A Promise Made By A Young Boy

Posted by Innocent Man as Our Backstory

When I was about 9 years old my parents were divorced. From my point of view it wasn’t a messy one like you hear about now, but my parents were very good at hiding things from both me and my younger sister so I’m not really sure. I do remember the day my father moved out a little bit because it was a long time ago. They both sat us down and my father said that was moving while they both worked through some of their problems together. They never did.

A couple of years later my mother moved us from our little townhouse in Roxboro, Quebec to a duplex in N.D.G., a division located in the city of Montreal, so we could be closer to my grandparents who also lived in that area. I had to say goodbye to all the friends I had made while growing up, and neither my sister or I were very happy the move at the time.

We both came around to living in our new home after making new friends, attending a new school and having regular bi-weekend visits with my father, who had also moved to the area to be close to us. We had regular phone contact every night at 7:30 pm, if my memory of the actual time serves me correctly.

After a few years my mother started dating, and met a man who we all thought was a godsend and they eventually got married. He was a long and short haul truck driver and was definitely a man’s man. He had long hair, tattoos down both of his arms and on his chest, and only drank beer. He was very much the exact opposite of my father, who was a white collar worker. I suppose thats what caused the initial appeal to my mother.

I don’t remember exactly how long it was before trouble started brewing, I just know that it did. After my sister and I were sent to bed at night my mother and stepfather would frequently argue loudly and sometimes there were crashes and bangs. On a few occasions the police were even called by neighbours. Everything was quickly explained and the police would leave after checking to make sure my sister and I were okay, and sometimes they didn’t check on us at all. Knowing what I later learned, I was not happy that the police had not checked things more carefully. I was happy when laws were finally changed because if they had been sooner it might have saved my mother a lot of pain and suffering.

My father who was not handling the fact that my mother was remarried began to act out of character. He started calling at irregular hours and had begun to ask to speak to my mother during our calls, afterwards which she always seemed upset and would cry. It wasn’t until much later that I found out my father was drunk during most of those phone calls. I remember my sister and I deciding at some point to just stop taking his calls, and took the phone off the hook whenever we knew he would call. My father was extremely upset by this, and when he did manage to either reach one of us, or purposely run into us somewhere we were, he would yell. As a result, we decided that we no longer wanted to see him because he was creating such a disturbance. Everyone was constantly looking over there shoulders, and this greatly upset my stepfather.

One of our scheduled weekend visits with my father met him with a note on our front door and my stepfather on the other side of it to make sure there were no issues. The note told my father that we did not want to see him that weekend. He did not like that one bit, and refused to leave. My stepfather went outside and escorted him off the property and towards his car. Both my sister and I were watching the events, unknown by anyone, from upstairs through my curtained bedroom window. What happened next I will never forget.

I don’t know what exactly was said between the two, if anything at all, but I do know that once my father was at the door of his car and after he had opened it, he turned to look at my stepfather and my stepfather punched him in the face, knocking him back and causing his glasses to fall on the ground. What my father did in response was no real surprise to me.

He is a huge fan of Kenny Rogers and on more than one occasion had listened to his tapes while we were on car trips. Among his all time favorite songs was Coward of the County and in the song chorus is a line…walk away from trouble if you can. My father is by no stretch of the imagination a perfect person, but he had raised us to follow another line in the song, turn the other cheek a bible verse contained in the new testament. He himself did so on this occasion and picked up his glasses and headed home to call the police.

The police arrived sometime thereafter and placed my stepfather under arrest for assault and battery. My mother was visibly upset by this and packed us up and took us to our grandparents and went to the police station to see what she could do to help him. My stepfather was eventually let out on bail and was required to appear at a later date in court to defend himself against the charges. At the time he had the support of the entire family. During this time period however because my father lived so close by, he had to live somewhere else because one of his bail conditions was to stay a certain distance away from both my father and his residence.

When the day finally came to appear in court, my father had provided the crown with a number of witnesses to the event and he himself testified. When it was time my stepfather stood up to explain himself he plead guilty to the charge, with my mother and grandfather watching from the courtroom seats. What they heard next put them both into a state of shock. Right before the judgement was to be handed down, the crown brought out his criminal history record. He had been charged numerous times before for assault and battery, and was convicted once, for which he was currently on probation. The judge decided he had not learned his lesson and sentenced him to 30 days.

After only 10 days my stepfather was released but he was no longer the same man. My mother felt deceived by him and decided to end the relationship and he never moved back in. One day he decided to come to our house anyway and banged on the door demanding to be let in. My mother called my grandfather told him he was there and then she let him in. My sister and I were in my bedroom at the time playing lego and they started to argue in the kitchen and I heard a loud crash. I ran towards the sound and found the kitchen table upturned and my mother on the floor crying hysterically. My stepfather was hovering above her with an almost evil look on his face. He began to yell and move closer to me but his advance was interrupted by my mother who had grabbed his legs. I ran back towards my room to protect my sister after my mother through her tears told me to do so.

My grandfather arrived seconds later and told me to close my bedroom door and hide in there with my sister. He also told us to cover our ears and we did and I think we might have even closed our eyes at the same time. While we were hiding we were both very frightened and crying and I thought back to all the times my mother had claimed that she had had accidents that left her bruised and sometimes with a black eye or two. She had said she had fallen in the shower, or bumped her face on the kitchen cupboards, or had fallen down the stairs. I knew in that moment how these accidents had actually happened. I silently vowed to myself on that day that I would never ever hit a woman or allow violence to be a part of my life because I had experienced first hand how it could destroy lives and a family.

My mother entered my bedroom a while later to get my sister and I and tell us that everything was okay. Our grandfather was gone, and we never saw our stepfather again. My mother was soon divorced a second time.