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I grew up pretty quick the day that my father hit my mother and she didn't wake up from his blow. It was early in the morning and I had yet to leave for school. My mother was getting everything ready for the up coming day, makeup, lunches, and putting away laundry, but my father woke up as she was folding his favorite shirt.

Still drunk and smelling of alcohol from the night before, he staggered out of his closet from where he had passed out. Dad eyed mom who didn't notice him, she also didn't notice his clenched fist or my yelp when he struck her. She fell to the floor with folded clothes in her arms, I could see her twitch from the breakfast bar.

Before I had time to think, I quietly left my cereal floating in milk and picked up the phone in the other room. I could have called my grandmother or my moms best friend next door, but my heart instinctively told me to dial 911. So that is what I did.

I sat in my blue jeans and pink top waiting for help to arrive; I was already late for school. Surely she would be OK when help arrived. When the ambulance and police came, cuffs landed on my dads wrists and a white sheet fell over my mom. As they rolled her out they forgot to grab her purse, the only thing she never left the house without. I raced back into the kitchen and snatched her leather bag, but the men said she wouldn't be needing it this time. They said she'd never need it again and that I should call someone to pick me up.

I was twelve when my mother died of head trauma, and my father went to jail for murder.

Learn more about this author, Patricia Vennes.
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