My Personal Earth Tremor

(Continued from last Tuesday . . . )

Grandpa Ready’s death in March 1943 brought about my learning to tell time, Mom explaining to me at the funeral parlor that out of death comes life, and a terrifying incident for my mother, brother, and me that shook all our lives in May. It happened nearly seventy years ago and I forgave my father long before he died in 1975. Yet the memory of the fear and panic I felt lingers.

            Mom was cooking supper in the kitchen. My brother and I sat on the floor in the narrow living room, reading a comic book. We heard the car bumping along the rutted driveway and sputter to a halt. The car door slammed.

            We waited expectantly for Dad to come inside. His feet seemed to plod across the porch floorboards before he pulled open the screen door so roughly it slammed into the shingled front of the house.

            He stumbled inside, muttering. “Where’s she? Where's your mother?” His words slurred; he smelled strange. 

            "In the kitchen," I stammered. "Making supper."

            My brother and I quickly stood up to hug Daddy around his legs, but he shoved us aside. His body lurched sideways, hitting first the buffet on the left and then the easy chair on the right. He leaned heavily against the doorframe into the kitchen, and I could hear his ragged breath.            

            “Where’s my dad?” he shouted, stumbling into the kitchen. “What've ya done with him?”

            I rushed to the kitchen door and held onto the frame, wanting to keep my brother back.

            “John!” Mom said, “You’re drunk. You know your dad’s dead.”

            He shoved her aside and grabbed the sharp knife lying on the counter. When he raised it high, his arm trembling, it seemed to me that the blade gleamed in the light from the electric bulb hanging from the ceiling. Then he plunged the knife downward. My mother reeled backward, banging into the end of the table. It skittered sideways.

             “John!” she shouted, as he lunged again, barely missing her left arm, which she'd raised over her head. She turned and darted to the end of the kitchen table. He followed her, the knife flashing, rising and falling, missing her chest, her shoulders, her back. 
             He kept bumping into the long table, knocking the chairs over. She edged her way around the table. He followed, staggering, stabbing the air over and over again with the knife, muttering, "I'll teach ya to lie to me!" 

            They circled the table again and again while the knife plunged downward. Then . . . 

            “Dolores,” Mom yelled, “take your brother outside!”

            Dad tried to grab her.

            “Get in the car! Lock it behind you.”

            I stood dumbfounded.

            “Go!” Mom screamed. “Go now!”

            My brother was peeping beneath my arm. I ran with him back to the front door. On the wall next to it was a drawing of Mary, the mother of Jesus. We stopped, our chests heaving with fright. The two of us stood, our backs to the kitchen, and prayed in breathless whispers. "Blessed Virgin Mary, make Daddy stop. Please! Please! Stop the yelling. Don't let him hurt Mommy. Don't let that knife get her. Please listen. Please."

Leonardo da Vinci drawing from Wikipedia.

            We could hear Dad bumping into the table. We could hear Mom’s voice, calm, steady. “John. Stop this. Let me help you get into bed.”

            We heard a thud as if someone fell to the floor. Then sobbing—harsh, loud—and Mom’s voice. “That’s it. Just cry it all out.”  

            My brother and I gripped one another's hands, our mouths still whispering frantic prayers. We watched Mom lead our father from the kitchen, past us, and into the bedroom. He no longer held the knife.

            The two of us stood beneath the drawing of Mary. I had my arm around my four-year-old brother, ready now to run for the car if Dad suddenly rose up from the bed and tried to kill our mother another way.

            Time passed. I don’t know how long. Mom came out of the bedroom and closed the door after her. She sat down in the easy chair, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes. My brother climbed up on her lap, “Mama,” he said. “Is Daddy okay?”
            "For now," she murmured as tears rolled down her face. He patted them away.

            I went out into the kitchen, collected all the knives, got the hammer and the axe out of the toolbox, and hid them all under a wooden box in the backyard. For the next ten years, until I went away to college, I did that every time Dad came home in the wee hours of the morning. The only thing that changed was that I learned to hide the weapons underneath the mattress on my bed. 

               Often, as the years passed, Mom would ask me to bring her one of the knives I'd hidden. "You don't need to do this, Dolores," she'd say each time. "Your father isn't going to hurt any of us."

            The reality is that Dad never again tried to kill my mother. But his drinking did end up hurting all of us.

                                                                           (Continued next Tuesday . . . )