“My mom took her family’s advice the second time. My grandma had a friend whose son was single, an older Chinese lawyer. He lived in a nice house, drove a fancy car. On paper, he seemed like a perfect guy, and she was so pretty and charming that he proposed right away. Without my dad around, and after paying for his medical bills, we desperately needed cash. So my mom ended up marrying him.”
She clenched her fist around the stem of the wine glass.
“And they had this big, grand wedding, a huge to-do, with over 200 people there. And my mom...she was so beautiful. She looked so happy, so much happier that day than she’d ever been with my dad. And I think she really believed that it was going to be happily ever after for her.”
She forced her hand to open and gently placed the glass on the table.
“But he fucking sucked. He was so much worse than my dad. He thought that just because he was rich and educated, he could look down on everyone. He expected my mom to be perfect and loyal to him in every way, and he expected the same of me. He called my mom a slut if she so much as talked to another man. All he ever cared about was appearances.”
“My mom’s family changed their opinion of him when they saw his true colors, but they still outwardly bragged about him to others. About him being a lawyer, or driving a Mercedes, or being so rich that my mom didn’t have to work. They never mentioned how he loved verbally cutting everyone down and making people cry. Bending people to his will. My mom resented him, too, but she felt like she couldn’t leave. She didn’t want to deal with the shame of a divorce, and she’d gotten used to the lifestyle. She would rather put up with his bullshit than be a divorcee or work in a restaurant again.”
I shook my head and forced my hands to relax. My parents had fought prodigiously when I was younger, and they’d half-heartedly mentioned divorce once or twice, but they’d never hit or verbally abused each other the way that Anna’s parents had. I shot Anna a sympathetic look before mixing together the egg and ricotta.
Anna continued. “Everything was about appearances and reputation to my family. Everything had to look good. That was their guiding principle—do whatever looked best to the outside. Whatever happened in private didn’t matter, as long as no one found out.” Another sip of wine.
“I avoided him as much as possible during high school. He yelled at me over nothing and everything. Any time I so much as raised my voice or gave him a dirty look, he slapped me.” Her voice quieted. “And sometimes when he slapped me, I’d see...something else in his eyes. Like he wanted to do other things to me.”
I channeled the overwhelming desire to nut-punch her step-dad into angry sauce stirring. I ended up having to wipe some off of the counter and off of my shirt, and I scalded my hand on the side of the pot.
Fuck that fucking guy. I began layering the lasagna.
“The last straw for me was when I’d just started college. I finally had the freedom to ignore them, so I did. But he was paying for my tuition, at least at first, and he was a fucking control freak...so when I didn’t pick up their calls, he and my mom just showed up to visit me one day without telling me. I’d just started seeing this guy who was half-black, and when they showed up at my dorm, they found us in my room alone together, and my step-dad lost his shit. My boyfriend didn’t know what to do, so he just left, even though I’d asked him to stay. Then my step-dad chewed me out and started hitting me, saying all of this terrible racist shit about how bad it would look for our family. And my mom...she agreed with the things he’d said. She scolded me just as badly.”
Anna looked straight into my eyes, her own eyes brimming with unshed tears. I finished layering the lasagna as quickly as I could. I knew that it was hard for her to tell me all of that, but why thefuck was I making lasagna? There was so much that I wanted to say to her...but still, I kept my mouth shut like she’d asked and just worked faster.
Voice high-pitched and trembling, she continued. “She eventually realized that he was going overboard. She tried to get him to leave, but he refused, just told her to go wait in the car. I think she could tell that he’d lost it, that something was wrong with him, because she refused to leave us alone together.”
Anna held a hand to her cheek. “So he slapped her. I remember her holding her hand up to her face, shocked and hurt. He used to hit me all the time, but he’d never hit her before that. She’d thought she was safe from him, that he was different from my dad...but she knew then that he wasn’t. She was stuck with him as much as she’d been stuck before. She was helpless, and she knew it.” Anna stopped to blow her nose into a napkin.
“But at least,” she whispered, voice thick, “at least she still refused to leave me alone with him. She stood her ground that day, just that one time, for me.” She sniffed. “And that’s...that’s when he started beating her in earnest.”
I hurried to put the lasagna in the oven and wiped my hands on the dish towel, then went to sit with her. Finally. I took her hand and gave her my full, undivided attention. A lone tear slipped down her cheek.
“He hit her and said that it was her fault that I was such a slut. I tried to get him off of her, but he was stronger than
