Sometimes, at night, she slammed doors and screamed down the stairwell. She was drunk. She threatened to set the house on fire, to kill my father in his sleep. I was afraid. Our father didn’t react, so we followed his example.
Once, when I was maybe eight years old, we were all summoned to the bathroom in the middle of the night. At moments such as this, my motionless, mute, submissive father behaved like a third child. Her face twisted with rage, my mother pointed at a bath towel that had slipped off the rack.
“Who did this? Was it you? You? Or you? I’m warning you. Next time, I’ll kill you.”
We all returned to our bedrooms in silence. I cried noiselessly. I was terrified.
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