When I was seven, I was pulled out of my classroom during snack time every Friday, reluctantly toting my navy blue lunch box down the hall to attend a quasi-group-therapy session with the two fellow second graders who were in the same boat. Ms. Black, the school counselor, tried her best to console us with tender reassurances. But I did not ask to be part of this exclusive Divorced Parents Club; I just wanted to eat my oreos in peace. With each passing year, The Club would grow exponentially in membership. Fifty percent of all marriages and whatnot.

 

* * *

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It was the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever: she had borne the children for him, and yet he still divorced her. Even though she hadn’t wanted us, now that she had us, she was determined to keep us. She won custody. And the house. My dad would move out, and we would visit him every other weekend. Fatherhood reduced to four measly days per month.​

 

My memory of their time together is hazy and fragmented – glinting shards of a shattered recollection.

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I do remember waking in panic to the seismic activity of kitchen screaming matches and ferocious slamming doors.

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I do remember the time I tripped in my dad’s Honda minivan after he picked me up from pre-K, landing on some kind of sharp, cold, sticking-out metal that sliced just above my right eye. A chilling flirtation with blindness. He rushed home and carried me in his arms through the front door. Upon seeing the sticky crimson wetness matting half my tiny face, my mom shrieked and shrieked until the windowpanes rattled. I watched my father cower in fear, a lost puppy caught in a manic hurricane.

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I do remember my dad lamenting, “Your mom always talk about sacrifice this, sacrifice that. ‘I sacrifice my career for you and now you take me for granted.’ But if you go to ice cream store and choose the chocolate flavor, are you ‘sacrificing’ vanilla? No! You choosing chocolate! Sacrifice – shénme sacrifice? Tā mā de. Shì tā de choice.”

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Mother was despotism, constantly devising new rules and bans and punishments. Father was laissez-faire, letting us eat candy and watch cartoons and play video games on his laptop. Mother would spank me for disobedience, lock me outside on the snow-covered porch to teach me a lesson, yell at me for being sick because I "wasted her cooking" when I threw up my breakfast of scrambled eggs. Father would defer to her authority, standing idly by, a reluctant soldier serving an autocratic regime. But ultimately, it was her reign of terror.

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One particularly brutal night when I was five, my dad entered my room to find me balled up on the mulberry pink carpet, wedged in the small crevice between bed and dresser.

​      “Daddy,” I hiccupped, chest heaving, snot dripping, throat constricting with each syllable. “S-sometimes when Mommy screams at m-me, I just wanna go into the kitchen and – and stab myself with a knife.” 

​      “Jackie, ah.” Helpless hesitancy paled his face. “No, don’t do that.” He patted my head. 

 

In those early years when my age traversed the single digits, my typical nighttime routine consisted of crying myself to sleep while furiously scratching at the backside of my left hand, clawing my nails across the fragile surface until it was raw and bleeding and throbbing with pain. It would be years before I encountered the concept of self-harm, and years more before I realized it might have something to do with me.

 

Now, whenever I check the watch adorning my left wrist for the time, I catch a glimpse of the past. Faint scars like fleshy rivulets.