heard , or maybe not even seen at all . It ’ s a skill I perfected watching my mom , the one piece that has stayed with me . So many times since her death I have searched my face for signs , looking for her hard brow in my sea of freckles . I had to look no further than the way an angry man can make me fear for my life .
We didn ’ t know , with Gary . Not at first — or at least , I didn ’ t know . In the years I was away , she had met him , had a child with him , and lived her life with his temper . I came into their chaos on the whim of my caseworker . Mom gave me a room , a small bed , and no explanations . In the first few months , I clawed for his attention , sinking my talons into him in the same clingy way that would drive boyfriends away all through middle school . The less attention he paid me , the more desperate I got , until simply a dirty look after I pushed the baby would be enough to satisfy my hunger .
Like so many things , I don ’ t know what drove him to it . I ’ m sure I did something , because I was always doing something . I pissed him off and suddenly I was laid out on the ground , on my belly . Whap . Whap . Whap . Hot pain on the backs of my calves , throbbing so hard that the welts themselves seemed to pulse . I saw him retreating with his large stick , flakes of bark falling onto the kitchen floor as he walked . He didn ’ t throw it out the door as I expected , but set it against the door frame . He sauntered back into the living room where I was burying my face in the carpet .
“ You see that ? You do that again ”— and even then , I remember not knowing what I had done , what that had been —“ and you get the cane again .” I lay trembling on the floor long after he walked away , not sure if getting up would set him off again .
So many of the facts have been filled in for me in recent years . Gary had been raised on a Mexican farm , and the caning of calves was simply what was done to naughty children . His abuse was , for all its irony , his way of treating me like his own child . Later he told me stories of his pet chicken , and how his father chopped its head off in front of him . He described the blood gushing , and how the chicken still walked around while on the ground his head twitched . I was shocked and fascinated at the time , and it would be years before I realized that the man who terrorized me was not born that way , but like most monsters , was created .
It was like a switch flipped . For all my groping for his attention , suddenly I was doing everything in my power to avoid the focus of his rattlesnake eyes . The stick stood by the screen door , daring me to misbehave each time I went outside . Fortunately for me , Gary got a job in the kitchen of the local hospital , and with
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