Saving Heroes

It’s amazing what you can get used to. I mean, if you grow up around something, see all the time, then it becomes normal to you. I’ve seen all kinds of things: blood, broken ribs, tears, bruises. I’ve seen it all, and that was at 6 years old. My father was a supreme asshole. He would beat on my mother for any and every little thing. He didn’t need much of an excuse to lash out. And I’ll admit it. For a while, I blamed her, I was sure it was her fault. Daddy always said so.

Then, my mother got pregnant with my little brother, and Daddy needed a new punching bag. Naturally, he picked me. Unfortunately for him, unlike my mother, I had things to do. Mom didn’t work. She stayed at home, cleaned, looked after the children. I wasn’t available around the clock. So I learned to walk softly, very softly. I would do all my homework in my room, I would skip dinner as often as I was allowed to, skip bathes, and sneak out my window to go to school. That’s right, I actually had to sneak out to school. But I’d do anything to keep from crossing Daddy’s path. And I only got the belt.

Would you believe that my father was a church going man? A deacon? Yep, every Sunday we would spend all day in church. Sunday school, 11 o’ clock service, evening service. All day. And Pastor Edwards would come over for dinner each Sunday night. When he left, Dad would beat on Mom because something was wrong, something was always wrong. The greens weren’t seasoned, the cornbread was cold, or the chicken was dry. There was always a reason. And while she was pregnant he’d beat me. Why didn’t I answer the pastor, why didn’t I help mom with the dinner, why wasn’t I paying attention in Sunday school?

I felt horrible when my mom had Mark. Daddy was finally done with me. He went back to beating on mom, and I was relieved. What kind of daughter did that make me? What kind of person? Instead of thinking about that, I tried to focus on my baby brother. He was so cute, he had little fingers and little toes, and he would laugh and giggle. But he was a baby, and he would cry. We only had about 3 minutes to make him stop before Daddy went off.

Thankfully, Mark was a good baby. He rarely cried, and when he did, you just had to stuff him with a bottle, or his pacifier, or play peek-a-boo. I loved my pretty little brother. He learned to say “Mama” and “Daddy” and I was elated when he said “Hayhay”. My name’s Hailey, but you take what you can get from baby talk.

Mark learned the same way I did. We grew up around abuse, the sound of flesh, the smell of blood. Mark learned to treat cuts and bruises, help Mom around the house, and stay out of Dad’s way. And we knew not to say anything to anyone.

When he was 8, Mark came into my room one night, “Is Mommy bad?”

I looked down from my book to see him standing at the edge of my bed. He had finished taking his bath, but his brown hair was still damp, and his breath was minty fresh. I picked him up and sat him down on my bed. “What do you mean, Bonito?” I always called him that. No, we weren’t Spanish, but he was my little pretty boy. Still, I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his friends, so… Spanish.

“Cause Mommy always needs spankings.”

“No, Bonito, Mommy isn’t bad.”

“Then why does Daddy spank her?”

Do you know how hard it is for a 15 year old to explain domestic abuse to an 8 year old? Hard. “Because Daddy is bad. Daddy is a bad man, Bonito.”

“But Hayhay, Daddy is daddy.” He never grew out of calling me that. I didn’t mind it, though.

“I know, Bonito, but even daddies can be bad men.”

“But Hayhay, Daddy is a deacon.” He was on the edge of tears now. I felt sorry for him, he was so confused.

“Do you think I’m a bad girl?”

“No.”

“Daddy used to spank me all the time.”

“W-why?”

“Because Daddy is a bad man, Bonito.”

Have you ever told a child that Santa Clause isn’t real? That’s what this was like. I literally had to watch as the innocence died in his eyes. And I knew that I had killed it. I felt horrible. My brother would never be young again. He cried then, quietly. We were always quiet in my father’s house. He fell asleep in my arms, crying the whole time.

My little Bonito was a different boy when he woke up the next morning. The world of fairies and dragons and Santa was closed to him, forever. His eyes were open now and I didn’t know how I felt about that. He didn’t do anything differently. He was still quiet, respectful, and helpful. But he watched now. He watched and he grew. For 3 years, he watched and he grew.

No matter what I may forget, I will always remember that night. It’s been engraved in my soul and etched in my mind. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had finally had enough. Dad had gone after Mom again. He was slapping her because she wasn’t being respectful. He was a man of God, how dare she treat him that way. I ran and grabbed his hand. I slapped him and told him what I really thought of him. And he hit me. I was old enough, big enough now. He needed to put God into my life. He hit me again. My mother lay on the floor, 5 feet from me, while my father began to beat me. Warming to his subject. I was screaming and crying and he just kept hitting me.

And then it stopped. I dared to look up and his face… Shock, pain, disbelief. Fear. Those are the emotions I remember seeing in him. And then a small hand flashed out from behind him and into his side. It flashed in and out of my vision. I saw my father crash down on his knees, my little brother standing behind him. His hands wet with suds from the dishes. Suds turned red, blood red. His hand came up and around my father’s neck. He was holding a steak knife. I will always remember the look on his face as well. Calm. Absolutely calm. And it was with that unnatural calm that he slit my father’s throat.

He looked up at me, smiled, and walked out of the room. I looked over at my mother, she was crying for him, my father. How could she?! How could she cry for that monster?! After all the years of torture and abuse, she had the nerve to cry for him?! She ran to the phone and called the police. I went outside where my brother was.

He was sitting on the edge of the porch, his legs stretched out on the lawn. The smell of fresh-cut summer grass and the cool night wind wrapping around him as he stared up at the star-filled sky. The knife laid next to him.

I went over and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him into me. We didn’t say anything, we just sat there together. We sat there as the sounds of sirens moved closer and closer. As the front door opened up to the flashing lights. As the police came into our home for the first time ever.

They came out back, stood him up, and handcuffed him. He had that look of absolute calm the entire time. He didn’t cry or resist. He just smiled at me as they took him away.

Numbers are amazing if you really think about it. Amazingly stupid little things. Like the number 27. That’s how many times they said Mark stabbed him. 158. That’s how many days the trial lasted. 4. That’s how many hours it took the jury. 7. That’s how many years they decided to steal my little Bonito away from me. They wanted to keep him locked up until he was 18. Another amazingly stupid number.

They took my little Bonito away from me for seven years. They locked him up in a mental institute, and they refused to let us see him. We tried, but either he would refuse to see us or they would be punishing him for not cooperating with his therapy. Twice they tried to move him to juvenile detention. The first time, he beat one of the boys in juve for attacking a younger kid. He beat him halfway to death. So they decided he was still mentally unsound. The second time Mom blocked it. She hired a lawyer to keep him where he was.

It took a while, almost 2 years, but my mother really blossomed after my father’s death. She got a job, began writing, and started a support group for battered wives. The support group turned into a foundation. The foundation went nationwide. Mom wasn’t a household name, but the people who needed to know about her, knew about her. She warned women that the person abused isn’t the only victim. She told my brother’s story to the world. How he saved us from my monstrosity of a father. And, to her credit, she didn’t get rich off it. She poured most of her money back into the foundation or into me.

I admit. I was mad at Mom for a long time, but with counseling and time and lots of crying, we worked our way past it. I started getting into fashion and design. I went to school, kept my grades up, got a job at one of the many middle of the lane companies where my boss thought he was a genius, and I hated it. My mother told me that I needed to get my own ideas out there to the people. She started wearing clothes I designed for her anytime she was giving some speech or address. She even gave me the money to begin my own line. I started with women’s clothing, then added a men’s line, then a children’s line. I preferred to mix modern with medieval and it did well. I wasn’t a household name quite yet, but I was definitely on the up and coming list. By my junior year in college, I owned two stores.

We kept the old house, but we did move. Everything that belonged to that house though, we left behind. Clothes, furniture, pictures. Everything. We wanted a fresh start. We bought a new house, in a new neighborhood, in a new town. We couldn’t stand all the people looking at us like we had done something wrong. Mom was the mother of the murderous son. I was the sister of a psycho killer. But no one talked about the years of abuse we went through. No one wanted to “speak badly of the dead.” Hypocritical sons of bitches. So we left.

But Mom kept the house. She would take groups of women there, telling them different stories from our life, letting them relive her experiences. She would always end it with Mark’s story though. Driving home what her failure to act cost her son. Sometimes, I think she was punishing herself doing those tours.

Still, while we didn’t have Mark, we had each other. It’s the main reason why I never moved out. We closed ourselves off to the world for a long time, but in our home there was music and television and the smell of food. We didn’t have a quiet home anymore, we didn’t tiptoe around the house. We screamed at each other from across rooms, we played music too loud, we drank wine and watched movies Dad would have never allowed us to. Mark had sacrificed himself for us, and we celebrated our lives every day because of it.