Hurting People Hurt Others – Vinnie Saw His Father Kill His Mother

My Psychiatrist says I have ‘hate’ issues. He says to hate someone is to despise or detest them. I believe that to hate someone can sometimes be a cry for help that has been ignored for so long that the tears have evaporated and turned into bitter poisonous salt—I hate my father!I loved my mother. She had the most amazing personality and warm presence. She was my down-comforter, my angel, my favorite toy and then some. Even though there were always people in and out of our house when I was growing up, there were things that only she did for me. She would ask me what I wanted to eat when I got back from school and, when I got home from school, there it was. She would set the table and we would always eat dinner together. I don’t ever recall eating dinner with my father, then again, he was never at home. My mother would help me with my homework and make sure everything was okay with me and school was okay for me. You know, I don’t ever recall my father asking me if I was okay, or how things were at school. My mother and I said our prayers together nearly every night. If, for some reason, she had to go out with my father or over to her folks, she would call me to make sure we said our prayers together over the phone and make sure that I was okay. When I talked to her, she listened. She didn’t give me the ‘Ummm’ or ‘Umm hum’ like my father. She listened and answered my questions. I don’t know when I became aware of the abuse in my home. I know my mother covered up a lot of it and always made my father out to be some sort of hero to me. I would see a mark on her arm or a bruise on her face and she would say it was nothing or that she had tripped and fallen. When my sister Christina was born, I noticed that my father stayed at home a lot more. Men in suits would come over to our house and they would go into his den and close the door. Sometimes they would be in there all night. Once, when I was nine, I heard them talking about a District Attorney who wouldn’t play ball. My father gave an order to someone in the room; he told him that if the District Attorney didn’t want to play ball then he had to be taken off the ‘playing’ field. I didn’t understand what they meant until much later. I started to notice a lot of things when I was nearly ten, for instance, I noticed that the people in the house treated my mother rudely. The staff didn’t respect her and the men in suits who came ignored her. After a while, I noticed that she always had a glass in her hand and a bottle of alcohol by her side. She would still ask me what I wanted for dinner when I got back from school, but when I got back, there was nothing on the table and she would be locked away in her room. Christina’s nanny had more kudos than my mother. My father didn’t talk to my mother with a civil tongue anymore and, as a result, the people he paid to work in our house afforded her the same treatment.

On my tenth birthday, under the guise of taking me to get my birthday gift, she drove me to an impoverished area. She took me by the hand and walked me through the building that my father owned. It was a brothel. There were girls as young as ten and ‘worn’ women with ‘war paint’ engraved on their faces, working there. My mother told me that she had recently found out that my father was involved in this business and how it was evil and any money that came from the sale of sex or prostitution would never lead to anything good. Then she drove me to another part of town and parked outside a building used by my father to package, store and sell the drugs he brought in from South America. She pointed to the police car parked outside with the two policemen sitting inside. She told me that the police provided a twenty-four hour protection service for my father’s business. While crimes were being committed in nearby areas, these policemen would not respond because they were paid to protect my father’s drugs. I don’t know if she had some sort of premonition about her demise. But her words scared me a little. She made me promise to always take care of my sister, Christina, to never expose her to my father’s ‘soul-less-ness’. She also warned me to make my own way in life and not get involved with the things my father did, lest the sins of my father fell upon me, then she held me in her arms and cried. She was dead the very next day. My father killed her! When she died, it was like a light went out in my life. I had no one to talk to. I was alone and ignored. The light in my life was replaced with a ‘darkness’ that welcomed its friend called ‘hate’. Every time I thought of my mother, I saw the image of my father putting something under the hood of her car and I hated him. I saw his face, dark and thunderous, when my mother’s car exploded. I feel a little respite when I recall the shock and the pain I saw in his eyes when he realized that Christina had been in the car. The pain and shock I saw in his eyes that day is what has kept me going. I draw strength from the knowledge that he suffered, that the death of my baby sister pierced his heart. Soon, I will require something more to sustain me and maybe then I will play my finest hand—my ‘untold secret’. Until then I will keep everything locked away. Sometimes I feel sorry for my father and I think to myself, maybe I should tell him the truth and bring a little joy to his soul. I remember one Christmas, a couple of years ago, when I nearly told him but just before I found the words, I remembered the promise I had made to my mother on the day before she died and the words literally died in my throat.

My Psychiatrist believes that I never really grieved for my mother and, until I let go of the pain and anger in my heart, I will never be free of the hate I carry. I guess I pay him two hundred and fifty dollars an hour to tell me what I already know. He asked me one day to think of a time after my mother’s death when I experienced a form of peaceful happiness and to try and build on that. The only time I could think of was nearly ten years ago, when I met a girl that was running away from home. She had a backpack in one hand and a map in the other. She had the most intense eyes I had ever seen. I don’t know how I knew she was running away from home. There must have been something in her mannerisms that I recognized, because I had run away from home several times as a teenager. As she waited for a Greyhound bus and I waited for my car to get cleaned, I spoke to her. I am not a generous person neither do I really care about other people. Yet, for some strange reason, I sat down on the bench next to her and we talked.

She had just been told that she was adopted and was going to find her real parents. She wanted to know why they had given her up for adoption. I thought about all the perverts out there and knew that I had to protect her. She had such an air of determination about her, but at the same time, she had an air of innocence that evil men recognized and preyed upon. I asked her if her adoptive parents loved her and treated her well. She sang their praises. I resisted the urge to take her home with me under the false guise of offering to help her. I had done this several times in the past with girls who had either run away from home or come to California in search of fame and fortune. Girls who had found themselves homeless and in need of help. I hold no false pretence of sainthood; with these girls, after a few weeks of decadent fun, I gave them money and sent them on their way. This girl was different; she had a quality about her and a spiritual force that seemed to surround her and repel a quality about her and a spiritual force that seemed to surround her and repel every bad intention that came into my thoughts towards her. For some unexplainable reason, I told her things about me that I had never told anyone. I told her that my mother was dead and I had a father that didn’t love me. I actually told her that God had probably placed her with her adoptive parents because they were the best people to take care of her. I told her to go back home to them. I don’t know who put those words in my mouth I just know that I was completely shocked when I heard them come out of my mouth. She listened to me and after a while, she phoned someone and told the person where she was and asked the person to come and get her. Even though my car was ready, I waited with her until they came. While we waited, we talked about my father. She said that I should look for some good in him. She told me that ‘hurting people hurt others’ and that maybe my father was hurting and didn’t really mean to hurt me and I could be a form of collateral damage. She must have seen the sad look that flickered across my face because she quickly started to tell me some jokes. I laughed at all of her jokes, even though I had heard most of them before. I was happy for her when her family showed up, but I was sad for me because she had to go. I never got her name or her number, but for a few moments, I truly believe I experienced a form of peaceful happiness.