Be forewarned: N.C. Happe’s beautiful essay for Guernica can sometimes be difficult to read. As she recounts her childhood and her move to Canada, she considers the violence we inflict on ourselves and others, the violence we invite and accept, and the ways we compromise ourselves to feel like we belong.
After a childhood spent observing my father’s moods, I had come to believe something fixed about violence: that fury alone was its precursor. I had grown too familiar with his penchant for threats, the flash of a flat palm contacting a wall. His footfall, like thunder, moving over the floor.
Although once in a while the doe came to mind, and I found myself pausing. I would consider the wings in my closet, the bones in brown bags. The rough contours of a contradiction emerging, yet to be named. When he dragged the doe’s slack body behind him that day, something in my father’s behavior had given me pause. He was moving more slowly than usual — brows furrowed, mouth bowed and nearly forlorn. He had lifted the corpse with a reverent gentleness and eased it to the ground. He had even murmured a prayer.
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