It Was Me All Along: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF

was me.

HE STARTED DRINKING MORE . I hadn’t known it to be anything unusual until that Wednesday, at just about three o’clock in the afternoon, when I heard the glass shatter. If it had been just a smash—the crunch of another heavy green glass ashtray cracking through the wall—perhaps I wouldn’t have flinched so markedly. If I hadn’t heard Dad howl, I’d have assumed it was another routine case of him losing his temper.
    At seven years old, I’d become accustomed to seeing ashes and cigarette butts flying through the air like confetti in the kitchen. They argued, usually after Mom pleaded with Dad to stop drinking or to help with some household task that might have made her life less overwhelming. Before she left for work, she’d ask for him to tidy up, and upon her return, she’d be met with a bigger mess. The dishes, in a crusty pile, waited to be bussed, and dirty laundry sat, almost patronizingly, just to the left of the hamper. She resented it. And he resented the nagging. Mostly, she backed down.“Never mind. It’s fine,” she’d say, relenting. She took all the reasons she couldn’t take it, not even a day longer, and packed them away. She rolled them, refolded them, and rearranged them, tucking them in and under and more tightly, as if she were filling a suitcase. Only patience made more room. She lugged that baggage with her, blistering the middles of her palms, and I could almost see the hunch her back had taken to support the weight. There were moments when she threatened him, said she wouldn’t put up with all of it anymore. Those times, she’d stand straight up, her shoulders squared, with her suitcase at her feet, and I’d witness her body steel as it went from nervousness to self-assurance to hesitation to
just leave already!
    What I wonder now, when I think of how unbearably heavy that suitcase had become, how broken she looked every time she stuffed one more sorrow inside, is why she never left.
    On the occasions when she chose to fight back, when she began unpacking the suitcase and setting its load upon Dad, his rage ignited. Even if he understood how valid her wants were, the attack made him defensive. He blasted her with her own insecurities over and over. The cursing, the name-calling, the insults—they corroded her confidence. They made her feel small. She ran our house and paid the bills by way of four jobs, and still I watched her weaken her stance and look downward as if to ask herself,
Is he right?
If she fought back, he roared louder. Or he’d throw something she loved across the room.
    But those were not the times my chubby body trembled. Those weren’t the times when my spirit split like the walls of our house. No, it was only when Anthony entered the room, when I heard his small voice try desperately to make itself bigger and less boyish,that the pit of my stomach twisted so violently, I couldn’t tell if I was hungry or about to be sick. I’d see Anthony wedge himself between Mom and Dad, separating them by the width of his thin body. I’d watch him try his best to be brave, to speak through the staccato of his stutter. And at first, Dad would go easy on him. He’d gently tell him that everything was fine and that he should go back to his room. But with one look at Mom, Anthony planted his feet where they were. He stayed and tried to defuse the fight. Soon enough, Dad would begin launching insults at Anthony just as he’d done to Mom. The names he called him, the way he teased his fourteen-year-old son the way he might a man his own age—set the anger inside me over high heat. My insides rolled to a boil. I’d clench my jaw so tightly, I thought my teeth might crack.
    I can still remember the last time I’d heard them fighting and Anthony had gotten involved. The three of them stood in the kitchen, and I looked on from the darkness of the dining room. My nails dug deeply into my palms when Dad began with the yelling. He belittled Anthony, taunted him, and then