Blow it Down

*This next post was inspired by the Carrie Underwood song "Blown Away" off her new album of the same title*

The winds are picking up, after a day of excessive dry-heat and thunder. All the windows in the small ran-shackle of a house are open, the glass straining against their panes and the curtains blowing haphazardly. Strength is building in the wind with every minute that goes by. Dust and foliage whip up in it, making it hard to see beyond the porch. The skies are dangerously dark--huge, fluffy, pitch-black clouds linger in clumps. Rain so desperately needed is not building inside them, but something much more dangerous.

Something deadly.
 
I stand in the kitchen, holding my new born calico kitten close to my chest. We both know what is coming--the danger we will be in the path of. The kitten nuzzles into my neck, trying to comfort me in the midst of our shared terror. But I am stuck, stock-still. I don't know what to do. I know exactly where we need to go, the decision that is only too easy to make. I just can't move. I can't force my mind to make that decision. My eyes are locked on the couch the sits in the living room in front of me. The couch that Daddy is passed out on.

The television by his feet is flashing the red and embolden tornado warnings for Greenboro county, telling all viewers to take immediate shelter below ground, but Daddy still sleeps. In a drunken stupor, his head to one side still clutching his bottle of Jack Daniels--his one and only love and solace in life. He wreaks of disappointment and whiskey. His unconscious form shows a man who has worked hard every day of his life, but pissed it all away on a bottle of brown liquid. He was out cold and completely oblivious to all going on around him.

I can't recall a single day when I haven't found Daddy in this exact position.

 His typical day consisted of waking around noon, contemplating a shower, barking orders and reprimands to my sunken form about the waste of sperm I was, then driving into town to drink himself into an oblivion. The owner of the only bar in town knew our house number by heart and usually called me to come pick him up hours later. Even though I knew the verbal assault I'd receive the second he slumped into the front seat of my car, I always picked him up. That was the spell he had me under.

It only got worse once we were under his roof. Where he could beat the day lights out of me without worrying about others seeing it. He's broken my nose, jaw and both arms in his drunken rages. I've had bruises on each and every clean area of my body--bruises and injuries I had to make excuses for if I ever went to the hospital (which was rare). If I was lucky, I'd run from the car to the house and shut myself up behind my locked bedroom door. He'd chase after me, nipping and trying to grab at my heels, then pound on my door for hours, calling me every dirty word in the book until he finally retreated to the couch. The next morning, it would start all over again.

It never stopped and I knew it never would.

For the longest time, I asked myself why he did this to me. Why he hated me so much and found pleasure in my pain. If he ever loved me. I was his one and only daughter, but he was nothing like a father. He didn't cherish or protect me like all the fathers in movies.

But deep down I knew why he was the way he was. Why he beat me into submission and had me cowering in corners at all hours of the day.

Because I know his secret.

That night, fifteen years ago, he told the ambulance and police officers that she fell. That Mama tripped on the carpet on the first landing and tumbled down the stairs head first. That he was in their bedroom changing for bed when she left the room to get a glass of water downstairs."Her foot must've caught," he said, with no emotion. He was nowhere near her when she fell but heard her scream and the thud when her head hit the wall at the bottom of the stairs. I heard the police say her neck snapped like a twig and her face was littered with bruises. They carried her covered body out on a stretcher, right passed me in the front yard as I clutched a doll to my chest. They wouldn't let me see her--wouldn't let me say goodbye to the Mama I loved and who loved me with all her being. I cried silent tears as they raised her body into the ambulance and shut the doors behind her lifeless form.

I watched as the flashing ambulance lights pulled away, and only turned back to the house when I knew Daddy was behind me. I turned very slowly, when he was a mere few feet from me, but he stopped dead in his tracks from getting any closer. I stared him down. Stared at him with the hardest look a five-year old girl could give. I shot ice and hatred through my pupils and tried to pierce his soul. With every inch of my being, I tried to convey what I knew. What he knew, that I knew. As the seconds grew longer, he couldn't hold my gaze any longer and he looked away. He couldn't take the truth that was staring out at him through five-year old eyes.

The truth that my Mama didn't trip down those stairs. That those bruises were weeks old. That Mama was coming to get me, gather our things and flee Daddy's house forever. She had had enough of his drunken rages, of him taking it out on her face. His abuse and heartlessness. That Daddy grabbed her arm when she left their bedroom and fought with her at the top of the stairs. That he choked her lifeless with his bare hands and then pushed her down the stairs.

Daddy killed my Mama.

And I saw it happen.

And that was why he beat me. He beat me into silence. He beat me to forget. He beat me to remember my Mama.

Suddenly the room went silent. The television snapped to a gray, fuzzed out screen. The lights blinked on and off then went black completely. Only minutes left.

Then I heard the sirens. The tornado sirens that notified all in hearing distance that a spiral of dangerous wind had touched down and was headed our way.  That all who did not take shelter were at their own peril.

There was no longer a decision to make.

I dashed from the house that held only pain and hurt, still clutching the kitten to my breast through the wind and hail, and I ran to the storm cellar. I yanked and pulled at the doors--the wind beating them shut again every time I got them open a crack. Finally, with all my strength I forced the doors open and wedged inside. I scurried down the stairs, safely locking the door behind me. I lit some candles we had stored and found a blanket to gather myself into.

I snuggled into the blanket, still clutching my kitten, and rocked back and forth. The wind got fiercer, the cellar doors strained against their bolts and I could hear things crashing against the house. I tried to shut it out. I tried to remain calm.

And as the wind screamed louder and I knew the tornado was on my doorstep, I prayed. I rocked and prayed. "Blow it down. Blow it away. Blow it down. Blow it away," I said it over and over again. For hours on end.

Blow down my salvation. Blow away my misery.
Blow down my salvation. Blow away my misery.
Blow down my salvation. Blow away my misery.


I wake to my kitten lightly licking my fingers and sun shining through the boards of the storm cellar. Slowly I stand and approach the doors of the storm cellar, still firmly locked. With nimble fingers, I unlock the door and push them out into the blinding daylight.

I step from the cellar with unsure feet to check my surroundings. And I almost drop to my knees.

The house is gone.

Completely gone.

Where Daddy's house once stood was just a pile of brick, nails, broken glass and boards. The foundation was completely ripped from the ground, leaving no semblance of a house or even a shack. No signs of life beneath the rubble. No body. Just an empty bottle of Jack Daniels lying yards away from the mess.

And as the implications of what it all meant hit me, I cried for the first time since Mama was taken. I was free.