I run until my chest burns and the backpack full of books slams against my ass with every stride.
Still, once I reach the red brick colonial, I stop and stand on the sidewalk, dreading opening the front door and stepping inside.
It’s hard to believe I was excited when I first saw this house.
I’d never lived in a house before. I’d never had my own bedroom, or even a proper bed with a frame.
Back then, I still believed I could win Randall’s approval if I was very, very careful and very, very quiet.
I knew I annoyed him. He wanted my mother, not another kid. His own sons were already grown. I met them at the wedding, where they barely consented to shake my mother’s hand. She laughed and said they were worried about their inheritance.
My mother never looked more beautiful than on her wedding day, her dark hair pulled up in a magnificent shining mass topped by a sparkling tiara, her mermaid gown encrusted with even more gems, to complement the rock on her left hand.
I was so proud of my flower girl dress that I couldn’t stop looking at myself in every window I passed. I had never had a dress like that, as puffy and ethereal as Sarah’s in The Labyrinth.
I got too excited though. I vomited, and a little splashed on the skirt of the dress. My mother was so furious that she slapped me across the face. I had to walk down the aisle trying to hold back tears, with my basket of petals and a livid handprint on my cheek.
The day ended sadly for her, too. She drank too much wine at the reception. When it came time to cut the cake, she smashed a handful of it in Randall’s face. She laughed wildly, head thrown back, swaying a little on her stilettos. Randall couldn’t say or do anything in front of all those people, but even I could tell he was shaking with rage.
That was the first night we spent in the red brick house. From down the hall in my new bed, I could hear the familiar sounds of my mother fucking. I was used to her theatrical shrieks of pleasure and even the banging of the bed against the wall. That night there were other sounds: slaps and screams.
In the morning, the left side of her face was more swollen than mine. She sat at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee and glaring at Randall, who ordered her to make him some eggs, then calmly sat down to read the paper.
She got up and made the eggs, scrambling them in a frypan. Then she walked over to Randall and dumped them in his lap. He hit her again, so hard that she slammed into the wall and fell behind the table, sobbing pitifully.
Randall might have been older, but he was tall and heavily built, with palms harder than iron.
I threw myself on top of her, blubbering and begging Randall to stop.
That was one of the last times I had pity for my mother. She wore mine out not long after Randall’s.
Seeing how she treated him with open contempt, deliberately angering him, and then how she would crawl back to him whenever she needed something, sitting on his lap and talking in a baby voice, feeding him sips of her drink, destroyed my last shreds of respect for her.
Randall hates her, but he’s also obsessed with her. He says he’ll kill her before he ever lets her leave him.
I don’t know whether it’s worse when they’re fighting or when they gang up on me.
They’re both home all the time. Randall retired right before he met my mother, and she’s never held down a job unless she absolutely had to. Her only piano students were those who would put up with our succession of shitty apartments and her constant canceling of lessons.
Her real work has always been leeching off men. Randall has lasted the longest, because he was the first one stupid enough to marry her.
Even my father didn’t marry her. Whoever he might be.
When I can’t stay outside any longer, I slip my key in the lock and open the door as silently as possible.
I hate the smell of Randall’s house. It stinks of dirt from his back garden—in which he is always laboring without ever managing to make it actually pretty—and of the brand of cheap boxed wine my mother likes to drink, and Randall’s pine-scented aftershave.
The only part of the house I like at all is my own room. My goal is to get there as quickly as possible without being seen.
I creep down the hall, forced to cross the open doorway leading into the living room. I can see the back of Randall’s head as he sits in his favorite recliner. I hate the blocky shape of his skull, the buzzed gray hair, and the fold of fat between his hairline and his plaid button-down.
I’m tip-toeing across that opening when Randall says, “Get in here.”
My stomach sinks down to my loafers.
I creep into the living room, my hands already clammy.
He expects me to come stand in front of his recliner. I take a quick glance at his face, trying to gauge how bad his mood is today.
Three empty beer bottles sit on the side table next to him. Three isn’t too bad.
However, the ruddy flush on his face makes me think those aren’t the first three of the day.
“You’re late,” he grumbles.
Randall’s voice sounds even older than he is. It sounds like a bag of rocks tumbling around in the back of a truck.
“I didn’t have detention,” I say swiftly. “I was walking home with some girls. Mandy Patterson and some others.”
I’m hoping this will appease him. Mandy’s father is a real estate agent so successful that his handsome grin is plastered across every billboard and bus bench in our town.
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re walking home with the pope. You get here on time,” Randall snarls.
There’s no actual reason I need to be home by 3:50. Other than Tuesdays and Thursdays at Mrs. Belchick’s house, I have no appointments. But Randall decreed it, and that means I have to obey or suffer the consequences.
Of course I’m not going to bring up that rational and reasonable point. That would be suicide.
Instead, I swallow my sense of injustice, humbly saying, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
It will happen again, because something always happens to make me late. The universe wants Randall angry at me just as badly as Randall wants it himself.
I’m hoping this is the end of it. I can go up and hide in my room until it’s time to set the table for dinner.
Instead, Randall says, “Change your clothes and come down here to do your homework.”
Shit.
I don’t bother asking him if I can do it in my room. I simply set my book bag down by the edge of the fireplace, before trudging upstairs to change out of my uniform.
Changing clothes is my mother’s requirement. She says it’s so I don’t wear out my uniforms so fast, but I suspect it’s really because she’s noticed how much Randall prefers the plaid skirts. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that’s the whole reason he insisted I switch schools.
In response, my mother has been forcing me to wear more and more modest clothing. First, it was no tank tops, then no shorts. Last week she screamed at me over a scoop-neck t-shirt. I’ll be wearing turtlenecks in July by the time she’s satisfied.
I loathe the way everyone fixates on my clothing—the teachers at school, my classmates, Randall, and my mother. The taller I grow and the more my tits come in, the worse it gets.
I don’t get it. It’s not like I have some massive rack like Ella Fitz, who started growing them even before we left elementary school. Still, every sign of puberty seems to inflame my mother. She was furious when I got my period last year, and refused to buy me tampons, even though we have swim class as part of PE, and even though every other girl uses them. Mandy Patterson was delighted to tell the whole class the moment she spotted a pad in my bag.