"What, you want to defend that little fucking whore!?" The sight of dad's fist bashing into my face was the last thing I'd see out of my right eye for a week. Normally I was in a corner crying at about this time, begging "daddy stop, daddy no," but not right now. It's pathetic to see what a 20 year old man gets reduced to when his father still trashes him like it was nothing. That fucker had some nerve starting to throw punches in my apartment, but to start in on Gina like that.
My poor sister was balling her eyes out in the kitchen, while dad stood just twenty feet away pulverizing me in the dining room. I wasn't going to let that fucking slime bag hit her again, even as his fist cracked straight into my jaw, loosening it a bit and making it hard to bite down. My eye was shut for sure, and my jaw didn't fit together right, but I could cope. Gina had a black eye, and her lip was split. Yeah, it doesn't seem like much, but I had two more years experience with him then she did. Hell, he even took it light on her while I was living at home. Once I moved out to college, he started in on her. Now she was the one screaming "daddy stop, daddy no!"
I think it was my defiance that made him go all out on me. It wasn't that I defended her. Hell, I had been taking punches out of the man all my life; I guess that's 20 years of taking them away from Gina. One night wouldn't piss him off. It was that I was standing there taking my beating like a man that pissed him off. He wanted to see me break, and I wasn't going to break.
Crack! That was the sound his fist made as it hit my jaw again. This time my cheek was pinched against my teeth, and sliced it open. My mouth filled with that awful, well-water taste of blood. I'm no bitch. I spit it in his face. He wiped it off, mortified, and I laughed openly at the look on his face. "This is it" I thought "he's going to kill me for sure, like an I'll be buried sort of dead." Dad balled up his fists, and he was burning with a fire to hit me. But he saw it in my eyes. Even if he hit me, even if he killed me, he wasn't going to break me, and that showed him how futile it was.
If he couldn't break me with his fists, he was going to do it with guilt. "Fine, you want your sister to be able to look like some kind of whore, with her slut hair and her whore make-up, then you take care of her. She's out of my house, for good!" He stormed off towards my door, grabbed his overcoat, and left. Gina tried to stop him, but I held out my hand and stopped her. When he left, I locked the door behind him. The door was too thick to break through, and this apartment was in a shitty part of town, so the deadbolts were pretty reliable.
"Well, now you've fucking done it! Now I don't have a place to live!" She cried.
"You're welcome."
"Excuse me?"
"You know, I did just take a world class beating for you."
"Where am I going to live?"
"You can stay here till you find a place."
"What about my stuff?"
"Forget it. The alcoholic bastard is probably going to get trashed and throw it all out tonight. I'll take you by there in the morning. You can salvage what's left. It's not like dad ever let us have all that much anyways."
She sat there a minute, then she cried some more "Jack, I'm sorry."
Yeah, Jack's my name. You know your father's an alcoholic fuckbag when he names you after his favorite drink. If it had been a brother here celebrating his 18th birthday instead of a sister, I'm sure his name would have been Manhattan.
I held Gina while she cried. She did that a lot. Having an abusive fuck as a father and watching your mom and bro catch it worse than you every day either makes you tough as nails, or weak as the French. Gina was the latter. I guess that's why I stuck it out on the line for her so much. She didn't have the edge to take it from him full force. Sometimes I resented her for being so weak, but mostly I felt sorry for her and didn't want to see her hurt. I felt guilty about going away to college. It was only 45 minutes away, but I was the only friend she had in the world, and without me, she was alone and scared. Shit, maybe I wanted dad to kick her out. Maybe I wanted her close to me, somewhere where I could protect her. It's not like I learned to be close to anyone other than her.
Dad called every girl he didn't see in a Catholic school girl uniform a whore, but he was especially mean with Gina. I know for a fact she had to be a virgin. There's no way she could have gotten away with a date under his watch, let alone get fucked by some guy. He was being a prick because she dyed her hair auburn and was wearing red lipstick. I thought she looked cute as a button with it, but he wanted to give her a hard time. She had on a low-cut shirt that showed off a very decent 18 year old cleavage. Again, thumbs up from me, dad wanted to give her a hard time. She was trim and slender. We didn't have any choice because dad didn't feed us. And she had the whole outfit completed with a black cotton skirt and a black choker. She knew I always thought her graceful little neck looked great in those chokers, but dad wanted to give her a hard time. Hard. That's what I was getting holding her tight against me, looking down at her chest, just generally feeling closer to her than to anyone on earth.
After about fifteen minutes she was done. She wiped tears away from her freckled face, and went over to my freezer. She wrapped some ice in a compress, and she handed it to me. It was a drill she was familiar with, since the days she was capable of getting ice. I pressed it against my eye. The cold got to be too much every now and again, and I'd have to take the compress off for a few. I pressed, then warmed, then threw the bag and said "fuck it." Gina jumped, scared as hell. I said "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
She was quiet for several minutes, and then said "I fucking hate him, so much."
"I know me too."
"I can't even wear normal clothes without getting called a whore. I haven't even looked at a guy, and he calls me a whore. I'm sick of it."
"I know." I said. She fumed in anger, and I just sat there throbbing in pain. "I'm going to bed. We'll go get your stuff in the morning."
I laid in bed and tried to ignore the pain long enough to get some sleep. The door to my room creaked open. It was Gina. "Yeah?" I asked.