Silence and darkness greeted me whereas usually the television or the radio would have been playing as some form of background noise. Then I heard it, a sound I would never get out of my head for as long as I lived. My mother, screaming, a cry so haunting that I rushed toward it instinctively.
I swung the door open to their bedroom, my mother’s screams pierced the otherwise quiet house, to behold Monty on top of her beating her violently. I grabbed the closest thing I saw, a baseball bat given to him by my grandfather, an old dented wooden bat which my dad insisted was used by Mikey Mantle. Likely another lie, like every other filthy word that had come out of his disgusting mouth. My grandfather had walked out on my old man and his mom when he was a baby. I doubted a man who undervalued his own family would give his son something as purportedly valuable. My father had always drilled into us the idea that he actually gave a fuck about us, as evidenced by his lousy presence and the fact that he provided for the family—no one ever dared to tell Monty that bare minimal parenting wasn’t proof of love, just fulfilling responsibility.
As I watched him raise his clenched fists to strike my mother directly in the head, I charged. He didn’t see me coming until it was too late. I lifted the bat, putting my full weight behind the momentum as I swung, coming down squarely on the back of his head. I watched as he fell on the ground, the blood from the strike splashed back into my face and onto my forearms that gripped the bat with cold calculation and the urge to raise it again. My mother’s blood already stained the floor and what trickled from his head began to conjoin with her pool that was already on the floor. I tried to feel my mother’s pulse, not knowing if she was ok or not.
“I’m gonna kill you,” my father spat, trying to get on his feet.
Without thinking, I struck again. The bat knocked him off his feet and he flew back, landing on his butt. He dabbed his thumb on the corner of his lips, touching the gash that had opened there and was cascading blood all along the crown of his head from the first blow. His eyes, cold, calm, and exacting, lacked the rage that usually persisted there.
“I am going to kill you. And you know what the best part is? No one is gonna do shit to me, cause your stupid ass attacked me first. You’ve always been worthless, Calvin and nobody will miss you.”
“No, Tyler, no! Let him go,” my mother pleaded.
She was alive, holding one arm limp on her side, her nose broken, crooked and caked with blood. Mom tried to move as if to protect me, but my father was quicker even incapacitated with blows.
He lunged toward me, but before he could swing his fist, I hit him in the head with the bat again. But unlike the first two, this time I didn’t stop. I kept going, concentrated only on my rage. At that moment, I wanted him dead. Eighteen years of abuse. Abuse against me, my brother Fox, and especially my mom. I wanted to be free of him, and I knew that as long as we both walked this earth, I would never be free.
So, I kept hitting him, hitting until my mother’s piercing plea broke through my thick blanket of hate. I lowered the bat and was immediately flooded with shame.
I looked down at the pool of blood around my feet, Monty’s lifeless body on the hardwood floor, and heard the bat making a clunking sound as it hit the ground.
“Calvin, what did you do?” my mother sobbed. She examined Monty for any signs of life, her hands roved over dad’s body like she loved him. I realized right there in that moment, that violence doesn’t preclude love. He beat her and she had learned to accept that as a part of who he was.
I stared at her, the tears streaming down her face, and I wasn’t sure if her pain was for the husband she lost or the son she was about to lose.
“I set us free.”
Chapter 27
ELLISON
The sirens that came blaring down the street stopped at Calvin’s house and the neighbors moved to their windows to peek out in curiosity. If there was drama in the neighborhood, it always took place at the Montgomery’s. The only other police cruisers on our street were the ones my dad parked in our own driveway. I’m sure the Montgomerys had piqued the interest of everyone in our subdivision at some point, but most of them knew Meghan, Cal, and Fox to be good neighbors and upstanding citizens. It was the club members taking over the place on the weekends that came up at city council meetings, according to my mother. I wasn’t immediately alarmed by the chaos, I’d seen it before and was used to the club members' delinquency calling attention to the Mongomery house. They ran there to have Monty shield them from persecution, as he had ties that could get them out of binds rather quickly, to the great chagrin of my father.