The night nobody died was in late October or early November - full dark had come early and the leaves had already turned. The furnace rumbled on and off sending warm air through the vents at regular intervals. My daddy had returned to work and my mother had left for a lodge meeting. The remnants of a cold macaroni and cheese supper were still on the kitchen table.
I have no clear memory of what started the argument between me and my younger brother but it escalated swiftly.
Words turned into shouting, shouting into threats, threats into pushing and pushing into violence that resulted in his shoving me down the cellar stairs. I reached for the handrail but missed and fell the length of the wooden steps, landing in a heat at the bottom, seeing a haze of blurry stars and tasting copper before the dark settled. When I came to, my hair was tacky and wet with blood, my lip was split, my eye swollen and each breath felt like a stab but miraculously, nothing seemed to be broken.
I found the 2x2 on my daddy's workbench and gingerly climbed the stairs. The living room was lit only by the flickering old black and white tv and my youngest brother was asleep in my mother's green chair, the dogs were curled up together on the sofa. The brother who had pushed me was sitting Indian style on the floor in front of the tv with a tin can of brownies and a carton of milk beside him. Bright, shimmery hate came without my calling it and I raised the 2x2 over my shoulder - when he sensed the danger, he turned and I swung with every ounce of my being, catching him squarely on the side of his face and sending him sprawling sideways. A spray of blood and saliva flew out of his mouth and I thought of a crab, scrabbling on the beach and wailing. I raised the 2x2 again, waiting for the right moment to deliver a second blow - that I would've delivered it and hoped for it to be lethal was not in the slightest doubt - when several things happened in a matter of instants - my youngest brother woke and began caterwauling, the dogs started to bark in a panicked and desperate way, and a key turned in the front door and my mother and daddy walked in.
He pushed me down the cellar stairs! I screamed at them both.
She fell! he bellowed back instantly although the words were a little mushy.
Psychopath! I screeched, Mental case!
Whore! he yelled, Bitch!
In the ER, I was told I had two broken ribs, a concussion, a lacerated scalp wound and a black eye. His jaw was broken in two places, he had lost three teeth and partial hearing in one ear. I remember fluorescent lights and the green tiles of the hospital floor, stitches and bandages and pain pills, my mother's furious, snarling face and my daddy's sad and worried one - then the cool, clean sheets of a hospital bed. I was sent to my grandmother's to recover and stayed until the following spring, coming home only on condition of constant adult supervision - Nana was adamant and would hear not the first word of protest or parental disagreement. My grandchildren are not going to kill each other while I'm alive to prevent it, she warned my mother and daddy, And make no mistake, I have money and friends in family court and I'll use both. It's sheer blind luck that nobody died!
When it was all over, the hate I had felt that night was to frighten me. Time, distance and estrangement dulled and finally blurred it but the sharp edges, the overwhelming intensity of it, stayed with me, and I know I could summon it back. It's still a frightening thought and probably always will be. Sometimes I think we only brush the surface of what we are truly capable of.
I have no clear memory of what started the argument between me and my younger brother but it escalated swiftly.
Words turned into shouting, shouting into threats, threats into pushing and pushing into violence that resulted in his shoving me down the cellar stairs. I reached for the handrail but missed and fell the length of the wooden steps, landing in a heat at the bottom, seeing a haze of blurry stars and tasting copper before the dark settled. When I came to, my hair was tacky and wet with blood, my lip was split, my eye swollen and each breath felt like a stab but miraculously, nothing seemed to be broken.
I found the 2x2 on my daddy's workbench and gingerly climbed the stairs. The living room was lit only by the flickering old black and white tv and my youngest brother was asleep in my mother's green chair, the dogs were curled up together on the sofa. The brother who had pushed me was sitting Indian style on the floor in front of the tv with a tin can of brownies and a carton of milk beside him. Bright, shimmery hate came without my calling it and I raised the 2x2 over my shoulder - when he sensed the danger, he turned and I swung with every ounce of my being, catching him squarely on the side of his face and sending him sprawling sideways. A spray of blood and saliva flew out of his mouth and I thought of a crab, scrabbling on the beach and wailing. I raised the 2x2 again, waiting for the right moment to deliver a second blow - that I would've delivered it and hoped for it to be lethal was not in the slightest doubt - when several things happened in a matter of instants - my youngest brother woke and began caterwauling, the dogs started to bark in a panicked and desperate way, and a key turned in the front door and my mother and daddy walked in.
He pushed me down the cellar stairs! I screamed at them both.
She fell! he bellowed back instantly although the words were a little mushy.
Psychopath! I screeched, Mental case!
Whore! he yelled, Bitch!
In the ER, I was told I had two broken ribs, a concussion, a lacerated scalp wound and a black eye. His jaw was broken in two places, he had lost three teeth and partial hearing in one ear. I remember fluorescent lights and the green tiles of the hospital floor, stitches and bandages and pain pills, my mother's furious, snarling face and my daddy's sad and worried one - then the cool, clean sheets of a hospital bed. I was sent to my grandmother's to recover and stayed until the following spring, coming home only on condition of constant adult supervision - Nana was adamant and would hear not the first word of protest or parental disagreement. My grandchildren are not going to kill each other while I'm alive to prevent it, she warned my mother and daddy, And make no mistake, I have money and friends in family court and I'll use both. It's sheer blind luck that nobody died!
When it was all over, the hate I had felt that night was to frighten me. Time, distance and estrangement dulled and finally blurred it but the sharp edges, the overwhelming intensity of it, stayed with me, and I know I could summon it back. It's still a frightening thought and probably always will be. Sometimes I think we only brush the surface of what we are truly capable of.
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