Photo: D. Sharon Pruitt
I run out of the house, grabbing my backpack off the floor, grab my brother’s bicycle and get to the high school as fast as I can before staggering into class and sliding into a seat before the teacher starts the lesson. My body wants to shut down, all I want to do is curl up on the floor and sleep but I have to keep going. Listen to the teacher, answer questions, walk normally to the next classroom, and repeat until the day is over. Wait, today is the pep rally. Darn it! That means I have to not only socialize with the rest of the soccer team, but I have to be horrifyingly peppy for the whole school. This is going to be a super great day. I wonder what happened to Mark’s bike…I really should have out it somewhere safe, but I forgot to grab the lock. Oh well, at least I made it to school so everyone just thinks we had a breakfast emergency or something. Ow! Who invented the method of jabbing people with sharp pencils in order to get their attention??? Sheesh! At least it’s not her fault, she doesn’t know every part of my body covered in clothing is also covered in bruises.
“Yeah, I got 537 for that one too. Do you think the book had the wrong answer?” I answered your question. Now leave me alone! I just want to think about what I have to do today. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to use any of this stuff outside of school, maybe I’ll be able to help everyone with homework when I’m stuck in the hospital someday. Ok. I guess the book did have the wrong answer, that happens a lot more than it should. I always assumed that the textbook authorities had all the answers, but I guess that’s just life; nobody has all the answers, but we all pretend to know everything. Finally, class is over so I can sneak out without talking to anybody….and…mission complete! I think this is the first time I’ve ever made it from first to second period without being ambushed by somebody in the hall. Maybe I’m giving off weird vibes, that would not help my case at all. Alright, made it through math so now I will become a literature expert – in an alternate universe maybe. At least it’s just a grammar lesson so the know-it-all kids can finally learn about to/too/two and your/you’re. They could really use a good old F on a grammar test to wake them up. Gratefully, I’m not going to have to participate because this is a lesson targeted at specific students. Everyone else can do other homework.
Ok! The school day is over, so it’s time to get to the daycare center to get the little ones, then to the elementary school, and then the middle school to begin the walk home. Sometimes I wish that I had a different life, but then I look at my family and I can’t imagine a life without them. Now that I have all of my wonderfully obnoxious siblings in my entourage we can go home. Hoping that he’s not there, we will go to the house and then just wait until everyone gets picked up for their various evening activities. Who decided to put me in a family with wonderful siblings and horrible parents? I’m sure that I am being shaped into a wonderful woman, but whose decision was it to make me the mother in this family? Well, it’s too late to even think about any of that stuff. Just keep walking, talking, smiling, don’t you dare flinch. One flinch and they notice, a second and they stop, a third and the baby starts to cry, a fourth and they start sobbing, a fifth and we all start screaming at each other, a sixth and I have no control. We made it home, everyone laughing and talking. I whip out the snacks, go over some homework problems, have a discussion about why giraffes are tall and pigs are short (the decision was that it would be mean to have short giraffes since they would weird having short legs and a long neck, pigs are short because they would look funny with long legs). Then the parade of cars appears and the lively house gets quieter as everyone races out to meet their friends. Once the house is empty, I have no reason to keep going, and I collapse on the couch. I feel every bruise, every cut, every bit of shame and anger. Then it all fades away as I sleep, I wish I could sleep forever. Stop it! You’re not allowed to think those words. Just relax, forget the pain, just sleep until the next time.
“Get up!” I jolt awake as he screams at me, “You are the laziest thing I have ever seen. You are nothing, you’re worthless. Now get off my couch.” I’m so tired, too tired to fight him again. I pull myself off the couch, too tired to yell back, to tired to tell him that this is my house and he is he intruder, too tired to say anything. Man, that couch is comfortable I wonder if he’ll let me sleep finally. It’s been so long and I can barely move. I look at him, I notice the same hatred and anger I see every day, but something is different today. “Why are you standing there like some idiot?? This house is a mess. Clean it up. Now!” I don’t know if I can stand up much longer, I’ll never be able to clean the house. Wait, I know what it is. This is different because I’m not in the living room anymore; I fell asleep on the living room couch and now I’m in the basement. He must have already drugged me since I can barely move, and this isn’t from the pain – which is fading away now. I know that I will only have a couple moments to speak once the pain is gone, so I know what I want to say, “I am not yours”. He smiles, I hate it when he does since it only means that he is in control, and says “The papers say differently, my official little step-daughter, now let’s have one last father-daughter moment”.
This is it. He told me he’d do it, but I thought I would get my family somewhere else. I thought I would say good bye. I wish he had chosen a happier day instead of making sure that I was miserable all stinking day. I wonder what would’ve happened if I had taken everyone and fled. I doubt that we could’ve gotten far but maybe I should have tried. No matter what I could have done, what remains is that I am currently being dragged up the stairs and I can’t move and my step father is about to throw me out of the attic window. I wonder what people usually think about when they know they’re about to die. I imagine religious people think about whether or not they have followed the laws well enough so that they can go to heaven. Atheists probably wonder whether there really is a god, since if there isn’t one then they will soon just cease to exist, but if there is a god then they will probably be in misery for the rest of eternity. A person’s last thoughts in this sort of situation would most likely be a brief summary of their true self since these thoughts are the last ones he will have, and he knows that it is the end. What does it say about me that I am wondering about what other people think before they die? Does this mean that I’m not a real person since I have no thoughts of my own, just thoughts about other people’s thoughts? It’s sad to die without knowing who I am. I always wanted to find out what I would do since I think the textbooks would all say that I would become some sort of addict and become nothing or else I would repeat my misery with my future family. Maybe this option is the best since I will just end now, instead of dragging out years of misery and pain. At least I am aware of my fate so I have time to accept it and think about whatever I wish. Like how much I love my siblings, and how I hope my mother dies a horrible death, and how I hope that my stepfather dies a slow and horrifically painful death that drags out for so long that he wants to rip his own heart out of his chest.
This is the attic, the last time I will ever be inside this house. This house where I watched my parents fight until my father had no choice but to leave his children with their addict mother. This is the place I have called home for so many years, where I learned to be a mother to my siblings while our mother got high and prostituted herself in her bedroom. This is where I helped my siblings ignore their mother and to become independent so that they can take care of themselves and each other when I’m gone. This my home, my only home, even though I dreamed of leaving someday I somehow always knew that I wouldn’t. This is my home and this is my death. I lived for my family, I have no idea what else I wanted except for my family’s safety. I don’t think I allowed myself to see a future since my present was just about getting through the day so that I can withstand the beatings. I allowed him to destroy my body so that I was the only one hurting, if he ever hurt my family I wouldn’t know what to do, so I allowed him to do this to me. I hoped he would stop sometime, but knew in my heart that I wouldn’t survive it. Now we are here, in the attic, he is looking at me with all of the hatred his eyes can hold and I can almost feel the anger threatening to destroy him. I wonder what will happen to him after this, will he be satisfied or will he need another victim?
He lifts me to a table, sets me down, and pushes me out the window. As I fall to the ground, I think about how beautiful the sky is and how happy I am that I lived. I just wish I could have had more time.
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