Chapter 3: No Safe Place

As I grew up, I realized my father’s behavior was called domestic violence.

The teacher said you could call the cops, and the police would protect me and my mom. I’d watch those school safety videos where a cartoon badge would show up and promise help, and for a moment, I believed it.

So one night after being beaten, while my father was asleep, I tugged at my mother’s hand.

Full of joy and hope, I even forgot the pain on my body.

"Mom, let’s call the police and have dad arrested."

But my mother wasn’t happy as I’d imagined. Instead, she looked at me with shock and heartbreak.

"Aubrey, he’s your father. How could you do this?"

Her tone of reproach hit me like a slap. I felt the words burn into my cheeks, hotter than any bruise.

I instantly blushed, feeling like the worst daughter in the world. I shrank away, hugging my knees to my chest beneath the kitchen table.

But it clearly wasn’t like that.

The teacher said, domestic violence is domestic violence. No matter who does it, it can’t be forgiven.

So I insisted on calling the police.

My mother hit me for the first time.

The stick was as thick as a finger, and it even broke; she made me kneel and think about what I’d done.

For the first time, I learned that it wasn’t just my father’s beatings that hurt—my mother’s did too.

For the first time, I learned that my mother could hit people—just not my father.

After being beaten countless times by my father, I never cried. But that night after my mother hit me, I cried all night.

The next day, my mother, unusually, boiled an egg to roll over my bruises. She pressed the warm shell to my skin, whispering apologies, tears slipping down her cheeks.

Usually, my mother saved the eggs for my father.

I knew this was how things went in our house—a little kindness, just enough to make you forget the pain for a minute.

But I didn’t like this kind of mother. She felt very strange to me. I began to see her not as a guardian, but as someone trapped—maybe just as helpless as me.

Before, when I was beaten, I looked forward to growing up, because then I could protect my mother.

But as I got older, I found that growing up was a sad thing.

It gradually destroyed my delusions.

Time and again, the domestic violence repeated.

Time and again, the forgiveness was the same.

I couldn’t help but become numb, coldly watching my mother cry bitterly one moment, then flatter him the next. It was like she wore a mask, switching faces at will.

I thought I couldn’t be more disappointed than I was today.

But behind disappointment, there was still despair.

When I was eleven, my father beat me so badly I had a bone fracture.

No matter what she said, I insisted on calling the police.

She cried and knelt, begging me, saying if I called the police, I’d be forcing her to die. She clung to my hand, desperate.

A mother kneeling to her daughter.

I was nailed to the pillar of moral shame.

No way forward, no way back.

Did she love me?

I couldn’t tell anymore.

Maybe she did, but her love for my father had drained her dry.

What was left for me was very little.

There were countless broken plates at home, and because life was hard, my mother kept all the usable ones.

She gave the best plate to my father, the second best to me, and the one with the most cracks to herself.

Later, the broken plates became so numerous she couldn’t tell which was best or worst.

Everyone held the same kind of broken plate.

Living the same kind of ruined life.

My father asked for more and more money, came home in a worse and worse mood every day, and hit harder and harder.

But a few days later, my father suddenly looked radiant.

Not only did he bring home a rotisserie chicken, he also bought my mother a new dress from Walmart.

My mother thought spring had come.

But my father’s words plunged her into winter.

He took her hand and said:

"Lillian, there’s a big shot at our card game, he’s loaded. He really admires you. If you wear this dress and have dinner with him tomorrow night, what do you think?"

My mother was always very pretty—a well-known beauty in town. People used to stop her in the grocery store to compliment her smile or ask what shampoo she used.

Her smile froze, her eyes blank as she stared at my father.

She asked slowly, "Just dinner?"

As if confirming something.

My father’s eyes flickered, not daring to meet hers.

He said, "Lillian, please help me just this once. The guy said he’ll help me out in the future. Then I can give you a good life."

My mother sat there, trembling so much she couldn’t speak, like a puppet whose soul had been emptied—instantly aging ten years.

I’d never seen her like that.

It was as if all hope was gone.

My father thought she wouldn’t agree, so he turned and cursed her:

"Didn’t you moan for me in bed, but you can’t do it with someone else?"

"Damn, you’re not even as good as the skin on Mrs. Murphy’s heel."

I knew Mrs. Murphy. She lived at the west end of Maple Heights.

Classmates said she was a prostitute—selling herself to support her husband. There was always a cloud of cigarette smoke and whispered rumors around her porch.

My mother was already sobbing, tugging at my father’s sleeve, begging him to stop.

"I’ll go, I’ll go."