Burn Down the Ground (30 page)

I screamed to the 911 operator, “HE’S BACK! He’s trying to kill my mom! He’s got a knife to her throat! Please help!”

Dad saw me talking into the phone; he knew the police would soon return and he brought himself back under control. As the
seconds ticked by, he tried to make things appear a bit more normal. He folded his knife and put it back in his pocket and made us resume our places around the table as we waited for the police.

This time the officers immediately handcuffed Dad, looking to me to interpret his Miranda rights to him. They didn’t see me as a victim, too. “You have the right to remain silent,” one of them began.

After a few sentences the other officer decided that the teenager might not be the best person to deliver Miranda rights. Legal matters could be taken care of at the police station and they all tromped out through our broken door.

While I was busy translating with one officer for Dad, the other cop dealt with Mom. Other than some bruising, she didn’t seem in need of medical attention, and she refused to go to the hospital for an examination. Mom wasn’t crying anymore; she seemed to be in a daze and anxious to put the whole event behind us.

Mom and I headed back to our respective bedrooms, again with no hug, no discussion, no comforting, even though this was by far the most traumatic incident I had ever experienced in my life. I had survived being uprooted to live in the wild on Boars Head, defending myself from my brother’s bullying; having our trailer repossessed; selling Charlie Brown; watching my beloved library burn to ash; moving to Fort Worth not knowing the fate of our dogs; seeing David’s scary descent into the world of drugs; and experiencing Dad’s long absences and alcohol-fueled exploits. But witnessing my father’s violent attack against my mother was catastrophic. I knew my life would never be the same.

Mom and I were both exhausted, and I just wanted to retreat to my bedroom and shut out the world. It was impossible to feel safe there. The front door was propped up against the frame, and my telephone was ripped out of the wall.

It was almost eight o’clock in the morning and I finally gave up the idea of going to work my morning shift at Malibu. I picked up where I had left off in my journal to Rob:

COME SAIL AWAY

D
ad was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and placed in Tarrant County Jail with a bond of $5,000. For just $1,000 he could be free. But even at that price, Dad didn’t have that kind of money. No one he knew was willing to pay for him, either, so he sat in jail for several days, one of
which happened to coincide with my parent’s twenty-second wedding anniversary.

Mom refused to press charges. She wanted everything to go away quickly and quietly. Just like when Dad was arrested for public drunkenness at Pizza Inn, she acted as if nothing was wrong, as if Dad hadn’t held a knife to her throat. I was outraged. I wanted to see him punished but she still needed my father. He contributed to paying bills. She reasoned that out of jail, there was the potential for him to find work and he could help deal with David. Without her cooperation, the police had no case against my father. Eventually he received probation and was freed before Rob returned from duty.

Now that things had escalated to physical violence, Mom finally came clean with me. She told me that on August 12, the Friday before the attack, my father had stolen her gun. I was alarmed to learn she had one in the first place.

“A gun? Where’d you get that?”

“Your uncle Doug gave it to me for protection.” Why would her sister’s husband think she needed protection? And protection from whom? Dad?

“And now Daddy has it?”

“I don’t know, Kambri. He told me he threw it away. Maybe he’s lying. And he went into my closet and slashed all my clothes with a knife!”

I felt sick to my stomach. It was my fault. I had let Dad in the apartment that night. Dad was banging on the door and I had just wanted to sleep.

Mom’s trip to see my father’s sister Cathy, after which she had come home to smoke a joint with me, had been a visit to plead for help. After discovering her clothes destroyed and gun missing,
Mom was truly frightened. She finally realized she was in over her head and needed help knocking sense into Dad, to get him to move on with his life and stop harassing her. She hoped Aunt Cathy could intervene somehow, and at the very least shame him to his family. When my mom got home from that visit with Cathy, she’d been emotionally spent. That’s why we’d gotten high together and gone to Six Flags. One of the best nights of my life had been her attempt to unwind from a stress so great, I couldn’t imagine.

Being arrested didn’t discourage my father. He continued to drop by the apartment in the early morning hours after a long night of drinking. Mom avoided him by staying at Aunt Cathy’s house, leaving me alone at the apartment to deal with him. Even though his beef wasn’t with me, I was still afraid. Sometimes Alexis stayed over so I had backup. Time and again, Dad hounded me for Mom’s whereabouts until I threatened to call the police. Then he’d slip away. After a few failed attempts at seeing my mother, Dad resorted to phoning at all hours. When I answered, he cooed into the receiver, “Ellooooo. Luh yoooo. Kipree, luh yooo.” I never turned on the TTY, so he was unable to hear whom he was talking to or if anyone had even answered.

Mom and I reacted by changing our number, but Dad knew where to find me. He came striding casually through the doors of Malibu Grand Prix as I cleaned the candy display case. He smiled and waved hello.

“I miss you,” he signed. “How are you doing?”

“Fine. Busy.”

“I tried calling but your number is changed.”

“It was shut off,” I lied.

“Is your mama dating?”

“I don’t know, Daddy. I’m busy. This is my work.”

“Okay, I understand.” He looked dejected and hopeless. Rather than alienate me entirely he left without incident, waving goodbye with the ASL sign for “I love you.”

When Rob returned from duty, I presented him with my journal that detailed everything that had happened since he left, including Mom and Dad’s situation. Rob was infuriated when he read what my father had done to Mom. He adored my mother and swore that if he had been there that night he would have killed my father.

Having Rob in my life provided me with a certain amount of stability, and I smothered him with so much love that he had no choice but to love me back. I was a damsel in distress, and I looked to him as my hero and protector. What better scenario for a young man hundreds of miles from his own family to swoop in and sweep a girl off her feet, to save her?

Two weeks after my father attacked my mother, I began my senior year of high school.

The theater department buzzed as everyone swapped stories of their summer vacations. I chatted with Charity, a classmate whom I had gotten to know my junior year. When it was my turn to share, I didn’t mention anything traumatic. I bragged about a small independent movie I had been starring in over the last few
weeks. I had snagged the lead role and I loved the long days and nights of filming, another distraction from the drama at home.

“The movie’s gonna be entered in festivals and stuff,” I crowed. “I worked a lot at Malibu, too, and I met this guy Rob. He’s almost twenty-three and works on Tomcats in the navy. He’s gonna pick me up from school in his Trans Am. I can introduce you to him.”

“Wow, that’s great, Kambri.” She smiled. I had gotten to know Charity during long hours of rehearsal and travel to and from competitions. She could see right through me, so I decided to confide in her. “But, then, umm …” I lowered my voice and said, “My dad tried to kill my mom.”

“Huh?” She gave me a mystified look. I delivered a short version of the night from just a few weeks before. She looked as though she didn’t believe me. She had interacted with Dad at various one-act play competitions and knew him as handsome, flirtatious, and a cutup, the deaf Elvis impersonator. It was obvious that she was straining to express concern and find the right words. “Oh, that’s sad, Kambri. I’m sorry.” She slid away as if my family’s problems were contagious.

I worried that I had shared too much with her. We weren’t that close, after all, and my explanation of Dad’s attack must have seemed pretty unbelievable. Her reaction taught me to keep my mouth shut. So, for the next fourteen years, she was the only one I told.

In the first weeks of school, I landed the lead role of Bunny Watson in the fall play,
The Desk Set
. I was back to my busy schedule of school, rehearsals, homework, and shifts at Malibu. My mother and I still lived at the apartment, but she was working up
to eighty hours a week to make ends meet. Rob drove me to and from school and rehearsals and, on his off nights, slept in my twin bed. Mom didn’t object to his staying over. We both felt safer with him there.

On opening night, Mom and Rob greeted me in the school lobby at the end of the final curtain, each holding a single red rose. I hoped Rob would gush and be overwhelmed by my talent. Instead he shyly handed me my flower and said, “Pretty good, kiddo.”

The second night of the play, Charity squealed, “Hey, Kambri! Somebody sent you roses!”

“What? Where?”

“They’re in the dressing room.”

I couldn’t imagine who would send them. Mom and Rob had already given me flowers. I opened the card and was surprised to learn they came from Steve, a tall, handsome blue-eyed blond who was on the basketball team and ran with the popular, preppy crowd.

“You were wonderful. Break a leg tonight. Love, Steve.”

My heart fluttered with excitement. After the show, I met Steve in the lobby, where he looked positively starstruck, as though I were Bernadette Peters and this was not the auditorium of Richland High School but the boards of Broadway. He gave me a long hug and congratulated me on a job well done. That was all it took—roses and a hug—and I was his.

Dad had stopped coming around. Mom worked so much that he could never find her at home and things seemed to calm down. I was finally able to focus on being a high school senior. Being wooed by a popular jock was intoxicating. While circumstances at home may have made me grow up too fast, at the end
of the day I was still a typical teenage girl. I liked the idea of having two guys vying for me. It reminded me of how my mother was dating another boy when Dad relentlessly pursued her.

Rob’s shifts often didn’t coincide with my hours at school and rehearsal schedule, so I used that as the excuse to break up. Things at home were not as volatile, and I didn’t need his protection. Too timid to tell him in person, I broke the news over the phone.

Rob was crushed, but he didn’t cry or get angry. He told me that he loved me and that he would agree if it was what I wanted.

Steve, like me, was active in school and together we bounced from basketball games to assemblies, from after-school parties to variety shows. I couldn’t believe someone so clean cut and popular wanted to date me. He made me feel normal, and normal was all I wanted to be.

David, however, was reaching a tipping point.

Mom thought David’s troubles might be the result of his upbringing. “We should never have smoked marijuana in front of you kids. Maybe I shouldn’t have let you watch so many R-rated movies when you were little.”

Dad thought the downfall started around the time David was caught sniffing paint with Allen in the Kings’ barn. “That ruins your mind,” he signed, shaking his head in disappointment. “It kills your brain cells.”

Whatever it was, it was a combustible combination. My parents tried several times to check my brother into a hospital, but unless he was deemed to be a threat to himself or the public, he was allowed to leave under his own free will.

“But he is a threat! How can they just let him walk out?” I asked.

“It’s the law,” Mom sighed. Even David’s old friend Allen, who had been clean and sober since leaving Montgomery and was serving in the military, knew something was wrong. He had recently visited David and was so jarred by my brother’s appearance and behavior that he secretly talked with my mother. He urged her to intervene, telling her that her son was likely addicted to crank and who knows what else. She followed Allen’s advice, played the tough-love card, and refused to allow David to stay with us.