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becca05 · 5 years

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It’s dark. Musty. Smells like piss from one of my older brother’s sleepwalking excursions. Claustrophobic. Tears are silently streaming down my cheeks as I crouch in the closet surrounded by discarded army men and RC cars. Muted, I can still hear the yelling emanating from the kitchen. I am hiding. Scared. Terrified. He is looking for me and when he finds me, which he will, there will be hell to pay.

“Becky, where are you?” He yells. I can hear my Mom crying. Silently. Just barely above a whisper but there. I wish for once she would just stand up to him but she never does. We are all prisoners to his rage.

The bedroom door swings open. He is here. I hold my breath, trying to make myself as small as possible. Invisible. Sometimes I wish to be nothing more than to be invisible. He is tall and slender with dark black hair cut short and a black mustache that reminds me of a bushy caterpillar. His skin is tan and leathery from years of smoking, his long slim fingers permanently stained yellow from the nicotine on the cigarettes. His light blue jean pants are barely hanging on. His clothes are always too big. And mostly tattered with holes. Ripped in places. To the world he is insane, to me he is Dad.

He flips the small twin size mattress my brother sleeps in, up into the air, discarding my teddy bears and baby dolls. For a moment there it looks like it is raining toys. I can see him through the slit in between the closet doors, his body is rigid. His normally soft liquid brown eyes black as coal.

“Becky, where are you?” He yells again.

I make myself even smaller. Envisioning myself shrinking. Getting smaller and smaller with each passing second. And it’s working, he is leaving the bedroom to search the rest of the trailer. Just when he is getting ready to leave the bedroom my foot gets a cramp and slips, knocking over a few of my brother’s long ago discarded toys. The falling toys even though they are small and don’t make much noise, is still enough for my father with his ever precise hearing abilities to detect. My hiding spot has been discovered. I am found. Caught. The closet doors, my once safe haven, are thrown open.

“Gotcha.” He laughs.

He grabs me roughly on the arm, leaving an imprint of his fingertips on my pale white skin and even though I try to fight, try to squirm away from his strong grasp, my five year old body is nothing compared to his adult strength. He drags me from the closet, causing more toys to fall, and pulling me roughly from my limp wrist, he drags me out of the closet. His fingers pale white from applying so much pressure.

I try kicking and screaming, grab a hold of the closet door with my free arm and try to hold on for dear life but doing so and fighting back would only make things worse. When he is like this, it’s best just to stay silent. Submit to his will. He pulls me from the cramped small bedroom now messy and littered with toys, takes me down the small dark carpeted hallway and into the living room as if I am nothing more than a flimsy rag doll.

Mom is standing in the kitchen, her long black hair flowing down past her shoulders, almost reaching her waist. An apron is tied around her house dress. She had been cooking. Making gravy and biscuits homemade and from scratch. One of my favorite meals. It seems like that is all she ever does, is cooks. Her thick wire rimmed glasses are tear stained as silent tears run down her freckled puffy cheeks. She is obviously upset but yet she does not speak.

He pushes me against the white now stained brown couch. The couch is old and dirty, a hand-me-down. Little motes of dust fly through the air as he pushes me face first into the dirty couch. For a second I am mesmerized as the dust moats float through the air, the sunlight from the open window filtering in, making them shine, a brief lull in my current predicament. He pulls down my thin cloth pants exposing my white stained underwear, he undoes his black leather belt, cracked in places from years of use, snaps it in the air for good measure and whips me once, twice, three times, until my bottom is sore and whelped.

Afterwards he puts his belt back on and it is as if nothing has even happened. He goes outside to chain smoke while alternatively drinking coffee laced so thick with non dairy creamer that the coffee is more white than brown. He chases it with a large glass of ice water because he is paranoid and a health nut and thinks if he chases the coffee with water it will flush his kidneys of any toxins.

I sit on the dirty dust covered floor, next to my whitish blonde haired brother who is five years older than me and who has already received his punishment, pondering what I did this time. Maybe I laughed when I shouldn't have or perhaps I didn't sit up straight or eat enough, because while most kids get punished for stealing, lying, or being disrespectful, we get punished for laughing a little too much at a sitcom. Such is life when your father is a paranoid schizophrenic.

#writer #memoir #lettersfrommydiary #myfather #mentalillness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #endthestigma

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