HONY Part 3
“I’m old now. I’m fifty. But I remember the conversation like it was yesterday. Gene and I were sitting on the living room couch. Both of us are convinced we’re getting in trouble—so we’re starting to pre-bond. We’re huddled together, we’re holding hands. And my mother is so nervous that she’s staring at the floor. Finally she looks up at Gene, and says: ‘You need to know what happens when people can’t control their anger.’ My mother is a storyteller. She can really paint a picture with words, so what she said next played like a movie in my head.
‘Both of you were very young,’ she said. ‘I was a single mom. I’d just joined the army, and I needed a babysitter while I went through basic training. I chose this nice, older lady. And she took very good care of you. Until one night her husband had a heart attack, and she had to rush to the hospital. She left you behind with her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend.’ At this point my mother took a deep breath. She looked like she wanted to stop with every fiber in her body. But my mother is a trained soldier, so she straightened her back and continued. This time she was looking at me: ‘Tina, you were just a baby. And you started screaming. So the boyfriend began to shake you. Then he began to beat you. He beat you so hard that he broke the bones in your body.’ Now my mother turned to Gene. She was crying at this point: ‘And Gene—Gene, you tried to stop it. You were only three years old, but you tried to stop it. You started beating against that man’s legs. So he picked you up and threw you against the wall. You almost died. And when you woke up from your coma-- things just weren’t the same.’
My poor mother. She looked exhausted by the time she was finished. But she tried to comfort him. She said all the right things. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she told him. ‘I wish I could change things. But everything happens for a reason, Gene. Look how far you’ve come. Your life is going to be so big, and so meaningful.’ At this point I was traumatized. I couldn’t even look at Gene, so I was staring at my shoes. But I knew exactly what he was feeling. He was squeezing my hand so hard that his fingernails were digging into my palm.”
