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“There is so much pain in your eyes.” It did not take long for my future wife to notice.
“We have to leave him Mommy. We can move to Puerto Rico. He will never find us. All four of us kids agreed and pleaded with her- “We have to leave him now.”
“Como podemos?” How can we?” she asks.
We knew that my mother was scared and could not take care of us all by herself. We had no one to turn to, but we had to do something. He had become so angry and worse, that day he let his anger turn to violence. We convinced my mother to wait until he leaves for work at 10pm and at least spend the night at a neighbor’s home. With no plan for the future, all four of us slept on the floor; at least we tried to.
My father rarely carried keys to the house. Usually my mother would lock the door behind him when he left for work at the Bronx terminal market. He would knock on the door for one of us to let him in when he arrived. His knock was loud and recognizable and it would let us know to take a break from the good times. That night, we took the keys and left the door unlocked for his return.
When he arrived that morning, he must have seen the note my mom left him: “We are leaving you and never coming back. We cannot live like this anymore. The kids are so scared of you.” He began to call around and it did not take him long to reach my mother’s best friend and neighbor.”
“Chany’s on the phone.”
My mother snaps back with fear and fury “Yo no quiero hablar con el.” “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“He said he wants you all to come home and that you have the only set of keys. He does not want to leave for work that night without locking the door.”
“I will send Dennis.” she says
“What? Me?” I asked, hoping to escape this dreaded initiation rite.
“He hit your sister. It has to be you.”
“Do it for Mommy.” One of my sisters blurts out.
“OK. I’ll do it.”
I was only 11 years old and I had never been as scared as I was that day walking from our neighbor’s home to ours. “I have to be strong for my mother and sisters." I felt so small and vulnerable, confused as to why I was forced to act like a man. “I cannot cry. I have to be strong.”
I entered the house and pressed on to the kitchen all the while dreading the next moment. There he was. There was no sign of anger or of any emotion. We just stared each other. He looks at me and says: “what does she want me to do?”
I started to quiver. I could not hold it in anymore. I was a child in pain and so I cried. “I want you to stop fighting!”
His eyes began to water and he took a step towards me. I jerked away a bit and then he turned into my dad. He hugged me and said through sobs: “I promise I will not fight anymore. I am so sorry.”
At the moment of our embrace, I could feel the pain behind the anger. It was the pain of a man who was lost- a man who hated himself for not being able to control his passions. A man who lived a lie in the eyes of most people he knew. It was the pain of a man who needed his father to embrace him and tell him he was sorry a long time ago. It was the pain of a man who did not feel he deserved the love of his family.
My father thought he kept his promise because he never hit us again, but the daily bursts of anger continued for years. That is, until disease took away his strength and he learned to surrender to his truest self. He learned to stop fighting.
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