“I-I waited a while,” I’d stuttered. “And when she started screaming, I ran into the kitchen.”
“And when you got there, you saw your mom with a knife in her hand,” said the lawyer, circling the courtroom floor as if he were performing in a highbrow play off Broadway.
My mouth had instantaneously dried up. I went to speak, but nothing came out, like when you’re trapped in a nightmare and want to scream but there’s no sound.
“Could you please speak up?” the lawyer had pushed, in an effort to intimidate me even more than I already was.
I cleared my throat. “N-no, she didn’t have the knife.”
The lawyer had looked momentarily perplexed, as if I was playing some kind of a joke on him.
“OK,” he’d said patronizingly, as if he’d decided to play along. “So where was the knife when you walked in?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think it was on the side.”
“You don’t know,” he repeated, as if he hadn’t heard the second half of the sentence.
“It was on the side,” I said more concisely, leaning into the microphone.
“And where was your mother?”
I looked at my father, sitting there in his best three-piece suit, the one he saved for church on the odd occasion he went to repent his sins.
“She was bent over,” I said. “He had her by the hair and was kneeing her in her stomach.”
“OK, so she picked up the knife to stop him from hurting her any further?” said the lawyer, putting words in my mouth.
“No,” I said, not wanting to say what happened next, but knowing that I had to. “I picked up the knife.”
The lawyer had looked from me to my father and back again.
“He was hurting my mom and wouldn’t stop,” I said. “I was screaming at him, telling him to stop, but he wouldn’t listen—he just kept on hitting her and kicking her again and again. So I picked up the knife and asked him to stop one more time.”
The lawyer’s eyes had shot up to the brass plaque impregnated into the paneled wooden wall behind the judge, as if he were silently praying for patience.
“But didn’t your mother say, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ Meaning that she was intending to kill your father.”
I’d looked at my father, who was surreptitiously nodding his head.
“Your honor, the defense is leading the witness,” said the prosecution, standing up.
“Rephrase the question,” said the judge, a woman with short gray hair, whose face completely changed depending on who she was looking at.
“So what happened next?” the lawyer asked me.
I wasn’t quite sure. It had flashed in front of my eyes so many times, but it was at such speed that I couldn’t make sense of it. I’d tried to slow it all down, but it was still chaotic.
“I … I…”
“Just take your time,” he’d said, but the angst on his face suggested he meant the opposite.
“I … I stabbed him with it,” I said, as quiet as a mouse.
“She’s lying!” my father yelled, gesticulating as he leaped up.
The judge slammed her gavel down on the desk. “You will refrain from speaking out unless asked to do so.”
I’d sat on my shaking hands, watching my father shrug off the security guard who was standing by his side.
The lawyer returned to where my father was seated and whispered something in his ear.
Dad’s mouth was pulled tight and he glared at me as he nodded in response.
“Naomi. May I call you Naomi?” asked the smug man, as he returned to stand in front of the witness box.
I didn’t want him to call me anything. I wanted to go home.
“What has happened to your mother—to your family—is something no young girl should ever have to go through.”
The threat of tears pulled at my throat.
“But I’m sure that you don’t need me to remind you that if your father wasn’t protecting himself against your mother, he can no longer cite self-defense for the crime he has committed.”
I’d nodded, fully aware of what I was doing, if not entirely sure what it would mean for me. But I didn’t care—as long as he got what he deserved.
He’d looked at me before going on. “So you understand that there is a much higher chance that he will go to prison for a very long time. He’ll be away from you, away from your younger sister. Who will be there to take care of you? You have to be honest about what happened, so that we can get your dad back home and start rebuilding your family.”
“Your honor, the defense is leading the witness,” stated the prosecution again.
“Do you have a question?” the judge had asked.
The lawyer had looked at me through narrowed eyes. “So I’d like to ask you again,” he said, pausing for effect. “Who stabbed your father?”
I’d leaned into the microphone, aware that the deadly silent courtroom was holding its breath. “I did,” I said, as clearly and succinctly as I could. “I stabbed him.”
14
I feel sick, as if I’ve been kicked in the stomach. I can’t shake off the feeling that everybody is out to get me and I’m a flailing ship without a port in the storm. I need to steady myself, so that I don’t sink beneath the rising waters that are perilously close to taking me under.
I knew that my father’s trial was a big deal in New York at the time, but I could never have imagined that it would follow me to England almost thirty years later; that there were people in the world who were affected by it back then and were still able to recall a life I’ve tried so hard to forget.
Unable to help myself, I ease up the lid of my laptop and sit with fingertips poised over the keyboard. I’ve never thought to do this, but it suddenly occurs to me that even those who weren’t aware of the case at the time only have to put a few keywords into Google to find out all about it.
I type in “Man kills wife 1995 New York” and hover over Enter, asking myself if I really want to do this. I swallow hard, hit the button, and close my eyes, not knowing what is waiting for me when I open them.
Eventually working up the courage, I squint and am immediately sucker-punched by an image of two little girls: me, holding an ice cream, smiling self-consciously into the camera lens, and my sister, with her trusty pink bunny rabbit beside her and half her ice cream smeared around her face.
Tears immediately spring to my eyes and I let out an anguished whimper. I remember this being taken at the Richmond County Fair, just a year or so before our family was torn apart. Dad had won the watermelon eating contest, which had made me ridiculously proud, and we’d celebrated with all the candy we could stomach. I can still feel the wholeness I’d felt that day; the contentment of being with Mom and Dad, safe from the outside world. Who knew we needed protection from someone within our own home?
I look at Jennifer’s chubby little face, her eyes alight with wonder at everything going on around her, and I hate my father even more for taking that away from her. Somehow, I forged my way through the debris he left in his wake, carving out a life I felt I deserved. But Jennifer wasn’t so lucky. She got lost in the mire and it pains me every day that I wasn’t able to pull her out. Though as she looks back at me from the screen, I can almost see her mouthing the words, You didn’t try hard enough.
I slam the lid down and cry out into the silence of the house, in a desperate attempt to rid myself of the thought that my own sister could be masterminding a plot to bring me down. Would she go to such lengths? Does she really blame me for everything our father put us through?
There’s only one person who can calm my overactive imagination, but as I pull my denim jacket on with the intention of going to see Leon, I’m reminded of his vicious words on the phone when I told him about Anna. On top of everything else, just when I need him most, it seems that my anchor is rapidly drifting away.
As I head over to the main house, I use the short walk to clear my lungs and head of all the toxic thoughts relentlessly attacking it.
“Hey, Naomi,” says Tristan, as I approach the security lodge. “How you doing?”