WHACK!

He hit me.

Hard.

I quickly placed my palm across the left side of my face. My skin felt tingly, was hot to the touch, and I swear to God for a few moments I really thought that I could hear bells ringing in my ear. It hurt like hell, but before I took too much time to wallow in the intensity of the searing pain, I lifted my head back up, remembered the girl my mother raised me to be, and promptly kicked my boyfriend Tyson in his nuts.

I’m pretty sure I heard him yelp the words “you bitch” on his way down, but the point was he was on his way down to the ground. Right where he belonged. I was in no fucking mood to fight with him that day.

I had just gotten a call from my little seventeen-year-old sister asking me for a referral to a gynecologist. She wanted birth control. I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend. I felt like dog crap. I was doing a horrible job of being a role model for Jana. My mother was probably rolling over in her grave.

“Are we done?” I asked a moaning Tyson.

He was such a whiner. I didn’t even kick him that hard. Then I realized that he must have been high. And when he got high on junk like ecstasy, his dick always got hard, which made the kicking of his balls even more painful. Great for me, but not so nice for him.

“Not by a long shot, bitch.”

I really got annoyed then, because I knew him calling me a bitch meant that he was ready for a knock down, drag out, reality show like sparring match. Which would mean that part of my face was going to end up a nasty shade of purple by the end of the night, and I’d have to dig into my makeup kit once again. A kit filled with theatrical face cover. Cover that I paid a lot of money for, but couldn’t really afford, so I only wanted to use it if I absolutely had to. I know. That line of thinking was totally fucked up, but I was young and dumb and had no one telling me any better.

Tyson hit me that night, because I dared to ask him if he took the forty-five dollars that was in a sealed white envelope inside of my underwear drawer. At the time I was working as a waitress, and had been saving the money to buy a gift for Jana’s eighteenth birthday. It was a lot of money to both of us back then, and his response to my question told me everything. He had stolen the money, and it wasn’t too difficult to see why. He had bought drugs with it. Something his miserable ass had been doing more often than not, but I had been too stupid to jump ship before it got completely out of hand.

I met Tyson when I was just fifteen years old. I had been outside with some friends from the neighborhood for practically the entire morning. It was hot that day. Humid, swamp like heat. So we took a ten-minute bus ride to the local mall and wandered in and out of stores all day to keep cool.

He was working as a stock boy in the Hallmark card store when he stopped me dead in my tracks while I was looking at the Christmas in July display. I was examining figurines. I loved those things. They reminded me of my mother and my nana. Two women who lived for Christmas, two women whom I loved, and two women who were long gone from this earth by then.

“You going to buy that?” he asked me.

I knew he wasn’t old enough to be the manager or even assistant manager of the store, so I gave him a little attitude, because basically I thought he was an ass for assuming that I was a thief or that I was too broke to buy one crappy figurine.

“What business is it of yours?”

“I spent all morning putting those on the shelves in a very specific order.”

I looked at the display.

Then at him.

“They don’t look like they’re in any sort of order to me.”

“Well they are.”

“Come on, Jade, he’s so rude.” My girlfriends cackled as they pulled me out of the store.

“But so hot,” one of them said loud enough for him to hear.

“See you later, Jade,” he said to me smiling as we walked away. Giving me an exaggerated finger wave. I thought he was funny, and I smiled back. Then we left.

After another thirty minutes of window-shopping, we decided to visit the food court and grab a slice of pizza. It was there that one of my neighbors, Mrs. Sanchez, approached our table while we were eating. It wasn’t uncommon to see people from the neighborhood at the mall, so I didn’t think anything of it at first.

“Jade?”

“Oh hi, Mrs. Sanchez.”

“Hey, babe. Uh, when was the last time you checked in at home?”

“Not since earlier this morning, why?”

“Well, hun, I think your dad’s been at it again.”

“Really?”

I was so embarrassed. I could have crawled under the table. My girlfriends knew nothing about my shitty life at home. Now they were getting an ear full.

“Yeah, so your sister is at Linda O’Neal’s house. You may want to get home. I think she’s a little freaked out.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Sanchez. I’ll get home right now.”

“Do you need a ride? I just have to grab something out of Macy’s and then I’ll be ready to go.”

“Thank you anyway, but I’m fine.”

Most of my teenage moments were cut short and ruined because of my father. Mall visits. Phone calls. Hanging with friends. And forget about boys. Even when we were very little my father wouldn’t have ever won any sort of dad-of-the-year award, but he was all my little sister Jana and I knew, so to us he was like Superman and Spiderman rolled into one. What we were too young to realize back then was that my mother was the glue that held our little family together, and once she died, our fractured unit fell completely apart.

My father always had a drinking problem, way before my mother’s death, but she knew how to shelter us from it. Protecting us from his tantrums. Shielding us from embarrassing moments. Making excuses for him that little girls believed. Holding the family together.

She went to work.

She paid the bills.

She checked the homework.

She talked to the teachers.

She cooked the meals.

She cleaned the house.

She did every damn thing. So when she died quickly and ruthlessly from ovarian cancer, needless to say, everything fell completely apart in our home. My father’s drinking dramatically increased and with it so did his tantrums and his black outs.

He usually got really drunk Friday nights after work, which is why I would never make plans on Fridays, but then he’d sleep in most of the day Saturday. So that’s why I thought it would be safe to hang out at the mall for a couple of hours during the early day.

Usually on a Saturday, he’d be in bed sleeping it off, and my sister would be on the computer looking at Disney shows for half of the morning, so I figured no one would even miss me for a couple of hours. I just wanted to hang with my girlfriends and be a normal teenager for once. Not stay in the house all day to keep an eye on him and my sister. I hated that that’s what my life had become. I never asked for the responsibility. I resented that it had been thrust upon me. And I missed my mother desperately.

It was just my luck that when I let my guard down, for just a moment, my father had to go and have another tantrum. Tossing furniture around the living room like a lunatic. Then passing out on the couch with the front door open, but the screen door locked, so that the whole block could peep in and see him passed out in his underwear.

Luckily Jana knew the routine. When Daddy starts acting like a crazy person, run downstairs and get out of the house through the basement door. Then off to one of the neighbors.

We verbally ran through it a million times with each other, and we actually had to do it together several times, but she never had to get out alone. So not only was I pissed that my father caused all this drama and embarrassment, and that I wasn’t there to protect my little sister, but now my friends were looking at me as if I was the most pitiful person on the planet. Mrs. Sanchez said all of this in front them as if it was common knowledge that I was the daughter of the neighborhood drunk. As far as I knew, they didn’t know anything about my life at home. At least that’s what I liked to believe back then.

I remember throwing on my suit of bulletproof emotional armor and acting like what she said didn’t faze me one iota. The last thing I needed was this story getting back to school. I didn’t want pity, I didn’t want anyone’s intervention, and I didn’t want advice. I just wanted to be left alone to handle it myself.

“Um, guess I better head home early.” I remember saying casually as I took another bite of pizza.

“Of course, girl.”

“Buses run every fifteen minutes right?”

“Yep. There will be another one any minute.”

“Cool.”

Then he came over.

If I could go back and tell my fifteen-year-old self to run like hell, I would. I should have gotten up from that table and taken the bus, but I didn’t.

“I’ll take you home,” Tyson said.

I stared at him quietly, not knowing what to say. First of all, he was older. If he was driving, he was too old for me. Secondly, I knew better than to take a ride from some strange guy, but I wanted to get to Jana. Ms. O’Neal would no doubt be pumping her for information about our father, and our home life, and she was only eleven. She would eventually crack under the pressure. And if that happened, the entire neighborhood was going to know what was going in our house. Perfect way for child protective services to get in our business, and neither of us wanted that.

“Don’t you have a Christmas display to fix?” My friend Tyra asked him with a tinge of teenage sarcasm.

“I just got off work, and it sounds like your girl here needs to get home sooner rather than later.”

He looked at me. “So what’s up? You need a ride?”

“Okay,” I blurted out in response. Somewhat tongue-tied. Not really thinking about the consequences of my actions. I was blinded by my budding teenage hormones plus a strong desire to get home to my sister.

Even in work attire, Tyson looked liked he just completed an X-Games competition. Motor biking. Skateboarding. Extreme skiing. He just had that look. A slim but fit build. Assorted tattoos. A bleached blond faux Mohawk. Not to mention that he had to be three or four years older than me. A total turn on for a fifteen-year-old girl looking for any excuse to rebel against her father. Her life.

Back then I didn’t have a cell phone. That was a luxury that we couldn’t afford. So I promised my friends that I would email them when I got in the house. Knowing good and well it was probably likely that I wouldn’t be able to send them much of anything. When my father had a tantrum, he tended to gravitate towards the electronics, and we only had one old desktop computer. My mother’s. Although I prayed that it had been spared his wrath.

As soon as we got into the car, Tyson asked me if I needed a little something to relax before I dealt with my father. I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by that, but I assumed it was an alcoholic drink. That’s what my father said on many occasions when he poured himself a scotch.

“I just need something to relax, peanut.” My father’s nickname for me.

“I don’t drink,” I told Tyson firmly.

“I don’t mean alcohol. I’ve got a little Oxy.”

“What’s that?”

“A pain reliever. It’s prescribed by doctors. Totally safe. It’ll give you a nice buzz, so you won’t be as stressed out.”

“I don’t know—”

“Here, you can have one and see what it’s like. I take them after work and on the weekends to wind down instead of getting all pissy on alcohol. Plus most girls I know like them, because there’s no calories.”

I still wasn’t sold.

Not until he dangled it in front of me then took it away.

“Never mind. You might not be ready—”

“No,” I stupidly said. “I want to try it.” Imploring with my eyes for him to give me another chance. To give me the OxyContin. “Let me just deal with my dad and my sister first,” I said in an effort to stall actually taking the thing. “I don’t want to talk to them high.”

I remember Tyson giving me a strange look after that. As if he was impressed with my mature decision making, but at the same time irritated with the fact that I made those choices.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that this very part of my personality, my maturity beyond my years and my ability to rise to a stressful occasion without the need to numb myself, is what Tyson grew to resent. My strengths were his weaknesses, and he hated me for it. It was the part of me that he spent years trying to suffocate and annihilate. And the terrifying part was that he almost succeeded.