My efforts didn’t save Momma. Apparently what saved her was her thickheadedness. Literally. Thanks to the strength and resilience of her skull, Freddie’s attempt to kill her had failed. She returned the next day, bandaged, battered, but conscious enough to promise he was never going to be allowed to return. With a resolve I hadn’t heard before, she looked us all in the eyes and swore, “Well, he ain’t coming back in here no more.”
We might have gone an entire week without him, but before I could relax he had returned after all. I knew this roller coaster. We’d been on it since I could remember. Every time he came back, apologetic, contrite, he’d start off being real nice. But he was as predictable as rain. Nobody knew when he’d go off, but at some point everybody knew he would. Again, and again, and again.
Why Moms fell for it each time was confusing, without question. By the same token, I understood that we were sometimes in the most dangerous straits when we were trying to get away.
While I had no control over the short term, I expanded my long-term plan. Not only was I going to make sure my children had a daddy, I was never going to be Freddie Triplett. I was never going to terrorize, threaten, harm, or abuse a woman or a child, and I was never going to drink so hard that I couldn’t account for my actions. This plan evolved over time as I studied at the virtual college of how to grow up and not be Freddie. For now, I could only hate him. It was an emotional truth that lived under my skin, close to the bone.
Small flickers of rebellion had begun to flare. As an antidote to my feeling of powerlessness, I did little things just to see if I could mess with Freddie. For instance, I knew that he couldn’t read and was threatened by anyone who could—which gave me an opening.
Sometimes I’d start reading aloud, for no reason other than sending him a message—I may have big ears, but I can read. Real good. You can beat us down, but you can’t read. Other times I was even more calculating, holding my book and pointing to a word as I asked Momma, very loud to make sure Freddie heard, “What does this word mean?” Or another variation: “What does this spell?” Or, at my most devilish, I might, out of the blue, ask her how to spell a particular word.
Momma had only to give me a gentle look, telling me just with the expression in her eyes—Son, you know very well what the answer is. It was our unspoken conspiracy, our private agreement that he wasn’t going to break us. Then, out loud, she’d say, “I don’t know,” and the two of us would smile at each other with our eyes.
