The Blood of Innocents

My eyes are blind as I turn every sense inward to hear the whisperings in the black. The corridor fades and the muted voices drifting from the bedroom have become my focus, my existence. Unmoving and silent, I have become part of the night. Ears straining, I turn the heavy knife in my hand like a tennis player waiting for the serve. Not again. Not tonight. I mouth a silent mantra, "Go away, get away. Go away, get away." I've had enough. It's time for it to end. Too many nights in my sleepless bed, a big kitchen knife clutched in my hand like a talisman against the shrieks and curses his nocturnal visits elicit from my mother's bedroom down the hall. These descents into hell are always scripted for the heart of the night, when he can catch her unawares and helpless, the darkness he uses like a tool from his torturer's briefcase. He has many tricks, and the knife that sleeps between my headboard and mattress is insurance against the possibility that I will become one of his jokes. <- <- <- <- <- The rifle goes off, a dull blast echoing from within the barn. My mother runs screaming from the house. "Joe, Joe! Jesus Christ, you bastard!" Breathing harshly, sobbing, she rushes to find the dead and bloody carcass of the man who, only a moment ago, said he was determined to end it all. The man who she loved through the terror and the pain and the broken promises. He steps from a stall, his laughter lunatic, his demonic grin transforming his features into an all-too familiar triumphant leer. He kicks dirt over the hole in the barn floor, rifle pellets still smoke in the dust. "So you really do love me, don't you? But isn't that what you want? For me to stick this gun in my mouth and end it?" His black eyes narrow. "You whore. You slut. You fucking bitch. It would serve you right if I blew my fucking head off. The cops would think you did it." My mother sobs now with vigor, relief and disappointment fighting for precedence in her tortured heart. "Oh, how sad. Cry, you stupid bitch--maybe I'll shoot you in the fucking head." Raising the rifle he points it at her as she backs away, a look of unbelieving shock on her face as he sights the black hole of the barrel at her head. "Joe! No! Stop it, God Dammit, you fucking bastard!" She turns and runs for her life as her shrieks follow her through the twilight yard. His laughter roars through the barn, a corrupted, copious mirth. -> -> -> -> -> I am shadow. My heart blacker than the deepest pitch, and I wonder...was this darkness created in me by the hatred I swim within each day? Absorbed through osmosis from the sticky diseased existence that I have been thrust into, no more a willing participant in this madness than a child being pushed into the world after nine months in the womb? Is it a family legacy, each generation lacking the strength to resist the relentless pull of violence and fear? And now that I have come to this point, this juncture that will inevitably lead to my own ruin, does it matter the circumstances that have brought me to this awful place, where a daughter seeks to butcher her father? In the silence of my intention I seek an inner peace, and pray to the God that has forgotten me for the strength to act on my conviction. So the bible says, "Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will go free." I believe. I breathe shallow to be sure to hear a cry for help should it come. Tonight it will end. He has taken us to hell and I have become worthy of his paternal gift. Madness. <- <- <- <- <- The police car glides silently up the driveway. We watch through the window as he saunters toward the car, a supplicant with his hands held before him, above reproach, a family man. "What did she say this time? I'm beating her again? Chasing her with the car? Really, everything is fine here. She stopped taking her medication, she's out of control." The lies roll off his tongue, his easy manner belying his manic rage of only minutes ago. He turns his face to the window where we hide in the shadows, his bright smile letting us know that once again he will play the cards, he has the power, he wins. His lazy grin dares us to come forward to challenge his story. There will be no salvation, no protection, today or any other, from the sad-faced officer whose eyes follow my father's to the window where he must know we watch. We are still seen as merely property in the eyes of the law, belonging to the man who, with an actor's grace, turns and strides with purpose toward the house as we prepare for it to begin again. The police car turns, and slowly drives away down the street. -> -> -> -> -> The mutterings fade and my ears strain for a hint of sound. Only silence. I pull in, a meditation exercise I read about in some magazine, a way to focus sensations or experiences through control of breathing and heart rate. In, out, follow your breath deep. One, two, catch a heart beat, hold. Now I hear him, his whispering voice a false, cloying sweetness. "Can't you see, Rita? We are bound together, and where I go you will follow. Even in death, together." I imagine my mother lying frozen with fear as he sits on the edge of her bed. I imagine his eyes the black coals of hate as he reaches for her, as if to embrace her face with his torturous hands, instead coiling them around her neck and squeezing, gently at first. Her struggles reach my heightened senses as if drawn through a bright filament connecting her to me. Her weak protests set my heart racing faster, and I know it's time to move this earthly vessel, this shell that once held my life's possibilities, that now holds only despair and fury. I am no longer human, merely a leaf swept along by a roaring river, taken by the current to a future that must have been written in the stars, so unable am I to control this destiny. <- <- <- <- <- A shriek, a crash of broken glass, a deathly silence. My chest tightens as the dread that has become my constant companion envelopes me in a red mist of apprehension and despair. No escape, not even for a day. I leap to my feet, and stand there with the hair on my arms standing on end. The strawberries sitting in a bowl on my lap fall to the floor, unnoticed. Every nerve is drawn tight, every muscle in my body is prepared to answer the primordial question--fight or flight? Was it over? Did my mother's body lay shattered among the shards of broken glass from the window? I want to bolt to the kitchen and be sure it is only a chair that had been pitched through the window in a fit of anger. Please let it be a chair. Will I find her body broken and bloody with my father leaning over her, sobbing his regret, his relief? In that brief hesitation, awash with possibilities, the not-knowing is a relief to me. Because knowing would mean the end had come for her...or rather, that it hasn't ended. Suspended in this in-between moment, the terror held in abeyance only by the power of my will, I plead with God to save us. Save her. The cursing begins again, buoyed with the energy released by the shattered window, and I bend to gather the berries scattered around my feet, one sock is stained red with the juice of a crushed berry. With the rise and fall of the curses reverberating through the house, I sit and turn my face and thoughts to the TV while my heartbeat drums a staccato rhythm against the hollow of my chest. -> -> -> -> -> The knife sings to me of freedom, and the music is sweet. I rejoice in the dark that surrounds me, shelters me, hides me it its velvety embrace. My steps, slow and careful, take me further down the hall. Soft, demonic laughter reaches my ears, and is echoed by a coarse response deep in my own chest. Madness isn't a word--it breathes through my lungs, it makes my fingers tingle, it dances before my eyes that see only black. In each step, in each beat of my heart, with every fiber of the body that is no longer mine, I imagine it over. I imagine a life free of this torturous fear, this precipice that is my future. Living with this fear is worse than anything the sane world can throw my way. Neither jail nor psychiatric hospital can possibly rival this hell. I act and she will be safe, so simple it seems. This mother-child who cannot, will not, do what circumstances demand. And like the times I have put myself between his fists and her body, I will find a way to make her safe. <- <- <- <- <- Our heads bent, we walk quickly down the road. Escape. Our lives depend on it. His violent temper has turned deadly; one of the rifles is unaccounted for. He has pulled the wires from the car engine and our only choice is to walk. It's almost night, dusk, and the bugs are dancing a lazy summer waltz around our tear-stained faces. "We'll be fine. Don't worry. We'll go to Jaunita and Jerry's house and call a cab and get the hell outta here. Fucking bastard." Her monologue goes on. My sister and I nod and look back, knowing he will come and it will be worse when he finds us. As if on cue, the car comes skidding around the corner, a fat black sports car that my father won through a "Suggestion Award" program at the Ford plant where he's worked for twenty years. It rushes at us like a nightmare, engine roaring and tires spitting dirt. Seeing the gleeful smile of the madman behind the wheel, we know death as certainly as we know our names. The car skids within inches of our legs and we jump for our lives. "Get outta the fucking ditch, you bitches! Get your asses up here. God Dammit, you think you're gonna just walk away? Huh? You think you can just fucking walk away?" Grabbing me by the hair he hauls me out of the ditch, pushing me toward the open door of the car. Stars. Suddenly the world is filled with dancing stars. I shake my head, wondering why I am sitting, with bloody knees, on the road next to the car. Reaching my hand to my forehead I find a bump swelling to incredible size that hadn't been there just a moment before. "Can't you even get in the fucking car? Get your goddamned ass in the back!" He has pulled us all from the ditch, kicking and punching my mother as he pushes her toward the idling car. I jump in, knowing that if I don't move fast I'll pay dearly for my hesitation. My sister follows me into the back seat, looking at me with doe-hunted eyes, the very same I imagine must be staring back at her. We sit silent lest we draw his attention, and his wrath. -> -> -> -> -> Only inches from the door, the world has ceased to exist except for fire in my head and the heavy knife in my hand. The fire is cleansing me, showing me strength, moving my free hand to the doorknob. As my fingers brush the cold metal of the knob the door is suddenly pulled open, filled with the looming apparition of my father. Our eyes meet, the darkness no barrier to the intent of the soul, and in that millisecond I believe he has seen my purpose as clearly as a child sees fairies. "Get your god-damned ass back to bed," he says, pushing past me. He starts down the stairs, looking back over his shoulder. I hope he has seen the knife resting against my thigh. I want to hold it before me with the seething anger that still burns behind my eyes. I want to scream after him, "Find your peace, old man! Find a God who will forgive you! Because I never will. I will never forget and you will lose this battle! I have strength--strength I have stolen from your heart of madness!" My mouth remains empty as my mind swells with words to banish him. I look into my mother's room. She's sobbing beneath the covers of her bed, hiding. "Mom? You okay?" I hesitate. "You okay?" "Go to bed, Linda. I'm okay. Just go to bed." Her hands flutter near her throat, and I know tomorrow there will be bruises there that she'll cover with make-up and we'll never mention. Turning from my mother's room I shuffle, emptied, down the hall. I feel a liquid warmth making a trail down my thigh. In my room I hold the knife up to the moonlight cascading through the window and see, without surprise, that blood stains the tip. The blood of innocents.