Is He Dead?

I saw my father, on the floor, just his legs coming around the end of the bed.  As I looked in the room, I had one thought.  Please, let him be dead.  I was somewhere around 7 or 8 years old.  I didn't really know what *dead* meant.  I knew for sure it meant that he wouldn't come back.  By then, I was done.  I was so over all the violence and the drunkenness and the abuse.  I wanted it to end.  I wanted him to end.  That didn't mean that I didn't love him.  I adored him when he wasn't drunk.  By then, I knew the difference.  I was tired.  Tired of all of it.  Behind me, in the rest of the house, a war had taken place.  The war had consisted of one man versus everything else in the house.  Things were broken or up ended.  There was food all over the floors and walls.  He had had a one man violent temper tantrum.  Why?  Because my mother had left that night instead of waiting to get the crap beat out of her and had taken me with her.  Where was I?  I was across the street, shoved into an upstairs closet under a bunch of blankets.  The neighbors were protecting my mother.  I was upstairs when all the yelling and banging started.  When the man wouldn't let my dad get to my mother, he started yelling for me.  That's when this woman came and shoved me into a closet hiding me.  I did not know who these people were even though they were across the street.  I honestly don't think my mother did either and I think that's why that is where she ran to.  She didn't have a car then to get into to get away.  There had been many a midnight trips of her running from my father.  But, that's a different story.

When I went around the bed to look closer at my father on the floor I saw that he had thrown up everywhere.  He was a mess and the smell was sickening.  My mother wouldn't even go in the room.  It was up to me to see if he was dead or alive.  I am pretty sure that we both wished he was dead.

Seriously, a child shouldn't be that tired of life.  Neither should an adult lean that heavily on a child.

Regardless, that was my life.
During the day things were more *normal*.  When the sun set, monsters came out.  During the day things were cleaned up, new furniture replace broken pieces, walls were washed or painted.  At night screams were heard, punches were thrown, monsters ruled.
That night I knew he was the monster trying to tear down the door of that neighbors house.  He was the monster that was yelling for me. He was the monster they were hiding me from under all those hot and heavy blankets, just in case he broke through the door.  I slept in that closet. Alone. With the door closed.  In the morning, going across the street when the sun came up, going in the house...he was my dad, on the floor, filthy and I wished that he was dead.