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“Mel! Mel! Open up. I know you’re in there. Open the door.” James’ voice is loud. He’s sure to wake the neighbors. They’ll be angry. They’re always complaining the kids are too loud.
“Daddy?” Damian’s little face is screwed up into a frown; he looks between me and the door.
“Damian? Damian, tell your mom to open the door. I need to see you.”
Fuck.
No chance of pretending we’re not home now, or that he has the wrong address. Pressing my eye to the peephole, I catch a glimpse of James’s red face as he glares at me.
“Mel, stop playing these fucking games. I’m their father. I deserve to see them.”
“Let’s not do this now.”
Damian is cowering against my leg, sensing, if not understanding, the tension.
“Can I call you tomorrow?”
“Like hell. You won’t call. You won’t even answer my calls. Fucking let me in.”
I gasp and pull away as he pounds on the door again.
Damian starts to whimper.
“James, you’re scaring him. Can we just talk later?”
I’d like to tell him maybe, if he paid his fucking child support and didn’t disappear for months on end, he could see his kids. I don’t. I don’t want to talk about it in front of Damian. He’s little now, but he already understands way too much.
Another voice sounds in the background. I can hear the murmur, but I can’t make out the words. James stops beating on the door. “It’s my family in there, and I’ll do what I fucking want. Don’t tell me what to do!”
This time I hear the response. “Listen, if you don’t stop making a racket, I’m going to call the cops, and I don’t care who you are. And you can tell Mel that I’m making a noise complaint to the building manager. This is ridiculous.”
“Fuck you!” James goes back to pounding on the door.
I’m going to have to do something, but what?
Just then he breaks off again and another neighbor yells, “Shut up, would you? I’m calling the cops.”
There’s a scuffle and more thumping, then the sound of footsteps.
I peer through the peephole, but I can’t see anything.
“Mommy?” Damian lifts his hands and I pick him up, tucking him on my hip and holding him close.
“It’s OK, sweet. It’s going to be OK.”
I can’t decide what to do. I walk back down the hall and pause at the door to his room in indecision. It’s late. He should be asleep. We all should be. I should put him back to bed, but instinct screams at me to get out. What if James comes back? What if he somehow gets in? Or makes more noise and we end up getting evicted?
“Baby, find your jacket, OK?”
“Why, Mommy?”
“Please see if you can find it, sweetheart.”
When I look in on Elsa, she sits up, blinking at me and rubbing her eyes. “Was someone yelling?”
That decides me. Everyone’s awake anyway. We’re getting out of here while we have the chance.
I stuff supplies into a backpack. Clothes, water bottles, some toys. Anything I can grab. I stuff the kids into their jackets and lead them to the window. “We’re going to play a little game, OK? It’s called fire drill. Time to make sure we all know what to do if there’s a fire.”
