Flashback

“Well?!” Her eyes bulge as if they’d grown fists to plant on hips. “Say something!”

What can I say? I’m not sure what she wants me to do. Is this a real issue, or does she just need food? If so, do I just start making stuff? Say something, man. I peel my eyes away from her glare and focus on the lines of our tiled floor. It’s been too long. I can feel my head making minute motions, darting as I calculate at break-neck speeds.

“I—” No, that’s a bad idea.

“THIS! This is what I mean!” I don’t think she realises she is shouting. “You just stand there. Just say what you are thinking. Gah, just say something. Christ!”

“I didn’t realise the water was getting cold.”

“How can you no— Eugh! How hard is it to just say that, then? Why do you freeze up like you’re being told off?”

Because I am. How do you explain this to someone who fell for my strength, my confidence. Someone who wants a man, not a collection of old scars using feeble words to placate them. What does a man do when the woman he loves is so angry and unpredictable? Why does this feel so familiar?

My thoughts are interrupted by her sudden movement as she swipes the pans from the draining board, hurling them into a clatter on the hard tiles. I don’t startle, but I feel the anger boil up in me, then the fear that I might use it shoves it back down to safety, and I hear a ringing in my ears.

My chest tightens, and the kitchen leaves me. I flop to the cold tile and twenty-two years swirl down the drain as I pry my six-year-old hands from the cold porcelain sink to grip my sister, as I curl into her arms, hiding in the darkness of our downstairs toilet; more a closet. It is dark and we don’t dare make a sound. I flinch before I realise what has happened.

A broom handle spears itself through the door, its shaft piercing the wood and letting light bleed in through tiny cracks and splinters. The wood hovers an inch in front of me. We sit, stunned to a still silence. A violent tussle begins to shake the broom, and it catches on the splintered wood.

There is a feral roar as the door rips open. The broom follows it silent and obedient as it is shoved aside. My sister curls around me but is pulled away and thrashed. She is thrown into the wall, punched, kicked, and then sent scurrying. When she is done, my mom turns to me.

“Well?” There is spittle as she barks the question. I don’t know what she wants me to say. I don’t even know why she is mad. I am wracking my brain trying to think of the right words to fix this, but there are no words. I am six. Just a kid. “WELL?!”