Page 24 of Hart Breaker

“I come to Mana Hart’s house?”

“Still got a couple hours till we leave for the stadium, flower. After Jillian shows you the coolest little lady Knights gear for today and helps you get ready, we’re gonna eat some breakfast and watch some tapes.”

“Tapes boring, Daddy.” She sighs exaggeratedly, and even though I don’t agree, it’s one hundred and ten percent adorable.

When my seven thirty alarm goes off, Eminem’s “The Way I Am” blasts through my speaker, and my game day begins.

I curl up to a seated position, throw my legs over the side of my bed, slide out, and then walk to the windows facing east.

I didn’t only just buy this house because it was a major flex and I could. Not completely, anyway. I could have lived in Blue Valley, which was the plan, but driving through this town on my way from Syracuse, it just felt like the right place for Linda Hart, the woman who gave us life and showed us love, even when it was really bad at home. I mean, it was always really bad, but we never saw the shit she hid. We didn’t go unscathed; our father was a tyrant who emotionally abused the fuck out of Roman and me, always telling us we’d never be as good as him. We’d never be offered a D1 scholarship to play baseball like he did because we were lazy little shits and didn’t wanna put the work in.

I know Rome got it before I did, but my first recollection of being dragged out of bed to train was in second grade, and I remember the first time we saw him all fucked up, pushing Mom around. I was in grade five, and I was fucking terrified. Then I was pissed. The time between those two emotions was maybe five seconds. Rome’s reaction time was quicker. He was on him like flies on shit, and he still has a scar to prove it.

Our father stopped drinking for a month or so, stopped the physical shit with Mom and us, but double downed on the training.

The next time he got fucked up and went after Mom, Rome was at his first varsity baseball practice. I grabbed a ball bat and swung at an old lamp to get his attention. That worked until I turned my back, and he pushed me through a door.

Mom called the cops that time. The sheriff was one of his buddies, however, so even though Mom kicked his ass out, he came back many times in drunken or drug-induced rages.

Between Rome and I, he never got a chance to lay hands on Mom again, and Jillian, well, he tried to go after her once. She grabbed a bat, but she didn’t swing at a fucking lamp; she swung at him. He grabbed the bat and managed to push it into her stomach. I thought she was dying; she wasn’t breathing. It ended up that he knocked the wind out of her, and as I tried to get her up, he swung it across my back.

Eventually, someone listened, and DCFS stepped in. He got therapy and was diagnosed with some mental illness—IED (intermittent explosive disorder). Some genius in DCFS decided that, and a judge backed them up by giving him supervised visits because “kids need their fathers.”

That day in court, Mom flipped shit and asked who in their right mind would insist children visit their abuser. She dropped an F-bomb, as well, and our mother, a victim herself, was held in contempt of court and arrested—fucking arrested—and taken away, spending a night in jail. We were taken to our grandmother’s, where that fuck showed up for his “supervised visit.”

He spent hours saying he was so sorry and that it wasn’t in his control, and yeah, I felt for him, Jill felt for him. Rome, however, pointed out that his mental illness seemed to worsen when he drank—pissed the old man off, too.

Our mother spent time in jail for defending her kids. How fucked up is it that she spent more time behind bars than he ever did? On top of that, Mom was forced to do a hundred hours of community service, picking trash off the roadside, and the three of us had to go to counseling to teach us how to deal with a person with IED.

Something about that fucks with a kid’s head, ya know? Those effects have outlasted anything he ever did to us.

Rome and I continued playing baseball because we loved it, but I knew I’d never play the sport our old man loved above everything else professionally, so I went hard when I started playing football as a big fuck you to him.

This past Mother’s Day, Rome, Jill, and I gave her back just a little bit of what she gave us. She gave us a home regardless of where we lived, and we gave her the physical form of that.

Not one part of that had shit to do with the old man. But yeah, in the past, I’ve given him money to keep his ass away, but then he came at Jillian, saying we owed him and he was going to the press if she didn’t give him money. Rome found out, and we decided no more; who the fuck cares if he comes at us?

Then Jillian got knocked out, mugged, and was taken to the hospital. We suspected he could have been involved, but man, did I pray he wasn’t. Growing up, we were able to keep her from the harshest of that shit, but yeah, this time, he did more than knock the wind out of her; she ended up in the hospital.

She’s all good, had a concussion, healed fast, and he’s in jail for the first time ever for a crime against the people he should want to protect with his life.

I had two years where my pregame rituals were all energy and no anger, and my game wasn’t affected as I feared it would be when not honing in on that darkness, but right now, I really need a reminder of who the fuck I am.

Those feelings that maybe there’s a possibility that I could truly leave it all in the past, that maybe I’m not broken inside, are fucking wrong. Rome’s now engaged, and Jillian’s head’s up her ass in love with a guy who’s just as deep; that’s them, not me.

Affirmation comes as I begin feeling it. The thick, numbing sludge seeping through my veins, numbing me enough to allow me to be in the headspace required to crush Philly this afternoon.

They have the number two offense in the country and the number eight defensive record. We’re fourth in offense and twelfth in D. Their record W’s surpass us, and we’re not doing all that bad by having a five and two record halfway through the season. We’re one W and one L at home. That needs to change in our favor this week. And when it does, we’re tied with Philly for number one in the division.

My old man; the fans of the Knights before it was bought out by the Links, Ross, Brooks, Abraham, Hines crew and moved from Knoxville to Blue Valley and hate the new Knights team yet show up to be dicks; the sheep in Knights’ fan gear, like fuckwit Brett; and all the fucking haters who say we’re a joke don’t get a fucking W today. We do.

’Cause I am whatever you say I am. If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am …

Walking into the kitchen, hood up, covering my AirPods, my playlist blasting in my ears but low enough so that it’s not heard by little ears, I’m in the zone.

I sit in the middle of my kitchen island, head tipped back as Jillian squirts whipped cream from a can into her open mouth while Boone’s back is turned as he’s grilling on the cooktop.

Jill mouths, “Shhh …” as she sets the can on the counter and bops Lily’s little nose as she smiles from ear to ear. Her blonde ringlets are tied into little pigtails with gold ribbons, and she is all decked out in Boone’s number, from her little Jersey to her custom, gold, sparkling little high-top Converse, with his number on the heels of them.

---