[Author’s Note: As part of the #BareYourMind campaign, here’s a story of an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE). Traumatic events such as witnessing parental conflict can result in long-term negative effects on mental health. If you struggle with mental illness, I encourage you to share your stories as well. Let’s work together to de-stigmatize mental health in our society by giving it a human face.]
Continued from Part 1…
I finally snapped out of my paralysis. I ran to the phone and dialed 911. After a few rings, a woman asked me about my emergency. The voice was monotone and superbly calm. I felt envious of her detachment. She didn’t have to live through the nightmare I was experiencing.
“My mom is trying to kill my dad, or he might kill her,” I said.
The woman, her voice still serenity personified, asked me my address and told me help was on the way. After I hung up the phone, I saw my dad had finally overpowered my mother, holding her down as she lay splayed half-on and half-off the couch. My mother had dropped the hammer. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and her head swiveled from side to side. She was muttering a flood of unintelligible gibberish that almost sounded like words from another language.
Inanely, in that moment I recalled that the mother of a good friend believed in the phenomenon of speaking in tongues. She believed the holy ghost would reach down and touch people sometimes, if they were devout enough, and bless them with the ability to do miraculous things, such as the spontaneous ability to speak other languages.
My friend’s mom claimed she could speak in tongues for a specific purpose: to help heal sick people. She would kneel next to her kids when they got sick and “do the overlooks.” For people like her of Italian descent, this was something you did to call for God’s help to cure someone of disease, or even the curse of the evil eye. My mother had never believed in that stuff. But it sounded like she was doing it now, for sure. She seemed possessed by something, but it sure didn’t seem like a holy spirit.
Meanwhile, I had never seen my father look terrified. His eyes looked blank, and he was breathing heavily. I assume he was in shock. As he continued to hold my mother down, he glanced at me and asked if I had called the police. All I could do was nod at him. My sister hadn’t moved at all. She might as well have been a statue.
Soon, we heard a siren in the distance. Then, red and blue swirling lights flashed through our windows. There was a firm staccato knock at the door. I surprised myself at how nimbly crossed the room to let in the police. I think I just wanted this bad dream to be over.
The cops were efficient, separating my parents before assessing my mother’s state before one of them summoned an ambulance with his walkie talkie. The other officer was questioning my father, who seemed to only half-hear the questions. The EMTs arrived in their ambulance. They checked my mother and gently placed her on a gurney. We watched as they wheeled her out of our house. In the crawling red lights of the ambulance, my street seemed bathed in blood. Some of our neighbors had come out to gape at what was happening.
The EMTs asked my father if he wanted to ride in the ambulance. He just shook his head. That’s when my own anger toward him surged up again. He should have gone with her. But he really didn’t give a shit. This whole incident wouldn’t really slow down his shitty behavior. It was just a minor hiccup to him. I wondered if he even had a shred of remorse for the stress he inflicted on my mother.
He barely looked at my sister and I before wandering off to the bedroom he shared with my mother and closing the door behind him. All I could do was stand there, helpless, as my rage rose within me. I held my breath and flexed my fingers, convulsively opening and closing my fists. My ample imagination began to slip the bonds of my control. In my mind I saw a much taller, stronger version of myself beating my father to a pulp. It wouldn’t be until years later that he would get his comeuppance, and my mother would get a sort of justice in the form of a bitter divorce that went heavily in her favor.
But all that was no comfort to us, their youngest children. I was left alone with my sister, who still hadn’t moved from where she stood. I gently sat her down on the couch and hugged her. The events of that night were as deadly as a nuclear blast for our young minds. The concussion of the initial blast rocked the foundations of our world. The fallout would catch up with both of us years later, causing severe damage to our quality of life in the afterglow of its deadly radiation.
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