“What?” he asked, the fog clearing on his anger as he took a step closer.
“Go to bed, Hamilton. Sort your shit out. I need to take care of her, okay?”
I gently grabbed my mother’s arm and started guiding her toward her Escalade. “Shit, Vera. I’m so sorry. I didn’t see. Joseph did this?”
“It’s your fault,” Mom cried out, her trembling legs nearly buckling beneath her. “It’s all your fault.”
Through the bright moonlight and streetlamps, I saw Hamilton grit his teeth. “Let me come with you, Vera. You don’t have to do this alone.”
I let out a shaky breath. I knew that my mother didn’t want an audience to an already traumatizing experience. And Hamilton wasn’t in the right headspace to be what I needed him to be. “Just stay here please and get some rest? I don’t think you’re capable of helping me right now. I just want to get her to the hospital.”
“Vera. Please let me—”
“No,” I snapped.
Hamilton helped me put Mom in the passenger seat. She was crying to herself, repeating the same thing over and over. “I hate you. I hate you both,” she sobbed before putting her head in her hands. I swallowed that hate and buried it in my chest, suffocating the notion with determination. After shutting the passenger door, I stood outside with Hamilton for a moment, awkwardly wrapping my arms around myself and searching for the words to say.
“Are you sure I can’t come with you?”
“Positive,” I whispered.
Hamilton looked like he wanted to reach out and touch me but instead balled his hands into fists at his side. “Please call me if you need anything. I’ll fix this, okay?” Hamilton said.
“I’m not going to call,” I admitted.
“What? No. This is just a setback, Petal. I’m an ass. An insensitive asshole. I fucked up. I can fix this, Petal. I can take care of Joseph once and for all. I can make them all pay and protect you—even protect your mother.” I didn’t need his protection.
He reached out to grab my shoulder, but I shrugged out of his reach.
“I’ve got it all covered, Hamilton. I don’t need you to fix this. I need you to fix yourself.” I let out a sigh, tears filling my eyes.
He looked down at his feet as I shoved past him to get in the driver’s side. The moment I started the car, my heart sank. This felt like the end of it all, somehow. And I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
24
I’d seen my mother battered and bruised before. She once dated a married man and came home with a shiner on her face. The wife wasn’t too happy when she found the two of them together in her bed. She also rode a bike to work when she couldn’t afford a car and then crashed it into a ditch. Proud and determined, she came limping home with a broken foot and a bent bike frame. It never did heal right.
She handled pain. Delivered me without an epidural because she didn’t want to spend the money. She endured bitter winters without a coat to save money. She had cigarette butt indents in her stomach. A ripped earlobe from when she had a stud yanked out.
But I’d never seen her like this. Cracked wide open. Raw. Bloodied. I wasn’t sure if it was the physical injuries making her tremble and cry out. No, it was the mental anguish that had her twisted in knots.
Mom refused to go to the hospital, so instead, I took her to the apartment that didn’t feel like mine anymore. I helped her into the bathtub and gasped at the number of bruises that littered her chest and torso. Most of them were easily hidden. Joseph knew exactly what he was doing. He had experience hiding his cruelty. I made out the imprint of fingerprints on her hips. Deep scratches along her sides. Dried blood between her thighs. “Mom, you have to go see a doctor. You need help,” I whispered for what felt like the millionth time. My heart was breaking for her. All this time, I didn’t see the signs. Her desperation to make sure we were making Joseph happy stemmed from her own sense of self-preservation.
“I don’t want to,” she snapped before easing into the warm water mixed with Epsom salts. Feeling helpless, I grabbed a washcloth and started gently running it over her skin. Without clothes, my mother looked too thin. I could count the bones in her spine, each disk protruding against her thin black-and-blue skin. She bent her knees and rested her chin against them, the bones cutting into her face as she let out a sigh. “I just have to stay here a couple days while he calms down. It’ll get better, you know. I just need to let him relax. He doesn’t want to see me like this. It hurts him to see me like this. I know he feels guilty. He loves me so much. I made him angry. It was my fault—”
“Mom,” I replied gently, as if worried I’d spook her. “It wasn’t your fault. You can’t go back to Joseph like this.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Vera,” she gritted as I ran the cloth over a particularly nasty cut on her back. Some of her injuries looked older, like this had been going on for a while.
“Has this happened before?”
“Joseph is a passionate man,” Mom mumbled. “He feels things stronger than everyone else. It’s what attracted me to him. I like it rough.”
I gagged. “This isn’t rough, Mom. This is brutal.”
A single tear fell down her cheek, and I wiped it away. “You can’t go back there.”
“And where would I go, Vera? I have nothing. We have nothing,” she sobbed. “I can handle this, okay?”
I exhaled before lathering up shampoo in my palm and scrubbing her scalp. She jumped when my nails ran over a tender spot of baldness. He ripped out her fucking hair.
“How do I always end up like this?” Mom asked.
“Like what?”
“Helpless, letting my daughter clean up my mess.”
I scoffed. “You had me when you were fifteen. You worked three jobs to raise me. You’ve always taken care of me.”
“We both know that’s a lie, Vera. You learned how to make dinner when you were eight years old,” Mom replied. “You were folding laundry at six. Watching yourself, getting yourself ready for school when you were barely five.” Soft tears sank down her defeated expression, but she looked proud of me in that moment. “You grew up fast. Faster than you should have.”
“So did you,” I replied warmly. “You took care of a baby you didn’t want when you were just a baby yourself.”
“You think I didn’t want you?” Mom said, crying harder now. “Is that really how you feel?”
“I know who my father is. I know you didn’t—”
“I wanted you, Vera. The moment I saw those two little lines on a cheap dollar store pregnancy test, I knew my life was going to change. Every good thing in my life starts and ends with you. You helped me find a strength within myself I never knew existed. Everything I do is because I want you to have a better life than I did. Because I love you so very dearly, baby. I might be a mess. I might not go about things the right way. I say the wrong thing. I let my ambition get in the way. And yes, I resent that my life was stolen from me, but I don’t resent you. I have failed as a mother if you think for even a second that I don’t love you.”