by Ines Vieira
“Just stop Hector, please just stop,” my aunt cries back. But he doesn’t. He breaks free from my uncle’s barrier just enough to send one swift kick to my mother’s abdomen and this is the thing that wakes me up from my frozen state.
He doesn’t see me coming from the back and I use this to my advantage. I hurl myself at him and grab his waist with both arms strong enough that I send him to the corner of the room with me latched onto him for the full ride. His back hits the wall as he slides down to the floor, and I cringe with disappointment that the sound of his head bouncing off the wall wasn’t enough to bash his brains in. I’m on him now, swinging hard and steady on his midriff and I feel him punch my head with just the same amount of force that at one point I actually think I may go blind. I have tuned out the cries of every single person that is in this room as I only have eyes for the bastard in front of me. But it’s hard to keep my eyes open when the blood from my brow is making its way down on my face. I know I should feel more pain than I do, but that’s just because the adrenaline has kicked in. I’m lucky that I still have him pinned on the ground. With his taller frame and brawn, I wouldn’t have been able to get in this many jabs.
My hearing comes back to me and I start to hear the yelling and pleas in the background. My uncle, my aunt, my cousin, all frantically begging for this to stop. My mother hasn’t said a word though and this is what drives me to punch harder. I need to hear bones break. If I can't hear my mom’s soft voice, then please God, give me this. Let me listen to the bones shattering under his jaw, his ribs splintering with every pounce. I’m praying in my head, praying that this will be the end of it. Begging for enough strength to silence him for good. But he’s too strong. The element of surprise that had taken him aback at first and that had given me the advantage of attack was now wavering and he was starting to get into his own. I wouldn’t give up though and when my knuckles started to bleed, chipping one of his teeth with my fist, it was just the incentive I needed to continue. I pulled back all the way and gave him one more blow this time with the intent of breaking his nose. I wasn’t successful, though, but it I knew from experience that it hurt like hell. In doing this, I had left my left side vulnerable, and he was quick to take advantage and plow his own fist into my ribs. I let out a gasp and saw my own blood splatter across the walls just by letting out the air from my lungs. I think that now this is how he will get’ me but two arms pull me away from him just as I think that he’s going to overtake me. My left eye is too swollen to see clearly who grabbed me, but by the hands that I see on my arms, one must be my cousin Jess and as I turn to see the other pair, I hear my cousin Alex trying to calm me down. Alex’s tone, though, seemed that he would have preferred to join in the fight and beat my father to a pulp, too. I try to look at the man being dragged to his feet by my uncle and my cousin Tony, but everything is too blurry to really make him out. I want to ask Alex to get his phone and take a picture just so I can keep it as a memoir. A keepsake of today and the image of him beat this time by me and not the other way around. He’s gotten onto his feet and spits out blood from his lip onto my uncle’s living room carpet.
“Get off of me!” he yells.
“Heitor, enough!” I have never heard my uncle yell once, but the very sound makes my father take a step back.
“Carlos, this is none of your concern. Stay the fuck out of it!”
“It became my concern when you hit that poor woman that is lying on the floor. Bloody and swollen by your hand. And then turning on your own son?! What the hell is wrong with you?!”
I can't see them. I want to so much to see my father’s face, to see my uncle’s, but my vision it too hazy to see anything straight. I’m almost certain that my left eye is swollen to the point that it will be completely shut before I have time to go to the fridge and ice it.
“My wife! My son! My problem!”
“No Heitor. The moment you laid hands on them they stopped being your wife and son.” My uncle’s voice is cold and full of resentment. I see him enough that I can make out him nodding over at Alex. Immediately he leaves my side and takes over from where my uncle was grabbing my father. Now both my cousins are at his side grabbing fiercely on as if he was a wild unpredictable animal. They aren’t wrong in thinking that.
“You little fucks! Get your fucking hands off of me!”
“No, Heitor. Your nephews are going to show you out. Best go with them. Don’t make me call the police to force you out, instead.” I hear an intake of breath.
“If I’m going then my family is coming with me.”
“Brother, if you believe that I would ever let you come anywhere near Isaac and Evelyn again, you are sorely mistaken. After what I saw today, they aren’t your family. You don’t treat the people you love the way I saw you treat them in my own home.”
“Carlos, you always did look down on me. But I’m your family. I’m your flesh and blood. The blood running through my veins is the same as yours. So stop being a fucking hypocrite. If you do this to me, kick me out like a dog on the street, then you’re no better than I am.” I hear him spit one more time, but this time, I know it was intentional, and I also bet that it came too close for comfort for my uncle.
“You may be right. We do share the same blood, but that doesn’t mean that we’re family any longer.”
“So you're choosing them over me? Your own brother?”
“I’m choosing to protect my nephew and sister from a monster I once held dear to my heart. The boy I grew up with, the brother I once loved, doesn’t exist anymore. Don’t come around again or I will call the cops. If I was Evelyn I would press charges regardless. Don’t go to our mother’s, even though I know that’s the last place you will go, but I prefer that you don’t break her heart the same way you’ve broken mine today. Leave and don’t come back. Ever.”
Even though I never imagined my uncle saying this to my father, and even though I know how much this must be breaking his heart, I have never been so proud of a man in my life. Yes, I am my father’s son, his blood does run through me. But if that’s so, then so does my uncle’s. A man that would never lay a hand on his wife or his children. A man that would be brave enough to stand up to a monster without fear of the repercussions. A man that still saw the good in people, but was strong enough to know when some just couldn’t be saved. That’s the man I wanted to be.
“You’ll be sorry for every word you just said to me, Carlos. I’ll make sure of it. You want the whore and the bastard so bad, fine keep them! But this isn’t over. The bitch owes me, and one way or another I always get what's owed to me.” He spits again and walks over to the door, with Tony and Alex as his constant shadow.
Only when he finally leaves, do I rush to my mother’s side. She is still conscious enough to have heard each and every parting word of that wretched man’s mouth and I can make out the distress in her eyes.
My Aunt Annie is still cradling my mother’s head, trying to wipe off the blood from her split lip with a handkerchief. Her hands are trembling so hard that instead of cleaning the blood, she is actually leaving small blotches of red stains on my mother’s cheek.
“Mom, what happened? What was he talking about?” My own voice matches my face. It’s rough and pained, yet she turns to face me and gives me a weak smile. A smile that she hopes will calm me, but it doesn’t. How can it when I see the whole side of her face has already swelled up two sizes?
“I thought that this time, for once, I would be smarter than him, but I guess I was wrong again. I really thought that he wouldn’t find out until it was too late, but I should have known better. He always finds out.” The front door opens and I can hear Alex and Tony tell my uncle that my father has taken off in his car.
“Boys, go and help your aunt and Isaac onto the couch.” My uncle’s voice is defeated and I see him rushing to comfort Aunt Annie beside me. She’s still trembling from the whole ordeal. So is Jess. I don’t think I have ever seen Jess this mute before. Both my cousins’ lift my mother o
ff the floor and lay her down on the brown polyester couch. I also try to get up, but unsuccessfully. My whole body aches and my left eye is completely shut now so it makes it harder to get my bearings. I can only make it to the couch with Tony’s aid.
“I always knew he was an asshole!”
“Enough Tony! Go and get something for your cousin’s eye in the kitchen. If we don’t slow the swelling down, we’ll have to make another trip to the hospital.”
“Ok, Tio” I still hear the disappointment in Tony’s voice that he didn’t get a few swings at dear old dad. I sit next to my mother and try to see if we don’t have to go to the hospital anyway. I inspect all of her body, not only with my eyes, well the one that can still see at least, but also with my hands. I’ve become a real expert at identifying broken bones and ribs in her small body. Thankfully nothing is broken, aside from looking like she was in a MMA match, I’m sure she’ll be fine in a couple of days. I look over at my uncle and see that he’s still holding onto Aunt Annie and Jess. He’s holding them tight. Trying to comfort them and making them know that they are safe now. They can't stop shaking though. I wish that I still felt that. Mom and I don’t shake. We don’t tremble. We lost that ability long ago. That crippling fear that has grabbed onto to my Aunt and cousin and refuses to let go has become more like a memory for my mother and me.
We don’t tremble. We don’t shake. This is just another day for us. Normal. Expected. We’ve become numb to the violence. Fear for us had been replaced by anger, then shame and then acceptance.
Yet, this was the first time in months that he’s touched us, and most importantly, this was the first time that he had an audience. My father had always been very cunning in keeping his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde persona; well hidden. Why did he lose it today? What took him over the edge that made him lose it in my uncle’s house, for everyone to witness? That’s the only thing that is making me uneasy. Today’s display had witnesses. Yes, they were family, yet he knew that they would never condone this. So why now?
Then I recall my mother’s words and my father saying that she owed him. That’s when I start to feel something crawling down my spine. That’s when the panic sets in.
“Mom….” She’s looking down at her hands, staring at her wedding ring splattered with her blood, and maybe some of his too from all the spitting he did. “Mom, what did you think he wouldn’t find out? Find out what?
She’s mumbling now. Trying to get that damn ring off her finger. Tears are now falling down her cheeks as she sees that the ring just won't come off. She mumbles again something under her breath, and all I can make out are the words: “How did he find out?”
“Mom, find out what? Mom! What did you do?” This gets her attention. Now she sees me. Now she hears the dread in my voice.
“Oh baby… I really thought he would only find out when it was too late for him to do anything about it. I just don’t understand how he could have found out.”
“Mom, please you're not making any sense. Talk to me.”
“I didn’t think he would find out about the money.”
“Money? What money?!”
“The money from the sale of Nana’s house. I sold it. I was able to get a little bit over a quarter million for it.”
“What?! But you said that the deal fell through. You said that the real estate agent said that the people interested in the house had pulled out.”
“I lied. Well not about that. The deal did fall through, but that was just because the real estate agent got another offer. A bigger one. A 260k bid. This couple offered 60 thousand dollars more, so I sold it to them. I told the real estate agent to only go through me so that your father wouldn’t find out. I even asked her to call your father and tell him that it would take longer than expected to sell the house due to the bad economy. It was going all as planned. I just can't figure it out how he found out.”
“Mom, when did this happen?”
“I signed the paperwork last month. The money was wired to your account a few weeks ago.” Now I understood why she had wanted me to open a bank account so badly. Even though my mother couldn’t comprehend how my father found out about it, it was pretty easy to put things together. He must have still kept in touch with his drinking buddies back in Arizona. Hell, he might even owe a couple of them a few grand. So of course when they saw this new family moving into Nana’s house, they just assumed that he was flush with cash and rang him up to get their cut.
“I really thought that this was our ‘get out of jail free’ card. That once you graduated, we could just disappear.” Her tears keep falling and she covers her face with the knowledge that now my father will never let us go. No matter what Uncle Carlos told him tonight, we knew better. He would follow and torment us until he got what he wanted. We were no longer safe here. Fuck, I doubt that we will ever feel safe again. Sure he doesn’t know how much the house sold for, but if the only offer he knew about of 200k had made his mouth water, then an extra 60k would only entice him more.
I take her hands off her face and dry her eyes with my thumb. Her wedding ring isn’t the only thing splattered with blood. Her grey t-shirt and jeans are also mostly covered with shades of red. It was a good plan and the fact that my mother had thought about this and done it all on her own, made me so proud of her. I knew my mother was brave, but what she conjured up with this risky plan, took balls.
“We can't stay here anymore. We’ll have to run. You know that, right?” She swallows and nods in understanding.
“Well, of course, you’re staying!” My uncle's incredulous voice is the first thing that makes me realize that we weren’t alone. My conversation with my mother was heard by everyone in the room and each and every one of them has a troubled look on their face. Even Tony’s face as he offers me a bag of frozen peas for my eye, is tumultuous.
“Tio…” I start to reason with him, but I am immediately cut off with a wave of his hand.
“No Isaac. You can’t leave. You’re family and family sticks together.” He kneels on the floor in front of my mother and takes her hand into his. “Evelyn, I’m still trying to wrap my head around what has happened here, but I’m not naïve enough to think that this was the first time my brother was abusive to you or to Isaac. I am so sorry you had to go through this alone. I wished you had confided in me or Anna.” Fresh tears roll down my mother’s face but I see her strength come out as well.
“There was nothing you could have done, Carlos. It’s not like I hadn’t tried to leave him before. I just never gotten so far as I had now, and I truly believed that this was the time that I would actually do it.” I had never known my mother had tried to leave the prick before her confiding in my uncle. I always thought that he had been successful in beating the hope out of her. It had been only after he said that I could leave after high school did I think she ever considered it.
“When did you try to leave?” I know that the question came out a whisper from my cousin Jess’s lips but everyone in the room turned to her regardless.
“Oh Jess, I tried to leave him every day for the last 20 years. The only time that I was able to get far enough though was when Isaac was five. Your uncle hadn’t been home for one full week, and I thought that this was my chance. I had a little bit of cash saved up and my mother wired me the rest for two plane tickets back home and I left.”
“After a month, I really thought that we were free. I was wrong. Hector had tired of whoever had entertained him long enough for us to get away. When he got home and saw that we were gone, he was furious. He showed up in Arizona and put a gun to Isaac's head. He said that if I ever pulled something like that again that he wouldn’t be so forgiving next time and that the first one to go would be Isaac. He promised that I would see my baby bleed out before he killed me too.”
“After that image was engraved in my memory, the lengths that Hector would go to, I was too scared to say anything to anyone or try anything ever again. But every day, I prayed that this would be the day that we were release
d from this nightmare of a prison that Hector had created for us.”
Silence. Sometimes silence is more deafening than anything you have ever heard in your life. What can you say to that?
I don’t remember what my mother has just described. I do remember being in Nana’s house happy with only my mother and my grandmother. I remember my Nana throwing me into her pool in the back yard after teaching me how to swim. I thought that we were on vacation and I had never been so happy with just the three of us. I don’t even remember the day he got there, all I remember were the tears in Nana’s face when we got into his car to leave back to Plymouth.
Maybe my subconscious had protected me against horrific event. But it couldn’t protect me for the ones that followed. The first time my father had ever beat me was after that trip. I guess in the beginning he figured that this would keep my mother in check. Later on, he just took pleasure from it.
“I’m so sorry Evelyn. I’m… God…I…” I have never seen my uncle cry, but as he holds my mother hands in his, he’s unable to keep it together. My aunt is cradling Jess as she sobs into her chest and even Tony and Alex look like they have just taken one in the chest.
I don’t cry. I will never shed a tear for what has passed ever again. My mind doesn’t go there. My mind only goes to the here and now. We do have to leave. The prick left today voluntarily enough, but that doesn’t mean it's over. This is the only life he knows. He doesn’t know anything else, and the added offense of him feeling that he has been cheated out of something, like a quarter mill, that will only add fuel to his fire. Revenge will consume all his thoughts. He’s already a dangerous cunt, but add money and his family turning his back on him, that will make him lethal. We need to leave.
“Tio…” His face is stricken with guilt and anguish, but I need him to see things for what they are and not to let himself be hung up on past events.