After My Wife Was Slapped, I Cut Off My Parents

My parents had finished helping my cousin raise his kids. Now they said their health was failing, and they wanted to come live with me for their old age.

My wife didn't say a word against it. She cleared out the guest room and spent four hours in the kitchen making a whole table of food.

But the moment she set the braised fish down on the table, my father slapped her.

The reason was that she hadn't pointed the fish head toward him. He said that was disrespectful to an elder.

My mother kept her head down and pretended not to see.

I stood up quietly, dumped the fish into the trash, and said to my father:

"Dad, you and Mom should just go home today. We can't wait on you."

My father stared at me like he couldn't believe his ears.

"What's that supposed to mean? You'd throw over your own parents for your wife?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"You ill-mannered thing. Don't you know the fish head has to point at the elder of the house?"

"You set it a few inches off. What was that supposed to mean?"

"You looking down on me? Or do you think I'm old now, not worth any respect?"

Having already struck Leona Henson, my father kept up the furious tirade at her.

His voice was loud, out of control.

As if the way one plate of fish had been arranged were some enormous insult to him.

I looked at my mother.

Head down, she sipped her tea in silence.

Then I looked at Leona.

She had a hand over her cheek, staring blankly at my father, the tears she was holding back swimming in her eyes.

I knew she felt wronged.

I knew that for my parents' visit today, she'd taken a whole day off from work.

She'd gotten up at dawn to make up the guest room, clean the house, shop for groceries, cook. Four full hours in the kitchen.

To take proper care of my parents, she'd given every ounce of respect she had.

And still my father slapped her, on the grounds that she'd disrespected him.

Facing his anger, Leona bit her lower lip, her eyes rimmed red, and explained softly:

"Dad, I didn't know that was a custom where you're from."

"I just set the fish down without thinking. I really didn't mean any disrespect."

My father's brow furrowed.

"You're talking back now?"

And with that he raised his hand again, swinging at Leona.

I stepped forward fast and clamped my hand around his wrist.

He froze for a second, glared at me, and said in a low voice:

"Elijah Dickerson. What do you think you're doing? You dare stop me?"

I put myself between him and Leona and looked him straight in the eye.

"I won't let you touch her again."

His face went livid, twisting.

"I'm your father!"

"Your wife doesn't know the rules. I'm teaching her a lesson so she remembers. What's wrong with that?"

My mother, who had been silent all along, finally lifted her head and spoke for the first time:

"Eli, elders correcting their juniors is the natural order of things. Your father hit Leona so she'd learn some manners."

"Don't be difficult."

My father straightened his back, like the one in the right, and barked at me coldly:

"You hear that? Even your mother knows better than you."

"Raising your hand against your own father over an outsider. Aren't you afraid people will laugh at you?"

Outsider.

At that word from my father, the color drained visibly from Leona's face.

I said nothing.

I just let go of his wrist.

Seeing it, my father gave a cold laugh, satisfied.

"At least you've still got some conscience left. You know how to listen."

Then he sat back down, tapped his chopsticks against the rim of his bowl, and ordered Leona:

"Rearrange that fish. Point the head at me, and I won't bother holding it against you."

He said it looking down at her, like he was giving orders to a waiter.

Leona pressed her lips together and started forward to do it.

I stopped her.

Then I picked up the fish first and dumped it, clean and quick, into the trash.

"Elijah, what do you think you're doing?"

Through my parents' shouting, I set the plate down.

And said to them, coldly:

"You two should just go home today."

"We can't wait on you."

My parents froze at the same time.

The two of them looked at each other, as if they doubted they'd heard me right.

Several seconds passed before my father, bristling with fury, demanded confirmation.

"Elijah, are you telling me you'd throw over your own parents for your wife?!"

His eyes were bloodshot as he glared at me. He was clearly livid.

When I was a boy, nothing scared me more than his anger.

But now, I felt calmer than I ever had.

"Yes."

One word. Clean and final.

Not a shred of room for negotiation.

Seeing how set I was, my mother knotted her brows and said, disappointed,

"Eli, how can you be so heartless?"

"This whole thing was your wife's fault to begin with. Not only do you refuse to set her straight, you're driving your father and me out over a mistake she made?"

Leona's fault?

What had she done wrong?

She'd been married to me for fifteen years.

For those same fifteen years, my parents had been over at my cousin's, propping him up.

In fifteen years, Leona had never once eaten a meal cooked by my parents.

She'd never received a scrap of their care or concern.

Even during her recovery after childbirth, even with the baby, it was her own mother who quit her job on purpose to come help.

And through all of it, Leona had never uttered a single complaint.

Just the opposite. The moment she heard my parents were coming, she was the first to take time off work, and she waited on them with everything she had.

And what did she get for it?

Because of where one plate of fish was sitting, she was in the wrong, she deserved to be hit?

Wasn't that insane?

Seeing that I stayed silent, my mother changed tack and suddenly started playing the victim.

"Eli, do you have any idea how your father and I ran ourselves into the ground helping your cousin raise his kids? We're sick all over from it."

"We came to you counting on you to take good care of us in our old age, to let us live out our years in peace. You can't just cast off your own parents over a little thing like this."

A little thing?

My wife took a slap for nothing, swallowed an enormous injustice, and in their eyes that was just a little thing.

But my father's pride, his so-called rules of the table, was a matter of earth-shattering importance?

I frowned at my mother.

"You wore yourselves out helping my cousin. What does that have to do with me? Why should I be the one to support you?"

The instant he heard that, my father shot to his feet, beside himself.

"How can you be so petty, keeping score like this?"

"Amos is your cousin. He's family!"

"He lost both his parents when he was small. If we didn't help him out a little more, how was he supposed to get by on his own?"

"You're his older brother. Would it kill you to give a little and let him have his way?"

Give a little.

Growing up, those were the words I heard more than any others.

The year I was five, my uncle and aunt both died in a car crash.

Overnight, my cousin became a boy with no one to look after him.

While my eldest uncle and my aunt were still discussing what to do with him, my parents didn't hesitate for a second. They took him home and said they'd raise him for the rest of his life.

That night my mother called me into her room, stroked my head, and said,

"From now on Amos is your real little brother. You have to be a good boy and give a little for him."

I was too young then to know what favoritism was.

All I knew was that from that day on, nothing was ever mine again.

The good food went to my cousin first.

New clothes went to my cousin first.

Even the allowance I saved up had to be handed over for him to spend.

I thought it was just something I had to give up as a kid, that it would get better once I grew up.

But I was wrong.

A heart that's already tilted doesn't right itself with time.

When I finished high school and got into college, my father said the family had no money and told me to figure it out myself.

I worked myself to the bone through an entire summer and earned forty-seven hundred dollars. I was still two thousand short.

I asked my parents if they could help.

My mother lowered her head and said nothing.

My father had me write an IOU and told me to pay it back after I graduated.

That same year, my cousin got into a community college.

My mother happily threw more than a dozen tables' worth of a party for him.

My father gave him fifty thousand dollars and told him to go travel and unwind.

Later, I met Leona in college. After five years together, we decided to get married.

When we were working out the wedding, my parents told me plainly,

"The money for the wedding costs and the house, you figure that out on your own."

"Your mother and I need to hold on to our money for our old age."

I didn't say anything.

I just gritted my teeth and worked like mad.

Three jobs a day. I ended up in the hospital more than once from the strain.

In the end it was Leona, aching for me, who emptied out her entire savings so that together we could pull off the wedding and buy the house.

But when my cousin got married, my parents didn't say a word. They drained every last cent of the family's savings to cover his wedding costs, buy him a house, buy him a car.

They even volunteered, throwing in money and labor to handle the renovations on my cousin's new place themselves.

Because of all this, something had always sat wrong in me.

I always felt I'd shortchanged Leona.

But she just smiled and took my hand and said,

"It's all right. We're still young. Whatever we want, we can earn it ourselves."

"We're a family. Getting along in peace is what matters most."