gets me on the phone. She knows where I stand with this shit. I went to see him once right after he was admitted, and I've been avoiding that shit hole of a hospital ever since.
I don't want to see him. I don't want to talk to him. And no matter how many times she tells me that he's been asking about me, it's not going to change any of that. He should have thought about that before he was a shit dad to us, before he laid a hand on us, before he laid a hand on her. But I can't tell her that. It would break her heart to hear me say that I hope the old man dies, so I have to make up excuses — practice ran late, won't be able to make it, or I think I'm coming down with a cold, wouldn't want to get him sick, or now, thanks to school starting back up, I have a huge exam that I need to study for. But even though I'm not saying it, I know she knows. I'm not coming to see him again.
Things have always been tense between us ever since I was a kid. He was hard to be around growing up. He threw fists like he threw insults, and while I could deal with getting hit just to keep the peace, I didn't put up with him touching my little brothers. He had episodes, fits of rage, where I swear I could see his eyes glaze over into nothing, and that's when he would drag me out back and beat the shit out of me. I took it, mostly because fighting back wasn't an option, at least not when I was that young, and I knew after he was done with me, he'd leave my brothers alone, which seemed like reason enough just to swallow it and let him pummel me.
It happened less and less as I got older. I was taller than him by fifteen, and thanks to all of the hours I spent at basketball and wrestling practice, I filled out with the kind of muscle that we both knew could rival his own. So instead of hitting us himself, he pit us against each other in a makeshift ring in the backyard, for "practice," to "learn his sport," to "be able to defend ourselves."
I never threw a punch at him, though. Not in the eighteen years that I lived there. Not until that night. He stopped beating on us once he realized that we were old enough to fight back, so his fits of rage were then soothed by the bottle. Most nights, he spent out at the bar, and while he was bleeding my mother dry of money in the process, she never stopped him because she couldn't deny that the house was a lot more peaceful when he was gone.
It happened the week before I left for USW, right before my freshman year. He stumbled into the house, drunk as fuck, as usual, and instead of falling asleep on the couch, he stumbled down the hallway towards my parents' room. I could hear my mom trying to soothe him, trying to calm the drunken anger, but when the glass shattered against the wall, I was out of bed and down the hall just in time to see him holding her against the wall, his hand at her throat.
I've never blacked out before, not like that, but when I came to, I could hear my mom screaming at the top of her lungs. Desperate, anguished screams, pleading for me to stop as I held my dad down on the wooden floor, slamming my fist into his face over and over until he was unrecognizable. I don't know how it happened; all I remember is my brother, Trey, hauling me out of the room while my mother dropped to her knees and tried to wipe some of the blood away from his face as it poured from his nose and mouth, pooling quickly on the wooden floor.
