There's no going back

I’ve never been on a train and personally, never want to. It sounds like an invitation to join a party that you can never back out of.

Too late, you’re already on board. Like getting onto a boat. What’s up with these boat people?!? They’re always talking about what they did on their boat last weekend and how great it was etc. and ‘you just have to come along next time, you’ll love it!!!!’ Well, what happens once you’re on that boat and you want to get off? Good luck with that.

And you immediately want to get off. There’s usually no destination, they’re always drinking and everyone else is a stranger. At least on a train there are tracks. There’s a start.

And since you got me talkin’ about train wrecks, why don’t we start with my dad.

He hit her. He always did. Unless I tried to intervene. I would jump on his back and punch him as hard as I could in the chest and back but I was only nine.

But it worked. He would stop, laugh at me, and stop hitting her. And she never once made eye contact. With either of us. Ever. She never once said anything. Not to him, not to me. She just looked at the floor and never said a fucking thing. EVER. To this day, I’ve never even heard a thank you or an “I’m sorry”. Even a ‘what the fuck is wrong with you’ would have been a normal question, right?

And that runaway train just kept running.

I was the youngest of four daughters. At the time I had an older sister by three years that didn’t want to have any part in the nightly beatings, she just hid. She always hid. And I waited for him to come home from the bar each night, knowing that if I didn’t do anything, no one else would.

My two oldest sisters had moved out and never looked back. In fact, I’ve never once heard them say anything about the situation, as if it never happened. All I can think is that maybe for them, it didn’t. It’s easier that way, to pretend they didn’t just leave us to fend for ourselves like we did, or assume that we found some way to hide from it like they had. I don’t know. And I guess, I don’t want to know anymore. They were kids too, and you do what you can to get through. It’s scary as hell when you think back through all of the things you went through and realize that most of it was true, and you’re still walking around like you think you’re normal or something.

Sometimes my mother would have us hide in the old cars in the backyard and watch him walk through the house, looking for us. Looking for my mother. Each room would light up and you could hear him screaming, see him screaming and throwing things, breaking things. It was like watching a movie because he couldn’t get to us from up there, couldn’t hurt my mother from up there. Not here in this rotted old car that was supposed to be worth something. Something worth putting back together.

So the next night the door would open, the whistle would go off, the train would hit the tracks, and we’d start over again. And again. And again.

Until one night, I went to stay with a friend. And when I went home the next morning, there was a car waiting there for me and a lot of blood on the screen door and I was told to go inside and pack an overnight bag and be back in the car in five minutes. While they waited outside.

I was nine.