Jojo over heaven

12
necessity, he would beat other people. For me, a still-innocent child, one could
not be "stronger
I watched him.
He was strong, stylish, and cool.
In that broken-down slum of a town, knowing that my father was such a
person was my life's greatest, and my life's only pride.
But my mother repudiated that.
She downright criticized it.
"Dear, please stop. Let's go give back all the money you stole. You
mustn't do these things. If you do things like this you won't be able to go to
heaven."
Whenever she said that, she got hit.
A foolish woman got foolishly beaten.
When she collapsed, he would violently kick her and throw liquor bottles
at her.
I only found out about it later, but my little brother or little sister that
could have been was lost to that violence, apparently.
It's a cruel story. It's a cruel story, isn't it? It surely is.
But among that daily violence, she was forthright to the end.
In that life at the bottom rung of society, in that terrible environment,
she talked about justice, ethics, and morals. She held dearly those things that
served no purpose at like they were treasures.
I wish she'd have just shut up.
At the least, I wish she'd have overlooked my father's actions.---- If she'd
just done that, she would at least have escaped his violence.
No. When I think of my father in his drunken frenzies, you probably
couldn't escape completely no matter what you did...... But when I was a child, in
an attempt to do that, I would stay quiet and get away from him when he drank.
And that would minimize the amount of damage I received.