Chapter 4

Chapter Four — Walking on Glass

After that first time, I started staying in my room.

It became my refuge — just me and my daughter, the door closed, the rest of the house kept at a distance. I learned how to move quietly, to stay out of his way, to keep the peace however I could. Every sound made me tense — footsteps in the hallway, doors closing, voices in the next room. I never knew which version of him I was going to get.

His grandmother was always hovering.

She had this way of inserting herself into everything, especially when it came to my daughter. From the beginning, she wanted control — she wanted her. She’d make little comments about how I was too young, too inexperienced, how maybe the baby would be better off with her. She said it like a joke, but I could feel the truth behind it.

I felt like I was walking a tightrope, afraid to lose balance because I didn’t know what would happen if I did.

This kind of life was foreign to me.

My parents never fought — not really. They didn’t yell, they didn’t throw things, they didn’t use fear to make a point. My home growing up was steady, calm, full of quiet respect.

But this house — this family I had married into — was chaos

He’d been raised by his grandparents, and the way they lived was like another world.

They shouted to be heard, fought to be seen, and used anger like punctuation. His grandmother once chased him out of the house with a rifle. His grandfather hit her, shoved her, knocked her down — and then hours later they’d sit at the same table as if nothing had happened.

That was what he grew up watching.

That was love, to him.

The pushing and shoving between us started quietly, almost hidden — quick enough that no one else saw. The bruises weren’t always visible, but the shame was. I was so embarrassed, so unsure of what to do, that I said nothing.

I just kept shrinking, trying to make myself smaller so there’d be less to break.

My mom knew something was wrong.

She would ask — softly, carefully — if everything was okay. I always said yes. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. I didn’t want her to see the cracks, didn’t want her to worry, didn’t want to admit how bad things had gotten.

And then, even on birth control, I found out I was pregnant again — this time with my son.

My mom was there that day, visiting. I can still picture the look on her face when I asked her — right there in front of everyone — if we could move into the little house she and my dad had refurbished out of an old barber shop, just two doors down from them.

She didn’t hesitate. She said yes before I even finished asking. Later she told me that was why she had come over that day in the first place — to offer us a place of our own, somewhere safe, somewhere new.

For a little while, things got better.

He seemed calmer, lighter. We had our own space, our daughter, and a baby on the way. There were nights when laughter returned, when I started to believe maybe we could make it work, maybe he’d changed.

But calm never lasted long in that world.

The tension always found its way back, creeping into the corners, settling in like dust. And slowly, the peace unraveled again.

The words came back first — sharp, cutting, designed to remind me that I wasn’t enough. Then the silence. Then the anger.

It was like living in the eye of a storm that never truly moved on — quiet for a moment, until the wind picked up again.