Page 9 of Swallow Your Sorries

Dread trickles down my spine, as my eyes snap back to his.What?

“Youronlynotification was from your storage provider. A reminder to buy more because yours is full.” His lips curl cruelly as he slides into the dance studio before locking the glass doors with a distinctive click and disappearing down the hallway.

Under the locker room window, the moans of my father and Madame rise to a crescendo, and then silence permeates the air like a sickness.

***

I hop off the night bus and get home two hours later to the sound of glass shattering.

My mother huddles beneath the countertop of the breakfast nook as my father rips every dish we own out of the cabinets, tossing them in her direction.

He never hits her directly. No, this is his way of keeping his conscience clear. If something hits her, it’s her fault for being a dumb bitch that got in the way.

“Why am I late?Why don’t you ask your cunt of a daughter?” He doesn’t spare me a glance, yet he throws a saucer with such precision it hits the wood panelling right where my head would’ve been. I stifle a whimper, falling into a crouch and protecting my head with my arms.

“I went to the fucking studio, thirty minutes off my route for her ass just to find out from some lanky kid that she’d already left.”

I swallow. That kid is probably…damn, I don’t even know his name, yet he’d touched me, held me, choked me, and destroyed my phone.

“Then she has the nerve to cut her phone off,” he roars, hurling Mum’s favourite casserole dish at the wall, where it explodes into a dozen pieces. One piece bounces and grazes my tights. The only decent pair of tights I owned.

I hiss as blood pricks at my skin and bubbles to the surface, along with my anger.

Jarett always talks about me as if I’m not here, not inside the room beside my cowering mother.

I daren’t say anything, though. It’s better off this way.

For my sake. For mum’s sake, I keep quiet. I keep my eyes on the linoleum floor. Peas litter the chequered pattern, crushed with muddy, melted snow from Jarett’s boots. The two-day-old deli meat mum got half off at work is stuck against a cabinet, a chair, and in her hair.

“You think I have gas and time to waste?”

My mother’s pitiful gaze meets mine. It’s imploring me to come and hide beside her.

What good would that do?

I try to resist, but then a teacup ploughs into my elbow. The impact rings through my bones and shatters my nerves.

I crawl towards her, seeking the counters’ shelter too. If I try to make it past him, he’ll only haul me back into the kitchen. Maybe even to the filled sink…

No, no one’s allowed to leave until his tantrums are over.

“I’m so fucking tired of your questions. Your accusations. You want answers, there she is!” He gestures to me mid-crawl, chucking a saucer at my head. It flies past me and hits the hallway wall, the sound piercing the air along with my shriek.

I freeze, covering my ears and humming like I have ever since I was six years old and cognizant of my existence.

“The ungrateful bitch,” Jarett says, spittle flying from his mouth that he wipes on his collar. “If you had just aborted her, I wouldn’t be trapped here with either of you. But no, you and yourmorals.Should’ve kicked the bitch out of you like all the others.”

The others???

“No, I had to do the right thing. I had to be a stand-up guy, listening to my fucking family spew their bullshit virtues.” He pauses, his expression growing distant. “I could’ve been someone. I could’ve been like my brother...” He blinks and suddenly he’s back, back in the present as he points an accusing finger down at Mum. “Instead, I’m stuck in this hellhole you trapped me in the moment you started growingher.”

Right.It’s all because of me.

It’s my fault he didn’t graduate from year twelve.

It’s my fault he’s stuck working a dead-end job.

It’s my fault he drinks himself into comas and has stage one cirrhosis.

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