Crimson Smile

That dilapidated house in Eastwood made every day feel like a horror film. Its current state more accurately depicts what it was like to live inside. Its paint has long faded. The grass is overgrown and weeds have destroyed a yard that was once so meticulously managed. The windows are permanently shut, with blankets covering them from the inside as not to allow anybody to see within.  I could count on my hands the nights we were able to sleep peacefully. The almost daily reality was a bleak one filled with screams, tears, and blood. I can admit that it is only in retrospect that I am able to humanize those involved in making my adolescence what it was. Try as I might, for quite some time, I simply could not move past those memories of holding my baby brother in my hands as we hid in the closet. I could not let go of the fear I felt when those doors opened and I looked up to see that figure standing overhead, seething with an unexplainable hatred that we could to nothing to quell. 

That hatred, in many ways, framed my childhood. I vividly remember nights spent praying to God that I could just disappear. After a particular run in with this hatred, I stood in our dimly lit bathroom reflecting on the moments that led to me looking at my bloody smile in the mirror. After the first hit, it was usually all a blur. The blows would come in flurries paired with expletives and critiques that today I find quite difficult to remember. At times, I wonder why I refer to the hatred as if it was separate from the person it called home.  Perhaps in an effort to humanize my stepfather, I made the choice to separate him from what I viewed as the driving force behind his actions towards me.

I was only a child when my mother got married, four years old to be exact. To that point in my life my mother was all that I knew. To that point in my life I had been raised almost exclusively by women, save for my grandfather. Not once, did I ever feel unsafe in the arms of an aunt, or of my grandmother. I learned through those women what it meant to be in a family. The idea of this man that my mother chose could treat me in such a way is something I couldn’t understand while it was happening. More hurtful than anything though, was the realization that he would continue to be around. It seemed as if my mother was faced with a choice between my stepfather and I, and his continued presence after our initial violent encounter was all the answer I needed, even at 11 years old. My mind shifted from expecting to be saved from my circumstances, to trying to understand the people causing me pain so that I could best exist within the chaos. 

I could see that my mother viewed what had occurred between my stepfather and me as a constant reminder of her missteps. She was the youngest of my grandmother’s five daughters, and at the age of nineteen she found herself pregnant for who she believed was the love of her life. Unfortunately, he did not quite view her the way she viewed him and in a turn of events that has become all too common she found herself alone. Still a child, heartbroken and disappointed, she now had a baby on the way. My mother has often expressed a sense of guilt for the circumstances under which she brought me into the world. In her mind, she was supposed to get married and have children, in that order. Finding the right person was imperative to her given her own upbringing. As a child she had grown up with an abusive, alcoholic father whose tirades left a lasting air of anxiety within the family long after he passed away. She refused to find herself in my grandmother’s position. Her environment left her with feelings of detachment and an apathy that she carried well into adulthood. When she met Alfred, my father, that apathy temporarily faded. He wasn’t extraordinary in any sense according to her. If anything, it was the fact that he was so ordinary that drew her in. The sense of stability he provided at an age as young as twenty two appealed to her. Could this be the man to start a family with? My existence makes it pretty clear which conclusion she came to in that regard. What she could never have accounted for was Alfred’s inner turmoil completely changing who he was, and changing the trajectory of both of their lives as a result. 

I’ll never quite know if my father loved my mother the way she says she loved him. From the few conversations we’ve had I gather that their connection was more rooted in physical attraction for him. He had grown up in a house with both parents and his older sister. Growing up, my grandmother and grandfather were both police officers, and from the outside their family looked well put together. But inside the walls of their Fox Hill home there was a war. My grandfather heavily abused drugs, and that abuse would leak into every area of his life. Like a persistent stream of water, wearing away at everything in its path. He would blatantly and repeatedly step out on my grandmother, who had left her family on the island at the age of seventeen to marry him. When confronted, he would beat her along with anybody who tried to stop him. By the time my mother was pregnant my father had been out of high school for about three years. He had gotten a job at the airport and for a while, and to those looking on from a distance; it seemed as if he would be much different than my grandfather. It wasn’t until he lost that job at the airport and received the news that my mother was pregnant, that he became the man he is now. His battle with addiction was one that some say he inherited. Sometimes even I wonder if he stood a chance against the generational burdens passed down by the men before him. Regardless, he handedly lost the battle and turned to drugs. They so violently disfigured the man he was previously that my mother said he was unrecognizable. The calmness and stability that had drawn her in was replaced with a volatile chaotic energy that led to my father having abusive outbursts of his own. 

I now find myself in a similar position as both of my parents. In their cases, abuse covered their worlds in a crimson tint. Nobody came to save them from the whirlwind that life can be, nobody was there to keep their feet planted on the ground. My stepfather knocked me off of mine for years, leaving the taste of blood in my mouth and the pain of abandonment in my heart. I refuse to let the cycle continue. My bloody smile will be the last that mirror sees.