Kathleen was in an evil mood. She’d been worse than ever these past few days, and all three boys had the injuries to prove it. Isaac sat on the floor with his back against the bed and watched Taylor run a finger down the square pattern of the heating grate that was burned into his arm. “Does it hurt?” Zac asked.
“Uh huh,” Taylor agreed, too fascinated by the pain to be upset about it.
Zac drew in a shaky breath and exhaled slowly. It had been freezing in here ever since they’d turned the electricity off; you could see your breath, steamy in the frigid air. It was January fourth, and Kathleen had already squandered the welfare check.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Isaac murmured. For the past few days, he’d been floating through the world wrapped in the hazy weariness of fever, unable to focus on anything for more than a few seconds before it slipped through his fingers and was gone. Kathleen didn’t believe him; she thought he was faking. Today, Isaac was trying, with more success than usual, to convince himself that she was right.
The front door slammed. All three of them considered hiding, knowing it would be futile to try. “She’s back,” Zac whispered.
“Don’t let her come in here,” Taylor prayed.
“She is coming in here,” Isaac hissed. “Don’t talk to her. Let me handle her.”
The bedroom door creaked open slowly. Kathleen stood there, her arms folded. “I don’t know why I even had any of you kids,” she began, sneering.
Isaac closed his eyes. “Oh, God. . .”
How do you remember the moment that changes your life forever? Not very well, sometimes, especially when you’ve just received a concussion from being knocked to the ground by your mother, especially when your older brother pushes you out if the way almost as soon as you struggle back to your feet, sending the room around you, already more than a little bit hazy, into a multicolored tailspin with no beginning or end. For a few seconds, Taylor didn’t know where he was, didn’t know if he was lying on the scratchy, industrial-grade carpet or floating just above it. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t talk and he didn’t know what was going on around him. It felt as if fireworks were going off inside his head, as if bombs were being dropped upon a million different thoughts being screamed all at once. Taylor squeezed his eyes shut, afraid to open them. Maybe this was a nightmare. Maybe he’d wake up and it would all be gone.
As hard as he would try to recall that night, Taylor would never have much success. A few sharp, fragmented details would stand out in his mind like shattered glass, but when he tried to put them back together, he’d end up even more confused than he had been when he started. In later years he would consciously tell himself to stop trying, but he never would be able to. He would need an explanation for the unexplainable. He would never stop wondering why.
Taylor did remember that the whole thing started with a beating. It wasn’t any worse than the other ones his mother had inflicted on them that week. He could remember worse ones. Somehow, though, there was an edge of insanity in his mother tonight, something that had never been there before.
Kathleen was losing control. She lost control. She had no idea what she was doing, acting inside a rage so powerful she could never have traced it back to one particular moment in her life, could never have directed it against a particular person, a particular situation, against anything in particular. It was a rage against her life, a rage against all the factors that had served to destroy her life, a rage against all that had destroyed her. This was the night Kathleen would allow her darkest inner urges to surface, a night in which her last few shreds of rationality would tighten and snap. She would demonstrate this rage by preying upon the only part of her life she still felt she should have control over. If she was going to hit rock bottom, she was going to take her children along with her.
Kathleen knew that she was losing her sons, resented the fact that they could be lost. She wanted to hold on to what she felt was hers, sensing somehow that they weren’t hers, that she had given life to three separate individuals, human beings in their own right instead of smaller extensions of herself that would fill all the voids she’d always known were there. She resented the fact that they were unable to do this for her and yet depended so much upon her, that she couldn’t abandon them without turning herself into a monster, that she couldn’t give them what they needed, couldn’t give herself what she needed. Kathleen couldn’t take it anymore.
Isaac watched the knife in his mother’s hand. The silver blade gleamed in the flickering light from the streetlight outside; Kathleen gripped the handle so tightly her knuckles were white.
She won’t do it, Isaac thought. Keep still, don’t move too fast, and she won’t do it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Taylor stir. Don’t get up, Isaac thought. Just lie there, please. . .
Kathleen’s eyes were icy, shot through with flickering, feral light. Her expression was that of a predator watching her prey. Despite everything, Isaac almost trusted her.
She won’t do it, he told himself. We’re her kids. No one in their right mind would use a knife on their kids.
She’s not in her right mind, part of him echoed, doubtfully.
Taylor let out a slow, whimpering breath. His eyelids fluttered.
Slowly, Kathleen’s eyes slid toward Taylor, then back to Isaac. No other part of her moved.
Isaac watched the knife.
He didn’t take his eyes off the knife.
As long as the knife stayed where it was, he could tell himself that Kathleen wouldn’t use it.
Kathleen wouldn’t use it.
She couldn’t.
She wouldn’t.
There was no way she would.
“Ike?” Slowly, uncertainly, Taylor rose to his feet. He gripped the edge of the bed for support. “Ike is she. . .” Taylor’s eyes widened as he saw his mother. “She isn’t?” he breathed.
Isaac saw Kathleen turn, the knife clenched in her hand. She was poised to strike.
She was going to use it.
Isaac dived for Taylor before Kathleen could, knocked his brother to the floor before Taylor knew what hit him. This put Isaac in the direct path of the knife when his mother lunged forward, wielding her weapon with careful deliberation. Oceans of pain, a thosand tongues of white-hot flame, ripped through his stomach as the blade met his skin.
Zac saw the whole thing. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d always have a sharp, clear mental image of exactly what had happened that night. As much as he tried to bury it, it would always be there, bits and pieces fluttering into his mind before a flood of memory came back to overwhelm him.
he couldn’t stop it couldn’t have stopped it there was nothing he could have done why didn’t he stop it why couldn’t he have stopped it he should have done something done something done anything why didn’t he why did she what made her do it why couldn’t he have stopped it why didn’t he stop it why did she do it he should have stopped it
He couldn’t have stopped it.
But Zac didn’t know that.