The last thing I heard before the world went black was my stepfather laughing, and it sounded like breaking me was his favorite hobby, as if my agony were the evening show he came home to watch. His name was Victor Payne, but in the house we shared, everyone was required to address him as “sir,” especially my mother.
Every single night, he managed to manufacture a reason to torment me, whether it was a dinner plate placed on the table with too much noise, a shirt folded with the wrong crease, or even just a look he decided was disrespectful. Sometimes he did not bother with a pretext at all, preferring to lean back in his leather recliner with a cold beer in his hand and casually command, “Violet, come over here because I am bored.”
My mother would always lower her eyes to the floor to avoid seeing what was coming. She whispered to me once in the dark, “Just do exactly what he says so you do not make things worse for yourself.” I turned to her and whispered back, “How can you stand there and say that when he hurts me every single time I do exactly what he wants?” She just squeezed her eyes shut and replied, “Don’t make it worse, Violet, please just stay silent.”
Victor adored having an audience for his cruelty, and he loved making me stand in the center of the living room while he mocked every inch of my existence. “Look at her,” he would sneer while gesturing toward me with his drink, “she is twenty-six years old and still completely useless.” I stood my ground, my heart hammering, and asked, “Is mocking me the only way you feel powerful, Victor?” He threw his head back and roared with laughter, saying, “You have a big mouth for someone who has nowhere else to go.”
I had long ago stopped crying in front of him because I realized that was the reaction he craved most. “You think you are being brave by standing there like a statue,” he remarked one night while stepping into my personal space until I could smell the sharp scent of alcohol on his breath. I looked him dead in the eye and said calmly, “No, I do not think I am brave, I think you are just entirely predictable.”
His fake, twisted smile vanished in an instant, and the first blow he delivered sent me crashing hard into the kitchen counter. The second impact knocked the very air out of my lungs, and my mother stood frozen near the kitchen sink, twisting her diamond wedding ring as if that tiny circle of expensive metal could somehow save her from having to make a choice between us.
“Tell her to say she is sorry,” Victor snapped, his voice vibrating with rage. My mother swallowed hard and looked at me with pleading eyes, saying, “Please, Violet, just apologize to him right now.” I looked at her with pure disbelief and asked, “Apologize for what exactly, Mother, for breathing the same air as him?” Victor growled, “Don’t talk to her, talk to me, and tell me you are a pathetic waste of space.”
Victor’s heavy fist came down with such blinding speed that I never even saw it coming. My head struck the hard tile floor with a sickening thud, and then everything faded into cold, absolute darkness.
When I finally opened my eyes again, the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room burned above me and the inside of my mouth tasted like copper and old metal. Victor stood right beside my hospital bed with a mask of fake, exaggerated concern painted across his features. He grabbed my hand, but I pulled it away, and he whispered, “You slipped, remember? You tell the doctor you slipped in the shower.” My mother stood there and chimed in, “That is right, Violet, you were so clumsy today.”
