The End
For years Bobby had gone to church. Initially, it had started before he could remember and he had just continued because he never realized there was another option. He was just old enough when his father stopped attending for him to remember. Several years later, his brother stopped showing up too. It was just him and his mother. They had always been close and the walk to church with her was one of the more pleasant memories he had of her.
Church was the one place he could take his mother out of their home and feel completely safe. He was surrounded with people who cared, who were cheerful, talkative. People who sang and read and always wore a smile. And then there was God who always watched down on him. God filled his soul whenever he stepped beneath the high arches of the building and through the doorway. He felt like here, even though he was just barely seven, he could protect his mother from his father. He was glad, at this point, that his father never showed up anymore. He would have destroyed the experience, would have brought hate and violence to such a peaceful place.
Church became such a big part of his life and his mother was proud. He could remember her smile when announced that he wanted to be an alter boy. Somewhere he still had a picture of her hugging him in his outfit out on the grass in front of the church. He couldn't actually remember that point in time, but he pretended he could.
Several months later, just a week after he calculated that he was exactly seven and three quarters years old, he was standing in mass watching his mother in the pews, the priest's words falling into the background, and his father entered. He was drunk and angry. The moment he spotted Frances sitting, listening, he rushed for her. Bobby heard a scream emitting from her as his father launched himself over the bench and grabbed at her. Bobby didn't remember much of that sole confrontation. At one point he was trying to patiently wait for a small job, and the next he was ushered under a nearby table as people rushed forward to drag his father outside.
Two things emerged from this event. Two things that forever changed his life. The first was that his mother broke. No one saw it coming, but it happened anyway. The shock of his father's sudden attack had been too much. She was sent to the hospital and administered drugs but her attacks always came back. Bobby could never again rely on their weekly walks to church, could never know if this week she'd be too paranoid to even have him in the room with her.
The second was that he realized that God was not a father figure to replace his current father. No, God was more like an older brother, and to Bobby, older brothers were not always to be trusted. When he had been dropped off at his neighbor's house and his brother retrieved from his house just hours after her first attack, his brother had laughed. Bobby, who couldn't even now imagine the horror his mother faced, had been perplexed to the point of barely being able to verbalize his own thoughts. But his brother had laughed.
God never stepped in to drain the alcohol from the bottle in his father's hand, or to snatch the gambling cards from his brother's pocket. God never protected his mother from herself and from that time on, He could never again calm Bobby's wound up nerves.
Within a month, Bobby had convinced the neighbors to stop taking him to church. No one complained. None of them even stepped forward to ask him why. Looking back, he forgave them. Who would ever want to approach the youngest child of a violent father and a crazed mother? Who knows what he'll grow up to become? These days Bobby still had to consider that question for himself.