Vocabulary Lesson

Cocksucker! I heard my brother scream loud enough to shatter glass and rattle me awake, I'll fix you!

The dogs sat up in alarm and began growling, there was a crash and something hit the other side of the wall so hard it set the mirror over the chest of drawers to vibrating and then I heard my mother's footsteps on the stairs. I suppose it was a reflex but I jumped out of a bed like a scared rabbit and jammed a hardback chair under the doorknob, as if I could keep whatever chaos was about to break out on the other side, then crawled hastily back into bed and pulled the covers over my head. Listening to the fight sounds and the footsteps thundering past my door gave me butterflies and I found myself wishing desperately that my daddy hadn't left the day before. My brother's violent streak had a way of mowing down anyone who got in his way. I'd never forgotten his pushing me down the cellar stairs at home or the time he stripped naked and ran across the front lawn through the snow just because he didn't want to go to bed. I was young but not so young that I didn't recognize some hazy form of mental illness though at the time I just called it evil.

There was a second crash and then the sound of a door slamming into something equally solid. I envisioned shattered, splintery wood and was thinking there'd be hell to pay for that little bit of mischief when things went deadly quiet just before erupting all over again.

I'll get you cocksuckers for this! my brother screamed, I'll get you both!

My other brother was now wailing, my mother was yelling, and it all became incomprehensible.

The screaming brother let loose a flood of curses and then fled. When I heard him stumble and nearly fall down the stairs, I imagined/hoped his dragon-like breathing would trigger an asthma attack and he might die- no such luck - then it was quiet again.

It turned out that the fight had been over a shiny, silver cap pistol, a nasty little toy that Nana

had forbidden in the house, and that one brother had accidentally broken then hidden under his pillow where the other found it. In a family where sharing was pretty much a foreign concept, it was more than enough to set off a violent confrontation. The pistol itself came to a bad end – Nana hammered it into pieces when she got home – and both boys forfeited a week of allowance and were summarily grounded. It meant a week of relative peace. When I asked my grandmother what cocksucker meant, she generously offered to wash my mouth out with soap. I decided to let it drop.  There were, after all, dictionaries for such things.