STEPS

CHAPTER SEVEN Violence and Retaliation

The fateful day came when my father shoved my mother, and she fell on the back steps, fracturing two vertebrae in her back. I didn't witness this assault and she refused to discuss it at length.

"It was an accident. I don't want to talk about it."

Her pain touched me, sitting at her side in hospital. Too much borne by this woman, too many sacrifices, too many bloody tears. We strayed closer, those few weeks of my tending to her. Perhaps this sudden intimacy lead her to the eventual revelation.

"Your father was angry again. He pushed me and I fell." Her voice calm, no hint of anger, only long-borne resignation resonating in her words.

"He pushed you? He did this?" I was in shock. Fists clenching, unclenching, the scene of her fall re-enacted in my head over and over from this new perspective. She so small, frail; her bones weakened by osteoporosis. He knew this! She'd fractured both wrists the last few years because of the disease. He knew this!

"Don't tell him I told you," she pleaded, fearing for me and maybe in witnessing my reaction, fearing for him as well.

Oh but I couldn't contain this knowing! It lodged in my brain and became one with all the other grievances, the countless other injustices she and I had endured. I paced my room, outrage scorching all thoughts, anticipatory words honed to a jagged edge in the waiting.

When my father arrived home I launched myself at him. Toe to toe I yelled, my spittle-filled voice alien, surfacing from the dark place holding my secrets. His hands at his sides, taking it in, this freaked-out shouting. I shoved him away, pushed him into a corner.

"I will have you locked away if you ever raise your hand again. I will!"

"It was an accident," he pleaded. "I don't know what happened, I didn't mean it."

I wouldn't accept his words, screamed some more. "Fuck your God!" I told him before I retreated to my room.

A turning point, sure. He didn't strike either of us again, not for a long time. He still cursed, still threatened but never carried out the threats. I'd reached his height by now, perhaps my stature stopped him? Or the craziness in my eyes, his violence triggering in turn a rabid savagery in me. I could and would hurt him and perhaps he understood this finally.

Some ten years later, I came home to find my mother in bed and in tears. I heard again those intimate pleas through her bedroom door.

"My mummy, my mummy, help me... My mummy."

My initial questions swatted away. "I'm okay, leave me alone."

Something felt wrong, I sensed it, yet I still asked: "Did he do something? Did he hurt you?"

After considerable questioning and some angry interjections to her pleas, she revealed the truth. He'd lashed out again, smashing things, shoving her to the floor. The red marks on her throat left behind by hands trying to throttle her.

"It's not the first time," my mother said, overcoming her usual reluctance. This time the worst, but he'd often verbally abused her, a few times striking her when I was away from the house.

Her revelations cut me. His waiting until she was alone pointed to premeditation, slyness; the propensity for violence still in him but deliberately hidden from me. How the fuck had I failed to notice earlier? I believed I'd taken care of it!

The passage of years replayed in my mind... Times my mother claimed she felt unwell. My acceptance of her excuses at face-value. Times I'd found him in the workshop, chain-smoking, uncommunicative. God! Wrapped up in my own messes I had failed her! I had become her, living within the terror but missing the signs. The pattern repeating, only now I was the one responsible for its continued presence.