Should Have Known Better

“She’s gone. I told you. Told you everything. I’ll talk to her about it later. I’ll give her a whipping; don’t you worry.”

“Spare the rod and spoil the child!” My

father stomped on the floor and turned away from her. “That’s what the Book says.”

“That Book says a lot of other stuff, too,” she said.

“What do you mean, woman? You talking slick to me?” He unbuckled his belt. “ ’Cause if I reckon, it does say a lot more, too. A lot about a woman obeying her husband.”

“I ain’t trying to fight with you. I’m just saying, maybe you need to wait until that whiskey wears off before you discipline our daughter.”

My father walked away from the closet and into the dining room, off a bit to where I could see him. He was still in his church pants.

“What are you looking for?” My mother asked a question she knew the answer to.

He opened the bottom door of the cherrywood china cabinet I had to clean every Friday after school.

“I need a drink,” he said. “Where’s my whiskey?”

“You’ve had enough. It’s all gone.”

“Woman, it ain’t your place to tell me when I’ve had enough. Now where is it?” He tossed some half-empty glass bottles out onto the floor. One rolled out over the wood and stopped near my mother’s foot. Her hand, shaking and so pale from scrubbing other people’s dining room floors, picked up the bottle.

“Thought you were gonna stop drinking,” she said.

He kept rummaging through the cabinet and mumbling about a woman’s place.

“Ain’t want to have no girl anyway,” he said.

“You get real mean when you drink.”

“Told you I wanted a son. Girls is trouble. All of them.”

“It’s like you’re somebody else.”

“Open her legs to anyone who comes by. I bet you that’s how she’ll turn out! Like a whore. Like her mama.”

“Like the devil gets into you.”

“What you say, woman?”

My father sprang up off the floor and charged her so quickly it seemed like he was going to tear into the closet.

Her heels turned into the slit and her body banged into the door. The bottle hit the floor and glass scattered everywhere. The alcohol rolled beneath the door and wet my fingertips.

“What you say?” my father asked again.

“I ain’t say nothing, Herbert,” she cried. “I told you I don’t want to fight with you.”

He banged her against the wall and I watched as her heels raised high off of the ground over the slit and all I could see were the points of my father’s shoes. I could hear the faint gurgling of her choking.

“I could kill you right now,” he said. “You’re lucky I’m with you. You’re lucky you’re alive.”

I cried, but I knew to cover my mouth. I knew better than to let him hear me. She’d get it worse then.

Her struggle for air lessened to silence.

“Whore!” he yelled and all of her fell to the floor like a piece of rotten wood.