I wince as I watch my fathers body slam drunkly into the bedroom wall. My eyes fill with tears as the plasterboard cracks and blood trickles down his face where his cheek caught a torn edge. I know that I shouldn't move. Shouldn't reveal to the two silhouettes fighting in front of me my hiding place. But something moves my body forward to catch my fathers arm as he raises it to strike his attacker. My mothers face contorts when she spots my ten year old figure in the room. I only have a moment to register the disgust in her face before my body is thrown across the room with the force of my fathers strike. My face is wet from tears and my vision blurred as I fight to stay conscious. I struggle to my feet to see my mother flee from the room and my father sink down onto the bed, nursing the wound on his face. He stays silent as I slowly make my way to the side of the bed and pull his hands away to examine the cut. I don't meet his eye as I tell him to wash it in the kitchen sink. I leave him still collapsed on the bed and cross the hall to my bedroom, where I know my mother is waiting. As I expected, she's lying on the bed, arms wrapped around her tightly curled legs. With a few deft, practiced movements I maneuver her so that the bed clothes cover her shaking body. I retreat to the door and hesitate a moment, letting my eyes rest upon my mother. Merely minutes ago the woman in front of me possessed enough strength to psychically overthrow a man twice her weight, and now she looks more vulnerable then my baby brother in the bed next to her. I watch him for a few moments, mimicking our mothers actions, crying and rocking back and forth in his bed. I dry my eyes and walk out without a glance back. I feel something shift within me. Instead of feeling vulnerable I feel powerful, in control. I go to the bathroom and wash my face of dry tears. As I stare at myself in the mirror I see the change within me reflected in my eyes. After a while it comes to me that I have the same look in my eye as my mother did before she threw her husband across the room. I wonder if this is what adulthood is like. This coldness.

I sleep that night in the sitting room on the couch. I wake before everyone else and when they started to rise, not a word is said of the nights ordeals. Both my parents move a little stiffly and my father has a cut on the side of his face. Those are they only signs of something more than an ordinary night. Though as the weeks and moths progress it becomes more and more ordinary until the pandemonium in the background of my life becomes almost soothing. A never ending battle the soundtrack to my life.

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