TRIGGER ALERT – Please be aware that this post discusses violent outbursts.
Dirty-look duels
Supper could go in two directions, and neither was in my favor.
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When Dad came in the house, it was expected that we would be there ready to greet him. Lined up by the door, we were his adoring family, welcoming him back from the day’s battles, I guess. It was a small price to pay, though, if it meant a peaceful evening. But it wasn’t over yet.
While he went to change from his office clothes, my mother would be finishing up at the stove, and the rest of us were supposed to be setting the food on the table. If he was in a bad mood, this was especially critical so as to keep things from deteriorating. So for sure, it was all hands on deck, and I stayed in the kitchen. Too many nights, I’d be in the line of fire soon enough. No point in risking it any sooner than necessary.
If he was in a good mood, I still wasn’t off the hook, though. He would start chatting and expect me to accompany him to his bedroom while he changed. I was torn. Of course, I was supposed to help Mom, and I knew it…and wanted to. But I also knew that if he expected me to be with him, I had better follow, at least for a few minutes. If I didn’t, he would take offense, get angry, and then the night would still go badly. So, forced to choose between what Mom wanted and what Dad wanted, even as I wanted to choose Mom, it had to be Dad. The repercussions of choosing her over him were too dire.
But that didn’t mean I went unscathed. For the days I followed him and fulfilled what he expected, I faced her wrath when I returned to the kitchen. As soon as I walked in, her eyes shot laser beams at me across the room. I hated it. I felt like such garbage. But it was survival to me.
She never said a word to him, like telling him I should be helping her. And she never said a word out loud to me either. I don’t think she dared. But she made her fury clear to me — her look said it all.
So supper was almost always the duel of the dirty looks — my family’s name for angry glances. I was going to get them from one parent or the other, and it just came down to which one did I risk on any given day.
Did you practice your accordion today?
On the days he was in a bad mood, I had to be prepared for his questions fired at me like bullets.
“Did you polish my shoes like I asked you to?”
“Did you do the report I told you to?”
“Did you ….” and at this point, insert any number of things. He always seemed to have a perfect sense for the very thing I hadn’t accomplished. It didn’t matter if I did all the other chores. He didn’t ask about those. He’d always zero in on the one thing I hadn’t done yet, and then hell would start.
And the worst of those questions was: “Did you practice your accordion today?”
Up the street from us was a small music shop. So many times walking by it, I would stop and peek through the window at whoever was having their lesson. That accordion — odd and unwieldy — fascinated me. I just wanted to be able to fly my fingers across the panel of buttons on one side as my other hand picked at the keyboard. Never mind that I was barely big enough to hold the thing. But still, it became an obsession…and my doom.
For one, while music, songs, and lyrics speak to my soul to this day, I am NOT a musician. Appreciating music, feeling my soul respond to its call, is a very different thing from “delivering it” on an instrument. So, being a typical kid, I avoided practicing. And it didn’t help that the music teacher spent my entire lesson running his real estate business on the phone. He didn’t care that I didn’t practice. And I was relieved to be off the hook. Until supper-time.
I don’t blame my father for being frustrated with me and my lack of progress. But the usual parent approach would have been to just issue the ultimatum: “If you aren’t practicing, then we’re going to stop the lessons.” That would have made the most sense.
And that would eventually happen once a new teacher took over for my lessons and realized how far behind I was. At that point, my father, rightly so, stopped wasting his hard-earned money and put an end to them. I was grateful. While I loved the art lessons he sent us to and I would have done that every day if I could, music was just a setup for trauma for both of us.
Anyway, on the bad-mood nights, we would sit at the table, say our blessing, and then begin eating in silence. I used to sit right next to him at the table, but I learned quickly it was safer to sit at the other end, with my mother between us…which, in so many ways, was the nature of how the three of us would relate all our lives.
A few minutes into the meal, with only the sounds of chewing and forks hitting plates, the questions would start. It was like an interrogation. I prayed for something I could say yes to, or something I had succeeded in that day at school.
But on his worst nights, that was never the case. And I think my father always picked the accordion question because that was an almost always guaranteed “no,” and one he could use to start a fight.
“Why didn’t you practice?”
“I…just didn’t have time.”
“You NEVER have time!”
“I know. I’m sorry. I..”
“Why didn’t you have time?”
“I…I don’t know…I uh…my homework…”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW?!
The questions came fast. His voice got louder. And each word was delivered like a punch.
“What the hell’s the matter with you! IF YOU AREN’T GOING TO PRACTICE…”
At this point, his eyes burned into me like lasers.
My supper stuck in my throat. I felt like vomiting.
He continued to yell.
My hands gripped the edge of the table while my eyes never left his face. It was critical that I be ready to move if this got any worse.
Then, it came. He stopped eating, and almost in slow motion, the rage response began.
He’d tilt his head to the side and lower it, like a bull ready to charge. His mouth twisted into that thin line pulled to the side, and his jaw jutted out as he gritted his teeth.
Suddenly, he’d stand upright, kick his chair backwards, and start toward me.
I didn’t wait another second. I bolted for my usual escape route to my bedroom right next to the stove. It was always a race to see if I could get to it before he could round the table and push past Mom.
She would try to block him.
Sometimes I would make it. But not always. Sometimes he got to me before I could get away.
In that moment, he’d grab me by the shirt with his balled fist shoved up into my throat and push me up against the wall.
My head would snap back and hit the wall as his fist hit my jaw. Grabbing my shirt, he tightened his grip until I started to choke. Sometimes my feet weren’t even on the floor. I just hung there, his hand gripping my throat.
Mom would be yelling, “Hon, stop! Hon, stop it! STOP IT, HON!!!’
Back then, I never noticed the irony of her calling him “Hon,” – short for “Honey” – as he was beating her child. I never noticed much of anything except maybe someone running out of the room, and my mother trying to pull him off of me.
“What’s the matter with you??!” she’d yell at him.
Sometimes she had to push him back several times because he kept coming at me. I could always tell how angry he was by how many times he tried to get at me.
To avoid his fist and try to breathe, I remember flattening myself against the wall. I was never sure he would stop choking me in time.
If I could capture what he was to me in that moment, it was a “rage monster.” One minute, he was Dad, the next, he was this out-of-control twisted face vomiting rage at me like a monster.
Finally, Mom would succeed in pulling him away. Panting like that charging bull, he would finally just yell, “GET THE HELL OUT OF MY SIGHT,” and I did.
These moments were more frequent than I’d like to think. From a young age through adulthood. And he didn’t just focus on me — Mom sure got her fair share in that bathroom…and she didn’t have anyone there to pull him off of her.
But I was his frequent target since I was the oldest. There was something about his associating us both being eldest children, with that inner fury he pummeled me with. In those moments, in those eyes, he was someone else.
I’ve often wondered if anyone else in the house — like my Grandparents upstairs — heard these fights. Given the yelling and noise, they had to. The walls in that house weren’t very thick.
During one fight, Dad lost it and tore the shirt and left marks. We were supposed to be going upstairs after dinner to visit as my uncle, Mom’s brother who was a missionary priest in Puerto Rico, who had just come home for his summer vacation. He would stay with my grandparents when he was home.
My mother made sure to powder the marks to hide them, handed over a new shirt to put on, and told us not to say anything about this when we went upstairs.
And somehow, he always managed to switch back from the rage monster, to the charmer, while I just swallowed my terror and slapped a smile on my face.
Soul Mosaic 
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