“You will do everything I ask of you,” my father continues. “You will wear the clothes I lay out for you every morning. You will have the friends that I say. No more talking to Julie. She’s the one feeding you all of this nonsense, isn’t she?”
“Julie and I have been friends for over twenty years!”
“You want to try to lay down laws on me? Then I get to do the same to you.”
“But you aren’t going to stop seeing Sally, are you?”
There is a sickening sound. Six-year-old me doesn’t realize it at the time, but I recognize that sound now.
It is the sound of a slap.
Of hard contact.
My mom makes no sound.
“I will do what I want,” my father roars. “I am Brandon Slade, and you will not forget your place. You’re lucky I don’t divorce you.”
Divorce.
I may be six, but I have an idea of what divorce means. A boy in my class has divorced parents. I know he has two moms and two fathers. He has two Christmases, but he never seems happy about that.
I don’t want another mom or father.
But I am scared. As much as I want to open the door and tell Father and Mom to stop fighting, to try to get them to remember that they love one another, I can’t. I am too frightened, so I just stand there and continue to listen.
“Why don’t you?” my mom asks.
“You would like that, wouldn’t you? You would lose the servants, but you would make enough that you wouldn’t have to work a day in your life and all because you poisoned my heart.”
“At one time, you had a heart. You let that shrivel away. I tried—”
“You act like you had some hold on me.”
“I did,” my mom says. “You did love me once, even if you don’t love me now.”
“I guess love really is blind,” my father says.
“You can’t truly believe that you have no love in your heart for me, for Erika. You know that she adores you. She would do anything for you.”
“And that frightens you, doesn’t it?” he asks. “You’re afraid I’ll use her when she’s older.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time you used a woman.”
“I never put you into a compromising position.”
“No, you only stepped out on me, and I’m supposed to play the part of a fool.”
“Damnit, Kimberly, you’re pushing the wrong buttons tonight.”
At this point, I am growing even more scared. My hand even touches the knob, and I am trying to work up the courage to go inside when there is a crash inside. A yell. My fingers tighten, my wrist turning.
A hand touches my shoulder. Maria Lopez, one of our maids, stares at me with a disapproving glare.
I race away from her, from my parents’ closed door, all the way to my bed. Beneath the blankets I bury myself, trying to hide away, to be like a turtle. Maybe here in my bed, I can pretend that everything is all right, that everyone is happy.
I don’t hear the door open, but I do hear my floor creak. My arms flail as I try to get the blanket off me, and then it is lifted away.
My father sits on the edge of the bed. “It’s going to be just you and me for a few days,” he says. “How does that sound?”