Examples:
Growing up, my stepfather was a very powerful figure in my life. Not a positive figure, mind you, but full of influence.
I could feel him pull up in front of the house when he got home from work. The air just seemed to get less oxygenated and more dense. I would get to my room as quickly as I could, because I never knew what kind of mood he would bring home. Not that he really had a scale of moods...it was usually only pissy, angry, or mean.
So many times I was afraid of him. He would do this thing right before he flipped out into blind-rage-mode and beat us. He would look down at you over his glasses with over-easy egg eyes. As much as it annoyed me, it also put the fear in me, because I knew there was a pretty big chance I was about to get beat.
No one was safe, not even my younger sister, Mendy, and she was his obvious favorite. I remember it was her birthday and we had all went to Happy Joes to get pizza. It was a family event, because at some point a siren would go off and your "very special birthday" would be announced and everyone would sing Happy Birthday to you and in the end you would get a clown sculpture made from ice cream.
Mendy only ate a couple of pieces of pizza because earlier Tom, my step-dad...her real dad, had been making fun of her about her weight. Mendy had began to get sort of "overweight" at this point in her life.
The big birthday moment came and when the ice-cream Sunday was brought to Mendy, she wouldn't eat it. Tom started to bitch because he spent all of this money on her and now she won't even eat her goddamned birthday Sunday!
"Well, Tom," my mom added, "How can you expect her to eat when you called her fat all evening?"
So then, Tom started yelling, "Come on fatty, you little pig, eat your fucking birthday Sunday. You're always gonna be a fatty, anyway...Eat...The...Fucking...Sunday."
Of course, Mendy completely broke down and spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom with my mom and my sisters. When she came back, her eyes were red and puffy, but she ate her Sunday, and Tom pretended to be nice again.
"Happy Birthday, Mendy, thanks for eating that Sunday. I just didn't want your special Sunday to go to waste."
Fucked up, yes...the point was Tom was a strong, seemingly powerful man.
I was talking to my baby sister on the phone this morning and she was telling me that Tom was to have two pace-makers put in, but he refused because he claimed to not have the money. He was layed off about 2 years ago. He has now lost about 100 pounds due to his heart problems and diabetes, and because of these can't find a job. He has a new woman in his life, Janet (from another planet,) who tells him what to do and what to wear and how to spend his money.
Tom is broke. I would like to think that the anger he expelled upon us kids when we were growing up destroyed his heart and body. I would like to think that the human body cannot withstand being a harbringer of such horrible emotion, and it turns on itself after years of turning on others. I would like to think these things, because I want to believe there is a vast, complicated, form of cosmic justice ingrained in the universe; that people really do pay in some way if they don't learn from the hurt they cause others.
Tom is broke, and I feel nothing about it. Nothing.
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