Crystal Betancourt Guzman

Many Attempts at Life

I can hear what was going on downstairs, telling them apart by the impacts they made. My father, sounds like cinder blocks crashing on one another, my mother, like padded boxing gloves. 

It’s always easier if I just get it over with.

I slither out of bed in only pajama pants and a bare chest. 

No time to find and put on a shirt, I swing my room door open so hard it slams against the wall, fly down the stairs skipping steps. I miss the last one altogether and struggle to stay on my feet at the end of the staircase. My eyes are still heavy and crusty, my body stiff from how I was sleeping and now the bottoms of my feet hurt from how I just landed.

To my left is the dining room where he’s got her back against the table. So close to her she can’t move her legs to kick him off and her arms stretched out in front of her as she tries to reach for his eyes but his arms are longer. My mothers face is turning the color of a beet and her eyes are beginning to panic.

I sprint at him with all I’ve got, tackling him from the side. The sound we make hitting the floor, you would think there was a thunderstorm in the house. 

I’m a pretty big fifteen year old. I wish I could say that it’s because I eat a lot, or because I do a hundred pushups every night before bed. But that would be bullshit. It’s genetics, I’m just a big kid.

My father is much bigger, he towers over me, and unlike me he actually does work out daily. Old jailbird habits. 

I started off on top of him, I cocked my stiff arms back so hard I could feel the skin on my back move. Swinging as fast as I can, I don’t even know what I’m hoping for. He uses his arms to block most of my hits, he managed to grab one of my arms with his leathery hand and cross faced me so hard with the other I could taste the blood immediately. He grabbed my other arm while I regained my balance and hit me in the face with them. I fell back, only making the sound of a pathetic thud. 

On my back now, he bends down over me and spat, “Did you think that was going to do something you little bitch? I hope you got more in you than that!” 

Everything slowed down as I watched him prepare himself, digging his knees into the hardwood floor on either side of my waist. As slow as I was seeing him, my body couldn’t move fast enough to defend me. I think this is it. He might actually kill me this time. The first swing takes forever to connect, and after it does he pauses for a second. He yells something at me, but I could only hear a ringing and the hot blood rushing to where my cheekbone is. Was? 

Luckily, the second one goes on the other side of my face at least, delivered by his other hand. That one hurt too, but less sore to begin with. The third landed dead on my nose. I heard the crack and my eyes watered up. I could see my cheeks closing my eyes, I wish I could scream like I want to. But the weight of his body is pressing down on my lungs and I haven’t been able to catch a breath this whole time. At some point something in me cracked, had to be a rib, hopefully not my back. Whatever it was he must’ve felt it too because he looked down at it then moved his knee from there so at some point he moved it, and when I could finally gasp for air, it hurt to do that too so then I knew it had to be a rib. I can’t decide whether to try breathing or just let myself die. I can’t decide what hurts most right now. 

My vision blurs, but I know my mother came at him with something close to his neck. Although it doesn’t help much. He gets a hold of her again, but she puts up more of a fight than I ever could. I don’t know how she’s doing it, as small as she is. As gentle as she could be. 

Before I fade out I hear a gasp; and a padded boxing glove hit the ground.

I woke up in the hospital five days later to have everyone telling me a story about something I was actually there for. The neighbor heard the fighting so she called the cops. But they took their time, so by the time they got there, there wasn’t much they could do. 

When it came down to the facts, she cut him with a knife on his collarbone; she must’ve been trying to slice his throat. He took that same knife from her and stabbed her right in the belly. 

They say she must’ve bleed out quickly, when the cops got there he had just let her body hit the ground. 

He didn’t bother to deny it of course, at that point no one would. At first they thought I was dead too. I laid there unconscious, my abdomen was a brutal purple and my face was swollen all over.

According to the hospital records from that day, I had three broken ribs, a grade three concussion and a broken nose. I even slipped into a coma for five days.

Over time, people think they can comfort you with jokes, “Hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right kid?” I just raised my eyebrows and told them to fuck off in my head, remaining silent on the outside.

With my mother now dead, and my father in prison, all I had left was my maternal grandmother, and all she had was me. 

She did what she could with the cards she was dealt, suddenly having to spend the next three years raising her grandson. I got myself a job when I was sixteen. But I did some other stuff out in the streets to make money too. Four months after my eighteenth birthday she died of a bad heart. My little old lady, in her will she left me the house, I didn’t even think she had a will. 

Aside from the average theft misdemeanor, or getting caught with some pot on me, I managed to keep my record clean. I got into art and became a tattoo artist. 

I made a life for myself. I started to make money, work out, I even found myself a girl, no. A lady, Sadie. She made a home of my grandmother's house again. She’s supportive and smart, I love her drive and the way she’s just the perfect mixture of a badass and a sweetheart. We spent years together, then she gave me the best gift I could ever receive, she made me a father. We had a little girl together and I hope everyday she grows up to be just like her mother.

However the story doesn’t end there, no that would be too easy. I almost slipped through the cracks and lived a happy life. 

Someone broke into the house one day in the dead of night. The one my grandmother left me, the one Sadie made a home, the one where she and our child now rest their heads. 

I woke from my sleep when I heard some glass shatter, not a lot, just a little. I knew the backdoor that was by the kitchen had a window above the lock. I hoped that I was wrong and I was just being paranoid, but I never took any chances. Sadie was asleep on the bed still, I grabbed my gun, the one I bought off some connection at a random ice cream shop when I was seventeen. I know it’s loaded but I’ve never fired it. For all I knew the shit didn’t even work. 

Well I wasn't paranoid, the door was open when I looked and I caught him just about to walk into my daughters room. I saw red, and didn't think twice. Not that it would’ve made much of a difference. I shot him in the back of the head, killing him. 

The law doesn’t care all that much about the fact that I killed a man who broke into my home and was making his way into my three-year olds room. They were more concerned with the fact that I killed a man with an unregistered, illegal to have gun. My lawyer got them to let me off the homicide charge. But for the gun, I got seven years. I will never forget Sadie’s cry when the verdict was read aloud in the courtroom. 

 Now she has to pay the price for my mistakes. My baby girl won’t get to know her dad until she’s ten. I did everything I could, and it still wasn’t enough. 

Here I am today. I got put in Rivers Prison, me being here is very unnecessary. I think part of it was based on my looks. Big tattooed men don’t get sent to the low security prisons. 

However there was one thing I did not consider until now. When I walk into the hall everyone looks but is quiet. Every set of eyes scanned me. The guards put me in a cell with some young kid. He seems too enthusiastic for someone in prison so young.

He stands at about five ten and he’s lanky. A classic white boy with shiny black hair and blue eyes. Stick and poke tattoos on his hands and arms. 

He stands by the bed welcoming me, “Hey man, I’m Finn. Top bunks yours, they shut the lights out at about eight thirty, but sometimes whenever they feel like it. Don’t worry man I’m not weird or nothin, I try to keep a low profile here and stay out of trouble.” 

He puts out his hand to shake mine, I shake hesitantly but I play along.

“I’m Angel” I say calmly, placing the thin stack of sheets the guards gave me on the top bunk.

“Yeah, I know. You gotta be Bardi’s son huh? He mentioned you would be in. He’s been keeping up with your case on the news.” 

A chill ran up my spine. The little squirt went on talking, but I heard nothing but the blood rushing to my face again, just like before. How does this kid not know when to shut up? 

I should’ve known. How did I not think of this? Just because he’s dead to me doesn’t mean he’s actually dead.

Our cell is on the first floor, and when I turned to look out the door there he was. Sitting on a table surrounded by a bunch of other losers. A scar along his collarbone, his eyes looking me up and down with a twisted grin across his face.