It was now four o’clock. Trina had slept for a couple of hours, woken up and then dozed off again for another hour. Curtis was still thinking about everything she’d told him this morning. His father had raped his mother, over and over. He’d violated her, day after day, month after month, and she’d taken years of abuse in silence.
But even knowing the truth and feeling deeply sorry for his mom, he still wished she’d found the strength to leave his father. To some degree, he understood why she was afraid to, but he also couldn’t help the way he felt about it.
Trina smiled. “So you’re still here, huh?”
“Yep, where else would I be?”
“You’re a good brother.”
“And you’re an awesome sister.”
Trina smiled again and then said, “I know I told you some very unsettling stuff about Mom and Dad this morning, but I wanted you to know the truth.”
“No, I’m glad you did. It explained a number of things that I’ve always questioned, but I do still wish Mom had taken us away from Dad. I wish she’d thought more about you and me. Or if nothing else, I wish she’d stood up for us. Stood up for me at least one of those times when Daddy was beating me. There were days when I thought he would beat me to death.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but I wish you could somehow find a way to let that go.”
“Me too, but I honestly don’t know if I ever will.”
Trina stared at him and then said, “My hope was that I would never have to tell you this, but now I think I should.”
“Tell me what?”
Trina coughed harder than she had been.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said, coughing again.
Curtis leaned forward in his chair. “Are you sure? Do you need some water?”
“No, I’m fine,” she said, and finally settled down. “So here’s the thing. Remember the day Daddy died?”
“I’ll never forget it.”
“Neither will I, but there’s so much more to the story. A lot more than what we were originally told.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I wanted to know why Mom stayed, too. Why she didn’t have the courage to leave Daddy, so that you, her, and I could have a better life. But when she got sick, she finally told me everything. Daddy really did have liver disease because of all the drinking he’d done for so many years, but then he came down with pneumonia. So while they were in bed one night—the night he died—he’d reached over to his nightstand, picked up a roll of summer sausage that he’d brought into the bedroom from the kitchen, and started eating it with a few crackers. He was eating it while watching television, but his head must not have been propped up high enough, because Mom said the next thing she knew, he was eating and laughing at an episode of Andy Griffith but then started to choke. And for some reason, he couldn’t get control of it. He was struggling to breathe and trying to cough up everything in his throat, but after a while, his breathing slowed and then it finally stopped altogether.”
Curtis lowered his eyebrows. “Wow, I always thought he died of a heart attack with liver and lung complications.”
“He did…but Mom also finally got the courage to stand up for herself and for us.”
“How do you mean?”
“While he was choking, he reached out for her, but she just stared at him and never moved. She said she just sat in bed next to him, watching and thinking about all the times he’d raped her. All the times he’d beaten her little boy. All the times he’d made her little girl feel like she was a worthless animal who would never find a man who wanted her. She said she just watched him struggle in distress until he took his very last breath. Then she called 911.”
Over the years, Curtis had come to realize how wrong it was to want anyone dead, but he remembered, as a teenager, being thrilled about his father’s death. He’d felt free and more relieved than he ever had in his life, and he hadn’t shed a single tear. Not the day his father had died, not the week the arrangements had been made, and not the day of his funeral. He hadn’t cried about it a day since then, either. They’d lived such a dysfunctional life, and Curtis had just been glad to know that with his father gone, he would no longer have to live with a drunk who hated him.
“I guess I don’t know what to say,” Curtis finally said. “I mean, I had no idea.”
“I know. Neither did I, but I just couldn’t leave here without telling you.”
The last part of her sentence broke Curtis’s heart, but he didn’t let on that her statement about leaving here had bothered him. “Why didn’t you tell me this morning when you told me about Dad raping Mom?”
“Because I didn’t want you to think badly of her. Mom was a good woman with a good heart, but I wasn’t sure how you would feel about her letting him die. How you would take the idea of her not helping him when she certainly could have.”
“I know it’s not what God would expect any of us to do, but I do know that when a woman has battered wife syndrome—which I do believe now—you can’t say what she will or won’t do. I’ve always known about battered wife syndrome, and I’ve even studied it so that I can help some of the women at the church. But for some reason, I’ve never wanted to see that Mom fell into that same category. I guess it was just easier for me to wonder why she didn’t leave. And easier to blame her for what happened to me.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to see things for what they really are when you’re so close to them.”
“Exactly.”
Trina slowly closed her eyes, and Curtis thought about the one memory that was always at the forefront of his mind. Curtis had been seventeen, and it was the last time his father had beaten him. This day had also been only a few months before his father had died.
Thomas burst into Curtis’s bedroom, holding a broom handle with both hands, and hit him across his body with all his might. It wasn’t until then that Curtis had awakened. His father whacked him hard again, and Curtis bellowed out in pain and slid backward toward his raggedy wooden headboard.
“What did I do?” Curtis yelled.
“Didn’t I tell you to take out that garbage?”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I had to study for my finals, and I fell asleep.”
Thomas slammed the broom across Curtis’s arm. “I don’t care what you had to do. I told you to take out that garbage, and that’s what I meant.”
Curtis tried protecting his head. “Dad, please don’t. I’ll go take it out now.”
“You’re gonna do what I tell you, you hear me?” Thomas said, bashing Curtis across the side of his head.
“Owwwww!” Curtis shrieked and wept loudly. “I’m sorry, Dad. Please stop.”
“I guess you think you’re grown, but I’m about to let you know who the grown man is in this house,” Thomas said, tossing the broom to the floor and lunging on top of Curtis. He punched Curtis in his head, face, and chest with both fists, over and over, and Curtis tried to push his father off him. But then Thomas dragged Curtis by his legs off the bed.
When Curtis’s head hit the hardwood floor, he howled in pain. Then his vision blurred, and he quickly scooted away to the same corner he’d been taking cover in for four long years.
But as he gazed at his father, watching him trying to catch his breath and preparing to attack Curtis again, something came over him. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced before, but at that very moment, he knew his life would be changing.
And he got to his feet.
“Get back down on that floor,” Thomas yelled. “And you stay down there until I tell you to get up.”
Curtis stared him down. “No.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
Thomas glared at him like he was crazy, and rushed toward Curtis, but Curtis shoved him backward and then pounded every part of his father’s body that he could, one fist after the other. Thomas staggered to the side, but Curtis had no mercy on him.
“I told you to stop beating on me,” Curtis yelled, and then grabbed his father by his collar and slammed his body across the room.
Thomas’s body hit the wall and then slid down to the floor.
Curtis was so out of breath, he could barely stand up, but then Trina and his mother came into the room, covering their mouths with their hands. Neither of them said anything, but it was then, as he looked at his father lying on the floor, moaning and bleeding, that he knew Thomas Black would never touch him again. He would never as much as raise a hand to Curtis, because Curtis was no longer a scared little boy. He was a seventeen-year-old young man who wasn’t afraid of him. And if for some reason his father did try to beat him again…well…Curtis just hoped it never came to that, because he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, ever allow it. He wouldn’t take another beating from his father for as long as he lived.