Years March By

(Trigger warning: this post contains sesnitive topics including drug and child abuse.)

Born April Winn Ferry, 24th of April, 1974. Miami Beach, FL. When I go back and try to piece together the details of my arrival, the data is sketchy. The hospital seems to have been torn down. My mother is dead now, so of no use in data collection. My father, as is the way with fathers in the 1970s, wasn't actually there. My father recalls a phone call in the wee hours of the morning. A doctor on the other end of the line saying your daughter has been born but come quickly as she is unlikely to live through the day. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, pulls on pants and a tee shirt. He's 22 years old with one son that he ushers off to grandparents. He gets to the hospital and doesn't remember much except that there was a problem with my lungs and severe jaundice. We know the outcome as I am sitting here writing this. I know how to make an entrance.
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By the time I am 4, my parents’ marriage dissolves in a pile of broken dishes and slammed doors. I'm not sure of the extent of my mother's drug use at this point but if I had to place bets, well, I'd bet it was party-time most of the time.

A year. How does it feel to you looking back over a year? Fast or slow? Most of my formative years blur together. Except that year. Five years old. A new father. The memories are slow and torturous. Like an old VHS tape stretched to its final life playing everything in slow motion, grainy and garbled. A bedroom door creeps open, a dark figure looms. My brother cries as hands grip and shake him leaving clearly defined marks. My mother begs from a fetal position on the floor as another fist slams her face and another foot kicks her side. And then it gets bad. She flees. We flee.

Railroad tracks slick under foot as we walk. In search of refuge. A friend on the other side of the tracks. The right side of the tracks. Embrace. Tears stream down my mother's bruised and swollen face. A friend telling her she needs to leave for good, this time. Five minutes later fists pound on the door. I will kill you bitch. Just like I killed that fucking dog of yours. The dog I watched him kill through the cracks in the blinds of my bedroom. Bert and Ernie clutched to my chest. I  have lost the name of the dog over the years. A dalmatian. Maybe this is why I really hate the movie 101 Dalmatians. 

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