“Your mama is always mad about something! What’s new?”
“I didn’t get no dessert or movie, no extra time with my nephew, your grandson who you never ask about. All I got was yelled at, ’cause she’s sick of you.”
“Well,” the old man snickered, “I’m sick of her ass, too. She was ungrateful and tried to wear the pants all the time. She wanna be a man? That’s on her.”
“She didn’t want to be a man. She did what she did because you weren’t pulling your weight. If we’d only relied on you, me and Dallas wouldn’t have had nothin’ to eat, or a roof over our heads. You need to be thanking her.”
“I paid that woman from every one of my checks! Diapers, baby food, you name it! You want to listen to only her side of things—you was too young to remember the truth.”
“I’m surprised that every time you say the word ‘truth,’ lightning doesn’t strike. It’s a foreign word to you, ain’t it? Doesn’t roll easily off the tongue.”
“I don’t need this shit right now, Axel.”
“And I do?” It began to sprinkle, so he turned on the windshield wipers. “You think I wanted to be at the Department of fuckin’ Corrections today, all because you like to put your hands on women?”
“I didn’t put my hands on her!”
“You did! Tammy defends you all the time. She wouldn’t lie about this. My question is, why in the hell would you push her in the first place? She’s a woman!”
“She weighs three times as much as me, and could pound me into the ground! Her being a woman don’t have a damn thing to do with it!”
“I don’t give a shit if she weighed as much as five elephants stacked on top of one another. She’s still a woman, someone you say you love. What really makes this outrageous is that this isn’t your first rodeo. It was just the first time the police were called about it because she was in the hospital and got confronted. Tammy practically licks your boots when you walk past. Maybe that’s why you did it, because you don’t respect ’er and it’s easier to terrorize someone you see as weak. Poor excuse for a man!”
“I didn’t hit her first!”
“Oh, so it went from ‘I didn’t hit her’ to ‘I didn’t hit her first.” Liar. Every time you open your mouth, liquor goes in and lies come out.”
“She smacked me. I instinctively pushed her, Axel, and she fell back. It was an accident! I never hit your mama, and I ain’t never hit no lady I’ve been with on purpose, so stop tryna paint me out to be the bad guy!”
“You knew if you hit mama, she would have shot you faster than a narcoleptic falls asleep. You got drunk again last night, and went crazy. As usual.”
“Just shut your mouth and take me home. I’ll make sure you get your fuckin’ money back, so I don’t have to hear shit else about this! You make me sorry I had Tammy call!”
“Good! All you want to do is get in this house and get sloshed anyway, even after all that happened.” He made the wipers go faster, as the rain was now coming down harder. “You don’t have a relationship with your grandson, Dad. Dallas avoids you half the time because you’re nothin’ but a big pit of festering negativity. You only call me when you need something, or think you can get some type recognition off my name, and you treat your ol’ lady like crap.” I hate you…
“Axel, if you want to talk to me about this, we ain’t doing it in front of mixed company. You’re showing off because this lady is here. That’s what is going on.”
“Bull. I always talk to you like this, and you complain about it. Each time, I hope and pray that my outrage will mean something to you—just one time—but it never does.”
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME THEN, AXEL?!”
“Honesty! I JUST WANT THE TRUTH!” he exploded. Something was happening, and he no longer had control over himself. His heart was beating so fast, it hurt, and his anger soared so high even heaven looked far away.
“The truth about what, Axel?! What is so damn important that if you don’t hear it, your entire world will crumble?”
“I want to know who you really are! I’m thirty-four years old, and I still couldn’t tell you what you like to do for fun besides drink. I have no idea what type of childhood you had because you only told me lies. I don’t know what foods you enjoyed growing up—simple things like that! And the things you did tell me, well, so much for that! I found out a lot of what you said to me when I was a kid wasn’t even true. Do you know how that made me feel?!”