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It wasn’t that I hated my father, despite the terrible things he’d done to me and my mother, and I didn’t think that I’d ever truly be able to hate him, not with the memories of what he used to be like before the drinking and gambling and cheating. But I didn’t love him either, and I wasn’t sad when he just up and left one day and never came back. I didn’t need him, unlike my mother because she had loved him, even though he’d cheated on her and beaten her. And when he left, it destroyed her.

She tried to kill herself once. I’d come home from school and found her hanging from the rafters, and I thanked whatever god was out there that I hadn’t gone out with my friends like I’d originally been planning. If I’d lost her that day, I didn’t know what I’d do. After that, I kept a close eye on her. School was an afterthought; all I cared about was making sure my mother didn’t do something stupid. I needed her.

After coming home from my job one day, though, I found my mother standing on the sidewalk, her eyes blank, unfocused.

“I’m sorry, baby,” she said, her hands cupping my face. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

She just closed her eyes, her body swaying, and before I could do anything to stop it, she collapsed. I knelt down beside her, eyes wide with horror, and waited for her to draw a breath. And I waited, waited, waited. Later, I would wonder if I might have been able to save her had I acted faster, if she had died because I’d just sat there.

I’d often times blamed my father for her death. I told myself that if he hadn’t left, then she would be all right, but really I knew he couldn’t have foreseen this, and I was sure that if he’d known such a thing would happen, he would have never left. He had been cruel and abusive, but he had never wanted either of us dead, of that I was sure. I told myself time and time again that he’d left to protect us from himself--I had to tell myself this or else I was sure that I’d come to hate him.

In a way, I hated my mother more than I could ever dream of hating my father because she had known. She’d known what killing herself would do to me--that’s why she’d stood there in that last moment apologizing--and yet had done it anyway. She’d chosen her husband over her daughter, and that was something I couldn’t forgive her for.