Member-only story
Powerless Children
Abuse; divorce; and the question of relative privilege
When I was maybe fifteen years old, my stepfather wouldn’t let my mother leave.
The memory exists in pieces now, fragments, but each shard is still as clear as the day it happened. Here is one: my stepfather follows my mother around, hurling verbal abuse, when all she wants to do is get away from it. It is uncanny how closely this memory resembles a similar one, two decades down the road, of Atlas doing the same thing to me. I remember how it made me feel as a child — confused, afraid, wishing I could do something to make it stop but completely powerless; now, I know exactly how my mother felt in that moment, too.
Here is another fragment, smaller but even more heartbreaking: my brother Reaper, only seven or so, picking up gravels from the driveway and throwing them with all his might at his father. Some of them hit their target, bouncing off the back of a man who is bigger, stronger, more forceful than anyone else here. He doesn’t even notice.
And another: my mother tells us to get in the Durango, my two brothers, a friend of mine, and me, and gets her keys to drive away from this monster. There is a crack in this shard, because I don’t remember how exactly it happened (or maybe I didn’t see this part) but my stepfather wrests the keys away…