My Mother

MY MOTHER

“My husband used to hit me.”
My mother whispered in my ear
As she held me on our back porch
After announcing to my father
That she was leaving him.

They had come out of a kitchen
Loud with the rattling and banging of dinner’s
Pots and pans.
She made her announcement,
Scooped me out of the floor,
And carried me to the back porch.
She said my father’s profane language
Had been the straw.
I was confused by the secret she had whispered
Into my four-year-old’s ear.
My daddy hit my mother?
I could not imagine.
I had never seen him hit anyone.

I knew nothing of that other husband
The one whose beatings
Had planted the anger
That years later erupted without warning
On this husband and their children.

We stood on the back porch
For a long time.
She had said we were leaving.
It was dark.
I wondered if we were waiting for a bus.
But we slipped back inside when her
Fury had seeped away to
My dad reading the evening paper
My brother playing cars on the couch.
I went back to my dolls,
But I never forgot,
“My husband used to hit me.”