Behind Closed Doors

It occurred to me that perhaps one reason my imagination takes me to places I'd rather not go is that I heard and saw things as a child that most people never encounter.

When I was about four, my mother took my little brother and me on a rather brisk walk. I can recall my brother being in a stroller and my mother holding my hand as I walked alongside her. It was late afternoon and it was threatening to rain. At least that is how I recall it, because my mother must have said something to that effect.

My mother was upset. She did not drive. Thus, when things erupted at home, she had no way to flee except by foot. This was one of those afternoons.

My father had been drinking again. I didn't quite know this yet; I don't even know if I understood why we were out on a walk, which should have been a pleasant enough thing to do, but somehow I understood that there was a problem.

Eventually we returned home, and as we came in the front door and into the kitchen, I was horrified to see my father, face-down on the floor, in a small puddle of red liquid. It appeared to be blood. I knew about blood well enough; I had taken a tumble down the stairs at that very house and wound up with a nasty gash just over my eyebrow. It took several stitches to close the wound.

There lay my father, motionless. Rather than become hysterical, my mother said something like "Oh god, you bastard", and I recall feeling that this was a very strange way to react to someone laying in a pool of blood. Then I realized why my mother said what she did. It was ketchup. My father feigned an accident of some sort, presumably to scare my mother for attention. I don't really recall what happened next.

My brother and I shared a bedroom in that same house, on Bellflower Boulevard, near Alondra. It was an old Victorian style place, with an attic bedroom and dormer windows, and another part of the attic which had not been converted to any sort of room. It was kind of creepy, but that didn't stop us from exploring. Our bedroom was downstairs, and it had windows which seemed to be located rather high up on what I believe was the north wall. We would climb onto the headboards of our beds and look out the windows at the flashing neon lights of the shoe repair shop located not far from our house. It seemed we did this regularly: looking out the windows, watching the lights, and saying impish hellos to strangers as they walked past. I could smell the pleasantly sharp fragrance of geraniums and the heavier smell of the night-blooming jasmines which grew just under our bedroom windows. These were our precious few mischievious moments. We lived for those times.

There were many nights when my brother was not in the bedroom with me. Or perhaps I was not in the bedroom with him. What I do know is that he and I were separated by a door, and my father and brother were on the other side of that door. I can recall hearing my brother's screams. It was the most terrifying sound imaginable. I didn't know exactly what was happenening to him, but I knew that my father hated my little brother. Whatever was going on had to be horrible.

When I was five or six years old, we moved into another house. My bedroom was just next door to my parents'. To most kids this would be prime real estate bedroom-wise, but not for me. Sometimes my father's snoring filled the hallway--it wasn't an altogether awful sound....just kind of loud. It was the other sounds that bothered me--the sounds of ripping fabric, my mother's nightgowns. At the time, I knew it was my mother's bedclothes. I couldn't understand why my father was tearing them up. I thought he was pulling them out of drawers and destroying them to punish her. I could hear her quietly sobbing. I had no idea then that my mother was actually wearing the nightgowns and that they were being ripped from her body.

I guess you could say my father was a violent drunk. If we were lucky, he would just sit at the dinner table, or maybe on the sofa, watching the boxing matches, with his Brew 102, and simply pass out. Otherwise there was no telling what to expect.

At least once I saw my mother go to work with sunglasses on to hide a black eye.

My brother and I role-played as kids, so when we played house, my brother played the role--of all things--a battered wife. I was the understanding, reasonable friend. It was a strange game. I guess it was our way of reducing domestic violence down to our size, in a way we could understand.

I put such thoughts out of my head for a very long time--and then one afternoon at age 18, while at the health department with a friend who was there to get birth control pills, I heard the sounds of a child's shrill screaming issuing from one of the exam rooms. I broke into a cold sweat and ran from the building. I apologized to my friend and asked her if it was okay if I could just wait outside.

My brother, thank heavens, grew up to be a wonderful, gentle man. Neither of us became alcoholics. Sometimes we ruefully recall those bygone days of our childhood. We remember the the good times as well as the bad. Like most kids, we adapted to our situation as best we could. Our bond was what enabled us to survive the battleground that was our childhood.

My mother died fourteen years ago; my father died in February 2001. The nights of screaming, of crying, of ketchup blood and ripping nightgowns have long slipped into the past. However, somewhere in my soul, that scared little girl remains. I do what I can to try to quell her fears, as if she were my own child and not my childhood.

We do what we can to survive.

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10:35 pm