Before My Eyes

The weather wasn't particularly bad that day but I knew it would be windy. I had thought the pure force of it would be enough to consume and deter me from any digressions my mind decided to follow but as I left my top-floor apartment to the busy New York street below, making my way down the same eighteen floors I had walked countless times over the last decade - where I had side-stepped neighbours on the stairwell with only a nod of the head or an obliged 'good morning' - the only present currents were seemingly important memories, particularly those of experiences that had led me here to this day.

Mrs. Dixon lived in the apartment below me on the seventeenth floor. She had been unwitting in her unfortunate witness to the shouts and howls of brawls and arguments above her. That was before my wife and daughter left me. Since then my home has been eerily quiet; a husk of what-was, barren and listless. I had felt like apologising to Mrs. Dixon, more so for this recent dramatic change of events than I did for the previous disturbances; I thought the raw awkwardness and pity I now projected through my floorboards would undoubtedly chill the coldest of souls. I had carefully written her a letter on a back page of my small black notebook explaining everything, tearing it out and sliding it under her door before I left for the city streets, so not to alert her to the clang of her letter box. But she wasn't on my mind as I descended past her apartment down to the sixteenth floor, there were more prominent issues.

A memory of my childhood had wormed itself into my peripherals surfacing from somewhere long forgotten. I must have been around seven years old clutching my mothers hand as we stood drenched and cold, miserably attempting to cross a New York boulevard alive with traffic and bouncing rain. Traffic signals, red and green, blurred in splashed reflections over the wet street as we failed to dodge a puddle thrown up by a taxi's wheel. I remembered feeling a sense of hopelessness as my tears began to join the rain. I couldn't wipe my face dry as my sleeves were already saturated, I only squeezed my mothers hand tighter, pulled myself closer to her and sobbed. She didn't react. She was in one of her states again.

A man thereafter had approached us wearing a warm smile in his cheeks saying nothing as he handed us his large umbrella, leaving himself exposed to the weather. I think it was my mothers reaction that had imprinted itself into my soul as the stranger walked away into the rain. She didn't say anything or call out after him; the surprise of the sudden, affectionate gesture must have shocked her dismantling her ability to react in time. Instead her mood was temporarily lifted. Her sombre nature had made the wettest of days seem like the end of the world. But she bent down to me smiling, her eyes glistening as she kissed me on the forehead “what a lovely gentleman that man was” she had said, “you're gonna be just like him one day, Milton”

Seeing the effect the man with the umbrella had on my mother must have played a significant part in shaping me into who I am today; in particular my inundating, helpless desire to please people to the point of my own suffering. Something that was potentially counterbalanced by my fathers disavowing nature. And as I made my way down to the fifteenth floor, I remembered his lack of care toward her as she lay sickly and pale – her addiction was 'her own demon to deal with, not ours'.

By the fourteenth floor her bloody nose and black eyes – his violence toward her was brutal. He never hit me as hard as her, I was only ever an afterthought, swatted away like a housefly. That was until she died when he then became intensely suffocating.

His oppressive 'life-lessons' had been coarsely etched into my mind. He said I was different to other kids. That I had to be taught what was right and what was wrong. He said “the left-handed folk still shake with their right”. I never knew what he meant by that.

The thirteenth floor revealed his dodgy deals and backyard sales of stolen electrical items, where he would proudly charge unknowing 'clients' four times the price he had paid for them.

By the twelfth floor, the beatings happened more often.

And by the eleventh, one particular memory skulked in with dark eyes and hunched shoulders.

The doorbell rung. We lived in the last of a line of terraced houses on a street in upper Manhattan. The area was poor and dominated by public housing schemes designed to house low-paid workers – my father being one of the same. He worked as a labourer for a steel factory a short bus journey away, but he was better known for his frequent side-hustles. Usually when the doorbell rung it was someone trying to buy something; the doorbell was always ignored until the third or fourth chime, 'better to keep 'em waiting, easier to rush a deal' he used to say. This time was the same, only by the fourth time the guest had reverted to knocking rather loudly.

“Who in the hell!” my father wasn't happy “if you be bangin' on my door you better be the Lord Above himself and no one else” using his favourite phrase, as he marched loudly to the front door wrenching it open in an theatrical manner, almost dislodging one of Moms photo frames off the wall. I didn't recognise the voice as it greeted my father. I had tiptoed to the landing to try to hear the conversation, but the creaky floorboards prompted them to speak in whispers. My father shouted to me, “Milton, stay upstairs boy” I did as I was told but I could sense the tone of dread and fear in my fathers voice.

It was a vivid glimpse of my childhood. To have suddenly remembered it in all it's colours was overwhelming – the lady from the Child Protection Services taking me by the hand, my fathers gormless face in the backseat of a patrol car. I never returned to that house as a child; from that day I lived in many different homes under many different guardians, anger and loss was bred inside me at an alarming rate.

Passing an old friends apartment on the tenth floor, I could feel the little black notebook pressed tight against my chest, above my fearful fast beating heart. I had placed it in the inside zip pocket of my tracksuit jacket of which I had also zipped up tight, to be sure I wouldn't lose it. It contained everything within; I had spent the night before huddled over my cluttered, dimly-lit desk explaining my reasons behind my actions. Instructions and details of my requests, amongst apologies to my wife and daughter. And it was they that were next to infiltrate my conscience.

The ninth floor, our wedding. I hadn't drunk since I had proposed, a futile promise.

The eighth, the birth of our little girl – her fragile beauty inspiring another sober spout and a feeble attempt to be a better man. I think I lasted a week before reviving my turbulent aggression.

And by the seventh floor, the worst of all was to enter.

Shame and horror burned into me from their eyes; my daughters greens being swollen with fearful tears, the hazels of my wife's being almost unrecognisable to me. She knew what I had done immediately. I had told her I would be late home as I was going to make amends with my father. My hatred for him wasn't something I had ever tried to hide, so when I returned home in blood-splattered clothing carrying a black duffel bag, she knew.

“Milton...no, no, no Milton...what....what have you done?” her voice crackled in despair

“I....” I had nothing

“Get out...Milton get away from here, why have you come here?'

“I.....” still nothing. There was no explanation.

“GET OUT!” her voice bit the air with fierceness

“I....look, Collette...It's ok” I knew that it wasn't “We just have to....”

“We?! There is no we! GET AWAY FROM HERE!” she was brave to say this as she shoved me out the door. If the circumstances were different, I would have retaliated – I was just like my father, after all.

I was completely void of emotion as I pulled the trigger five times, watching his body go limp, the life fading from him – I felt absolutely nothing. But the horror and the guilt I felt from my wife's eyes when she discovered what I had done was a new sensation. The sickness and disgust poured into the depths of my soul, infecting my every essence. I hadn't felt it before, otherwise I would have stopped the abuse – the frequent bruises, the broken jaw, the screaming matches and slamming doors. She didn't deserve any of it. I was killing love with my trauma. It was by the sixth floor I realised I had desperately wanted to be like the man with the umbrella – but I was my fathers violence and my mothers addiction.

Down to the fifth floor, where Mr and Mrs Cohen lived in number 53 – I naturally thought about the gun I had bought off them. I had felt a slither of guilt for lying to them – 'it's for shooting the squirrels' I had said – but that guilt didn't scratch the surface anymore.

I recounted the days after they left to Colette's mothers. I waited day after day for the police to turn up, but she must have never called them. A week went by, paranoid and drunk, repeatedly counting the cash and reading the unfinished note of which I had both found in a duffel bag in my fathers house.

He had been recently released from prison, moving back into our old home which had sat empty and desolate for the last fourteen years. I had refused contact with him while he was behind bars, let alone move back into the home that held so much suffering within it's walls. His time served must have offered him some reflection and insight, as the note he had begun to write was an apology to me. Along with twenty thousand dollars.

By the fourth floor, three away from the lobby entrance, I remembered how I used to think it would take an immense amount of bravery to jump off the top of my apartment block, no matter how hard life had become. It was here I had come to realise it would have been braver to persevere with life and make amends. The city street was approaching fast. Aside from my written will in my little black notebook giving all twenty thousand dollars to my Colette and Lola, I had confessed to the murder, described all of my regrettable decisions and apologised in thick letters, pressing hard with the pen in case the white pages became soaked in crimson red. It was here I realised I had finally exceeded the guilt and horror I had felt a week ago. It was here I wished I hadn't have jumped.

By the third floor, my vision was fading, I was slipping into shock. Just like my parents had abandoned me, I had abandoned my family. I had questioned my fathers audacity – that he thought he could conciliate me with money and an apology letter. But it seemed I was doing exactly the same.

And past the second floor, to the lobby entrance and to the concrete. Nothing could save me, not the Lord Above himself and no one else