When I was six, my mum quit her job and my parents started fighting. A few years later I could no longer recall what her job had been – just that it was the topic of the words that had been screamed back and forth between them. My father thought that, if she wasn’t going to work, she should at least be a better housewife – do all the housework, have dinner on the table when he got home, those sorts of things. She argued that perhaps if he respected and appreciated her more, she might put more effort in. She probably wouldn’t have.

She took decent care of me, though – kept an eye on me and fed me. Not that she fed me particularly healthily – fish fingers, sausage rolls and potato gems were staple foods in our house, and school lunches consisted mostly of prepackaged snacks. Still, she took care of me.

-

When I was seven, my father started drinking. I think he’d always liked his alcohol, but it had never been an issue until then. He was an angry drunk and would fight with my mum over anything and everything. He’d shout at me, too, and occasionally get a little rough when I tested his patience. I quickly learnt to avoid him when he was drinking.

That was also the year my father first decided he was leaving my mother. My parents had been fighting all evening and I’d gone to hide in my room earlier and eventually managed to block it out enough to fall asleep. When I woke up I was moving, still wrapped up in my blanket, almost swaddled. My father’s gait was uneven and wobbly – he was drunk. I didn’t know what he was doing with me and I was scared.

My mother was shouting as he exited the house. “What are you doing? You can’t just take him! He’s our son, not yours! You can’t just take him!”

He ignored her and tossed me into the back seat unceremoniously, blanket and all, without a word. He got into the driver’s seat, backed out of the driveway, and started driving.

I didn’t know what had happened. He was drunk, and he was swerving a little on the road, taking corners too wide - you weren’t supposed to drive when you were drunk! It was dangerous. I’d seen a commercial on TV that’d said so. Remembering what I’d been told in school, I did up my seatbelt, wrapping my blanket around me first so that if we did crash, I’d have lots of padding. There! If we crashed it’d be his fault but I wouldn’t die because I was wearing my seatbelt!

I wanted to know what had happened and where we were going, but I didn’t ask, just tried to be small and innocuous. He scared me when he was drunk.

“Your mother is completely worthless! Don’t know why I married the bitch,” he started up as we entered the freeway. We were going faster and there were more cars here and I didn’t like the way he said ‘your mother’ because I didn’t want to be a part of this.

“She sits around the house all day doing fuck knows what while I work my ass off. Probably just watching shitty soap operas. Women love that crap.” He was ranting. “But we’re leaving. I’m gonna find me a good woman who’ll do what I damn well tell her to do. And I’ll be damned if I’m leaving my son with her. It’s her fucking job to take care of you and she doesn’t lift one goddamn finger. You’ll take care of yourself.”

I’d take care of myself? How? I couldn’t cook! Where would I go to school? I had to go to school! And if we moved we’d be too far away for me to walk anymore. Would I have to take a bus? I could take a bus. I could do that. I pulled my blanket up over my head and pretended that, like the monsters that hid in the dark, my father wouldn’t know I was there if I was completely covered up. I pretended he wasn’t drunk and that he wasn’t swerving on the road and that we weren’t leaving home. I fell asleep in the car.

It was still dark when I was roughly jerked awake. It took me a moment to figure out what was going on. My father had attempted to lift me out of the car, but hadn’t realized I’d put my seatbelt on. He muttered to himself, annoyed, as he undid it. He let me walk after that, trailing behind him through the dark parking lot with my blanket wrapped around my shoulders and dragging on the ground, a shield against far more than the cold.

We were at a motel. There was an overweight man sitting at the reception reading a magazine about cars. He grunted at my father and exchanged his cash for the key to a room. I followed my father out without instruction.

My dad didn’t tell me not to, but I didn’t want to share the bed with him even if it was big. He’d probably fall right asleep since it was late and alcohol always made him sleepy, but he was big and scary and angry right now and I didn’t want to be any closer to him then I had to be. I curled up on the floor and wrapped my blanket around my body tightly, covering my head in some false pretense of safety.

The next morning, we turned around and went home. My father gave no explanation, no reason; he just took me home then called in sick to work. He didn’t bother calling the school to tell them why I was absent. Maybe my mum would write me a note and I could bring it in tomorrow so that they wouldn’t think I’d just skipped the day for no reason. I had a reason, I just wasn’t sure what it was.

-

When I was eight, my mother started cheating on my father. There was a man she brought home, and I didn’t really understand who he was or what they were doing, just that it felt wrong. He spoke to me nicely, in that way adults talk to little kids when they were trying to be friendly, but I didn’t like him. My mum sent me to my room when he came over, but I’d seen them kissing and while I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, I knew that was wrong. She was only meant to kiss my dad because they were married.

I was supposed to be in my room, but it was summer holidays and I didn’t want to be. Besides, my mother didn’t have nearly the same power over me that my father did – she didn’t do anything about it if I was bad.

My parents’ bedroom door was ajar and there were noises coming from inside. I was curious. I wanted to know what they were up to that was supposed to be so secret. I crept up quietly and peeked in.

They were both naked and sweaty and the man was on top of my mother. They moved rhythmically, and I didn’t get it. It seemed almost violent and they almost looked like they could be in pain, but they weren’t, despite the sounds they made. My mother was saying things, and they weren’t objections.

I didn’t know what they were doing, just that it was wrong and bad and that I shouldn’t have been watching. My father would be angry if he found out, too – I was sure of it. I’d never tell him. I didn’t want him to be angry.

It was disgusting, what they were doing, and what were they doing? I had a side on view, and it looked like, like… Like they weren’t just moving against each other, like…

He turned his head and I froze, thinking I was about to get caught, and he did see me but he smiled at me and he winked and thrust particularly violently into my mother, causing her to cry out but not in pain. I couldn’t move. I wanted to; I wanted to run and hide in my room or maybe just run and not come back because they were doing bad things and he was looking at me like he thought it was funny and then he was closing his eyes and moving quickly, violently and my mother was making louder noises and saying things and then I did run and I didn’t know where until I was already there.

I sat down on one of the swings in the park and there were tears running down my face and I didn’t know when they’d started, but I wasn’t crying because I was too old to cry. That’s what my father said. I wondered if he did that with my mum. I didn’t want to think about it but I did.

I don’t think my mother ever found out that I’d seen, but I couldn’t look her in the eye for a week after that.

-

When I was nine, my father decided to teach me how to shoot. It would have been fun – going out and shooting at glass bottles and tin cans – if I didn’t dislike my father so intensely. He wasn’t a patient man and thought that hitting me over the back of the head was an effective way of teaching me not to miss.

Sometimes it scared me how much I wanted to turn around and shoot him.

I don’t think I wanted to kill him, I think I just wanted the power. I wanted to hurt him and make him helpless and powerless and then he wouldn’t tell me I was a lousy shot.

He took me hunting and I shot a rabbit. I felt sorry for it but I was proud of myself because I’d shot it by myself, even if I did mess up skinning it even though my father had showed me how and even though he never told me I’d done a good job hitting it.

That was the same year my mother first took me away in an attempt to leave my father. My dad had done it a couple of times since that first time, but my mum had never done it before. Maybe we really would leave for good, I mused as I sat next to her in the passenger seat of the car and stared out the window. She wasn’t drunk, so maybe she meant it. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I wasn’t sure I felt much of anything.

We stopped for the night at a motel, and I was surprised to find it was one I’d already stayed the night in with my father once before. We got a different room, though, not that it was any different from the one I’d stayed in with my father. I slept on the floor, not because I was afraid of my mother but because I thought she was dirty.

The next morning we turned around and went home.

-

When I was ten, my father took me away for the fifth time, and by that point I was only worried about him and his driving and not that we wouldn’t be returning home again. We always went home. He’d yell and rant about my mother, say nasty things about her, then we’d go to a motel and he’d sleep it off and we’d go home again the next morning.

By that point I’d realized he didn’t take me because he wanted me – he took me because I was the only thing he could take to make his point. They didn’t own anything of value, so he took me, a thing that belonged to both of them, as nothing more than a display of power. I was unimpressed.

He didn’t follow his usual pattern after we’d stopped at the motel that night. Every other time he’d gone straight to bed, passing out until late in the morning the next day, but this time he simply left me there, telling me nothing but to stay put, and went out. When he came back about an hour later, he had a woman with him.

She was wearing too much make up and not enough clothes and she smelled funny, like cigarettes and perfume and something very human – something I couldn’t identify, but which wasn’t foreign to my senses.

My father gave me a harsh look which I interpreted as an instruction to be quiet and behave, but when the woman looked at me she just seemed concerned and uncomfortable. She got over any scruples she may have had pretty fast, though, when my father started touching her, demanding her attention. She touched him back and clothing was removed and I could tell she didn’t want to be there, to be doing what she was doing, but she did it anyway and she kept saying how much she wanted him and she was lying and I didn’t know why she’d lie to him about that but I think he knew and I don’t think he cared.

By that age, I knew what it was they were doing. I’d read about sex, seen it on TV, but watching my father do that to some strange woman was completely different. Adults liked this, I knew, for some reason. Because it felt good. I understood that, on some level, but I didn’t see how – it was gross, and how did doing that feel nice? And it looked so violent, worse than it had been with my mother and her lover. My dad was aggressive and he liked to hurt people, all the more so when he was drunk. He didn’t hit her, though, just thrust into her hard and fast and rough.

And I couldn’t not look. I was on the floor with my blanket wrapped around me but my face was peeking out and I was watching because I wanted to understand but I didn’t. Why was she letting him do that?

When my father had finished, he went into the bathroom, leaving me alone with the woman.

She smiled at me. “Hey there.”

I didn’t respond. What was I supposed to say to her? Was I meant to pretend nothing just happened?

She approached me and knelt down in front of me and I cringed back. I wasn’t afraid of her, she was just dirty.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said gently and it was the truth but I’d never thought she was going to in the first place. She reached out and stroked my cheek and I made a face. “I wish you hadn’t had to see that because you’re just a kid, but there’s nothing wrong with sex, okay? When it’s two consenting adults, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

The bathroom door opened and my father walked out, raising his eyebrows slightly at the two of us. “You trying to seduce my boy now?” He snorted. “Doubt he’s enough of a man to be interested in having a woman.”

She gave him a fake smile. “We were just chatting, weren’t we, kid?”

I stared back at her. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to respond, but I nodded slightly just in case.

“I’ll take you back now,” my father told her calmly. At least the sex seemed to have taken the edge off his temper.

After they were gone I took a shower. I felt dirty. Dirty and angry and I punched the tiled wall of the shower and I didn’t cry because I was too old to cry and besides I was angry not sad. I hit the wall until my knuckles split and then, as I didn’t have a sponge, scratched at my skin with my fingernails while rubbing soap over it until it was stinging and raw and I felt numb. My father had returned by the time I got out.

My father studied me coolly. “Did you watch?”

I wasn’t sure if he’d be angry if I had, so I shook my head.

He let out a huff of a laugh. “It’s okay if you did. It’s normal to be curious. Are you curious?”

I was. I shook my head emphatically. “I’m tired.”

He smiled maliciously. “I guess you’re still too much of a kid. You’ll get it when you grow up.”

-

When I was eleven, I started running away. No, not running away, really… just leaving for a little while. I always intended to go back. At least I didn’t delude myself when I left.

I’d decided I’d had enough of their games, the ones where they alternated taking me from my bed at night and brought me back again the next morning. When they started fighting I’d wake up, get dressed, and climb out my bedroom window.

The first night I’d left I hadn’t really planned out where I was going, but soon decided on the park down the street. It was a natural choice – public property, plenty of room to hide in and not too far from home.

It was late enough that the streets were deserted, so I was surprised to find that the park was not. Though I was curious about teenagers who sat talking and drinking in and around the small amphitheatre that sat in the centre of the park, but natural sense of caution held me back.

“Hey, kid,” someone called out to me, and I turned around to see a boy of about sixteen addressing me. I cursed myself for letting someone sneak up behind me. “What you doing out here all by yourself?”

I shrugged but didn’t say anything or move away. He didn’t sound hostile, just… well, not quite friendly or welcoming, but close enough that I felt safe.

He smiled. “Come hang out with us,” he said as he continued on past me towards the amphitheatre.

I hesitated, and then followed him. What was I going to do otherwise, spend the night sitting around in a park all alone?

I was the youngest one there, it seemed, and was instantly the focus of enough people’s attention to make me uncomfortable. They weren’t malicious or anything, they just thought I was cute – a novelty.

“Shouldn’t you be at home in bed?” a girl with a sweet voice asked, sharply contradicting her motherly tone when she offered me a can of something alcoholic. I declined. Alcohol did bad things to people. “You don’t drink?” she asked.

“I’m eleven,” I told her, somewhat annoyed.

“Plenty of eleven year olds drink,” she told me. “Tons.”

“Don’t give the kid alcohol, Tracy!” some guy shouted from a short distance away, but he was laughing.

“I think you’d like it if I took it, but not for my sake. I think you’d think it would be funny,” I said dispassionately.

She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. She looked somewhat taken aback, and I got the impression I’d hit the nail right on the head. The guy who told her not to give me alcohol was laughing again, and I wasn’t sure if it was at me or her because I didn’t think it was funny at all.

Just when I was starting to get irritated enough that I was considering leaving, someone handed me another can.

“There you go. That ones just soda,” said the guy who looked to be about eighteen, and I flinched back when he patted me on the shoulder.

I knew he was telling the truth about what it was, but I checked anyway. It was coke, just coke, and the can was still sealed. I saw a commercial about that, how you should never accept any drink that doesn’t come in a sealed can or bottle and you shouldn’t leave drinks unattended, because people could slip things into them. I cracked the can open and sipped at my drink.

Almost everyone was drinking something alcoholic and it made me uncomfortable, but so far nobody had become angry or violent. Maybe it only made my dad angry, I thought, because he was an angry man already. Maybe alcohol just made people be more of what they already were.

It wasn’t just alcohol. Some people were smoking things I knew weren’t cigarettes. I knew what pot was – my mother smoked pot. It made her act weird, and once she’d offered me some but I didn’t take it, because I didn’t want to act weird. She got all slow and giggly and I didn’t like it.

A guy of about eighteen jumped over the railing behind me and sat down next to me, throwing an arm around me. “Hi,” he said, smiling at me, and I tensed up all over, because what the fuck.

Tracy laughed and it irritated me because it really wasn’t funny. “Jake, you’re scaring him.” She patted my arm and I really wished people would stop touching me. “Don’t worry, he’s not a fag or anything, he’s just really friendly.”

I knew what a fag was, people at school used that word a lot. It meant gay, homosexual, though most of the time I don’t think that’s really what people meant when they said it. It seemed to be more or less interchangeable with any other insult. I tried to shrug his arm off but he ignored it.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he said while bobbing his head.

I finally got sick of being touched and intimidated and physically shoved his arm off of me. I levelled a challenging glare at him, daring him to put it back. I was about ready to have at him, rabid animal style, if he so much as tried it.

“Woah, I like this one,” he said with a huge grin and it annoyed me because he wasn’t supposed to like my wrath. “You know how to fight, kid?”

Not really, I thought, in terms of experience, but I’d have bet I could take on most kids my age if only because I wouldn’t submit to anyone I could put a dent in. I shrugged. “It depends if I’m going to have to.”

He grinned. “I like this kid,” he repeated. He leapt to his feet and grabbed my arm to pull me up. “Come on, I’ll teach you how to fight.”

I yanked my arm away, but followed him anyway. Fighting, I decided, was a skill I could use.

Jake told me he had a black belt in karate, and I believed him not only because I could tell he was telling the truth, but because he had the proficiency to back it up. One thing I liked about Jake, or rather, one thing that was useful about Jake, was that he loved to help people. I don’t mean that he was a really good person, although he was a decent one, just that he liked to. He did it because he enjoyed it, which was selfish in its own way even if it benefited others.

I was also lucky that he seemed to like me especially. I think he saw me as a little brother, or something, but I could count on him to stick up for me. It was the fighting skills that really kept me around, though. What he taught me was a mix between what he’d learnt in karate, a few dirtier tricks he’d learnt elsewhere, and some helpful tips on how to use just about anything as a weapon.

That was also the year I first started to really stand up to my father. I don’t mean that it actually achieved anything – in some ways it just made things worse. In most ways. In previous years I’d simply accepted it when he shouted at or hit me and did whatever was necessary to avoid making things worse. Unless he was really angry at me or at the world, it didn’t get too bad – he’d get bored of it when I submitted. It was an alpha male thing, I think.

I just couldn’t do it anymore, though. To just go along with it made me feel like a coward, even if arguing with him wasn’t a very smart idea. Even if I never even came close to anything describable as winning.

“Where were you?” my father asked as I walked in the door, and I could tell I was on the edge of getting in trouble from the tone of his voice. And, you know, because he was talking to me at all.

I’d been at the park with Jake, him teaching me like he did a few afternoons a week when he wasn’t working, or off doing things I didn’t want to know about.

I shrugged, deciding that I might as well just tell him. It wasn’t worth it to start trouble for no reason. “At the park.”

“You should have been home hours ago,” he stated, giving me a look that dared me to argue.

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m always there after school. I don’t remember you telling me I was supposed to come right home today.”

He took a step towards me. “I’m telling you now.”

I put my backpack down on the ground in case he was planning on starting something. To be honest, I was scared; I’d just learned to hide it. He’d like it too much if he knew I was afraid. “Telling me afterwards isn’t very helpful,” I pointed out.

Another step towards me. He wasn’t exactly muscular, but he was a lot bigger than me. Big boned and bulky in a way I wasn’t, making him strong but slow. “Don’t get smart with me.”

I wanted to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t be so stupid if he didn’t want me to get smart with him, but even I wasn’t that suicidal. I met his eyes for several seconds, staring him down, then shrugged and turned to walk away.

He quickly took the remaining steps towards me and grabbed my arm roughly enough to hurt. He paused and narrowed his eyes at the few bruises and grazed elbow I’d gotten while practising with Jake. We didn’t exactly play gently. “Have you been fighting?”

“No,” I said, trying to yank my arm back but barely upsetting his grip.

He snorted. “Didn’t think so. You’re too much of a wuss. Get beaten up then, did we?” he asked in a gratingly condescending tone.

“No,” I repeated firmly, meeting his eyes with an angry glare.

He backed me up a couple of steps and shoved me roughly against the wall. “Now I know you don’t play sports, so what little games have you been up to?”

It was true, I didn’t like sports – at least not team sports – but his stating it annoyed me anyway. “You don’t know anything about me and you don’t even care what I’ve been up to.” I shoved against him, trying to conceal my rising panic. “Get off me.”

He chuckled and I wanted to snap his fucking wrists so he couldn’t hold me down anymore. “What’s wrong, not strong enough?” He grabbed hold of my fringe and pushed my head back so that it hit the wall, hard, and I could tell it amused him that it had been so easy. My vision went fuzzy as pain bloomed at the back of my head and I decided, through the blurriness of my thoughts, that I would get it cut short enough that he couldn’t ever do that again.

I met his eyes again before my vision had even finished clearly and stared at him silently. I will not cower before you. Fighting back would have just amused him, but I wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of a true victory.

He dragged me forwards by my shirt and slammed me back into the wall, causing my head to spin in confusion at the abrupt movement and the resulting pain. Something – a fist, I think – slammed into my stomach and I dropped to the ground gasping.

When I finally recovered enough from the pain to look up again, he was staring down at me with a victorious grin plastered across his face. “You’ll learn, or you’ll die stupid,” he informed me, and I wasn’t sure if it was a threat or a warning.

I wanted to break his mother fucking kneecaps. I settled with spitting in his coffee every day for a week.