Love With Sharp Edges

"What can you possibly see in him, Angela?! He's 42, you're 19; you run marathons, and he spends his days in a wheelchair!" He paused briefly before blurting, "And he's fucking black!"

Angela clenched her teeth so she wouldn't cry--not from sadness or hurt, but from anger. She continued packing her bag, viciously throwing in one item at a time. As her father glowered and snorted at her, she searched for the words of the perfect, bitterest repost.

"For god's sake, the man weighs 320 pounds! A young woman like you has absolutely nothing in common with a quarter-ton nig--"

She cut him off with quiet vehemence, pausing in her abrupt packing and glaring directly into his eyes. "'Nothing in common?' What would you know about what people have in common? Mom left you for a woman!" she hissed.

Nothing had ever been said about this fact. In the eight years since her mother's sudden departure from the family, they had never once talked about the circumstances surrounding it. No questions, no discussions, no snarky little allusions. It was understood that the original blow to his ego was about all he could take; further discussion of why his wife had switched teams would have crushed the man. He was an arrogant bully (like a lot of men his age, Angela thought), but he was weak and fragile on the inside (like a lot of men period, Angela thought). He had bullied her her whole life--it was his understanding of how to parent. But she was not little anymore, and she was finished being bullied. Her mother had always told her that the way to handle a bully in the school yard was to hit him so bad he couldn't get back up to hit you back. (Her mother had actually only insinuated that Angela boot the testicles off any boy who tried to manhandle her, but Angela had been extrapolated on the concept.) Now was the time, she decided in cold anger, to shut this bully down forever.

As her father stared back at her in hurt disbelief, shocked that she would bring up the circumstances of his failed marriage, she delivered the final blow. Angela was ashamed of herself as she felt vindication welling up in her as she saw tears form in his eyes, but she couldn't hold it back. She screamed at him in fury and triumph: "And the woman was fucking black!"