Dream, 09/04/02. Not in any way true. Disturbing.

My brother (just your basic brother, neither one of my real brothers) tells me, “Dad’s been beating Mom.” I go to my parent’s house, not their real house, and go into their bedroom. Mom’s moving out, but nobody’s told me about it. Everything of hers is in boxes, and there are a couple of packages (wrapped in plastic bags) with tags labeled with my father’s name. “Look,” says my brother. I open the bags. There are a couple of heavy leather belts, one black, one red with cartoon kittens. A kid’s play outfit, red and yellow, adult sized. I leave. I walk downtown and stop at a store (a jewelry store?) where my mother’s working now. I hug her. We walk outside and I ask her how long this has been going on. “Not long — a couple of months,” she says. “He said he wanted to try somehtin gnew, so I went along with it. But he lost control. There was something inside him, and it just came out.” I tried to picure my father — I thought I knew the day it’d started. I’d come over for dinner, and they’d given each other a funny look and went away in the van for a couple of hours. I stepped away from my mother and thew up on the street. I left.

As I walked down the sidewalk, I saw someone I know. She was crying: her grandmother, who was staying with her, had tried to feed a baby kitten its milk using an eyedropper. The kitten wouldn’t drink, so she’d taken the eyedropper and forced the milk up the kitten’s back paw. Somehow. The kitten was hurt and would probably die. I hugged the girl and walked on.

Lost, hopeless.