Breaking the Cycle

She looked at me hard. Not as if she really thought that I was too imaginary and whatnot. Her eyes were hard. Then I remembered that my stepfather had just got up off beating on her. She wasn’t in the mood for any type of talking.

“Did I say you was lyin’?” she growled.

Shit! I groaned. I just knew that there wasn’t a right answer to that question. I knew my mother. I knew her looks… and the current look was red hot. But, for once in my life, I didn’t care. I needed some “kid time” to think about shit. I needed space.

“I just said I ain’t lyin’,” I blurted out.

She slapped me. Straight to the cheekbone, nuthin’ but net! Which, alone, didn’t hurt that bad. My mother didn’t have bruising hand speed, but this time, Ma was rocking me with electric blows. My bruised skull was ringing savagely with each stinging contact that my face was taking. My vision blurred for a second… and then I went numb. I mean, by mind went blank. It hurt a little, but I could take it. See, my mother would whup my ass in short bursts… twenty, thirty seconds of pure fury, but if I could survive that? I consider that ass-whuppin’ a success! Then she slapped me again. And again. And again. In the midst of this assault, I began to notice my mother had developed a little more power—from somewhere! Her stamina was improving, too. She wasn’t stopping. Slap! Slap! Slap!

“Why you hittin’ me, Ma?!” Slap! “Why?!” Slap! “Go ahead, then!” Slap! “I can take it!” Slap! “I can take it!” Slap! “I look like my daddy, huh?!” Slap! “I am my daddy, huh?!” Slap! “Right?!” Slap! “I can take it!”

A lone tear welled up in my eyes, stinging but holding, refusing to creep down my face. She stopped with her hand paused in mid-air, the hatred in my stare burning with spite, me feeling like she wasn’t my mother; she couldn’t tell me she cared. She cried out incoherent words of pain that I couldn’t even begin to understand and I wouldn’t have understood them even

if I could understand them. She was the reason I was always utterly alone, with no one on my side, no one to turn to whenever my stepfather got abusive. I don’t know what it was. I never knew what it was, the total loneness; the disconnection between my mother and me. But, I knew she did not like me. By that, I mean that she couldn’t stand me. But, she still didn’t have to hit me.

I finally jumped up and ran out the front door. I limped around the house to the backyard, up the back steps, and hid on the back porch. I sat there quietly and listened. I could hear my mother through the window as she began to cry in pain and frustration. My face was still stinging from the force of her blows and all of my body’s aches and pains rushed through me. I still couldn’t find any vestiges of love for her… not in my heart. She knew that pain was wrong. She saw it up close and personal every day, and yet that was her gift to me. The long right hand of love. I wondered exactly how much of that torture was my mere existence costing her. I wished I could help her. But she still didn’t have to hit me.

A few days later, I took my mother down by Donnell Shunt’s house and showed her the grindstone. It had been moved over to the far corner of the yard, tucked, sinister in the darkness. I told my mother about the sparks and the sharp, shiny point of the blade. I told her about the strength Jessie Mae got from holding that powerful weapon in her hands. Even after her husband had held her down and violated her, she had found the control of her own destiny in the weighted heft of the knife.

Over the next three weeks, my stepfather rampaged on, beating on my mother constantly and my mother, in turn, found reasons to beat on me. But, now I understood my mother’s motivation and, more importantly, I shared the passion of her need for payback, for some sense of ultimate justice, for someone to hear her cry. Subsequently, after each of the many violent episodes in which my mother was beaten and she, in turn, would beat me, I began taking her to the grindstone. While we stood in the darkened yard, I began to plant the seeds of violent retribution in her mind. I began to give form and shape to the primal urges that lurk within the psyche of the abused until, one day, I noticed a strange gleam come into her eyes; another persona emerged as we became more and more comforted by the sight of the huge grindstone. Who knows, maybe she was having those dark matters dancing in the madness of her imagination.

One night, my stepfather came home late and pushed my mother straight to the edge of madness. He beat my sister.

Tamia was my youngest sister. She was still lost in her ignorance at times and she always managed to stay out of my stepfather’s way. I will give him credit; my stepfather usually left the girls alone, physically at least. He still stomped around them with terror in his stride, but usually that was all he would do to the girls and Tamia was still enough of a child to reap the benefits of being the youngest girl. She still had the ability to sing to my stepfather, still had the ability to soothe him, to bring his anger in to where he could look at it and let it die. “I like the taste of cann-dee. Sweetness is my pool. I like the taste of caann-dee. And I like you!”

I, for one, hated that freaking song. But it worked for her… so she sang for him whenever she saw bad trouble on my stepfather’s drunken radar. The big behemoth was bearing down on her now, his voice gruff and grating at the fears of his child, carrying a lifetime of trembling on its timbre.

“Didn’t I tell you to bring me some algae syrup, Gurl? My chil’ren is all so stupid. Didn’t I say algae syrup? Didn’t I?” He was on a rant. “All my dumb chil’ren.”

Tamia looked up at him with eyes widened in apprehension. Her daddy was chocolate thunder, dark lightning, and streaks of a painful storm. He was a black hulk, both dark and intimidating… the bare essence of a scary nightmare to a fragile, little girl. He bent over her, his bulk casting a huge shadow over her as he pointed a stubby finger in her direction.

“Girl, you so dumb. How you remember shit? You get it from yo’ mama, though. Yeah. She stupid, too. Be like a dumb slut sometimes. Now, have you ever seen me eat anything else but algae syrup? Have you?!” He was screaming at Tamia. Each harsh word pulled an anguished cry from her as she cowered from him, her eyes darting wildly, anxiously, searching for an avenue of escape. His temper was brewing like a big, black storm… and his dark cloud was heavy with his violent nature. She was going to be drenched in the fierce downpour. His very face was turbulent. A raw mixture of a blind rage and primitive urges wrapped in the guise of a man. We could only guess that violence had always been a part of his life. After all, he was turbulent; his very nature was based on intimidation as a means of control. A tool to terrify us with. Fear.

I lived the fear as I watched him tower over Tamia. I lived her moments of paralyzed anguish as I stood witness. We both knew his movements, knew when to prepare for serious episodes from him, and we saw it in the curl of his lips that were pulled back in a sneer. I wasn’t able to move as I watched him bend over my little sister and wrap his big hand around her throat. He lifted her up with no effort as she feebly kicked her legs, flailing, as he spit harsh words and spittle into her face.

“I want algae-muthafuckin’ syrup! You hear me?!”

And then he flung her at the living room wall. Tamia’s little body slammed face first into the wall and she shrieked in pain when she fell in a heap on the sofa. When she turned over, blood splashed from the corner of her mouth and the left side of her face was swollen and discolored with bruises. Tears streamed down her face as she pulled herself to her knees and looked up at her drunken daddy.

She began a mad singsong. “I like the taste of cann-dee. Sweetness is my pool. I like the taste of caann-dee. And I like you!” She sang haltingly; her voice strained around the pain that throbbed in her face. “I like the taste of cann-dee.” Tamia wiped the blood away from the corner of her mouth. “Sweetness is my pool.” My stepfather hesitated with his hand raised to strike her. “I like the taste of caann-dee. And I like you!”

I heard a piercing scream and turned to see my mother flash past me in a blur. She swung her fist and connected solidly with my stepfather’s face, rocking him backwards with the force of the blow. She attacked in a mad frenzy. She was throwing punches in bunches, scratches and straight rights that rained down, but didn’t move the heavy drunk and he began to shrug off her frenzied attack. He howled with rage and lashed out at my mother, catching her in the side of her head, stunning her, and then he rammed her with his shoulder, sending her body crashing into the wall.

I could tell that my mother was really hurt this time. Hurt badly. I heard her tortured breathing as she slid to the floor in a limp heap.

“Stupid whore.” My stepfather looked down at her and gingerly touched his swelling lip. Then he turned to me. “And you just a bastard.” I watched him. “Take your slut ass mammy in there and put her in the bed. Naw. Fuck that! Leave her ass right there.”

He turned and headed to another room. I waited until I heard the noise from the television before I moved over to my mother. She turned over and propped herself against the wall with her eyes closed. Tamia slid off the couch and was pulled into a tight embrace, her cries softer now as she sobbed in the comforting folds of my mother’s arms.

“And ya’ll both better shut up in there!” My stepfather’s voice boomed from the other room. “Um tired of hearing that noise! Ole bitch hit me in my mothafuckin’ lip! I oughta go in there and bust that ass right now! Shit!”

The moments dragged by as I sat and watched my mother and my sister. That was my lot in life, it seemed. To observe as life went by, as shit happened. My mother got up from the floor. She struggled to her feet, with Tamia hugged to her breasts, and staggered into the bedroom. My mother had really been hurt. She had a large swelling on the side of her head near her temple. She held her body sort of off to the left side, as if the force of my stepfather’s blows had broken something loose in her ribs. I had never seen her move with such obvious pain. She closed the bedroom door and left me outside, pondering the madness that had become my life, the everyday

that spelled such lunacy, the moment after moment I was forced to endure. Maybe, just maybe, I could make sense of it all, if it all could make sense. Sometimes life simply wasn’t fair at all.

I hated him. I hated that black muthafucka. I looked toward the family room, where he was sprawled out in front of the television, snoring. I hated his snore. I hated the sound of that nigga living! His very existence made me weak. Made me scared. Made me watch as he hit on my mother and sisters and brothers. Made me watch… and do nothing. At least my mother had taken a shot at him, though! She had stung him a little when she clocked him upside his head, rocked him when she had caught him by surprise with that first punch. Good to know that he could be hurt, too. I heard him rouse in the front room.

“Hey, Nigga! Get in here!” he growled at me. I ran to him and waited. “The world don’t owe you nuthin’, Nigga! Know that? World don’t owe you shit!” I waited some more. “Look at you! You ain’t shit, just like yo’ daddy. The apple knocka. Yo’ mama threw her legs up for him in the middle of one of them apple fields. He was… apple knockin’.”