Drunk Again

         I watched father stumble in after an eight hour day of work most likely followed by an hour at the bar and thought about how hard it must be for him to live such a lie.  That must be why he drank so much, to escape from the lies mother told to him and possibly to give her that extra hour to get her boyfriend out of the house.  She thinks he doesn’t know.
         He staggers into the living room and sits in his chair.  Actually, no, he doesn’t sit into his chair he does more of a falling action into his special chair.  He taught everyone early on that this is his chair and nobody is to sit in it whose name is not Henry Schultz. 
         He searches through the cushions for the remote, finds it and turns on the TV with some difficulty.  He is much too drunk to push the buttons precisely so he just leaves it on this channel.
         Twenty minutes passes and mother walks in.  She drops a plate of chicken in his lap. “Here.”
         “Why’s it so late?  I tell you every day I want dinner when I get home not a half an hour after I get home,” he half yells, half slurs.  “Did you underestimate the amount of time it would take for you to screw your new boyfriend?”
         Mother just stands there stunned, at a loss for words.  I see the big fight coming and leave the room, retreating to the bedroom peeking through the door to watch and listen from a safe distance.  There is silence for another moment then comes the rage.
         “Yeah I know what you’ve been up to you whore! So tell me how many other guys have you slept with?” he yells as he attempts to get up, falls back into the chair, and then makes it up on the second attempt.
         “No.  I didn’t.  I just-” she manages to get out feebly before the first blow comes. It knocks mother backwards into the wall and she screams out in a combination of fear and pain.  Father is not a very violent man, but this man was not my father.  The drinking changed him just as it changes everybody else.  This man, not my father, was not the peaceful type, nor was he the kind of man to let things go.  He wouldn’t just hit mother one time or two or three.  He would hit her twenty-three times.  Needlessly beating her and throwing her up against the wall.  He would help her up and then throw her to the floor again.  She may have deserved a smack in the back of the head for all the shit she put him through but this was total overkill.  Even the cruelest of men could feel sympathy for her at this point.
         She’s on the floor crying now, cowering from this man who is not my father. She is shaking in the corner, curled up in the fetal position.  She is bleeding.  Sadly, though, this blood is not coming from her nose or from her mouth but from her belly.  This blood is not her blood, but the blood of her unborn child.  He sees this, but is too drunk to truly it.  For her this is not a bad thing.  If he had realized it, it would have enraged him even more.  He probably would have thought that it was not his.  But unlike her other two children, this one was his.  And even this man who appeared to have no conscience would shudder at the thought of beating his own flesh and blood to its death before it had even had the chance to experience life.
         “Bitch,” he yells one last time before abandoning her in the corner to fulfill his own desires for his liquid gold and young women at the local bar.  He slams the door behind him.  She stays in the corner not moving with exception for the convulsions from the pain and tears.