The Getaway

My stepdad always had the advantage when things got violent. He was rough knuckled and strong, spent hours hitting that heavy bag he hung up in the garage, and I was 8 years old. Now it was going to be different, I was sure of it. I’d played little league all summer. Not that tee-ball coaches throwing soft pitch bullshit like the year before. I’m talking real little league. Fast pitch. I scored two home runs that season and I was chubby. The next Babe Ruth. I was going to splatter my stepdad’s head across the wood-paneling of our double-wide with an aluminum baseball bat.  

At no point in my choppy, slideshow memory was violence far away. I remember Detroit. We had a white house. Our first house. Like the rich people on TV. I was standing in their bedroom doorway wearing itchy green footie pajamas. He had the telephone cord stretched from the kitchen wall and wrapped around her throat. She flailed and clawed at his legs, punching at him as he stood above her. The cord cut into her neck.

I’m not trying to paint a picture of some mousy quivering victim when it comes to my mom. She was the little sister of eight brothers. Only one of which hadn’t done prison time and he was a preacher, which might be worse. One time my stepdad bought her a brand new yellow Trans-Am. To celebrate she went out drinking and after a half bottle of tequila got mad at him about something. When the Trans-Am came speeding at him across the yard he ran in the house to escape. She kept the pedal down and drove through the front of the house. The truth is that she started at least half of the damn fights they ever had, but what was I going to do? She was my mom. I was always going to be on her side.

The night I tried to kill my stepdad was a typical Saturday. Our neighbors packed into the dining room playing cards. Dinner plates of crushed up pills and bottles of liquor getting passed around. They drank, snorted, and placed bets with nuts and bolts out of my stepdad’s toolbox. I watched TV in the living room. An uneasy current swam through my chest and belly as they got louder. There was too much fun. Too much laughter. I knew that the better the time, the worse the fight.

I piled couch cushions on the floor and copied professional wrestler moves as I dove into them. Before each flying elbow drop, I’d yell for my mom to watch me. If I could get her attention for a minute it might break their momentum. It didn’t work. I asked her to time me as I ran up and down the hall to see how fast I was. She made up a number. As a last resort, I said I felt sick and recited a liar’s list of symptoms. She told me that I should go lay in bed. I begged her to bring medicine and tuck me in. She said “later.”

“He sure wants to be the center of attention,” said one of the card players.  

“He gets like that sometimes,” my mom replied.

I went to my bedroom and pulled the baseball bat out of my closet. I watched my reflection in the window and practiced my swing. My grip was firm. My stance was nice and wide. Bart Simpson was on the front of my white shirt jumping his skateboard and yelling “cowabunga.” It was my favorite shirt. No one made fun of me for wearing it at school. I took it off and folded it on my bed. I raised the bat above my head and flexed my muscles. Chubby boy tits jumped, and I was Conan the Barbarian. I waited.

Good time voices turned sharp and mean. Footsteps moved through the trailer. The front door creaked open and then slammed shut. There was a short silence before the “mother fuckers” began. I stood next to my bedroom door at the ready. My baby sister started crying. My stepdad stomped down the hall toward her room. My mom screamed that my stepdad couldn’t get it up anymore and followed him. The trailer shook and wood paneling let out a dull cracking groan as it split against the weight of someone. Go time. I opened the door.  

My mom was firing off punches left and right. Most were grazing shots, coming in wide and clipping the corners of his eyes. His arms extended like a white trash Frankenstein as he shielded his face and grabbed at her hair. I stepped out behind them into the living room. He looked past my mom, into my eyes.  

“I’ll stick that bat up your fucking ass you little shit!” he yelled.

“Not today,” I thought as I put the swing in motion. I kept my eye on the ball and visualized the connection. My mom was backpedaling and off-balance when his hands slammed into her shoulders. She fell against me sending us both to the floor and trapping my legs beneath her. The bat slipped from my hands. He crouched low over my mom, grabbed a handful of her hair and dropped his fist hard into her face. He did it again. Then again. He picked up the bat.

I woke up to the sound of my baby sister crying and my stepdad yelling “Die, you fucking bitch.” The front door was open and the air was blowing in across my wet face. My legs wobbled as I stood and teetered my way to the porch. My mom was flat on the oil-stained driveway. Her face and neck purple. The blood from her mouth sprayed against his leather boot. He torqued his foot back and forth on her throat like she was a cigarette he was trying to extinguish.

As I reached the bottom of the porch steps his fist connected with my nose. My feet went out from under me and my head cracked against the water spigot on the side of the trailer. A deep shame bubbled inside me as I curled into a ball. I heard my mom spit and gasp for air. He walked back into the trailer, stopping to kick me in the stomach on his way by. The door slammed shut and the lock clicked. My baby sister still cried in the distance.

My mom crawled up the stairs, got to her feet, and pounded her hands against the door. She picked up the lid to the BBQ grill and headed toward the living room window. A few months prior I’d ducked out of the way of a fastball while playing catch and it took out the kitchen window.  All the slaps to the head I received taught me that windows are expensive and we didn’t have that kind of money. I knew I had to stop her.  

“Mama, no!” I yelled jumping up and running at the door. 

She was in mid-swing; the red grill top looking like a giant cartoon boxing glove. She hit the window, and I hit the door at the same time. Glass flew into the living room, and the front door bent inward, broke off its hinges and fell to the floor. My stepdad was standing at the end of the hallway, rocking my little sister in his hands. I marched toward him demanding that he hand me the baby. He looked at me for a moment, then at my bloody mother crawling through the shattered window frame. He handed me the baby and walked into his bedroom closing the door behind him. 

We loaded into the car and drove around for a long time. My sister slept in her car seat while I was in front listening to my mom mother fuck my stepdad. I put my head against the cold window and looked at the night. We stopped in parking lots where she would check her face in the visor mirror and rub her swollen eyes. She dug for change near the ashtray and stood crying at a payphone. Streets and landmarks became unfamiliar and my eyes closed.

I woke to my mom opening the car door. She rubbed my head and told me we were going to stay with her friend Heather for the night. We shuffled up a squeaky wooden staircase to a third-floor apartment. Heather gave me a blanket and I laid curled up on the floor watching Beetlejuice on HBO. I tried not to listen to my mom cry to her friend on the couch behind me. I said I was hungry. They gave me a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies. I ate the whole box then fell asleep sometime before the end of the movie.  

In the morning the pain in my head and stomach was a constant throb. I told my mom it felt like I had an earache and toothache all over my head. She said she was sorry and that Heather was going to let us stay with her for a little while.  We were leaving my stepdad. We would be safe and happy, and my mom promised to stop drinking. She said when we got home I needed to hurry and pack up all my favorite things so I could bring them with me. I felt clean, like a new convert to some religion. There was a future away from this.  

When we walked inside the trailer my stepdad was sitting on the couch. His eyes were fat, glossy purple lumps. My mom’s combinations had done a better job than I thought. He’d torn apart the couch cushions, bent and broken the blades of the ceiling fan hung near the floor. The smashed television was in the middle of the living room. There was a pile of ripped and broken picture frames. I gave him my best tough guy grimace as I walked to my room and started packing.  

I stuffed my things into a backpack. Nintendo games and books I hadn’t read. Walkman, tapes, wheat pennies, and my Bart Simpson shirt. Most of what I decided to leave behind were old toys. Little kid stuff like action figures and toy trucks from back when I would play pretend. I thought about Heather’s apartment, the warm blanket, and HBO. I thought about Oatmeal Cream Pies. I thought about a new school with new kids. I thought about a new stepdad.  

I slung the backpack over my shoulder and walked into the living room. They were on the couch hugging as they cried, their faces pressed into each other’s neck. I told my mom I was ready to go. They both sniffled and looked at me. They promised it would never happen again. They promised things were going to be different. They promised it would be better from now on. They promised we would be happy together.