Breaking the Cycle

  I bowed my head and closed my eyes.

  After a moment, my stepfather commanded me, “Turn the station on that TV.” I turned to a channel with a baseball game and he dismissed me. “Right there,” he said. “Now gone! Get out!”

  I went back over to the couch and sat down. Moments later, my mother’s bedroom door crept open and she beckoned to me from the doorway. I quietly got up, peeked over at my stepfather, and then eased inside her bedroom.

  “Is he sleep?” my mother asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He sleep.”

  “That nigga ain’t never gonna put his hands on my baby again. You hear me?”

  “Ma, you got a big bump on your head.”

  “I know. Ain’t nuthin’. That’s just gonna be my fuel. My energy I use to get this evil ass bastard. You see how hard he hit Tamia? He threw her! That’s a little girl! That nigga dead! He ain’t doing that no more.”

  “We can go get a brick!” I supplied. “Or a rock maybe.”

  Ma’s eyes glazed over before she spoke. “Or a grindstone.”

  “The grindstone?” I tried to make sense of her reply.

  “Yeah, the grindstone.” She turned to me. “Listen to me. I got a surprise for his ass. I got a couple of knives hid downstairs in the basement. They those long, heavy hunting knives. I got them real cheap at the flea market. I’m gonna get him myself. I’m gonna get him.” My mother held my hands tightly as she looked me in the eyes. “Tomorrow, we go to sharpen my shit… to make my point to that dog out there. We gonna grind.”

  I was with her every step of the way… but I knew it was going to cost her. My stepfather was a big, strong, slave-tough nigga. He would have to be hit hard and quick and I knew that Ma would catch hell trying to get him. Even with a knife. But I’ll give her this; my mother was determined to take her husband off this earth. So, every night I took her down to the grindstone to sharpen her knife….and after she was done, I would sharpen mine.

  Her knife was bigger than mine. The blade was wide and thick and it had a black rubber handle. It looked like a hunting knife, yet it held a deadly beauty; graceful but lethal. I only hoped it would inflict enough damage to finish the job. In comparison, my knife was like a kitchen knife, which I kept sharpened for those special occasions when Ma would go off into one of her stark raving fits.

  I commiserated with my mother over the following weeks when we stood in the yard, late into the night, and watched the sparks shoot off into the darkness as we sharpened our knives. This was our moment… our time to bond closer, to learn to love and be loved, to find that commonality that would define our relationship for life… but my mother treated me like a red-headed stepchild.

  My stepfather came home drunk one day and tried to hit my mother with a baseball bat. That night, while we stood in the dark at the grindstone, as we sharpened our knives, my mother would confirm her value of me.

  She turned the grindstone. “That nigga always hittin’ me for nuthin’. Hittin’ on my babies.” Her eyes glared when she put the knife to the stone. “I had dem babies… not him! Fuck him and his stankin’-ass-ho-mama-ass! Shit!”

  “We ever gonna leave him, Ma?” I asked.

  She smirked at me… and suddenly the sparks from the grindstone began to fly. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “‘You ain’t no ‘we.’ You ain’t no part of ‘we’ and never will be. You are the biggest piece of shit that ever happened to me, Boy.” She paused to look me in the eyes. She saw right past the pain that her words inflicted on me… and she created even more. “You know how your black-ass stepdaddy, if you can call him that, you know how he keep on talking about your real daddy? Well, he don’t know shit about your real daddy. Truth is, I don’t know nuthin’ about the mothafucka myself. You know how I met your daddy? How I had you?”

  I was speechless. I mean, my mother never talked to me about serious stuff. She usually just hit me.

  She took my silence as assent. “When I was young, I was wild. I was out and about and I wasn’t thinkin’ about that black bastard up that hill with the baseball bat. I already had two babies by him but I was still young and still wanted to be free like I ain’t have no kids. So I was out at the clubs, partying, when I first saw your daddy. He had ‘nigga’ written all over his stank ass… and he was just what I needed. So when he came over to me, I was more than ready for him. We did a few jitterbugs and I checked out his rhythm just to see if he could swang. And then we did some slow grinds so I could check out his ‘rhythm’ and I knew he could swang. It was time to go. And I wanted him to be my lover.” She paused to look at me. “You know what a lover is?”

  I nodded my head in astonished negative. She continued anyway.

  “Well, your real daddy took me. He was savage with me. I looked up that word: savage. And that’s what he was… like a hungry, hard animal… and he growled as he took me. I tried to stop him but he started choking me. When I stopped fighting him, he still squeezed my neck so tight that I could hardly breathe. Then he looked me in my eyes as he took me. I still feel that look sometimes ’cause, to this day, I still wonder what he was looking for. It musta been pain he was lookin’ for ’cause that’s what he gave me. He was big… well, his manhood was real big, and he took me hard and vicious. That muthafucka raped me. Your muthafucking daddy!” She turned back to the grindstone and began to sharpen her knife. “I hate that muthafucka. I hate what he took. I hate what he hurt. And through him, I hated you.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes and I desperately tried to catch them before they fell. My pain had no place to go but inward. My mother wanted to leave me alone. As a matter of fact, I had always been alone, with nothing but hope as my companion. My life was a fucking tragedy.

  “And you look just like his ass,” my mother continued, grinding the stone. “Every time I look at you, I see that man. I see that man.”

  My mother had her back to me so she didn’t see me walk up to her. I thought I saw a slight tremble in her frame as she recalled the horror of my conception and, instinctively, I reached out and touched her shoulder. She had been through more than enough pain.

  She turned around and slapped me to the ground. “Muthafuckin savage!”

  She spit the words at me as I lay there, her words stinging me more than the blow to my cheek. Yet again, my pain had no place to go.

  We spent the rest of our time at the grindstone in silence. I watched the sparks fly and tried to imagine myself in another time, another place. When we finally made it back to the house, I went straight back to my bedroom and slammed the door. I pulled my knife from my pocket and flicked the blade out. I had been practicing flicking the blade like I had seen guys do in the movies, but I couldn’t seem to master the technique of shooting the blade out in an almost magical, Houdini-type move. Next, I was going to learn how to throw the knife and make it stick in the wall like Davy Crockett did on TV. I had visions.

  I heard the heavy footsteps of my stepfather as he pounded up the stairs into the house. His voice boomed. “Did you get my money for me, Bitch?!”

  I eased my bedroom door open a crack and watched them.

  “I told you that I couldn’t get no money,” my mother said. “You know nobody ain’t got no money. You know that shit. You ain’t got none neither.”

  “I know I’d have some more money if I didn’t have to put out no money for that bastard you got up in my house. Where is that skinny little nigga you call a son anyway, slut. Where his ass at? Where that motherfucker?”

  “I don’t know!” she screamed. “I don’t fucking know, alright!”

  A shocked second of silence hung in the air. The next sounds I heard were the utterly identifiable sounds of violence. My stepfather was enraged. He punched my mother to the floor and then he began picking up things and hitting her with them as she lay there. When she finally lay still, beaten and whimpering, he began asking her questions and kicking her to make her answer. When he began to tire, I heard my mother, in a very weak voice, begin murmuring her apolo
gies, begging his forgiveness. He was drunk. It was always the same.

  He plopped down on the couch and I heard his heavy breathing from my doorway.

  My mother crawled over to him, crying in pain. “Why you got to beat on me all the time?” Her voice was heavy with desperation. “Why?”

  My stepfather ignored her and picked up the remote control from the end table.

  “Why?” she asked again.

  “Bitch, I know you see me finna watch this program, right?” he replied as he flipped through the channels.

  My mother curled up in a ball on the floor and I watched as she deftly reached under the sofa and dragged the knife over to her. The blade looked ominous. Its edges looked sharp as she tucked it down by her side, hidden from my stepfather’s view when she turned back to him.

  “I just wanna know why,” she said. Her voice was much clearer when she spoke. “You been hittin’ on me for years… and for nuthin’. I do everything I can and you still beat on me. Why you do that?”

  “Bitch! If you don’t shut yo’ ho mouth while I’m watchin’ my program…”

  “I just wanted to know,” she said, “before I stick you.”

  And then my mother plunged the knife into his leg. He howled in pain and tried to scramble away but my mother had his leg locked in an iron grip. She swung the blade again, sinking it deeper into his thigh. My stepfather clubbed my mother in the head with both fists until her grip loosened. He tried to dive on top of her but his damaged leg wouldn’t cooperate. He fell in a heap on the floor next to her and my mother rolled away from him. He reached over, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back toward him, but she had the knife in the other hand and she swung it at him. The knife sunk into his chest to the hilt and my mother froze in terror. He looked down at the knife, buried to the hilt in his flesh, then he looked at my mother with a look of disbelief. An animal cry escaped his lips and he reverted to the monster inside.

  He seized my mother by her neck with both hands and began to squeeze. She was powerless in his chokehold and he began slamming her head into the floor. I stood there, in shock, as my mother’s body went limp, as her life left her, and I could only wonder why my stepfather wasn’t dead. It looked like my mother had stabbed that man right in his heart but he was still sitting there, living and breathing. I watched him for a second as he sat there next to my dead mother, as his chest heaved and blood leaked down the front of his shirt. I just knew that he was going to die but as I fingered my knife… I decided I couldn’t wait.

  I flung my bedroom door open and charged toward him, knife extended. He barely moved when he saw me coming for him and I swung my blade at his chest and face repeatedly. I realized it was my life or his, so I stabbed at him with blind rage. He was weak. All of that power, his vaunted power, the force that he had hammered me and my brothers and sisters with, that was all gone as he tried to fend off my attack by blocking my stabs with his arm. Each strike that landed drew blood and I vaguely heard his voice as he began to beg.

  “Stop… it. Don’t… hit. You… hurt… me. Stop.”

  I was covered in his blood, but the sound of his voice froze me. I stepped back from him. “What? What you say?”

  “You hurt… me.” I watched his chest rise and fall heavily with the handle of the knife poking out at an angle. “You hurt. Me.” His head lolled to the side but his eyes were still on me. In that instant, I knew he was going to live if I let him, and I vowed that he wouldn’t ever rise from that floor. My stepfather was a big, strong man and the hatred he had placed in my heart now turned to fear, which drove me to the brink of desperation. He raised his hands to the handle of the knife, got a good grip, and violently ripped it from his chest. He howled in pain as the knife fell to the floor by his side and deathly coughs began to rack through his body as he spit up blood. I just waited and hoped for him to die.

  “Hurt!” he screamed. “Hurt!”

  “Shit!” I screamed back at him. “That’s what you did to us! I ain’t never hurt you before! I ain’t never do nuthin’ to you! But all I am is a bastard, right? All I did was be born, right? Every day! Every day, I hated you. Every day, I was wishing you’d walk out that door and never come back. That we could make it without you… without you comin’ home drunk and beatin’ on me. And for nuthin’, Nigga. For no-thang!” My mother’s body lay on the floor next to him, lifeless. “And look what you did to Ma,” I ranted on. “Look what you turned her into. Look what you did to her! She dead, Nigga! Dead! You turned her heart against me. Her own son. But that’s all right, though. That’s a-okay with me, ’cause you know what? Inna minute you is just gonna be another nigga, dead. Even if I have to do it myself.”

  “Boy,” he managed to get out before his body exploded in coughs of pain. “Boy, I ain’t never… gonna die. I’m gonna always get your punk ass. You ain’t shit… just like yo’ apple knockin’ daddy. Yo’ slut ass mama threw her legs up in an apple field to have you… and umma end up fuckin’ you just the same. Shee-it.”

  “Fuck you!” I screamed and charged him again. I stabbed him and stabbed him and stabbed him until his lifeless body was slumped face down on the floor. I stood up and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the living room mirror and saw a grisly-looking kid staring back at me. There was blood all over my body and there was a madman dancing in my eyes. My torture was over but my tragedy had just begun.

  I arose from the grisly scene in a trance. I plodded out of the house and walked down the hill to Upwards Alley. It was nighttime now and the streets were quiet. I snuck around to the back of Donnell Shunt’s house and hid behind the fence. The grindstone was still there and I watched it for a while… harboring cruel visions accompanied by dark thoughts, the pair playing with each other on a jungle gym in the twisted playground of my mind.

  I look back now at the detritus of my life, at the mess that was my misspent youth and I can only feel wondrous justification. My existence is a fractional cycle, ending and beginning in shattered bouts of hopelessness. My memories are like that also; violent images that push themselves to the forefront of my consciousness in staccato rhythms of madness. Images of blood and guts, fists and knives, pain and agony, flash across my mind and cause me to, temporarily, push against the restraints that bind my mental state.

  My agony sometimes comes in the terrifying form of questions: Did I let my mother die? Did I really bring about my stepfather’s bloody demise? Was my childhood pain only a youthful nightmare? I don’t really know the difference between illusion and reality anymore. They keep me locked up most of the time but the pills and medication are my real captors. I’ve been a functional zombie for so long that I’ve lost touch with the warmth of humanity, the sound of the human heart, and the joy of laughter. Through the haze of my insanity only one light shines for me to hold onto; sometimes violence is the only answer to violence, and blood is the only detergent that has washed my soul clean. Forever.

  Nane Quartay was born in upstate New York and attended Augusta College in Augusta, Georgia. After a tour in the United States Navy he traveled extensively before returning to New York to begin writing his first novel Feenin. His next novel, The Badness, is due out this spring. He now resides in the Washington, D.C. area.

  SILENT SUFFERING

  SHONDA CHEEKES

  CHAPTER ONE

  I don’t condone violence of any kind. But I think it’s really embarrassing when it happens to a man. I’m basically treated like a helpless, punk ass bitch in my own house.

  Candace, or Candy as she’s known, is the inflictor of my pain. I’ve suffered unthinkable pain at her hands for more than a year. I bet the question in your mind is why do I stay and take it. I guess because I feel a connection to her in some sort of sick and twisted way. Let me elaborate a bit to give you a better understanding.

  Candy and I are both products of what happens when you’re raised in an abusive environment. Her abuse was experienced secondhand. Her father would beat her mother unmercifully on any given day. A persona
l punching bag for the old man. Candy promised herself that would never be her lot in life. She’d always be able to take care of herself. Never have to put all of her dependence in a man in order to make it. But in her effort to protect herself from becoming a victim, she learned to victimize.

  The abuse in my house stemmed from a woman scorned. When I was four, my old man left one evening for the corner store. I guess he never found it. Since I was a near replica of her source of pain, Mama took it out on me whenever the feeling struck her. A slap across the face; a punch to the head. After a while, she started tying me to the bed. Dared me to make a sound or piss. As hard as I tried, by the second day, I would lose my bladder control and she would lose control on me.

  One episode that has stayed prevalent in my memory happened around my fourteenth birthday. I don’t remember exactly what it was that set her off. It didn’t take much anyway. I just remember the situation almost landed me in the hospital after being horrendously beaten. Tired and breathless from beating me with a belt and being that I hadn’t given her the desired reaction of crying, she searched around for something that would surely get those tears out of me. That night it happened to be a hammer. I remember the feel of the metal making contact with a piece of my skull with a frightening thud. I ran as fast as I could out of the house in search of a safe haven. Ms. Johnson opened her door as soon as she heard the lock click. I ended up at her house for the next week, until she couldn’t afford another mouth to feed.

  Soon the prospect of going off to college became my escape plan. Tessa would laugh and tell me there was no way I was going to make it at a four-year school.

  “Yo’ dumb ass might as well go on down to the nearest trade school and call it a day.” She’d laugh that wicked bone-chilling laugh I’d grown to hate as she lay up on the sofa watching her favorite soaps.