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“Yes, sir, I want to go to—”
“Ezmita, go tend to Manuel,” Momma interrupted with a sharpness in her tone that didn’t go unnoticed.
My wishes for college and my parents did not coincide. Speaking of my future plans to anyone else was off-limits. She wouldn’t allow it. I doubted my four-year-old brother, Manuel, needed tending to when Rosa and Teresa were in the house with him and Miguel, my seven-year-old brother. Rosa was fourteen and Teresa was thirteen, both bossy and competent. Momma just wanted to get me out of the store and shut me up from saying to anyone that I wanted to go to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Starting from the time I began my ninth-grade year, I’d done everything on the checklist to make sure I wasn’t only accepted but that I could get a scholarship. My acceptance had come last week as well as the offer for a scholarship. I was running out of time to respond. Trying to talk to my parents about it was the most difficult part of the process.
Most parents would be proud. Mine weren’t. They refused to accept the idea of their oldest living daughter moving off to California to attend college. It didn’t matter if it was a Catholic university. It didn’t matter that it was an excellent education. I was to do as they had planned for me. Right here under their thumb.
For now, I would let them think that I had accepted their decision. Simply because my mother was a force to be reckoned with. All four feet eleven inches of her.
FEBRUARY 24, 2020 That Man Loves No One
CHAPTER 3
ASA
I had one week until signing day. One fucking week to commit to a college. Ryker was positive of his decision. He was making plans, and I was part of his plans. He expected me to be right there beside him. His father was proud of him, and Ryker had no worry in the world. He had the best life of any guy I knew.
When Ryker moved off to pursue his dreams, he wouldn’t be leaving his mother behind in danger. There was no fear of what would happen when he no longer lived under their roof. That was how it should be. How it was supposed to be. Something I’d never known.
I slammed my truck door with more force than necessary and stood in the driveway of my house, staring at the two-story craftsman-style home my father had designed. With its detail and impressive woodwork, it appeared to be a safe home on the outside. Just like my father. They were both façades. There was nothing safe inside.
If I stayed away, I could pretend that reality behind those doors didn’t exist, but then my mother would live in a hell I couldn’t allow. I was all that stood between her and the monster we both lived with. As a child, I’d cried and begged her to leave. For us to run away in the night.
She never acknowledged the words I was saying. Instead she’d rock me and sing songs to me in Spanish that I didn’t understand because my father forbade her to speak Spanish. My youth had been a learning period for me to adapt to the world I was born into. Hiding what my father was became a habit I followed just like my mother did.
I was tired of it. I was sick of how she was treated by the man who was supposed to love and protect her. How could she continue to expect me to just ignore his behavior? I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was eighteen and I felt like I was thirty. Living with an abusive father made you grow up quickly. There were few fond childhood memories in this home. The ones I did have, he wasn’t here. My mother was the reason for any happy memory I had. He was never in those memories.
Walking slowly toward the door, I waited a moment to listen closely for my father’s voice. He’d be careful not to yell too loudly, but he could be just as dangerous in silence. When I heard nothing, I opened the door and went inside preparing for the unknown, like I always did.
I couldn’t remember a time in my life when there wasn’t a heavy air of tension in our home. As a kid, I thought of it more as fear. I lived in fear of my father’s temper. Now that I was older, I felt the tension. The cord that was my father’s anger like a rope that is pulled tightly at both ends. All I could do was wait on one end to snap free. It was never the normal things that set him off. It was the things that were everyday life. For example, if my mother made something for dinner he didn’t like, or forgot to buy milk at the grocery store, or spilled something in the kitchen, he unleashed in words and often actions.
