Split (15 page)

chapter 23

c
hristion’s car is back in the shop
, and when I pick him up at the hospital, he tells me the garage will take a few more days. Could I pick him up again tomorrow?

“No problem. You know what? I’ll bet we could manage with just one car. It would save on expenses. Maybe you should just abandon the Pontiac in the shop.”

“I don’t know if it will be harder or easier when Mom gets here. Is she coming by car?”

“I don’t know.”

He says nothing, and I just grip the steering wheel tighter. The silence stretches out, as if she’s here already, as if she, Christian, and I are working on becoming a family, a threesome rather than a pair. It will change everything.

“If she does try to leave him, it’ll be risky, you know? Mirriam told me that that’s the pattern. When she tries to leave, it’s the most dangerous time,” he says.

“You needed Mirriam to tell you that?” I say.

He is quiet, and I realize that I’ve been too sarcastic, but I don’t know how to soften it now.

“Jace,” he says quietly.

“Yeah?”

“She promised she’d come, right? She said that?”

“She said, ‘I’ll come to you.’”

“Oh. Can I ask you a question?” he says, finally breaching the rules that I’ve stomped all over this whole time.

“Just this once,” I say, grinning, but he doesn’t join me.

“Did she ever try to leave him again, since that one time?”

I shake my head. “I begged her not to leave him then. Did you know that?”

“You were only, what, six?”

“Five,” I say. “She’ll be smarter this time, right? I mean, more careful, right?”

“Only six more days,” he says.

We’re silent the rest of the way home. I turn on the music to make it seem more natural, as if we’re both not thinking about the day she tried to hustle us off to a shelter, the day she decided that the lower-class life she grew up with was better than the abuse she was taking.

When I try to sleep that night, it’s completely futile. I keep hearing my dad’s voice, going from angry to icy. I keep watching an eleven-year-old Christian step between my dad and her.

She had told him that if he ever touched a hair on our heads she would be gone. I don’t know; maybe that’s why Christian did it, to force her to get us out. But I think Christian just loved her too much to keep on watching silently.

Christian and I were sitting in his room while Dad was screaming at her downstaris. I don’t remember about what anymore. We were trying to play Go Fish, but each time we said “fish” our voices were a little quieter, listening to my father spewing his acid. Then we heard a smack against her skin: open-handed, a slap. Where? Her face? Her arm? Christian got up and cranked up some music.

“Turn that shit down!” we heard.

He leaned over and turned down the music. I tried to listen to the woman in the music wailing instead; I tried to hear only the guitar screaming. Christian and I were both staring at the cards in our hands when we heard a crash. We looked at each other over our cards, and he put down his hand slowly, open-faced, so I could see the spades and diamonds, the hearts and clubs fanned out against the carpet.

In his eyes, I saw an unreadable look, maybe the first one I had ever seen. I always knew what to do when I looked at Christian; he would shift his weight, and I would know to step back; he would twitch his lips, and I would know to laugh. But this was enigmatic. It was the only indication I got that we were about to enter different worlds: him taking the hits, me still protected and watching.

He stood up and walked to the door. I watched him hesitate before he turned the handle. I didn’t know if he was waiting for me. I stood up and went downstairs with him, each footfall just a little slower than the last until I was going right foot, pause, left foot, pause.

When we got to the bottom, he swept the air behind him, motioning to me to stay back. But when he disappeared, I ran the length of the hall and peered into the archway.

My father had my mom by her shirt collar and was pushing her against the china cabinet. Her head was pressing against the glass. Christian stepped right between them, knocking Dad’s hands to the side.

“You son of a bitch,” Christian said.

“Christian, honey—”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Dad said.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Christian said, and I noticed that his head only reached our father’s shoulder.

I edged into the archway, but Christian straightened up as if he could tell I was there without looking. He shook his head, and I knew to stay out. I crept over to the side and watched.

“I’m your father. I tell you what to do, and you do it.”

“Not when you hit my mother, asshole.”

“Christian, that’s enough,” my mother said, grabbing his arm and trying to ease him out of my father’s way.

“What’s the matter?” Christian said. “You want to hit me, but you can’t because she’s got you on a leash, doesn’t she?”

Christian didn’t see it coming. His head snapped back when Dad popped him, and Christian, not used to taking it yet, went down, hitting his head on the floor.

Fightology Lesson #6: To reduce the chances of a concussion, keep your chin tucked to your chest on your way down.

I screamed; I was not schooled in being a witness yet, either.

The next day, she packed while he was at work. I was eating chocolate chips straight out of the bag for lunch when the taxi honked. Christian grabbed my hand. As we started out through the garage, I saw my bike. I grabbed the handle bars and started bringing it with me.

“No, honey,” my mom said. “You can’t bring that.”

“Then I’m not going,” I said. “I want my bike.” A vision of a new bike made me hopeful. “Unless I’ll get a new one at the shelter.”

“Well, let’s see when we get there.”

“No,” Christian said. “You won’t. Jeez, Mom, at least be honest with the kid.”

He came back and grabbed my hand. I clung to the open garage door.

“But Dad won’t be able to find us.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea, stu—”

“Christian,” Mom said.

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. He could have pried my fingers off the door. He could have jerked me away. He only let go of my hand and walked on.

“I think it’s better to leave, so I’m going.”

I let go and ran to catch up, taking one last look at my bike.

When I turned back, my dad had appeared out of nowhere, his car blocking the taxi. My mom’s face was deflated, her jaw open, her cheeks sagging. He paid off the driver, moved his car, and ushered us back.

“A taxi? Sometimes, Jennifer, I think you might actually be clever.”

My mother bit her lip and didn’t meet my eye. Christian and I both knew that the taxi wasn’t her idea, that it had been arranged by the shelter.

“You were watching us? I can’t believe you watched us.”

“I don’t have to watch you to know how that little mind of yours works.”

Years later, I learned that this cryptic comment was not about a psychic connection. He
knew
because my mom made a big cash withdrawal, and he kept an e-mail alert on the account. After that, he took her name off the account and handed her cash for all purchases, which made for plenty of awkward moments.

We walked into the garage, and I felt my skin go from hot to cold in the space of a second. As the garage door closed, the sunlight disappeared by degrees.

Here’s the thing that scared me the most: he was calm, he was deliberate when he reached for the hammer. I saw him extend his hand and choose a nail out of his blue toolbox. Usually there was screaming, name-calling before the blows began. But this time, he just walked toward her with the hammer and nail resting in his palm. She backed up, back, back, back, until her feet hit the wall.

“Walter.”

“You know what I always said about taking my kids.”

“You know what I always said about
hitting
my kids.”

He raised the hammer and swung it. I shut my eyes and felt Christian’s arm close around me. I crumpled, and he held me up as I buried my face into his side. I heard the crack of the hammer striking, and he exhaled in one great breath, his stomach pressing against my cheek, so I knew I could look.

My dad pried the head of the hammer out of the wall, not two inches from her ear. When he lifted it a second time, Christian let go of me and rushed my dad. The hammer clattered to the floor. He lifted Christian up and threw him to the cement.

Fightology Lesson #7: Sometimes you’ll need to roll faster than a boot.

I wonder now why I stood there and watched. Why didn’t I race to my downed brother, open the garage door, grab the hammer away, anything? No, I froze and watched him fire his foot into Christian’s stomach, cock it, and slam it into his back and then his face. Christian’s head hit the cement with the distinct
thud
that I came to associate with concussions. He curled up and rolled onto his side with his face resting in a blue-green pool of antifreeze. Incongruously, Mr. Yuk Face flashed in my mind:
Don’t drink the poison
.

My dad regarded the blood on his black dress shoes. He swore. Then he picked the hammer up off the floor and walked to my mother. He grabbed her wrist, and her arm went slack, following Fightology Lesson #8: Relax when the hits are coming because it hurts less. He lifted her hand and pinched the flesh between her thumb and index finger, stretching it up. Pressing the thin flap of skin against the wall, he placed the point of the nail into it.

“Hold still,” he said. “I don’t want to miss.”

“Walter, wait. I won’t try to leave. Not ever again, I promise.” She started sobbing.

But he raised the hammer again. She closed her eyes, her body tensed.

Fightology Lesson #9: Sometimes even the rules don’t protect you.

It took him three slams to pin her skin to the wall.
Thunk
-scream,
thunk
-scream.
Thunk
.

“You’ll leave only when I tell you that you can.” His voice was like ice and I thought,
That’s not my father. My father’s voice is like a blanket.

“Only when you say so,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“You won’t ever leave,” he said in his ice voice.

“I won’t ever leave.”

He kicked Christian again, and I heard a grunt.

“My kids,” he said. “My rules.”

When he drew his leg back again, a wordless scream erupted from me.
Stop. Stop. Please, please, stop
. He whirled around to me and stared at me as if he had forgotten I was there. He tilted his head.

“Jace?” he said, his voice suddenly sounding like my father’s again. “Go into the house,” he said gently. “Go on.”

In the sudden silence, I looked at Christian, who was propped on his hands and knees, antifreeze and blood racing each other to the ground. He lifted his hand and motioned to the door, protecting me still.

“Close the door all the way,” my dad said. “And go on up to your room, all right?”

I went inside the house. Our kitchen, empty and clean. I clicked the door shut, but I didn’t go to my room. I stared at the hinges, rust seeping out through the seams, and squatted on the floor, hugging my knees.

“Look what you did!” I heard my father screaming. “Did you see his face? How am I going to explain this to him now? He wanted to stay. He understands loyalty.” I heard a muffled sound, Christian’s voice. “What?”

“I’ll talk to him,” said Christian.

“You?” I could hear contempt thickening his voice. “You’re as bad as her.”

I heard his shoes striking the floor, coming toward me.
I should get up
, I thought,
I should go to my room. Like he told me
.

“Dad?” Christian said, and the shoes stopped. “Can I … May I please take her hand down?”

“No. She doesn’t want to come home.”

“I do, Walter. I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t rush into any decisions, Jennifer. Take your time.”

I uncrouched and climbed the stairs to my room. No place seemed safe. I crawled under my bed, but that didn’t work. I walked out and went into Christian’s room. He had a prism hanging in his window, and I watched the rainbows bend across his wall.

When I heard her scream again, I knew that my dad had pulled the nail out.

When my dad found me, he carried me to my room and, I clung to him. I can’t remember almost anything he said to me except, “I couldn’t let her take you from me. What else could I do? Don’t you want to stay with your dad?”

And I did. Even then, I did.

What would life be like without him? He was our glue. At the center of our lives, he determined what we would eat for dinner, where we would go for vacation, what school we’d attend. Wouldn’t our family spin out of orbit, drifting away and lost, if we weren’t charting our course around him?

At dusk, he dumped out the recycling bin, going through
Chicago Tribune
by
Chicago Tribune
until he found the one he wanted. He cut out an article from the newspaper about a man who was acquitted of killing his wife. I watched the scissors neatly snipping, and him smiling. He went into the garage with a flashlight and read it to her. I heard him telling her that he had his defense planned out and that he knew how to get off.

By dinnertime, I was starving, having only had choco-late chips for lunch, and I thought about how it was outside and how hungry Christian and my mom would be. He refused to take them anything to eat, but I asked if I could. He considered it and then said he was proud of my loyalty to them. So I spread peanut butter and jelly on some bread and poured them each a glass of milk. I peeled carrots, sloughing off their thin, frail skins, revealing the bright orange meat beneath. I put the food and drinks on a tray and carefully balanced it as I opened the door.

I walked into the windowless garage. In spite of the dark, I could make out my mom. She had sunken to the floor, but Christian was not visible, not even a shadow. I hesitated in the doorway until my eyes adjusted.

When I took my first step in, Christian appeared out of nowhere, and I jumped away as he reached for a sandwich. I stared into his eyes, which looked foreign and unknowable. Yesterday, before the card game, I knew every expression. This one was new. It was hunger and panic and desperation. When he reached again, this time for me, I dropped the tray. It clattered to the ground, and I heard glass shatter as I ran back into the house. My father was in the other room, and he came out as I came in. I ran straight into his waist, his belt buckle cold against my cheekbone. I smelled his Bay Rum as his arms went around me.