Friday Nights

It was Friday night. 

My father has been invited to friends for a braai.

Which of course just meant that they were going to have a piss up of epic proportions.

My sister and I had both bathed and we got into the back of the car, dressed in yellow matching pajamas – my mom in the front holding a basket with her braai pack and her potato salad. 

And Beelzebub’s Bottle: White Horse Whiskey.

I looked out the window as we drove, in my own little world – as my silence had come to be called.It’s not that I didn’t want to go – I was really happy that I would be seeing the other kids. One of them is still a very best friend of mine today – in fact, a soul sister is a better way to describe our relationship. No, it was that I knew how the evening would pan out.
 

The same way every Friday evening panned out in my 13-year-old universe.
 

Joviality would culminate into a nightmare of epic proportion.
 

I was scared.
 

The kids would all scamper off to play – and the parents would share jokes around the fire, smoking cigarettes and swapping stories about the week gone by.
 

And the whiskey and soda’s were gulped desperately  … and I knew that by about 10pm – the trauma would start.
 

My father would scream for me.
 

Compliant, I would always go.
 

“Get me another drink, you fat bitch,” he would splutter, his obvious inebriation evident in the slurring of his words, and by his condescending and aggressive demeanour.
 

Quite to my surprise, I looked him in the eye and said – “You have had enough."
 

His fury immediately ruptured…”What the fuck did you say?!”  he screamed at me.
 

“Daddy, I am scared to go home with you when you are like this”
 

He lunged toward me.
 

“How dare you speak to me like that in front of my friends?" , he spat.
 

“You had better start running, because tonight I am going to kill you.”
 

I ran.
 

I knew he wasn’t lying.
 

He had killed a part of me almost every night since I could remember.

He got up – went to the kitchen, to get his own drink, of course. 

One of the kids was in the kitchen, and he told him to go find me and tell me, that tonight was the night that I would die.
 

I was no more terrified than usual.
 

I waited.
 

Soon it would be time to go home. I would have no other choice but to to get into my fathers car.
 

And then the next ordeal would begin.
 

It was two o’clock in the morning – my mom, slightly less drunk than my father would finally say :
 

“ Give me the keys Brian.”
 

 And then the shit hit the fan. Drama would erupt as my father, without a words warning,  punched my mom, nearly hitting her to the ground. She got up in silence and wiped the blood from under her nose.
 

“Get into the car, girls.” She would say to my sister and I.
 

Eventually, all packed in the car, we reversed out of their driveway, my mother crying as my father admonished her for calling him drunk.

I was relieved.
 

Maybe this incident would take his mind off killing me tonight.
 

He looked at me in the rear view mirror.
 

Perhaps not.
 

Perhaps I would die a little tonight anyway.
 

If we got home alive.
 

As he swung onto the main road, my mother gave a muffled scream. I looked up into the front and saw the oncoming traffic swerving to miss us. My heart started beating furiously, and I grabbed my 9 year old sisters hand and squeezed it tightly.
 

“Brian “ she cried “please”.
 

He swerved over and abruptly brought the car to a halt on the side of the road and got out, shouting expletives to anyone and everyone.
 

"You think you are so fucking clever, Diane – I’ll walk home”
 

“Please Brian don’t”, she whispered softly to herself.
 

He left, swaggering off into the night.
My mom drove us home in silence.

We got home and went to bed. No one said a word.

I went to fetch my dog Miffy and we got into bed. 
I locked my bedroom door.
 

I narrowly escaped dying tonight.
 

Twice.
 

What a lucky girl I am.

Sometimes Friday night reminds me of those Friday nights.