On the bad Saturdays, there wasn’t usually much time for a respite. It was enough to just crawl into bed on Saturdays and try to get lost in daydreams under the covers until sleep overtook me.
There was no question that Dad was going to make me pay for “Doughnut morning rejections” and “Late movie avoidances.” Before Sunday Mass, he wouldn’t look at me or talk to me, the usual “silent treatment.” He would be personable with everyone we met there, but always avoided any eye contact with me.
Once we got home, he would start in with his barrage of questions — looking for something I did, or didn’t do, so he could start the fight. One time, it was the fact that I wore a sweater too short for me to church that morning. To him, that would be an affront and make him look bad to everyone else. It was like saying he wasn’t a good enough provider, and his family couldn’t dress properly.
That particular Sunday, we got in the house, and he literally ripped the sweater off my back and started yelling, and of course, coming at me. Mom ran interference, and I hid in my room. But eventually, once we had our big Sunday meal at noon, there would be no avoiding him.
He would fire questions at me. Glare at me across the table. I could barely eat, but I had to, or he would yell at me for that. I was so nervous, I could barely choke down my food. But the worst was yet to come.
After the meal and dishes were done, I would make a beeline for my room and bury myself at my desk. My hope was that if he saw me diligently at work on my homework for school, he would leave me alone. But that was a useless wish. On “payback Sundays,” nothing was going to stop him.
As I tried to concentrate, I’d hear his footsteps coming down the hall and stop outside my room. He would stand in the doorway and start peppering me with questions, or barking orders about something he wanted to see done the next week. Or he would just keep attacking me over some small infraction and not let it drop. My nerves were like elastic bands stretched out too far. After a few minutes of this, he would walk away.
I would just start to calm down when I’d hear him returning. Again and again we went through rounds of this, each time my nerves fraying more. Finally, he would decide it was time to escalate the situation, and he would come into my room. He’d whip open the closet door and start yelling about the mess in there with all of our shoes and toys.
Given that we only had two closets in the whole house, it was hard to store everything in there neatly. And since that closet was in my room, it was my fault if it wasn’t neat enough.
As he yelled at me, he was also grabbing toy boxes, shoes, clothes, everything in there, and flinging it out on the floor. Then he would storm over to my bureau, again guaranteed to be a mess.
Yanking drawers open, he would pull them out and empty everything onto my bed. He was in full Navy-inspection mode. It was one of his standard terror tactics, and he could always count on it to totally freak me out. I couldn’t and wouldn’t dare say anything. I just stood there and waited until he emptied everything. Then, like a military commander, he would bark at me to put everything back and make it neat.
And of course, that meant he would be able to return several more times. Some of his visits were to yell that I was being too slow, and others to inspect whether I did a good enough job.
By this point, I was an emotional disaster…on the inside. I cannot find the words that capture just how much a person’s nerves can shake on the inside and how tightly coiled they can get from repeated rounds of this emotional battering. But I just had to deal with it and not show any emotions. For sure, I definitely better not cry, look angry, or say anything. I was just supposed to take it – tough and stone-faced, no matter what I was feeling underneath.
Finally, at some point in the afternoon, after several rounds of him verbally and emotionally beating on me, my mother would finally say something like, “Why are you acting like this?”
She never said, “Why are you doing this to her?” She never said anything about me at all.
But once she had said that, he would finally leave me alone and retreat to his office.
By that point, my nerves were jelly. I was nothing but a quivering mess inside. I so wanted my mother to come over, to check on me. To see how I was, or if I was okay. I could even understand if she was afraid to say much to me. But I longed for just a glance from her, a smile, a look of concern. Anything. But no one came near me. She just stayed in the kitchen, a turned back.
One of the worst payback Sundays was July 20, 1969…the Apollo 11 Moon Landing night. The day had been pure hell. Rounds of verbal and mental abuse. But since it was summer, I didn’t even have homework I could pretend to be doing. And worse, since the astronauts landed on the moon that afternoon, that meant that instead of going to bed on time and finally getting a reprieve from him, we would be up later to watch them take their first steps on the moon.
While July 20th, 1969, was a landmark event for millions of people around the world, all I wanted was to be released so I could escape to my room. That one small step couldn’t come fast enough for me. A part of me realized that I should be feeling the awe and amazement of the moment. But the rest of me just couldn’t wait for that damned step to be over so I could just go to bed.
Soul Mosaic 
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