The slap comes so fast I don\u2019t register what\u2019s happening until after the impact. One moment I\u2019m standing in their pristine kitchen asking a simple question\u2014could my daughter-in-law please not smoke around me because my damaged lungs can barely handle clean air\u2014and the next moment my son\u2019s palm connects with my cheek with a crack that echoes off the granite countertops and stainless steel appliances.<\/p>\n
My head snaps to the side. Heat floods my face immediately, spreading from the point of contact outward like ripples in water. I taste copper, that distinctive metallic tang where my teeth have caught the soft tissue inside my cheek. For several seconds, the entire room tilts at an impossible angle, and I have to grip the edge of the counter to keep from falling.<\/p>\n
The cigarette smoke from Sloan\u2019s expensive menthol cigarette continues to curl between us like a living thing, lazy and unconcerned, drifting toward the ventilation hood that she never bothers to turn on. My son\u2014Deacon, the boy I raised alone in a cramped two-bedroom apartment on the east side of Columbus, the child for whom I worked my fingers raw and my lungs to ruin\u2014has just struck his seventy-three-year-old mother because I asked for breathable air.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe now you\u2019ll learn to keep your mouth shut,\u201d Deacon says, his voice flat and emotionless, as if he\u2019s commenting on the weather rather than the violence he just committed. He looks at me the way you might look at a piece of trash someone forgot to take out, with mild annoyance and complete dismissal. The slap comes so fast I don\u2019t register what\u2019s happening until after the impact. One moment I\u2019m standing in their pristine kitchen asking a simple question\u2014could my… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nREAD MORE BELOW..<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"