Should I stay? My left cheekbone is throbbing and the kids need to eat something. Should I stay? Your mother doesn't know anything and she cries when I close the door. Should I stay? The car needs new tires and the heater hose is ruptured. Should I stay? The doctor's office keeps asking about my next appointment. Should I stay? The refrigerator knocks and hums late at night; the neighbor's kids argue and then roar off in their old truck.
This silence is all my own. The dirty kitchen table is my pillow now, I'm so afraid to lie in that bed. I rest my face, too tired to fight sleep again, but when I do, my left cheekbone still hurts. Why do I hurt? Where did I think I was going?
Maybe I should just stay.
Note: I wrote this for a friendly contest a few weeks ago. The topic was the title of this post, and the first thing that came to my mind was that Good Friday when I was eighteen and I walked home from work to find that my dad had beaten up my mom. She was sitting on the sofa when I walked in. The metal frames of her glasses had been twisted from the blows; she kept twirling them in her hand like a foreign object suddenly discovered. She had bruising redness on her face, and when she looked at me, I saw a strange combination of resignation and contempt.
I always wondered why she stayed. When this contest idea came up, I figured I'd try to supply an answer myself. I didn't go all out on this piece. It flitted like a shadow in my mind, and I didn't even want to catch it, much less hold on to it and examine what that ugly little creature actually was.
