I remember the night very clearly...
We were sitting in a trailor house, not ours but presumably one of my uncles or a friend of my dad's. It was very smoky, but that's the way it always was around my parents. I was probably, as always, arguing with my siblings about something, possibly fireworks on this particular evening. Yes, it was the Fourth of July---Independence Day. My daddy was sitting at the table wasted, smoking a cigarrette.
Why did I think this night would be any different than the nights before? My mom walked into the "house" and I could feel the mood change. No one wanted her there at that moment. As usual, I had no idea what my parents where fighting about, but I knew I would hear every word of it...not that that would clear things up any.
She walked directly over to my dad and said these words: "Go ahead, hit me Walter, you know you want to. Do it AGAIN! DO IT AGAIN MOTHER F**CKER!" My dad just looked up with his glazed eyes and smiled; he knew that would throw her over the edge. She picked up the coffee cup sitting in front of him, without so much as a pause, and smashed it over his hand resting on the table.
I was...terrified. This was not an unusual happening in our family, to say the least. No, that wasn't the frightening part at all. As I watched the blood pour from my daddy's massive hands and drip onto the tile below, and as I saw the single tear roll down his cheek, and as he sat there and did nothing about it, that's when I realized...
I was in elementary school, that's all I know, and I knew at that moment...my mother was insane. That's when I realized.
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