A Woman's Flight Chapter 15

As dark as her father's thoughts were and as emotionally withdrawn as her mother was, she had never experienced abuse from either one of them up till that point. She was already two at that point and old enough to know that something was seriously wrong with her father.

She started secretly hating him after that incident. From that moment on it didn't get better. It got much worst. It was almost like something in him snapped. It was like he was becoming a completely different person before their eyes. Before they really knew what was happening;Richard became progressively more angry and abusive.

At first it started off with snide and cutting remarks directed at Lizzy and Rebecca until it got to the point where he actually started to beat on Rebecca and her mother for the smallest things. Rebecca started seeing her father as a monster. The thing that made her mad the most was how everyone seemed to just accept it.

No one wanted to cross him and her mother was too scared to question or go against him. Rebecca secretly hated seeing her mom that weak and seeing her being reduced to a scared little child or mouse every time her father would attack her. She used to wish that her mother would fight. She used to imagine one day that her mother would get tired of her father and she would have their bags packed one day and they would be on a train to her grandma's house and leave everything behind.

Looking back Rebecca’s mother didn’t really say much. She was so diminutive in every way. Thinking back on those days, Rebecca used to hate her mom for that. Whenever her father used to say anything harsh, she would just shrink away and just allow her husband to do whatever he wanted.

Whenever he would get frustrated and break dishes or hurt her or even Rebecca, her mom used to say,” Your father is a good man. He is just really tired and frustrated you see. He really does love us. He just doesn’t know how to show it. Things will get better Rebecca. Just you wait and see. When thing start to pick up and when he is not as stressed. Thing will get better.”,

Rebecca always thought that her mom was trying to convince herself more of this than Rebecca at that time before her father died. Even though her mother cried, there was a part of her that actually smiled. She figured it served him right. It wasn’t until much later that she would start to realize just how much her father had affected her and just how much she carried around the hate and bitterness that could keep her up in the middle of the night.

She would stay up some nights just thinking back to those days and wondering why it had to happen to her. She used to wonder if life was just some cruel joke and she had managed to pull the short end of the stick. She would sit and think back to all of the things her father had done to her and her mother and wonder if she might have done something in a previous life to deserve what she had gone through.

Some times she would wake up screaming in a sweat. There would be some days when she would feel a vice like grip come over heart at the sheer memory of her father. It was like she was remembering every last detail over and over in her head. During those days she just wished for relief and there were some nights in particular when she felt like she was better off dead.