This was a Creative Writing assignment for a CPD certificate in Creative Writing that I’m currently taking.
“Think of an idea for a short story then listen to a song which matches its mood, while purposely mining for visual content.” I did that; created a scene based on my life. Write what you know.
It felt different this time. We yelled across the room at each other; but that wasn’t the difference. We did that all the time. With the hardwood floors and not much in the way of things on the walls, the voices didn’t need to be overly loud to sound loud. He didn’t control this situation. He couldn’t. He hated that. But it wasn’t the reality. It was his perception of the information in the crinkled letter in his clenched fist that had infuriated him.
He kept screaming that I was stupid, just like her, and I was ruining his driving record, he was going to lose his license because of me. It was my fault. Of course, it was, it always was. I’d parked in the wrong spot on campus, late for a class, and had gotten a parking ticket. Embarrassing certainly, but his driving record would hardly suffer for it. I had the money from my job to pay the ticket. His name was still on the car because he refused to transfer the title to me, even though he’d said that it was “my” car. He’d even let me pick it out. A sporty, red Tercel that Dad bought, supposedly for me, just after I had turned sixteen, and that he’d refused to let me drive (save for lessons he gave me or that I paid for) until after I had turned eighteen and got my license. He drove it often.
Now, I was a legal adult. Now, my legal-adult-self felt the adrenaline rush as he strode across the living room towards me, our faces red, him sweating and me crying, standing in the dining room archway, having hit the wall in frustration with my open hand, I had screamed, “That’s not the way parking tickets work!” I’d lost the argument, I’d got emotional, so nothing I had or would say had any weight and he could just ignore it. He would.
He came at me with a fist raised, “Don’t you dare raise your hands to me!!”, he yelled in a rage. ‘What? I hit the wall!‘ I thought a moment before I thought he’d hit me, and then there she was. In front of me, between us, Mom, putting her rough, chapped, wet hands up in a halting defensive movement, yelling, “Joseph! Stop!” She’d rarely ever raised her voice in defense of us or herself in the years I could remember. ‘She really thought he was going to hit me. Fuck,’ I realized. He would have hit me!
Dad immigrated to the US twenty-six years ago, 1970 or ’71 I think. Learning the nuances of life in the United States didn’t seem to concern him too much, beyond getting his citizenship, learning the language, and how to drive on the other side of the road. He didn’t have many friends, and the way he believed things to be simply were.
If he thought that his daughter getting a parking ticket on a university campus would get his driver’s license revoked, then that’s the way it was, and he would react accordingly. After it didn’t happen, he’d just file it away to bring out like a gnarled, knotted, wooden cudgel to smack me down with the next time he got angry at me, which was often, these days.
Mom touched my arm, still up against the wall, saying softly, calmly, “Come help me with dinner.” I just mutely nodded and followed her through the short, hardwood hallway into the yellow-tiled kitchen. I watched Mom take another drink from her freshly-opened beer setting on the wet K-mart tabletop next to the potatoes that she had already washed and peeled but still needed slicing.
“Cut those, please. I’m making French fries tonight.” Like nothing had happened.
Wrong again. There was nothing different, after all.
Carol Darnell 