Memory of a Nine Year Old

She was nine years old. She had an uneasy feeling when she went to bed that night. Earlier in the day she heard her mom talking to her aunt on the phone. “Please come over and stay with us tonight” she said.” “I have a feeling this is going to be a bad night, he may not act as bad if he comes home drunk and sees you here with us” she pleaded. Later in the evening her aunt showed up at the house. Her mom sighed with a sign of relief when she saw her walking up to the door.

 As the evening went by there was a sense of dread in the air. Her mom and aunt sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee, making small talk and laughter was heard here and there. She knew they were trying to keep things light, but you could hear the fear they were trying to disguise in their laughs. Nighttime came and her mom told her and her siblings it was time to go to bed. Off they went to the bedrooms.

She wakes up in the middle of the night, someone is screaming and crying. She is frightened but jumps out of bed to see what is happening. She knows the sounds are coming from the front of the house, so she slowly walks up to the hallway to get a peak of what is going on. She sees her dad on his knees holding a knife close to his chest, crying and screaming and her mom on one side of him and her aunt on the other side both crying, begging him to stop, to put the knife down. She is scared but walks into the living room and stands facing her dad. Her mom yells at her to go back to the bedroom but she is frozen in place, unable to move, her heart pounding. She wants to cry; to yell at him to stop but she becomes paralyzed, unable to move a muscle or make a sound. Everything after that becomes a blur, she does not remember going back to bed.

She woke up the next morning and she found her father asleep in his bed. Looking at him sleeping she remembered the terrifying scene from the night before. While she was glad to see he wasn’t hurt she felt guilty thinking of how much she had wanted her mom to come to her, hold her and tell her everything would be alright, or one of her siblings to come out of the bedroom and stand next to her, to protect her.  She wondered if they slept through the ordeal or simply decided not to see what was happening. Either way, she had felt totally alone.

There have been many instances of fear, of not knowing how her dad would show up every Friday night after being gone all week. Will he be a bad drunk or will he be a good drunk? When he was a bad drunk it seemed like all hell would break lose but when he was a good drunk he would come home cheerful, laughing and with a plate of food.

Of the many instances this one memory has stayed with her to this day.