[Child abuse]
It doesn’t take you long to start crying. You try to hold it in, try to hold back the tears and be strong like your brother told you, but you are only six years old and you don’t have the capacity for strength when a grown man’s fists pummel you into oblivion. You aren’t sure what it is that you’ve done wrong this time, and maybe you did nothing at all. This man is dangerous, quick to anger like a wild animal or a spark held to gasoline vapors and exploding outward until he consumes everything in his path. All you know is that you were sitting in front of Saturday morning cartoons and playing with your plastic truck when he slammed through the bedroom door and starting yelling at the top of his lungs.
“SLOAN. Get your ass over here, boy –” and before you can run and hide in the closet he is on top of you, big hands slapping at your face and neck because he needs to punish someone and you weren’t fast enough to escape. You will be bruised and bloody by the time he is done and all the other mommies and daddies will ask you what happened and you will say that you fell down, because this man says that good boys don’t tell.
When he finally stops, you are still crying. He makes a disgusted sound in the back of his throat and then he goes into the filthy kitchen and you can hear him banging pots and pans around, looking for something to eat that hasn’t gone bad. You lay crumpled on the floor and wipe your bloody nose on your Wolverine shirt that used to belong to David until he got to big and he gave it to you. It is your favourite shirt, and when you see the bloody mess you’ve made of it you start to cry harder. David isn’t home, and you think that maybe you can clean it up before he sees it.
On your way to the bathroom, you pass by the open bedroom door and you see mommy on the bed that she shares with you and David. Sometimes this man sleeps over and then you and David have to share the couch, but that is okay because you get to stay up late watching TV and David never tattles. You are glad that mommy didn’t wake up, because she gets real mad when she’s tired and you don’t want her to see what this man did to your face. So you tiptoe past the bedroom and slip into the bathroom and you cry and cry and cry into a towel until you are all cried out, and then you put on your brave big-boy face and try to use a washcloth to scrub the blood from David’s shirt.