Daddy Don't Hit Me - January 15, 2007

By J. Parker

by j. parker"Pot affects everyone differently." No matter what Nancy Reagan or anyone else said, mom stood by that statement. But a point about which she never argued, and about which no one should ever argue, is that given a long enough timeline, liquor will make you into a mean son of a bitch. Everyone, once they drink past the euphoria, past the inflated self-confidence, past the slurring and stumbling, will become violent. Don't let anyone tell you differently. It's the price of doing business when you trade with alcoholics.

In November of 1981 my parents threw a huge party. Ostensibly it was for my brother's fifth birthday, but everybody knew it wasn't for the kids. It was an excuse for the adults to get drunk and get high. Mom used to say that some people "did pills" and they were worse than she was because of it. But when you get so drunk that you piss yourself, fuck a stranger for twenty bucks, and can't remember it while your husband sleeps with whatever neighbor is convenient, how can you find yourself superior to anyone? That's always been a mystery to me.

So, as the celebration gets into full swing, the level of discourse hovers somewhere around:

"Whore!"

"Bastard!"

"Addict!"

"Drunk!" (Check for everyone in the room!)

And that's when the anger starts. Mom came at Dad with a sucker left and hit him on the temple. He fell back and steadied himself. And with a little confusion, he wiped his face.

In an effort to save us from the violence about to ensure, our neighbor Linda, herself riding a year-long rollercoaster with cocaine peaks and valium valleys, hustled us kids into the unfinished basement. I fought against her but couldn't break free. She was pregnant and would later have a child with a club hand as a result of her drug use, but that didn't matter now.

As the door was closed on me and the other children who were at the party, I saw mom swing at dad again. This time he ducked. Her drunken punch corkscrewed her around in the kitchen. And this time, he punched back.

SMACK. His hand landed solidly in the left tit of the stoned neighbor who'd moved between them. This was the last thing I saw as I was forced into the basement.

Four of us were standing on the stairs behind the locked door on which I was pounding. Me, Danielle (who's mother had just been punched in the tit), my brother and Keith (Danielle's brother). My anxiety was immeasurable. I listened to the chaos above me. I tried to force my way through the door, but they chained the lock. I kicked and screamed, but they wouldn't let me through.

Scared, and afraid, I couldn't stay beneath the bare bulb and wait for my fate to resolve itself. I pried open an interior window from the basement.

Glass. Single pane. A swing from a scrap piece of lumber shattered it, and
soon cleared the frame for my scrawny eight year-old body to shimmy through.

I pulled myself out of the basement into a neighborhood in chaos. When I talk about my childhood, people wonder why family or neighbors didn't step in to stop the madness. What they don't understand is that most of the family and neighbors were at very best enablers and, more often than not, they were my parents' co-conspirators: drinking, getting high, fucking, and fighting along with them.

The woman who'd stepped between my father and mother, and had thus been punched in the tit, was screaming in the middle of the street. She was saying that her husband was going to kill my father.

This, as her husband staggered off of their porch and fell, face first, into their front yard.

My dad just sat on our porch swing and giggled.

To be continued...