It is the summer of 1971, and Dave is ten years old. School is out, and he is being given very little to eat. He receives no lunch and gets dinner on only one day in three. One evening she grabs a knife and screams at him that if he does not finish his chores on time, she will kill him. It is not the first time she has made such a threat. He does not believe that she is going to strike him, but something happens to make her almost lose her balance, the knife flies from her hand, and Dave ends up getting stabbed in the stomach. He loses consciousness. When he comes to, he is sitting on the toilet and Mother is putting gauze on the bleeding wound. He loses consciousness again, and when he recovers awareness, his mother is wrapping his lower chest in a cloth. He expects that she will take him to the hospital, but this is not what happens. Instead, she tells him he has thirty minutes to finish washing the dishes. He struggles to get to the kitchen, although he is in pain, and blood is seeping through the dressing. He decides to go to the living room and tell his father what happened. But his father shows no interest, telling him to go back to washing the dishes. His father does not want to risk upsetting his wife. Dave is deeply disappointed; he had still felt that his father would save him, but now he loses all respect for him.
Our Networks