Mel Bruja

A Night Like So Many Others

It was a night like so many others, so similar that I can’t tell them apart. I must have been about sixteen or seventeen; it happened so frequently that all the incidents blur together into one big tangle in my head. Once again, the same story: he came home late from “work,” and when she asked him where he’d been, instead of answering honestly and admitting his life wasn’t what he wanted, he threw a plate to make her be quiet (or a glass, or some tacky ’90s decoration from the shelf). She answered him angrily, because she was never one to stay silent, and he responded with a beating.

Generally, by that point, it was already very late at night—around two or three in the morning on any given Wednesday or Friday. My brother and I were usually asleep, or at least in our rooms, because we had to get up early the next day for school. If there was one thing my mom made sure of, it was that we studied so we’d have opportunities in life; in the end, the two of us forged our own paths.

Shouts, blows, shattered dishes: “You bitch, you’re driving me crazy! Isn’t everything I give you enough?” (I’m paraphrasing, but that was more or less what he said.) My brother and I found each other in the hallway at almost the same time, sharing that combination of “What do we do?” and “Oh, here we go again,” and like superheroes about to face a villain, we ran to the scene.

When we arrived, my dad was kicking my mom, who lay on the floor having a panic attack. He claimed it was all “theater.” For a while, I believed him. I begged him to stop, but I felt disconnected from reality, numb to what I was seeing, paralyzed. Meanwhile, my brother—who by then was about fourteen—lunged at my dad to stop him. My dad didn’t want to hit him, so he made terrifying faces (bulging eyes, clenched mouth, heavy breathing), threatening to punch him if he didn’t move. My brother challenged him to go ahead. So my dad shoved him, throwing him against a window, which shattered into huge pieces.

My mom, still struggling to breathe from her panic attack, ran to check if my brother was okay. That gesture fed into the claim of it being “theater”: “See? Nothing was wrong with you!” he repeated mockingly. I tried to intervene, asking everyone to please calm down and “sit down to talk like adults.” What did a teenage girl have to do with adulthood or conflict resolution? Of course, my plea was ignored and replaced by heated glares.

The insults flared up again, and the fight moved to the patio, because my dad was planning to get in the car and leave. My mom didn’t want him to go; I pleaded with them to talk. Again, no one listened. So I opened the driver’s door and sat in the seat, saying that if he wanted to leave, he’d have to move me. My dad looked at me defiantly, surprised that I was confronting him, turned around, and walked briskly to a little storage room we had in the back, where we kept all kinds of things, including a lawn mower. He grabbed a can of gasoline he used for the mower, came back with it, and doused the car. Then he took a match from a box, lit it, and threw it at the vehicle.

In an instant, I ran out of the car and, luckily, the match went out before causing a fire. I grabbed the hose on the patio and decided to use it, spraying the car with water. My dad got in, started the engine, opened the gate, and backed out. My mom, my brother, and I stood on the patio, side by side, not knowing what to do. We were scared but also relieved: the problem was over… for the moment. We hugged, went back into the house, cried together, and went to bed to begin the next day as if nothing had happened.

More than ten years have passed since that scene, and I still remember it. Sometimes I feel anger, other times anguish. But I revisited it in therapy recently to finally give it closure, and I was able to see it with compassion: for myself, for those vulnerable teenagers, for that woman caught in a toxic relationship, and for the uncertain future that awaited us. Instead of hating my dad or blaming my mom for not changing the situation, I now recognize that girl who, at the time, just wanted to help. For a long time, I felt guilty—thinking that if I hadn’t gotten involved, I wouldn’t have been in danger. But back then, I only wanted to be useful and stop the harm.

I also think of my mom, and how, despite experiencing that and other forms of violence almost daily, she still made sure my brother and I developed as best we could, that we grew up with a good education and healthy values, even in the midst of instability. It took me years to understand that my mom was a victim of the ingrained machismo of her generation. It took me a long time and my own experiences as a woman in this world to realize that those relationships are just as violent as they are consuming, and that after years of enduring beatings, seeing any way out of that reality seems impossible. I’m so glad she managed to do it.

Today, I embrace those children we once were, and I embrace my mother too, offering a hand so we can keep moving forward. At the same time, I remind myself that from pain was also born the strength that—despite years of violence and abandonment—found the resilience to create its own story.