Him

There was a beer can in his hand as he sat on the couch. My brother and I were watching television. We were only around the age of five or six. I remember asking him what I was going to look like when I grew up. I don’t know how I remember that, but I do. He responded with “you’re going to be tall, with blond hair and green eyes. You are going to be beautiful.” I believed him.

My brother and I wrestled with him a lot. Of course, we were doing the playful wrestling. He always ended up hurting one of us. My mom would always get very mad.

When I was eight or nine, we ended up moving to a bigger house. My brother, he and I lived there. We were without my mom. He still has his 24 pack of beer. He always had it. He’d have it when we didn’t have electricity. We were still young. My brother, he and I all slept on the pull-out sofa. He passed out and my brother and I just fell asleep there. We were all sound asleep. I woke up with his arm around my neck. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to scream out his name. My brother woke up and tried to pull his arm off. He woke up. He didn’t realize what he was doing. He kept apologizing.

He married a nice lady. I guess my brother and I needed someone to take care of us, and him. He drank more. They would get into fights. The first time it happened, we were having dinner as a family. It was even in candlelight. It was very late in the evening and it was all of us: her kids, him, his wife, my brother and I. He was trying to tell us a story and he usually stretches out the story. We all laughed and told him to get to the point. His wife agreed and said, “Yeah, get to the point.” He took a hand full of mashed potatoes and threw them at her. They argued at the table and we didn’t know what to do. He got up and took one of his hunting guns, with the shells and left. He yelled out the door that he was going to kill himself. I was scared. She was scared. I don’t know what anyone else felt. We waited till he got home. He was drunk. He was drunk to begin with. He must’ve taken some beer with him, or he went to the store. I think he just threatened to kill himself. I don’t think he ever would. He promised not to do that again. It’s happened more than once. On several occasions they would beat each other up. One of the times she pushed him down the stairs. He had to wear a back brace. Another time, she would take a cast iron skillet and whack him in the back of the head. He would push her and scratch her. There was one fight between him and her son. Her son was 17 and just sitting on the reclining chair. Her son was just telling him that he needed to stop the drinking. It was him, the beer can in his hand, that took his other powerful hand and flung it at her son’s face. The glasses flew off. I was sick of it there.

I moved in with my mom. She was living with another guy. He was nice. His name is Shawn. Shawn was different than him. Whenever there was a fight on the weekends at his house, I could call Shawn and my mom, and he would come pick me up. I hated to visit him. He would have his can of beer and he would talk nasty to me. It was very nasty and a figure like him should never talk to me that way. He even called me a bitch. He told me that I would never graduate from college and that I would probably get pregnant before I turned 21. I hated him with a passion. I never wanted to visit him again. I kept saying to myself, “Why is he so mean? How does he not have any faith in me?” I would go home and cry on my mother’s shoulder. She would just hug me and comfort me, like a real parent should.

He never paid his bills. His wife was always complaining about how much in debt they really are. She told him that he should stop buying the beer, but she drinks it too. One day I got