4. Childhood

Katherine

My phone rings in the bottom of my purse while I’m trying to juggle an armload of grocery bags and unlock my apartment door.

“Hello?” I answer as I dump the bags on the kitchen counter.

“Kat…” As soon as I hear my father’s voice I end the call and put the iPhone face down on the counter, continuing to unpack the groceries.

Serves me right for not checking the caller ID before answering.

My phone rings again but I ignore it. It’s his prerogative if he wants to leave a voicemail, but nothing’s changed. I’ll never listen to them and I’ll never call him back. The minute I walked out of my childhood house at eighteen was the minute I put him and my mother behind me. And my life is better for it.

They’re my parents and I would never wish any harm to them but, as far as I’m concerned, they’re not my family. I may not have been able to choose them as parents but I can choose who I call family, and my family consists of the five people who I know without a doubt would never mistreat me the way my parents had.

 

- Twenty-two years earlier -

This was it, I thought as I heard my mother’s angry footsteps approach the closet door that I’m hiding in

“Where are you, you little brat?!” She hisses.

I squeeze my arms tighter around my legs and shut my eyes hoping, wishing I could blend in with the wood paneling at the back of the hallway closet. I pray that she won’t yank open the door and find me.

I pray that my dad will come home from work and see what she is doing to me. I pray that the wood paneling will open and thrust me into a different world, Narnia style.

The door to the closet flies open, my mother stands on the other side and I know that this time it will be different. The purple blouse she wears make her brown eyes stand out even more and the rage I see in them makes me freeze. They are cold, uncaring of my outcome.

I caused this.

I am the cause of her rage. I ruined her life. She constantly told me that she never did want me but my dad had begged her to keep me.

“You bitch! How dare you hide from me!” She yells, grabbing my arm so tight I can feel the bruise forming instantly.

“I’m s-s-sorry momma. I d-d-didn’t mean to,” I whimper as she yanks me out of the closet and pushes me against the wall. I feel my neck snap forward and instantly back as I hit the cold paint and slide down.

Everything goes black and when I came to my mother is still yelling at me but I can’t make out her words. I’m trying to concentrate on making the floor stop spinning but it doesn’t work.

The spinning gets worse and I feel a blow to my stomach, then another. I fight to stay conscious, knowing that if I don’t the kicks will just get worse and she won’t stop.

“You worthless piece of shit! I didn’t want you in the first place,” she screams as another blow hits my ribs.

Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.

I hear more than see her stomp off in the direction of the bar in the living room. The pain is so bad all I want to do is stay laying on the tile but I know that if I’m still here when she comes back there will be hell to pay. 

Cringing in pain, I stand up, which is probably not the best idea since my ribs feel like they are all snapped in two but I don’t want to make her angrier with me. I’ll never know how I made it from that floor to my bedroom at the top of the stairs with, I would later find out, two broken ribs and a dislocated arm.

By the time I shut my door, the darkness is threatening to take over and I know that she has succeeded this time, that this was it. I would never wake up again. The prospect of finally escaping my mother’s clutches makes me smile but I am angry.

I’m angry at my mother for what she did, but mostly I’m angry at my dad for not doing anything about it. I’m angry at him for letting her kill me slowly and I’m angry at him for not loving me enough to save me.

I am angry at God too. Why did he put me with these parents? A mom who can’t stand the sight of me and uses me as her own personal punching bag and a dad who can’t care less about what she does to me. What did I ever do to deserve this kind of punishment?

Wiping the last of the blood from my nose, I pull the blanket off my bed. Wincing from the pain, I get down on the floor and crawl under my bed, finally giving in to the pain and the dark.

 

***

 

My phone ringing for the fourth time in a row draws me out from the memories.

“What is it, Dad?” I ask, blowing out a breath. At least the ringing stopped.

“Kat, it’s your mother.”

His voice sounds different. Tired. Defeated somehow. But I don’t care enough to ask how he’s doing. “What is it?”

“She had a stroke, Kat. Do you…Do you think you can come home and see her?” my father’s voice pleads with me.

I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. “No, Dad. I can’t come home.”

“Kat- “

“No. I can’t. I’m sorry. Don’t call again.” I end the call and immediately set a do not disturb for his number.

The fact that there is even an ounce of sadness warring inside of me makes me mad. My mother was nothing special. In fact, she was a horrible mother.  She made me feel like I was a burden on their lives and my father just sat back and let it happen, never once sticking up for his little girl or standing up to his wife.

It didn’t take me long to realize how weak and how much of a coward my father was. The day of my eighteenth birthday I hightailed it out of there and moved. My parents never put up a fight when I told them that I was leaving, but I never expected them to. It’s been ten years and I haven’t heard anything from either of them - no phone calls, no emails. Until today.

Guess I should feel relieved at that. I have nothing to say to either one of them and I should be glad that they finally cannot touch me. 

But I’m not relieved. I’m pissed off. How dare they think that I would just come running back the minute they called? Okay, so my mother had a stroke but my mother never gave a shit about me so why should I give a shit about her?

It might make me a bitch but I didn’t care. I. Don’t. Care.

But my dad didn’t sound well.

Fucking Hell.

I already know that I’m going to end up going back there. Not for my mother, but for my father. He may have been a coward while I was growing up but as much as I hate it, I’ll always be his little girl, and I didn’t like the way his voice sounded during that phone call.

So, I’ll go back but I won’t be going for her. I’m only going to check on him.

After I book a ticket home for the next morning I realize that I don’t want to be alone tonight so while I’m on a roll of making mistakes this week, I shoot a text off to Jason.

Me: Got a phone call from my father today.

Jay: What’d he want?

Me: He thought I should know that my mother had a stroke. He asked me to come home.

Jay: Fuck no.

That one makes me smile. He has always been my advocate. My protector. Making sure that people don’t take advantage of me. Sometimes it’s stifling because I prefer to fight my own battles but other times it’s nice to know that someone would go to bat for me.

Me: Can you come over? I don’t really feel like being alone right now.

Jay: Be there in 30. Anything you want me to grab on the way?

Me: Alcohol.

Jay: Trying to get me into bed again, Katherine? *wink*

Me: *rolls eyes* In your dreams

 

 

Jason

“Hey,” Kat says with a small smile, as she holds the door open.

I can tell she’s trying to hide the fact that she has been crying. She’s trying to put on a strong face so that she can convince me she really is fine but I know my girl and she is not fine.

“Hey” I reply, walking into her apartment.

I make a beeline for her kitchen and put the six pack in the fridge before I turn to her. “Figured we could just order from that pizza place down the street.”

“Sounds good. I thought you were bringing alcohol?”

“Beer is alcohol,” I smirk.

Kat rolls her eyes and I have to stifle the laugh that’s bubbling up.

“When I said alcohol, I meant vodka, rum, tequila…”

“You also said that you weren’t trying to get me into bed again,” I waggle my eyebrows, “and we both know what happened the last time you and I partook in a little Jose.”

“Ugh, touché. I’m going to hop into a quick shower. Delivery menus are in the top drawer,” she calls while walking down the hall towards the master bedroom and the attached bathroom

I watch her walk away, my gaze drifting down her slender back and narrow waist, over her luscious hips and down to watch the way her ass looks in those yoga pants. I have to stifle back a groan at the memory of how it felt to have that ass in my hands.

“I ordered a Hawaiian and an all meat,” I call as Kat rounds the corner into the open kitchen and living room.

Her long brown hair still wet from her shower. She’s changed into skinny faded jeans and a white tank top. I can see the black lace strap from her bra peeking out beneath the straps of her tank top and it takes everything I have to not stare and swallow hard.

“Beer?” I ask while opening the fridge and reaching in to grab two of the bottles from the six pack.

“Please”

“Pizza should be here in thirty.” I pop the tops off the two beers and hand one to her.

“Thanks”

I take a slug of my beer while watching her out of the corner of my eye. That shower must have helped because she seems more of herself now than when I first got here but her amber eyes still hold some sadness in them.

Kat and I have talked extensively about her past so I know that there must be a war of emotions going on inside of her. On one hand, she just found out that her mother had a stroke, but on the other hand, she never was much of a mother to Kat anyway.

Her shoulders are tense and her eyes that once held laughter are sad and brimming with unshed tears. I know that she’ll never allow herself to let those tears fall. Kat will never allow herself to cry in front of anyone; she has built such a big wall around herself that she’s too afraid to let anyone in and show weakness.

“Look Jay, I don’t want to talk about it. So, can we please not go there?” she pleads to me, knowing where my thoughts were.

I grab my beer and head to the couch. “Then we won’t talk. Pick a movie” I say, sitting down and propping my boots on the glass coffee table.

Kat sighs and plops herself down next to me snuggling in close under my arm and I fight the feeling of how right this feels and how perfectly she fits next to me.

A knock at the door saves me from continuing those thoughts. I jump up pulling out my wallet from my back pocket to pay the delivery guy before sliding the boxes onto the coffee table in front of her.

“Dig in,” I motion to the pizza boxes on the table, sitting down next to her and grabbing a slice of the all meat pizza before turning back to the movie she picked out.

Beauty and the Beast plays out on her big screen TV. Kat is a Disney fanatic so it doesn’t surprise me that when I told her to pick a movie she instantly went for one of her all-time favorites.

“I’m going back,” she announces, still staring straight ahead at the TV.

“You’re what? Why would you do that to yourself, Kat?”

Her shoulders slightly move up and down with each inhale and exhale before she looks at me. “I’m not going for her. I could care less about her. I’m going to check on my father.”

“Why do you want to go at all?”

“I don’t want to. I just feel like it’s something I should do. Maybe I can finally get some answers from him.”

“Kat,” I plead as I take her hand in mine, “they might not be the answers you’re looking for.”

“I know,” she whispers.

“How long are you going for?”

“Just a few days. I have a flight booked out for tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I tug her hand and pull her into me, kissing the top of her head when she leans into my chest.

Kat’s phone lights up with a new message and when she leans back into the couch I catch a glimpse of the name of the sender.

“Who’s David?”

“My new boss,” she says almost dismissively.

“Your boss texts you at nine o‘clock on a Friday night?” Now I’m intrigued. It’s obvious by the way she’s acting - the dismissive answers, the way she angles her phone away from me - that there’s something more going on that she doesn’t want to tell me.

Kat shrugs. “He’s just confirming that I sent out the meeting minutes from earlier.”

She places her phone face down on the arm of the couch and goes back to eating pizza and watching the movie but I can see her constantly glancing at her phone, like she’s trying to stop herself from checking for a new message.