The Last Time He Raised His Hand

My mother pounded on the door, ordering me to come out, threatening me with everything she was going to do to me. On her orders, my brother went downstairs to get my father. When I reached the phone, I remembered: my calling card and my teacher's number were in my bag. I started crying from exhaustion and fear. I had done all of this for nothing. I was going to get beaten tonight, and nobody could help me. My father came back up and pounded on the door too, promising I would die in that room. It was 11 p.m. Each side held its ground: me in their room, my parents on the other side with my brothers, who were almost happy that, for once, my father was going after me. Then my sister Angela, who had come home in the meantime, said she wanted to go to bed. I don't know why, but my father took it as disrespect. I heard him tell her to go to our room. He hadn't forgotten she had a beating coming. I turned on the radio so I wouldn't hear my sister scream. I had failed. I hadn't been able to protect her. The song playing was so sad that it still brings tears to my eyes today: the story of a child who died under his mother's blows because he never wanted to turn her in. I turned off the radio and picked up the phone. Then I waited ten minutes before I left their room and went to ours. Angela was lying on her stomach, and my father was standing over her, hitting her. At that moment, he and I had the same look in our eyes. "I'm going to kill you. I swear." He came at me, belt in hand, and the blows rained down on my skinny body. I kept screaming that I would kill him, that he'd better kill me, because otherwise I'd kill him in his sleep. He dropped the belt and slapped me again. I ran to the kitchen for a knife. My mother tried to hold my father back. My brothers were crying, begging me to put the knife down. Tonight, it was between him and me. Only one of us would be left. Let him kill me now, because I wouldn't survive under his blows. My father didn't even look afraid. It was far from a butcher knife, just a steak knife, but in my mind, I would leave him with a scar. He came toward me, and that's when Angela took a run at him and pushed him into the glass door that opened onto the balcony.