Fly Fishing on the Gowanus Canal

"In nomine Patris et Filio et Spiritu Sanctus."
"A-men."
Sister Mary Malachy crosses herself as she intones the prayer, thrusts her prognathous jaw forward, an Inquisitor ready to swoop down on the budding apostates in her charge. She tugs at the sleeve of her brown habit, taps the Timex watch on her thick wrist. Across her desk, 35 eighth graders shift to attention, ink-stained fingers reaching for rosaries.
She studies us—ice blue eyes behind rimless glasses half-closed in feigned prayer—alert to every exhalation of breath, every shoe scuff, sigh and stomach rumble. Malachy knows that behind our frayed white shirts and clip-on ties, beneath the pleated skirts and Peter Pan collars, we dream only of stickball and lipstick, of stink bombs, dirty pictures, fireworks, rotten eggs; of Frankie Avalon, Ringalevio and Kick-the-Can. She knows the boys—the Italians--will touch the giggling girls in the darkness of the cloakroom, make them squeal in the crowded stairwells as they march from the schoolyard after lunch.
Malachy wears a wedding band signifying her marriage to Jesus Christ and her renunciation of pleasure. Pain is another matter. She will spare no effort driving us up the slippery slopes of Salvation. This is her purpose, the vocation that had carried her from the bottle green glens of Donegal to this vale of tears, this Golgotha called South Brooklyn.
She nods to a dark-skinned girl in a raveled green sweater in the fourth row, her mouth ripe and red as Original Sin.
"The First Sorrowful Mystery, The Crowning with Thorns," Rosa Perez begins.
"Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."
The class murmurs the response, voices echoing down tiled corridors, merging with the morning prayers of other students like the drone of honeybees. The rosary continues, the “Hallowed be’s” and “Holy Ghosts” as dry as the husks of dead insects. In the fifth row, Jean W. inhales—her ripening breasts strain against her blouse—and announces the Second Sorrowful Mystery.
An aisle away, I hunch over my Catechism penciling a dove, the representation of the Holy Ghost, shitting on the head of Pope Pius XII. A feral creature, I sense a predator’s approach. I count heads.
"...Ten...eleven...twelve...shit!"
It’s my turn to proclaim the next mystery.
“The Third Sorrowful Mystery?” I mouth the question, prompting my brain to supply an answer. Nothing.
Ascensions. Assumptions. Redemptions.
Heaven sounds like a cheap furniture store. Mysteries swim in my head. Malachy will have me scrubbing the church basement, the labyrinth where Brother Masseo lurks among the broken statues of martyrs and serpents. Three more Hail Marys ratchet by. I crank my head left, cough, then whisper,
"What's the Third Mystery?"
"Ya mother's box,” Sal Mulia replies.
"Don't fool around!"
"Her canary."
Ernie Benevento snorts, the sound among the murmurs loud as a breaching whale. Malachy's wimpled head rotates. I duck, disappearing, I imagine, like Jonah into the belly of the Leviathan.
"Come on. Please!"
The nun fills the aisle between the rows of bolted-down desks. She advances, seeming to sniff the air. Sal hunches over his beads, a monk lost in divine rapture.
"Hail Mary full of grace...” A drone four seats in front of me.
“Shit!”
I squeeze my Italian rosary. A tiny window in the crucifix reveals a bone chip floating in holy water like a carpenter's level. I clench the holy bone.
"Please Jesus…I'll …" I hesitate “I won't….”
A vision of Jean blossoms in my head, plaid uniform skirt inching up, revealing her coltish thighs. I sigh, steady myself for the charge. Instinctively, my hand rises to the fading purple bruise under my left eye.
In the corner by the whistling radiators, Tommy “Cacasotte” Manzo stirs. The bolts holding his desk to the polished oak floor squeal in protest. Malachy sneers at him, a creature unfazed by Salvation’s promise or Darwin's exigencies; a bag of guts, corruption and decay. Stained tie, frayed white shirt, grey work pants straining against his ass like sausage casing; a mockery of all that is pure, clean, Christ-like.
Father Mario and the Franciscans of Our Lady of Peace Parish count the days until New York State law allows them to discharge “Shit-the-pants” like so much sewage into the gutter.
A round oak pointer materializes in Malachy’s hand.
Tommy’s internal clock is chiming noon. Soon he’ll eat at his mother Margherita’s (pronounced in our  dialect, “Ma-ga-la’s”) Third Avenue diner, waddle home, root into his unmade bed. At 5:30 P.M., the Mouseketeers’ theme will stir him to masturbation. He raises his slobber-streaked face, squints, lolls his tongue at Jean, a willowy German stranded by the ebb tide of emigration out of South Brooklyn.
He lifts his ass and farts. A barrage, a lament from his bowels that derails the Holy Rosary and wreathes the classroom in silence. The fallout stops Malachy as she’s about to pull me from my seat. Rows of students surge forward, surfers riding a wave, coughing, pretend gagging, holding their throats. Shrieking, they sweep past me, past Malachy, out the front door.
The lunch bell clangs. I stand, lock eyes with her.
“The Third Sorrowful Mystery!” I shout slapping Sal’s still bowed head. “The Crowning With Thorns!”
I swivel right, dash forward and out the door. I fly down the metal steps, out the building, dodge Butchie the Fag, the patrol boy, and the thundering trucks on Third Avenue, race down Carroll Street past my house, past Jimmy the Morgue’s idling Buick Electra, past Monte’s and the Crusader Candle Company not stopping until gasping I reach the grey rail of the bridge crossing the Gowanus Canal. I feel the pale sun on my face.
In Monte’s, Sonny the Indian sips brown whiskey, watches me race down the sidewalk, feinting garbage cans, my gangly body struggling to keep up with my brain.
He stares at the long mirror above the bar, lifts his chin. Whose face is it? What purpose the bunched muscles and tendons of the formidable jaw? The questions chase themselves behind his impassive eyes.
After a moment he grunts, “Whiskey.”
Fifteen minutes later, I walk back up Carroll Street.
A month ago, at the Grand Army Plaza Library, a woman with a face like parchment had shown me sketches depicting the Gowanus River in the 1600s, apple trees flourishing along its banks, Gowanus oysters renowned for their size and abundance.
 I’d described these wonders to Ernie and Sal.
"Go fuck yourself!"
Engulfed in the cloud of sautéing garlic and simmering tomatoes emanating from Monte’s Venetian Room, I float above the cobblestone street, imagining green and verdant hills rolling past  what is now Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, to the Heights above the harbor. 17th Century ships at anchor bobbing in the sunlight at the foot of Wall Street.
Crack!
A slap off the back of my head ends my meditation. Honey and  Fat Ernie, his nephew, are standing in front of Monte's. Holding a thick Cuban cigar, Honey is grinning. Sonny is to his left, Easter Island in a leather trench coat. Shaky stands to his left glaring malevolently at me.
“Daydreaming you mope?” says Honey.
 "What?"
“You hungry? Go inside. Red'll make you a sandwich.”
“No. I’m fasting.”
“It ain’t Lent. Think them cocksucker priests fast? Bullshit.”
“Fasting makes you think better. In India...”
“Sonny’s an Indian. He don’t fast.”
Sonny says nothing.
“What happened to your face? Your father go to work on you again?”
Uncomfortable, I look at Ernie. “You ready?"
“Yous better smarten up,” Honey warns. “Yous ain’t kids no more.”
He waves his cigar, digs into his pocket and pulls out a thick roll. He peels off two $5 bills.
"Get some ice creams. You, bring me the News and the Mirror. Don't forget like last time."
"I won’t. I promise." (I'm rich!)
"That Irish twat still giving yous trouble?"
"She hates us.”
"She hates Vinny ‘cause he's smart.”
"I ain’t smart!"
I tilt my head toward the bridge. We begin inching away.
“Where yous a going?" Honey jerks his finger toward Third Ave. "School’s that way."
"We don't gotta be back till one o'clock."
“Stay away from that fucking canal!" Honey spreads his stubby arms.
"They got water rats this big. All kind a shit. Yous a ’gonna get rabies. Something happens, I'll give you the rest! Stay outta there!"
Shaky walks out of the restaurant, greasy pompadour afloat on his pockmarked face.
"Yo, you got a call. Carmine.”
“The fuck he want now?” Honey groans.
He and Sonny walk into Monte’s leaving Shaky standing there.
Ernie stage whispers. “Looks like a dog shit on his head.”
I giggle.
Shaky turns, shoots me a look. “Homo, whatta you looking at?”
 “Nothing. I ...”
“Jerk-offs, I’ll go to work on both of yous! You, you fat fuck, don’t think your uncle can stop me neither.”
“We’re talking about school,” says Ernie. “Ever hear of it?”
Shaky pulls a wad of bills out of his pants pocket. “School is for jerk-offs.”
Ernie grabs his balls, “Fageddaboutit!
***

We dart between a row of parked cars, then head for the Carroll Street Bridge, a rare and decaying architectural jewel. Twenty yards from the water, it hits you, a wretched blend of raw sewage, chemical spills, oil from sunken barges and abandoned cars, garbage, feces, grease, bloated carcasses of dogs floating in and out on the tide.
In the 1960s, you could drive a car at speed down Carroll Street from Hoyt, accelerate, windows-closed, over the 100 foot-wide waterway—and gag.  Now hipsters dream of sailing yachts and houseboats along its fatal shores.
cut left alongside the John P. Carlson ink factory. On the bank, Sal and Rocco Cucchiaro are already stripping thin, whip-like branches from the sumac trees that somehow thrive on the canal bank. Short and dark-complexioned, Rocco’s mother dresses him like the accountant he'll never be: tweed overcoat, wool pants, polished shoes, white shirt stiff with starch, blue tie held in place by a fake pearl. I pull my rod from the weeds. A McCrory’s five-and-dime reproduction of the ones I see in Field and Stream. (I sense a larger world out there that I want to be part of so I cultivate mail-order hobbies: stamp and coin collections, a rock collection—shards of industrial glass and brick fragments I mistake for quartz and feldspar, bright chemical crystals scavenged from the Golten Marine Company’s abandoned factory near the canal—red plastic rockets powered by compressed air and water, designed for kids in cornfields. A month until they arrive in the mail; one launch and they disappear over the rooftops.) I tie on a sinker and outsized hook. 

"High tide. Fishing’s gonna be good."
"Sunday morning's the best," adds Ernie.
Sal finishes stripping his branch and runs to the 10-foot diameter stone culvert that carries waste from our toilets and sewers directly into the water. (In 2010, the EPA declares the canal a Superfund site. By then, my mom, her three sisters and two of her brothers are dead of cancer. See http://gowanuscrossing.blogspot.com/2012/05/losing-mom.html) He reaches down and begins trolling. Rocco picks a spot alongside a half-sunken barge smeared with oil and grease. Ernie elbows in front of him
"Thanks for helping me…You jerk!” I tell sal
"Swear to God,” he mumbles. “I don’t know the stupid mystery!”
"`Swear to God,’" I mince. "Some friend."
"Screw you."
"Got one!" This from Rocco.
"That’s mines!" says Ernie. “Slippery bastids!"
Rocco hauls an eight-inch condom from the water.
"All right!” Sal says. "Whitefish!"
Putrescent water splashes Rocco’s pants as he manipulates the dripping tube onto a tire.  Nearby, seven fly-buzzed condoms, Tuesday’s catch, shrivel in the sun.
"I got two!" shouts Ernie lifting his branch from the water.
"Your mamma was busy!" Sal shouts.
I watch a dead cat float by in the water; all of us wary of the outsized rats that scamper along the canal’s rotting banks and pylons. For the next ten minutes, we concentrate keen as Robert Redford on a Colorado stream. Finally, I spot a rubber discharged (“released”) from the culvert. I carefully pluck it out of the water. Sal is bent over examining the catch of the day. I circle. Ernie sees me, backs away. I put a finger to my lips, creep closer, closer, and lay the dripping thing on Sal's shoulder.
"Somebody I want you to meet…”
He looks up. Wha…?”
I throw down my fishing rod, dart away.
"Eccch! Sciafuso!" Ernie points.
"What?"
Sal whirls once, twice, a dog chasing its tail. The condom leaves a snail track on his coat. By then, I’m 30-feet away, giggling, running among the piles of concrete slag and bricks heading for a path that winds through a salvage yard and back out onto Carroll Street.
Sal, a track star, throws his raincoat at Rocco. "My mother will kill me!"
I climb a towering mound of garbage, turn and give him the finger. "The First Sorrowful Mystery," I scream, “your fucked-up coat!"
I lose my footing, skitter down the other side. Scramble to my feet, duck behind another pile of trash, accelerate toward a hole in the fence  100 feet away. I trip over a roll of discarded linoleum, almost regain my balance—there’s broken glass, rebar, cinderblocks scattered like a minefield—then fall hard in front of a mountain of blue metal drums piled along the fence.
“Ah!”
Instinctively, I burrow between two barrels.
In the distance, the bells of Our Lady of Peace Church chime the Angelus, then ring the hour, a single note that reverberates in my metal womb like a funeral knell. One o’clock! I crawl deeper, imagining a pirate cave formed by the rusting drums, instantly forgetting about school and rats and packs of feral dogs. I find myself in a small clearing surrounded by drums leaching powdery yellow crystals. I stand up; notice my grease-stained school pants. Ruined.
“Shit!”
A brown paper bag rests against one of the drums. Curious, I walk closer, reach down and pick up it up, disappointed at how light it feels. (Neighborhood junkies who burglarize Cambie’s Trucking and other canal-side companies often hide their swag in the lots that are our fiefdoms. Like Robin Hood, we steal from thieves, expropriating expensive handbags, perfume, shoes, for our mothers. One time, we find a giant Carrier air-conditioning unit still in its packing crate.)

A pillowcase is stuffed inside the bag. I pull it out. Stained a dark, clotty red.
"Jesus!" I fling the bag away with both hands.
The October wind, heavy with salt from the harbor, cuts through my thin jacket. I sniffle, wipe my nose on my sleeve. Acrid smoke—truck tires constantly burning in Smoky Joe’s junkyard next door, chokes the air. I look up, see the sun reflected in the back windows of a tenement; remind myself I’m just 50 yards from our own backyard. Gloria is in the kitchen doing dishes, getting ready for supper. I walk over to the pillow case, step on the edge, and kick. The bloody cloth unravels.
Something flies out.
“Ha!” A dry bark that surprises me.
I step closer. A tiny claw-like hand. Closer. A baby, smaller than a plucked chicken, blackened, smeared with blood and dirt. A naked, dark-haired boy, one arm reaching up to the empty sky.
"Ahhh!"
I turn and duck back through the tunnel of barrels, bile rising in my throat. I’m trying not to gag when Sal leaps onto my back. I fall to the ground gasping, spinning wildly, legs pinwheeling. In a second, he’s kneeling on my chest, forcing my arms back.
"Stop!”
He’s holding a dried condom to rub in my face.
"Please stop!"
"Fucking baby cry.” Sal says relenting. “You ruined my coat…”
We crawl together into the clearing and stand over the thing. I want to pick the child up and cradle it in my forearm. Or tell myself I want to. Sal looks at me like I’m crazy. And I am. I feel the tiny body shudder, but I’m the one trembling.
"He was alive.”
Sal tries to cover it with the pillowcase. Fails.
"We don't say nothing to nobody. Right?” he says.
"I don't know. This is...this is a sin."

A rock clangs against the steel drums. We both scream. A second stone lands at my feet. A moment later, Ernie squeezes into the clearing.
 “Ya two mamones!  What’d yous steal?”
He’s laughing, rubbing his right thumb across the tip of his forefinger, the Neapolitan sign for a thief. And then he sees.
“Aggh! The fuck is that?”
 He backs away, holding his hands in front of his face.
 “We found it.”
 “Sciefusos! It’s got germs. You’ll get sick…”
A stream of vomit, bits of Monte’s pasta and pastry visible, shoot out of Ernie’s mouth.

Ten minutes later, we walk out of the lot, chilled, smeared with grime, two hours late for school. The crazed Malachy no doubt waiting to spell "O-b-e-d-i-e-n-c-e” on my knuckles with a thick oak pointer that whistles as it cut through the air.
Halfway up the block Ernie says:
"You know it belongs to somebody?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Somebody got rid of it…on purpose.”
“Threw a baby away?”
He looks at us like we’re idiots. “It ain’t a baby.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s a…a fetal. My sister Lucille has these pictures…”
“Of what?”
“A fetal. A baby that ain’t been born…taken out of a girl’s stomach.
“Get out of here!”
“What for?”
“Because the girl ain’t married or don’t want it or…”
“That’s murder.”
Ernie shoots me a furious look. “Don’t say that! It’s like a business…Yous could get us a lot of trouble. I ain’t kidding.”
 “Fuck the cops!”
 “I ain’t talking about cops!”  
“What trouble?” I ask, glancing at Sal. “Over some little nigger baby?”
 “It ain’t a nigger!” Ernie shouts. “Yous know it ain’t a nigger!”
We did know, and I’d like to say it didn’t matter.

 Limbo mattered. (“A place where souls remain that cannot enter heaven.”) Limbo is located on the border of Hell, a working definition of the Gowanus neighborhood. Baptism mattered. Extreme Unction mattered. Justice mattered. 

But as I was to learn, it's easy to lose your way.

Dutch Shoes And Dead Babies

Late on a winter’s afternoon spent searching among the greasy truck bodies and rusting marine engines scattered on the banks of the Gowanus Canal, I enter the apartment carefully as if there are land mines under the linoleum. Sometimes, a slamming door is enough to trigger my father's anger.
Ernie, Sal and I had been hunting for swag hidden by the neighborhood drug addicts—my cousin Jimmy Psycho among them—in Golten’s Yard. We found something else. I’m still trying to understand what it was. My corduroy school pants are smeared with grease. In our meager household, money for another pair will not be easy to come by. Joey and Tommy are curled on the parlor floor watching television, the dinner table, already set in the cramped dining room."
Where's Daddy?"
Engrossed in the finale of the Mickey Mouse Club song, they ignore me,
"....K-E-Y."
"WHY? BECAUSE WE LIKE YOU!"
Despite myself, I stare at Annette Funicello's breasts jiggling under her white turtleneck.
"M-O-U-S-E!" Tommy belts out the letters like a cabaret singer.
You stink!" says Joey wrinkling his nose. "Like the canal."
“You too!”
Gloria is in the kitchen stirring a  boiling pot of Ronzoni spaghetti.
"I'm home Ma," I yell and dart for the stairs hoping to stash my ruined pants.
"Almost 6:00 o'clock. Why so late?"
"I... helped Sister Malachy clean the classroom."
"Why always you?"
"She says I’ll be a janitor someday."
"Don’t mind her! Go get washed."
In the upstairs bathroom, I scrub the pants with Ivory Soap hoping to get the grease out, instead smearing the sink with black streaks. I pour Ajax on my knees, then some of Joe’s Old Spice aftershave and scrub some more. Frustrated, I roll the pants up, tie the legs into a double knot and throw them to the back of the top shelf of the hall closet behind unopened bottles of Anisette, Creme de Menthe and Four Roses whiskey, gifts from Christmases past.
I’m on the couch pretending to read a Superman comic when my father pounds on the door, making the Christmas bells, we use for a knocker, dance. Tommy lets out a yelp.
Joe doesn’t have a key to his own house. In his world, wife and kids are always home, dinner always on the table.
Joey and Tommy run to pull the door open. I get up. Joe looms in the doorway in an army fatigue jacket and blue watch cap, his face wind-burned and raw. He carries yellow rawhide gloves. Two wooden-handled steel hooks, the tools of his trade, hang off his shoulder like epaulets. Tommy and Joey prance around him yelping like puppies.
"What did you bring us Daddy! Whatja bring!"
Gloria comes up behind us wiping her hands on her apron, eager as the kids. I feel myself drawn into the familiar routine. Joe unzips his jacket. It’s stiff, crackly with cold. Nothing. Joey and Tommy moan. I can smell the salt tang of the Atlantic Ocean on my father. Tommy pulls at the thick army sweater he wears underneath his jacket. Dutch chocolates! Dozens of tiny Easter eggs wrapped in brightly-colored aluminum foil cascade to the floor. Tommy and Joey squeal, then scramble to grab the candy. Gloria kneels beside them, pushing them way. “Yous haven’t eaten yet!”
"A Dutch merchant docked yesterday," says Joe. "A couple of crates slid off the draft and busted." I know not to question such good fortune. Every kid in the neighborhood will have a bellyache tomorrow Joe reaches into his jacket and hands me a brown paper bag.
"Go ahead big guy. This is for you. I traded Frankie Masters for it. His gang was working the Number One hatch. Different stuff."
I open the bag and pull out a pair of hand-carved wooden shoes. A miniature Dutch farmhouse is carved and painted in blue, yellow and red on the tops of the shoes. I can make out a blond boy and girl holding hands. The girl holds a bunch of tulips.
"I figured you'd go for that."
"Thanks Dad.”
Brooklyn was settled by the Dutch. There’s a crumbling farmhouse still standing in the devastated, needle park on Fourth Avenue and Third Streets. In the 1600s, the old farmer had built a series a canals and locks that floated him into New York harbor, as neatly as a car service.
I reach up to kiss my father's cheek. It’s bristly, cold as ice in the overheated apartment.
"Let me carry the hooks!” I ask.
“Be careful."
I turn, walk ten steps and carefully hang the tools in the closet under the stairs. Gloria is scrambling to snatch the chocolate from Joey and Tommy who are giggling hysterically and stuffing Easter eggs into their mouths.
Friday is payday. When we groan at the piselli and pasta, hard-boiled eggs and tuna fish our devout Catholic mom has prepared, Joe orders a pizza from Lenny's on Fifth and Prospect Avenues. Half-an-hour later, I’m gorging myself on pepperoni pizza, washed down with Hoffman’s Cream Soda and chocolate.
After dinner, I call Sally. The line is busy, busy, busy. We’d found an unspeakable thing in the lots, an aborted fetus. I didn’t know the word at the time or the fact that the wise guys were running an abortion mill on Carroll Street.
At 10:00 P.M., feverish and shivery, I crawl upstairs and climb into the lumpy bed beside my sleeping brothers. The radiators are whistling. Joey is rolled up, a mummy in the thin chenille bedspread. I unwrap him, cover Thomas's frail, milk-white body and lay back. I can hear my parents downstairs going through bills, can smell Joe’s Lucky Strikes burning one after another like a fuse. I decide to tell my father what we’d found in the lot first thing in the morning. Despite my racing thoughts, I fall asleep.
"Vinny, wake up! Please wake up!"
I’m jolted from some dark and terrible dream. "Wha...What?"
Tommy is frantically tugging at my arm. Half-asleep, I send him flying with a forearm.
"What!” I hiss.
"PLEASE!" They're fighting!”
The shouts echoing in the narrow stairwell, clear the sleep from my eyes. The crazed voice is deafening, obscene, familiar.
"You fucking cunt! I told you not to spend no more money!"
This is my other father, the father I hate. I leap out of bed and run down the hall. Joey stands trembling in his underwear at the top of the steps. The stairwell is enclosed in wood-paneling, a dark vertiginous tunnel where the beast rages. I plunge down the stairs, bare feet slipping, almost falling, catching myself on the banister, my kid brothers tumbling behind me.
I see a chair go flying...hear my father roaring...my mother mouthing the familiar plea, "Don't let the neighbors hear!"...the squeal of table legs over linoleum as my father shoves it, trying to pin Gloria against the dining room wall...Coffee cups, bills and ashtrays come crashing to the floor.
"Stop it!...You leave her alone!"
Gloria turns toward us, tries to cover where he'd torn her blouse, and in that moment, Joe is on her, slapping, pulling her hair, pushing her head against the wall. Gloria rakes him with her nails, carving bloody streaks on his cheeks.
"Look what you did to me!" he shouts.
I’m  frozen, tears streaming from my eyes.
"Please!" I try to scream. It comes out a whimper.
"Daddy Please!"
Thomas and Joey race past me wailing. Thomas, always so brave, grabs my father's legs. Joe shakes him off like a rag doll. Joey is trying to hug my parents as if a little boy’s love could stop this horror. Gloria is sobbing in helplessness and shame. Joe slaps at her again, screaming, cursing the family dead in Italian.
I feel myself moving. I see myself come between my parents. See myself tear my father away from my mother. I see Joe fly backward into the kitchen, crash into the washing machine and go down. I  hear my own heart pounding in the awful silence. Then, almost a whisper: "You hit your father?"
This is a battle for which all these years later,  I’m still not ready. I turn and face him. My father is 190 lbs. of muscle and fulminating rage. On the docks the Italians call him “Animale.” I square my shoulders and drop my hands. Joe charges The first punch, a short, brutal left, catches me in the stomach. I crumple, careful to keep my hands by my side. The second punch, a roundhouse right to the top of my head, knocks me to the linoleum floor.
"You hit your father."
Still wearing the heavy work shoes, he kicks me, who only loves him. Gloria and the kids shriek. There’s a roaring in my ears. Dazed, I try to cover my head, gasping at the pain, tasting blood where I’ve bitten through my lip. Yet, in some dark and secret place, I know I’ve won. I’ve diverted my father's rage, and some part of me, floating beyond the reach of the tattoo of kicks and punches, is happy.
"I'm calling the cops!" Gloria screams reaching for the phone by the bathroom door. Joe tears it out of her hands and throws it into the bathtub. In that moment, I’m up, my brothers holding me, moving me toward the stairs. My father lunges again, but the attack is half-hearted, the storm already passing. I’m in the tunnel ascending. I hear my mother cursing him, I hear his sobs, and then Thomas's trembling wail:  "I hate you! I hope you die!”
A rooster crows I jolt awake. Gray light seeps past the thick curtains draped over the windows. I watch my brothers sleeping, their trembling hearts already healing,  preparing to love our father again.