My mom and Ernie lived in the corner house on Zak road next
to a park and down the street from my middle school. From the outside it looked
like a cute little suburban neighborhood where kids played in the street and
rode their bikes around the block. For the most part it was just that…except on
some days.
My step dad, Ernie, was an outdoorsman. Actually, I believe
he still is. Growing up, he always made sure his girls were fishing and camping
and exploring. He didn’t treat us like boys, he respected who we were as girls
but us being girls didn’t stop him from teaching us everything we needed to
know about being outside. He taught me how to shoot his hunting rifle. He
bought me my first BB gun for Christmas. I knew about guns, had been around
guns and being in the presence of a gun had never scared be before I saw my
mother holding one. One morning when I was in the 8th grade I woke
up to shouting. They were fighting again. I’m not sure what they were fighting
about this time—I never knew what the fights were actually about. Maybe he
found my mother’s weed stash again. This was common. As I was getting dressed
for school, the shouting turned into screaming and now the babies were crying. I
opened the bedroom door and went to eat my cereal. The kitchen walls were no
Kevlar to the bellowing coming from their room. Then all of a sudden the door
swung open and both of them rushed from the bedroom. Ernie chased my mom who
was carrying his rifle. My mother turned her back to the wall and faced Ernie.
She pushed up against the living room wall shouting at Ernie but all I could
hear was him pleading, “please, please, Soco, don’t do this.” She was pushing
the rifle into his hands yelling, “Just do it Ernie, Just do it. I’m tired of
this. If I’m so awful to be with, just do it!”
When he wouldn’t grab the rifle, she put the barrel into her mouth. He
grabbed the rifle away from her and walked back to the bedroom. My mom followed
him and as she walked by she asked me, “Don’t you have school to get to?” I got
up from the table, grabbed my backpack and walked through the screen door. To
my dismay the front door had been open the entire time. As I walked outside on
my way to school I saw the two kids standing on the sidewalk listening to the
drama oozing from our living room. But this wasn’t the first time theatrics
from our house spilled into the neighborhood.
The humiliation.
