The day was July 18th. I remember it so clearly. Things started out normally, with Mum whistling as she arranged placemats in the kitchen or petting our cat, Misty, while reading the newspaper. I was between summer camps, which my nearly-eleven-year-old-self adored. However, I found ways to amuse myself. I’d get a ball of string and play with Misty, or watch Mum go about her daily business. I loved that, just watching her. She’d sit by the window and let beams of sunlight pour through the panes and onto her lap. She’d smile, happy to exist peacefully. Or, almost peacefully.
Unfortunately, there was one thing that nagged at our perfect life together: my father. I hate to say this, but he and Mum didn’t always get along. I like to think back to when I was really little, before the fights began. Things were always soft and kind, never harsh and cold the way things got on some days. I blamed it all on the fights. They had begun one night when I was eight, after something strange happened and Misty rose up off the ground a few inches. I had told myself it was a dream, a hallucination. I had looked up that word in the Thesaurus. I liked words, and I liked school. My teachers always loved me because I did so well.
But nothing could change the fact that Mum and Dad had gone into the den to chat that same night when I thought I saw Misty hovering above the ground. I sat in the living room, looking at Misty, who seemed completely unaware that anything was wrong. She rubbed her tail against my legs and looked up at me with almost human eyes. That’s when I first heard the shouting. First, it was a dull murmur. It was so quiet that I thought maybe it was my stomach. Then, the sound grew louder, and I realized what it really was: Dad yelling at Mum.
I was scared. Misty sensed it, I think, because she jumped into my lap and tried to calm me with a gentle purr. I clutched her gray fur fearfully. Mum and Dad had never shouted before, yet there it was, yelling. It echoed through the house and my heart shook inside me. After about ten minutes, I became so distressed that I ran upstairs to my room. I think Mum and Dan heard footsteps on the stairs because the yelling stopped. I sat on my bed, leaning against the wall behind it and whimpered. Moments later, my dad slowly turned the door handle and walked in. He looked concerned.
“Susan,” he muttered, saying my name carefully like he was afraid I might collapse and begin to sob right then and there. Maybe he had a good reason to be that way. I certainly felt like collapsing wouldn’t be so difficult.
“Dad,” I said meekly. I could hear a tremor in my tone. He sighed and approached my bed. He looked worn out. I felt sorry for him, even though he had been yelling at Mum. I wondered then why Mum hadn’t yelled back.
We looked at each other in silence, unsure of what to say.
“You’re… fighting,” I mumbled. He could tell I was distressed.
“I know,” he agreed, looking ashamed. “But you must remember this: just because Mum and Dad fight doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. Sometimes people get mad and have to let it out.” I nodded and feigned understanding, even though I wasn’t completely consoled. I could tell Dad couldn’t think of anything else to say. He was forcing himself to accept that I understood, even though he probably wasn’t sure about it. He left me, with one last apologetic glance. The sound of him shutting my door sent a wave of quiet through the house. Nothing moved, only Misty’s tail swinging back and forth on the couch downstairs and my stomach, rising and falling, rising and falling.
That was two years ago. I had been… eight, going on nine, I think. After a week, I was over the shock of hearing my Dad violently yelling at Mum. Of course, I couldn’t forget it, but my mind stopped turning my thoughts to it all the time. That only lasted about three weeks. Then the yelling started again. Mum rarely yelled back. I never really figured out why she just took what Dad threw at her. I wanted her to be strong. I wanted to be on her side. She was smart, pretty, and knew how to make somebody feel loved. I wanted to be just like her, and praise from my grandmother that I looked “just like Mary did when she was young” made me swell with pride. I looked like Mum. I was pretty.
I never could fully get past the yelling, because just when my wounds had healed, Dad would open up the floor for another bad night and I’d shake in my shoes. On those nights, I’d toss and turn. It was not a happy time.
School started again. My grades kept up, though my teachers noted on my evaluation cards that I seemed quieter and less enthusiastic. Mum assured them that nothing was wrong; they didn’t need to worry about my home life. It was around then that I started to be curious about what Dad felt the need to yell so often over. Oftentimes, I’d hear the yelling and be tempted to go downstairs and listen. One step towards the door and I would freeze in my tracks. I stopped there and convinced myself that I didn’t want to know, or that it was adult business I wouldn’t understand.
There’s that word again. Understand.
Time went on, and the yelling didn’t stop. Sure, sometimes Dad went for over two months without a bad night, but that wasn’t often enough to make a difference. I never became immune to the horrible sound raking through the air. It tore at me, and I couldn’t defend myself. That’s why I yearned for the ends of the fights for more reason than one. Mum would come in. Sometimes I cried, but others I only whimpered like I was still eight years old. She sat with me and stroked my hair. I felt comforted, but nothing could erase all the damage Dad had caused.
As I got older, I started to see things in my father that made me like him even less. He was cold-hearted, not the way I remembered him from my early childhood. He worked long days and found excuses to go away on long trips. Sometimes he’d come home drunk; I could smell it on his good-night kiss. Twice he didn’t come home for a whole weekend, but refused to tell Mum where he had been. The worst thing was when he made Mum cry. “Susan needs a father, not a drunk coward,” she had said to him. He’d smelled that night. He only laughed, bellowed something about “I’ll teach you!” and pushed Mum, hard. I gasped, and he looked at me. Unfazed, he bellowed, “Go to your room, you little freak!” I cried that night.
But two summers later, it was that fateful July 18th of the year I was ten years old. Dad was arriving home from one of his trips that night, so Mum was cleaning the house, getting everything nice and ready for him. I helped where I could, mostly keeping Misty out of the way and picking up her balls of string. Then, something unremarkable happened: the mail arrived.
Little did I know that the night of July 18th would be the worst of all.