Page 61 of My Rules for Revenge
I felt like I was about to throw up. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Seeing my mother’s deeply hurt face didn’t help. Despite everything he had done to us, I couldn’t believe he was capable of this. I knew he was an old man with a bad temper, but that was disgraceful and disgusting, and I never felt more ashamed to be his daughter. I knew my mother was telling the truth because she never spoke to me about these things.
“Mom, that’s horrible. Oh my god. What led you to think that?”
“He’s been coming home late, and his shirts have the smell of a woman’s perfume. You don’t notice how late he comes home because you’re usually in your room studying,” she explained.
“Jesus Christ. I can’t believe this.”
“I’m only telling you this because I didn’t want you to find out from anyone else. I wanted it to come from me,” she clarified.
“Why? Why would he do that? You’re always trying to please him. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know. Some men, no matter how hard we try, are impossible to please,” she pointed out.
A strong seed of hatred began to grow in my heart that day. I wanted to beat my father’s head in with a sledgehammer. I wanted him gone.
“He’s dead to me,” I declared.
“Honey, listen to me. I know this is a very, very difficult thing to hear. Trust me, I was crying for hours while you were at school. I cried until there were no tears left. I’m still crying now. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to strangle him and scream at him until he died, but I can’t do that,” she said.
“You should,” I recommended.
“Your father and I have our issues, but I want to try to work things out with him. I want to forgive him.”
“Mom, no. How can you forgive him? Forget about that. You need to leave him. No, we need to leave him. I don’t want to see him ever again.”
“That’s not realistic, honey. He pays all the bills, and he pays for my school. I can’t support us if we leave. I’m also terrified of what he might do if I tried to divorce him,” she explained.
I grew angrier and angrier at the prospect that we were imprisoned by this one man’s hand.
“Mom, this is crazy. He’s a horrible person. You should take him to court and make him divorce you. Then you’ll get child support, and we’ll be okay.”
“I understand the way you feel, sweetie. Listen, I’ve been thinking this over for a long time. I’ve considered all my options and all the possible outcomes. The best option for me is to forgive him and to work things out with him. This is not only for my sake but also for yours. He’s a very angry man. I don’t want to provoke him. I’m not entirely sure how he would react to me leaving him. I don’t want to find out,” she said pessimistically.
I got most of my qualities from my mother, Claudia Guerra. Despite her poor upbringing, my grandmother had sent her to a religious academy where the education was top-notch. Despite being a housewife, she was a well-spoken, intelligent woman. She wasn’t doing too well in her online classes because my father constantly harassed her. If she were left alone, she would have excelled. This I knew for a fact.
Unfortunately, my mother was a pretty introverted person who rarely revealed her feelings. Whenever she fought with my father, she would repeatedly tell him to leave her alone and to let her be. She never revealed that she felt he was tormenting her or that he was the reason she was failing her classes. She didn’t want to argue at all, which made my father more upset. It was so frustrating living under their roof. Their arguments typicallyended with my mother offering to do something for him to appease him. It was a constant cycle of toxicity that never ended.
“Mom, are you sure you want to work things out with him?”
“I am. You know I love you, and I only want the best for you. This would be for the best.”
I wasn’t sure what to say next, so I stood up and hugged her. I knew that the best thing for me would’ve been for my mom to leave my father. That man was a storm of violence who brought thundering, gray clouds over our heads whenever he was around. I didn’t want things to end that way. I stayed up the whole night thinking and decided that I would do something about it. I couldn’t just let my mom stay with a tyrant. I needed to make things right.
In the meantime, my problems at home were the last thing I wanted to think about. For the rest of that week, I couldn’t wait to go to the movies with Heather and Vivian. I was looking forward to it.
I lied to my mother that I was going to study at the library and scurried down the street to Vivian’s car. She told me to ask permission from my father as well, but there was no way that was happening. I considered my relationship with him officially nonexistent. He lost that privilege with me. I didn’t care that he paid for everything. He somehow worsened the rift our family already had and blew everything up for good.
When I got inside Vivian’s car, Heather screamed at me. According to her, that was her way of showing me she was happy to see me. I screamed back because she scared me. Vivianscreamed because she also got scared. We all got a good laugh out of that. It helped me forget my issues at home.
When we parked in the theater lot, Heather yanked us out of the car and made us run inside. We paid for our tickets in the lobby and made our way to the concession stand. Heather told me that the theater industry was a giant scam and that they sold snacks at insane prices to make up for movie ticket losses. Despite that, I still wanted popcorn. The warm, buttery smell shot straight into my nose from behind the counter. I was convinced.
I stared at the popcorn machine as it popped and sizzled. I stood so close that the golden light reflected off my face. When I glanced up, I noticed a classmate from Brightwood High was at the cash register. He had a protruding belly and a fading hairline. His name was Carlos. Apparently, he had no shame at all because he made no effort to hide the fact that he was staring right at me. I swear he almost started drooling.
“Hey, what can I get you?” Carlos asked.
“Just a small popcorn, please,” I replied.
“Four dollars and seventy-nine cents.”
