A Memory
In the morning I watched her glug the thick, yellow cat milk into the bowl and bend, tilting her leg outwards, but the cat wasn’t interested.
Later on I waddled in, rabbit in arms, my feet and legs bare. They shouted and ragged. He hit the table. He hit it again. She shouted and I waddled into the middle of them.
It was the only time I saw my father raise his hand to my mother, although I am sure he was capable to do it again. He went to strike her on the side of the face. Maybe if he had hit her he wouldn’t have stopped. I do ask myself that sometimes. Would she have left him? Would she have given him another chance to get her fair and square on the cheekbone?
When my father raised his hand, with such force I remember it nearly knocking me backwards, he caught my rabbit. The little bundle of fluff went spinning off into the stagnant cat milk she had poured that morning.
