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she didn’t care. She said I should have just asked her; she would have signed the form
anyway. Then Abel, who’d been sitting in the kitchen with us, watching the whole thing, said,
“Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” Then he took me into this tiny room, a walk-in pantry
off the kitchen, and he closed the door behind us.
He was standing between me and the door, but I didn’t think anything of it. It didn’t
occur to me to be scared. Abel had never tried to discipline me before. He’d never even given
me a lecture. It was always “Mbuyi, your son did this,” and then my mother would handle it.
And this was the middle of the afternoon. He was completely sober, which made what
happened next all the more terrifying.
“Why did you forge your mother’s signature?” he said.
I started making up some excuse. “Oh, I, uh, forgot to bring the form home—”
“Don’t lie to me. Why did you forge your mom’s signature?”
I started stammering out more bullshit, oblivious to what was coming, and then out of
nowhere it came.
The first blow hit me in the ribs. My mind flashed: It’s a trap! I’d never been in a fight
before, had never learned how to fight, but I had this instinct that told me to get in close. I
had seen what those long arms could do. I’d seen him take down my mom, but more
important, I’d seen him take down grown men. Abel never hit people with a punch; I never
saw him punch another person with a closed fist. But he had this ability to hit a grown man
across his face with an open hand and they’d crumple. He was that strong. I looked at his
arms and I knew, Don’t be on the other end of those things. I ducked in close and he kept
hitting and hitting, but I was in too tight for him to land any solid blows. Then he caught on
and he stopped hitting and started trying to grapple and wrestle me. He did this thing where
he grabbed the skin on my arms and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger and twisted
hard. Jesus, that hurt.
It was the most terrifying moment of my life. I had never been that scared before, ever.
Because there was no purpose to it—that’s what made it so terrifying. It wasn’t discipline.
Nothing about it was coming from a place of love. It didn’t feel like something that would end
with me learning a lesson about forging my mom’s signature. It felt like something that
would end when he wanted it to end, when his rage was spent. It felt like there was
something inside him that wanted to destroy me.
Abel was much bigger and stronger than me, but being in a confined space was to my
advantage because he didn’t have the room to maneuver. As he grappled and punched I
somehow managed to twist and wriggle my way around him and slip out the door. I was
quick, but Abel was quick as well. He chased me. I ran out of the house and jumped over the
gate, and I ran and I ran and I ran. The last time I turned around he was rounding the gate,
coming out of the yard after me. Until I turned twenty-five years old, I had a recurring
nightmare of the look on his face as he came around that corner.
The moment I saw him I put my head down and ran. I ran like the Devil was chasing me.
Abel was bigger and faster, but this was my neighborhood. You couldn’t catch me in my
neighborhood. I knew every alley and every street, every wall to climb over, every fence to slip
through. I was ducking through traffic, cutting through yards. I have no idea when he gave up
because I never looked back. I ran and ran and ran, as far as my legs would carry me. I was in