My dad is an angry-looking man with jagged hair and red eyes. He catches bad guys for a living and often comes home smelling like smoke and sweat. He yells a lot, and often says some bad words so Mom would make him put money in a big jar on the counter. A lot of my friends are scared of him because he kind of looks like a thug from the TV shows, the kind who grab the main characters and yank them into alleys to beat them up.
My mom though, she is nothing like my dad. She is soft where he is hard, and smiles when he scowls. She has bright pink cheeks that she lets me squish with my hands sometimes because they are so soft. She reads me stories every night, making different voices for every character, and kiss me on the forehead goodnight. She smells clean and sweet, and all my friends love her, because she offers them snacks when they come over. They run to her and skirt around my dad.
I see people looking at my parents when we go out together, and I know what they see. They see a mean man, a weak wife, and me between them, the only glue holding them together.
But I know more. They don't see what I see. They don't see the way my mom hugs my dad when he's making us dinner, because she can't cook at all. They don't know that my mom sometimes has to go away for a long time on a big ship with heavy cannons, and so my dad would read me stories in her place, making different voices for every character, and kiss me on the forehead goodnight.
But that's okay. Because I see, and I know.
