Mortimer George Creations

I remember the day we took this photo as clearly as if it were yesterday even though it was taken exactly 15 years and 2 months ago today.  We had just left a very eerie church service and stepped out into a cold, gray Sunday morning.  The sky seemed to reflect the weather-beaten concrete slabs that greeted us whenever we entered the church building.  The chills still run down my spine as I reflect upon that morning.

Flash-back.  Dad worked odd handy-man jobs a couple of days a week ever since the plant closed down.  The money he made under the table was not nearly enough or consistent enough to feed us, pay rent and keep mom happy.  She was always mad too these days.  Dad changed because of this and I resented him and felt sorry for him all at the same time.  I never saw my dad smoke, but I often wondered why I saw cigarette butts in our patio on the days he couldn’t hustle a job.  He would drink daily.  I wasn’t so sure if he’d drink out of anger or  if the drinking made him angry.  I never saw him drink before either.  All I knew brown liquor was now his drink of choice and on the days when he couldn’t work, his drinking started early in the morning and ended when he was passed out on the couch.   I was dads favorite and he never raised a hand or yelled at me even though he was always angry at the plant.

Dad’s unemployment made him feel like less of a man. He was raised to believe women shouldn’t work and a man was expected to pay all the bills.  Women cooked and cleaned, took care of the children and would never ever consider leaving the house to work.   Mom didn’t help.

Mom felt she had to find a job or they faced losing all they had.  I often wonder what would have happened  if dad didn’t allow her to work in the pub.  In hindsight we didn’t have much of anything to lose.   We walked to school, church and they walked to work.  I thought it was by choice, but I now realize we couldn’t afford a car, and most days  bus fare wasn’t an option.  To mom the little we had meant the world to her.  She grew-up poor, and straddled the poverty-line her entire life until she met dad.

Mom started working at the Pub six months earlier.  It was located four blocks away from our house.  Jim, the owner of the pub knew my parents and knew of our financial struggles.  After church service one Sunday,  he approached mom and dad and told them he needed a waitress to work during the lunch hours since the previous waitress unexpectedly quit.  Mom wanted to take the job that very day, but dad was not ready to commit to it.  After a few days of talking with mom, dad reluctantly allowed her to take the job.  I disliked hated Jim.  I didn’t like how  he would always look at us in church.  His stare lingered and his half-smile made me uncomfortable and scared.  He was responsible for handing out communion on first Sunday’s and always seemed to go out of his way to find our pew and  hand us the wine first like we needed it more than everyone else.

Mom seemed to enjoy working at the pub.  Initially she worked only 2 hours a day but after a month or so she was working 4-6 hours.  I resented her leaving us with dad all alone.  Before the pub, she was always at home, she helped us with our homework and cooked and cleaned.  Now, she was always too tired to help us.  When dad wasn’t working and wasn’t drunk, he helped us the best he could, but it wasn’t the same.  I blamed mom.

One night I heard mom and dad arguing and that’s when it all started.

Jim offered mom a full-time job at the pub and mom wanted it badly.  Dad refused to allow her to take the job and felt even though they needed the money, he couldn’t continue to raise us on his own.  He argued that he was close to landing a full-time job at the warehouse.  Mom said she’d heard that before and needed to do what she needs to do so that they could keep our little house. Mom and dad started yelling at each other.  Dad became angrier when mom told him how Jim’s pub business was growing and they plan to open another pub in the next city to the north.  Dad already felt less than a man being unemployed and all.  He started to yell even louder and questioned mom and Jim’s relationship.  Eventually the yelling stopped that night.  Mom started working fulltime the next day, and mom and dad barely spoke much after that.  Mom came home by 8 O’Clock , ate dinner, tucked us in and went to her room.  Dad sat on the patio and drank his brown liquor.

Flash forward a month. On Saturday evening dad decided to surprise mom at the pub and take us all to dinner.  He wanted to share the good news of how he landed the warehouse job and not only that, he was going to be a supervisor.  All his hard work at the plant had finally paid off because he landed a position that paid him more money than he had ever seen.  Mom would not need to work as long as he kept this job.  We were excited for him.  I,  in particular wanted him to be happy and this job was now the source of our joy.  I wanted so much for them to start talking again and to make things better at home.

I asked dad if we could enter through the alley in the back of the pub so that we could  surprise mom.  I blame myself.  He agreed just so he could see the smile on my face.  As we approached the rear alley-entrance of the pub we heard a man and woman speaking, however, the sound was muddled.  We slowly opened the back door and that’s when we saw mom, and Jim.  They were embraced against the wall next to the door inside the rear-entrance.  Mom had her back on the wall and when she saw us looking at her she immediately turned around and clutched her mouth with her right hand as if she wanted to throw-up, but nothing came out.  Jim raised both hands in submission towards dad.  Until that night, I had never seen dad’s rage.  He charged Jim and began swinging wildly hitting both Jim and the wall.  Blood engulfed the walls where Jim once held mom.  By this time the bartender and a few patrons came running in the back room.  Eventually, they were able to hold dad down.  I was screaming.  Mom was screaming.  I felt helpless.  Dad was panting like a wild bull laying his eyes on red for the first time.  I was angry at mom for making dad so angry.  I hated Jim before, now I was angry with hated mom.

After all the commotion of the night had subsided, dad walked us home while mom stayed behind.  I didn’t want mom to come home.  I was afraid of what may happen.  I did not want to ever see my dad so angry again. Why didn’t someone call the police.

Later that night mom came home.  Dad was already asleep on the couch after drinking an entire bottle of brown liquor.  That was the first time I saw dad drink straight out of the bottle instead of pouring it into his favorite mug.  I was angry when mom came home.  She didn’t tuck us in.  She didn’t speak .  Mom went straight to the bedroom and shut the door.  I knocked on her bedroom door and she told me to go to bed and that she would talk to me in the morning.  I felt betrayed and pushed aside.  She owed me an explanation.   I was too angry to go to sleep.  I went straight into the kitchen and sat down on the floor.

Sometime that morning dad woke me up, frantically.  I was asleep in the hallway  between the kitchen and their bedroom.  He picked me up and threw me in the tub and started to wash me.  He let me soak a few minutes while he woke up my little sister, Becky.  After we were all cleaned up, he made us get dressed for church.  I didn’t think nothing of it cause it was Sunday morning and regardless of the week they had, we always went to church every Sunday.  Except mom wasn’t getting dressed this time.  Mom wasn’t dressing us either, dad was.  Dad told us to get in the car while he made a phone call.

Jim wasn’t in church.  Dad just  sat silently the whole service and just stared at the pastor.  I wondered what he was thinking.  I wondered where mom was.  I wondered how I blacked out and was awakened in the hallway.  I was confused.

After church dad made us pose for this picture.  He seemed hurried and then I started to remember.  Right when I started to ask him about the night before two police cars came screaming down the street.  The entire congregation came running outside to see what was going on and that’s when the cops stopped right in front of dad.  I was shocked.  They told dad to let us go and lay on the ground.  My little sister and I were crying profusely at this point at the sight of their guns pointed in our direction.  The cops rushed dad, put the handcuffs on, and told him he was under arrest for the murder of my mother!  I started to remember that night and things were getting clearer to me.  I started to remember things that happened before I blacked out in that hallway.  My dad just looked at us and told us he loved us both and told us he did a bad thing.  He looked at me and told me he loved me and would never do anything to harm me and my little sister.

I’m a full-grown man now.  My dad was murdered in jail a couple of years ago.  He kept this photo in his jail cell and I retrieved it when we picked up his belongings.  All he did was mind his business but in that jail they didn’t take too kindly to him for some reason.  He was never really the jail type. When he was alive, I visited dad in jail every week. We talked about everything and everything slowly became clearer to me every time I talked to him.  You see, dad went to jail for us.  He went to jail for me…because in the moment that I blacked out, I grabbed an old butcher knife from the kitchen, forced open moms door and…