My Father's Eyes

© Kara Ferguson

I killed my father the week mother was in the hospital. Her leg was broken in two places; she would never walk the same again. My father told the doctors that she had fallen down the stairs, and it never occurred to any of them to send someone to see if we even had a staircase. It was the early sixties and in those days people didn't ask a lot of questions if a woman had an occasional broken bone or black eye. A man's family was his own business.

While mother was away I ran the house. The week had gone by smoothly. After all the years of simply watching I had learned a thing or two about my father's rules. On Friday, I began to prepare dinner about an hour before my father came home from work. Country fried steaks, perfectly round and carefully battered sat on a plate in the center of the kitchen table. Freshly baked rolls scented the kitchen. I was setting the table when I heard him open the front door. Knowing what would happen if dinner was not set and ready when he entered the kitchen I rushed along and finished setting the meal.

Appearances meant a lot to my father, straight down to an expertly set table and a well displayed meal. The clinking of ice cubes against glass in the other room told me that father was fixing himself a drink. Sober my father was a cruel and vindictive man, but with alcohol he was vicious and even more unpredictable.

The argument began over something insignificant to most people, the placement of the salt shaker on the table. Normally, I would have backed down. I knew my place, which was to grovel and beg for forgiveness over every minor infraction. It wasn't until I was much older that I understood the key was to make him feel superior over us. I knew he was a violent man, but until that day he had never hit me. Mother always took the physical abuse, and I lived in fear of it.

The salt shaker was just out of reach. Father swirl his whiskey in the glass and glared at me. I was suddenly infuriated that he couldn't just scoot his chair closer and grab it. My chair slid backwards with more force than I intended and nearly fell over. What sent him over the edge, I think, was the salt itself and how it seemed to erupt from the cap of the shaker when I jerked it off the table and placed it in front of him. The open palm of his hand made contact with my cheek so forcefully spit flew from my mouth. Before the sting had a chance to crawl its way across my flesh, I slapped him back. We stood there frozen for a moment, equally shocked by my reaction.

“You little cow!” he yelled, “Just like your mother.”

Before I could blink he grabbed my hair by the handful and pushed my face to the table. Up close the tiny granules of salt looked like sand scattered across the table.

“You'll clean your mess up, you worthless little cow,” the words echoed in my head as he breathed them in to my ear.

Father let go of my head with a push and my cheek throbbed as it bounced against the table. My chin trembled, but I could not cry. Crying, I knew only made him angrier; it seemed to prove to him that we were weak, that we were inferior. I clenched my teeth together until I thought they might crack. Grasping the salt shaker in my hand I turned carefully towards him. Father was walking towards the living room with his glass, probably to freshen his drink.

With his back to me, I threw the shaker. I didn't expect it to actually hit him; I didn't even aim. The shaker smacked in to the back of his head with a thud.

The glass dropped from his hand and shattered against the floor, spilling its contents across the immaculate floor. He rushed me, and shoved my shoulders with all his strength towards the kitchen counter. I grabbed backwards across the countertop hoping to catch myself before I hit the floor, but I landed hard on the linoleum and sat stunned. I looked up at my father straight in to his cold blue eyes and knew whatever had kept him from killing my mother all those years was gone. He had finally snapped, and I was the target.

He tried to kick me, but I raised my arms in from of my face for protection. Every breath shot pain across my back where it had connected with the counter. He tried again to kick me, but the alcohol and lack of food in his stomach compromised his balance. I lunged towards his legs, knocking him to the floor long enough for me to scramble to my feet. Every step was like fire through my body. I scanned the room desperately for anything to defend myself with. Still on the counter, just an arm's length away was the knife I had used to cut up the potatoes.

Then the knife was in my hand, and the blade was covered in blood. Father stood in front of me grasping at his chest as if it were on fire. His mouth moved but I didn't hear the words. My mother entered my thoughts, all the black eyes and all of the forbidden tears. I jerked my hand forward and sliced in to skin pushing hard. My father met my eyes with his. They were wide and glassy. He slumped away from me and slid to the floor.

My father lay there in the middle of the kitchen floor, still gasping for breath when I called the police. I remember feeling strangely calm at the time, maybe I was in shock. I sat in one of the chairs and watched as the blood spread out around his body like a crimson wave. The last thing he did before he died was turn his head and look at me with those cold blue eyes.