The Beat of a Battered Heart

DISRUPTION- 7

I remember my father. He wasn't around a lot but when he was, he was okay to me. I mean, he brought me coloring books and matchbox cars. Happy meals. I knew, even then, at five or six, that he wasn't really supposed to be Mama and I's. I knew that the silver band he wore was not matched on Mama's hand.

He drank beer. Smoked a lot. Mama did, too. She cried sometimes when he left. When I showed concern, she'd always just smile sadly and say, "Don't worry baby. He always comes back."

Until once when he didn't come back. For months. Mama worked a lot of extra shifts, spent a lot of time talking on the phone. He missed my sixth birthday and I remember being upset about it.

And then I came home from school and he was there. Like nothing had happened. He let me sit on his knee. He showed me card tricks. Mama was all smiles.

He stayed one night.

And never came back again.

Mama cried for a long time after that.

Later, there was talk. There was news. And even though I was only little, I knew that my daddy was in prison for doing a Very Bad Thing. Mama kept telling me that it wasn't his fault- that his wife had been terrible and abusive. That he had only been defending himself. The little girl- that was an accidnet. He'd never harm a child even if she wasn't his.

I was his. I had his blood in my veins. His dark eyes and wavy dark hair. An olive undertone to my skin.

Now, when I was thirteen, I went to the library bent on looking up all that went wrong to put daddy in prison. Mama was never the same once he'd gone. It was like she didn't have anything to look forward to anymore. She was mad. Not at me. At the people who sent daddy away.

And so it was in the middle of the Jupiter Public Library that I learned daddy wasn't just in prison. He was on death row. They all said awful things about him and I just couldn't reconcile this with the quiet man who brought me Twizzlers.

"There's no justice for your daddy," Mama would say.

I fixed that, though.

That DA- the sound his head made when I hit him with the bat. The echo of the shot I fired. Poor aim on my part- he's still alive. But, of course, not really.

Mama was so proud.

I was 18 then.

Three years later, after I got away with what I did in the parking lot of the courthouse, they killed daddy anyway. The only time I got to see him he was washed out and done. He told me to take care of Mama. And not to believe everything I heard.

I saw them the night daddy died. Outside of the prison. That bitch Mama hated so much and the boy she ran around with that was a man now.

I knew what I had to do. For daddy, for Mama. This Caroline- she said disgusting things about my daddy. She was the one who drove him to act the way he did. It was only natural for a man to try and control his women. It's how things were. What happened- it's all her fault.

So I followed her. That very night- to Jacksonville, then on to New Orleans. I had just enough money to rent a place upstairs from hers. And I became a pro at sneaking around her. At first, I just studied her routine. I knew where and when she worked, what time she came home. Once she was settled at work, it was so easy to get into her place.

And then something happened. I heard her crying one night. Heard her beg for forgiveness from her little sister that daddy had accientally shot. Heard her call for the boy that was now a man. She sounded so desolate. So alone. I started to waver. Just a tiny bit.