He stared at his hands for a moment, a mixture of terror and revulsion flashing across his face. He ran to the kitchen sink and began frantically scrubbing at the blood on his hands. I crawled across the floor to my mother. She lay huddled on the ground, blood smearing the floor around her. I pulled her head into my lap and she opened her eyes.
“Nicki…” she whispered hoarsely.
“I’m here Mama,” I said, my own tears pouring down my face. “I’m here!”
I huddled over her beaten body, determined to protect her from my father in any way possible, but it turned out it wasn’t necessary. After scrubbing at his hands for several minutes, Dad slammed off the water and stormed out of the house. I heard his truck start and he peeled out of the driveway.
When he was gone, my mother lay on the floor, blood smearing her face from a cut on her lip, dark bruises already beginning to purple her arms, legs and face as she lay.
My father had never struck either of us before that night, so far as I knew. The shock of that action was almost worse than the physical pain he caused, to me at least. Mom was a different story.
Her body was battered and bruised. Black and red mottled her face, which was swelling so badly, if it hadn’t been for her red hair, she would have been unrecognizable. I got her to her bed and tended her wounds the best I could, but Boy Scout first aid didn’t begin to cover this.
I brought ice packs for her wrist, abdomen and back. I brought her water and acetaminophen to help with the pain, but she struggled to swallow the pills. More water spilled down her face and onto the bed than made it into her, I think. Then I heard a hitch in her breathing and only had a moment’s notice before she vomited.
Saliva and tears spilled down her face as I held her hair back. She coughed and gagged into the trashcan next to the bed, finally ejecting something solid. When she was done spitting and clearing her mouth, she fell back against the pillows, exhausted by the spasms. On top of the discarded paper towels and the ripped-open bandages lay at least one bloody tooth, and parts of others.
“We can’t let him get away with this! We should call the police!” she shook her head and I sighed. “Mom, please let me callsomebody!” I’d begged, tears running down my own face as I did my best to clean the blood off her face without hurting her…
“You could go to a-a women’s shelter—” I began, but she interrupted me.
“-o!” she mumbled, trying to speak, but her mouth so swollen she could barely make recognizable noises. “-an’t!”
“At least let me call an ambulance, or Dr. Dunwoody!” I insisted, but she stubbornly refused. I knew why she didn’t want to call the police. Our town was small. It didn’t have its own police department. All emergency calls went to the Sherriff’s office, and Dad… was the Sheriff. It wasn’t like one of Dad’s deputies would have the balls to arrest him.
“At least let me get you to the hospital!” I pleaded, but she again shook her head. Her blue eyes glittering with tears. Her left eye had burst a blood vessel, so what would normally be the white of her eye was blood red.
“…dan-ger…” she managed to get out from between her battered lips. “-urt ‘em…”
I finally understood what she was saying. She was afraid of putting anyone at the hospital or a shelter in danger. While my Dad’s service weapon was still in the safe in their bedroom, we both knew he had others.
“-ed…” she wheezed. “-on’t -set ‘im, ‘et s’ee…” she tried to say. She was trying to tell me not to upset him, to get some sleep. My mother was the bravest person I knew. She had just been horribly beaten by a man who was supposed to love her, and she was trying to take care of me.
I sat with her until she drifted off to sleep, then I fell asleep next to her.
She was restless that night, moaning and crying out in her sleep. I debated whether to wake her. I didn’t know which would be better… Let her sleep, or wake her to take more meds? She felt feverish to me, and I didn’t know what to do.
I fell asleep next to her on the bed.
About 6 a.m. I woke up, terrified because her side of the bed was empty. I tore out of the bedroom, fear suffocating me, only to find her asleep in a chair in the dining room, her head laying on her crossed arms. The receiver for the kitchen phone lay on the floor next to her, an annoying fast busy signal blaring from the speaker.
I didn’t know what she had been doing for sure. Maybe she had tried to call someone. Maybe she had just knocked the phone off the receiver. To this day, though, sometimes I’ll wake from a nightmare where I hear my mom crying for me from a long way away. In the dream she always calls me by my middle name, Rowen, which she almost never did normally. She’d sob and beg for me to come get her, to save her, but I could never make my limbs move, in that quicksand way of dreams. I would always wake to tears and self-loathing because I hadn’t been able to help her.
My dad didn’t come home that morning, and I never asked him where he’d spent the night. I was able to wake Mom enough to get her to bed from the dining room. I wanted to stay home with her, but she insisted that she just needed some rest and I needed to go to school.
Before I left the house, I peeked into her bedroom and saw her pained, pale face against the pillows. Her eyes were almost swollen shut, and she had black and blue marks all over her face, neck and arms. Her hair spread out around her head like a bloody halo.
Her forehead was hot, but she was aware enough to insist that I go to school, even though I didn’t want to leave her. I refreshed her ice packs, and set more water by the bed, along with the bottle of pain meds. I found some pudding and applesauce in the refrigerator and set it next to her bed with some spoons. It was the only thing I could think of that she might be able to eat in her condition. Then I fled the house like a coward to the relative normalcy and safety of school.
When I got home that afternoon, she was gone. The only sign that I hadn’t dreamed the events of the previous evening were the bloody towels and sheets on her bed. To my fifteen-year-old eyes, the amount of blood was frightening. I wasn’t sure how someone could bleed that much and not die.
I’d waited up, hoping that maybe she had gone to the doctor or a hospital. Evening came, and she hadn’t come home. The next time I would lay eyes on her would be in a courtroom where I would tell her I never wanted to see her again.
My best, and only, friend, Vivian, often asked me why I didn’t leave. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about my deal with my father. The shame and fear was just too much. Even though I was doing it to protect my mom, staying made me feel… complicit… in my own abuse. Like I didn’t have the right to complain about it.
I wasn’t smart enough for college, as Dad reminded me on a regular basis. With my diagnosis, there was no way I could keep up with classes and work a full-time job, which was what I’d need if I had to pay for meds, school and other expenses. The medication made me nauseous. Some days it was all I could do to get out of bed, much less attend school full time.
He made me very aware of how much he paid for the anti-retroviral treatments that kept me from getting full-blown AIDS. He showed me the bills for the drugs as well as the ones for the specialists who treated me. Without insurance there was no way I’d be able to afford to live on my own. Even with insurance, the co-pays were exorbitant. They cost thousands of dollars every year.
