When you’re a child and you wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of your parents fighting, it might last a minute – or ten - but it feels like forever. You creep out of your bed to the mouth of the stairs.
Then you retreat, then creep forward again, this time bolder, down a few steps. But you run back to bed when you see a stomping figure cross the base of the stairs, bellowing and waving his arms. The sound of your mother being slapped sends a jolt through you. Should you go help her? But you are only five. What if you
get hit too? What if he kills her? What if he kills you? These thoughts swim in a circle of anxiety until exhaustion steals you back to sleep. A slamming door makes you stir, but you do not come to the surface.
You wake happy in the morning, but suddenly remember and race down the stairs to see the carnage you know is there. Your mother is in the kitchen and she smiles at you sheepishly, cup of coffee in hand, red puffy
eyes, the shape of a slap like a raised warning on her left cheek. Her look almost begs you not to mention the
obvious. You smile back, not saying anything, because the consequences of you speaking up will cause her to crumble. This happened once before, and you know better now. This is the first of you learning to parent your mother. The time for speaking up will come years later, but that’s too complicated a thought for
a five-year-old. You eat your count chocula and chatter about anything and nothing, while she recovers herself little by little. You realize that she dreaded this moment too, and the worry that you might ask a question that she will have to answer with a lie. Your thoughts are lost on going out to play.
Every night as you are tucked in, you want to ask. Every night, you worry that you will wake again and hear it, and not know what to do. Your guilt eats you a little more, even though you are afraid to help, and you
are so small. Your shame eats away a bit too. Once, you were so scared when you awoke to the fighting that you couldn’t go downstairs to use the bathroom. You went down the other hall, nearest the attic door, and squatted to wet on the floor. A disgusting, secret thing. You are ashamed and afraid and helpless, and those feelings chase you for many years. The fighting doesn’t happen every night, but you know it will happen again soon. Your stomach tightens and you feel a little sick.
These things shape you, without you ever knowing it. They flavor your life, your relationships, your ability to forgive. Some nights even now you lie awake, feeling five again, waiting to hear the slap and sliding
into sleep, glad to not hear it. Your last thought before sleep is the guilt, the desire to go back, intervene, be the hero, and fix all the broken pieces of your mother. But it’s far too late. You dream of her, and the dream is bittersweet.