“Isabella!”
Shut up.
“Isabella!!!”
That’s my father yelling again. Always yelling, my father.
“Isa – bella!”
Isabella is my mother. They have been fighting again, about…. My father has a problem. Well, not a problem, an epidemic. He likes the to play the field, even though he is supposed to be in the dugout. He cheats.
There I said it.
He cheats!
Why my parents stay together, is beyond me. Last weekend their fighting got really bad. My father had a date pick him up at our small house in lower Queens. At our house! Now, I know my father is smarter than that. I know it. And, well, having a date pick him up at our house didn’t make my mother too happy. She just cried.
“Isa – bella!”
Why can’t he shut the hell up?!?
Mother is not home, you drunken slob. Oh yeah, another great thing about my father, he can’t hold a job. My mother goes to work, comes home, goes to bed. My father then wakes up, takes the money and blows it all on the sauce. What a jerk-off.
I don’t love my father. And he hits me, he hits me HARD.
And screams. He always yells at me, “Vinnie you little shit! Why don’t you succeed, why don’t you try?!” And I cry. But I always think to myself, “why don’t you?”
“Why don’t you?!?!” I scream inside my head!
Because if that came out, he would probably put me in the hospital. And right now, he is sitting upstairs with a bottle of the cheap shit yelling for my mother.
“Vinnie!”
I look up at the house. I’m playing in our small cramped stoop with my baseball. I love baseball. The Yanks are my team. Don’t talk to me about the Mets. Forget about it. The Yanks, though. What a team! Whenever I can, I sneak into the park to watch a game.
“Vin – nie!”
He’s really piss-ass drunk, now. And I know if I don’t go in, he’s probably going to lay into my little brother.
Time to face the damn music.
I walk slowly up the small brown stoop, aged by the incessant smog and sun. The pollution is baked right into the stone. Baked. First step, second step, third. I open the tattered screen door and look up into the darkened house. I hope he’s on the couch in front of the T.V. Slowly pushing the door, so it won’t creak, I put my foot inside.
“There you are you little Shit!!!” he screams violently.
I am thirteen, not really a little shit anymore. My dad comes running at the screen door. I don’t move. He grabs the door and throws it open, as if he wants to rip it off of the hinges like a loon escaping from their institution.
I don’t move.
“Little Shit! Where’s your MOTHER?!” And he slaps me.
I feel the quick shock of a thousand pin pricks spread slowly across my face. My vision blurs then clears. Then I hear my mother walk up behind me on the step. He grabs me by the hair and drags me into the living room.
“Stay here! And don’t peep,” He says as he turned back towards the door, “or I’ll rip your little faggot heart out.”
I hear my mother come in. I hear the door slam. I hear my father start to yell. I hear my mother start to scream, pleading for him to change his ways.
“Change?!? You expect ME to … Don’t cry! Don’t cry! Or I’ll give you something to cry about!”
I clench my fists. Here it comes, I know it.
SLAP!
No more! Something just rips itself inside of me. I feel a redness explode in my chest as I run to my room…
SLAP!
I grab my baseball bat…
SLAP!
I hear her cries for him to stop. I run back…
SLAP!
…out to the living room. I run into the kitchen grasping the bat in both of my hands, careful to not choke up. I see my mother trying to block his blows but failing. I see his hand start to turn into a fist….
I scream. “NO!” And I swing the bat.
I swing HARD.
I feel the bat make contact, the blow travels up the bat into my arm, through every part of my being. The first blow takes him at the back of the knees. He drops like a brick.
I pull up the bat to strike again. I see my mother astonished and crying.I see something in her eyes. Shock? Sadness? Fear?
Of me?
No. No more hitting. He’s on the floor looking horribly pathetic.
“Get out.” I say as cold as my tears will permit. “I’ll take care of the family now. Never come back or I’ll put this bat through your fucking skull. We don’t need you. We don’t need you.”
He looked at me. Pushed himself up off the floor, dusting off his stained pants. He stumbled out the door. I heard the screen fall back and make its banging noise.
And we haven’t seen him since.