I remembered his hot breath on the side of my face as he’d lean over to see if my eyes were open. My body would tense as I’d stay as still as possible, afraid to move a single muscle. The smell of beer and an ashtray would hit me like a drunken tornado. I’d shut my eyes tight as I prayed for my mother to wake. Maybe, I’d thought, she would sense something was wrong with her daughter, and feel the need to come to check on me—a mother’s sixth sense. But my mother had never saved me.
I remembered the sound of his belt coming off before he’d climb in next to me. The mattress would slump to one side, and I’d clutch my blanket to avoid rolling closer to him. His callused and overworked hands would violate me in ways I couldn’t understand at eight years old. I’d pray my father would show up with his pistol, but my father had never saved me.
Every night like clockwork, but I’d still prayed.
And even as he’d raped me, I’d prayed it would somehow kill me.
But not even death had saved me.
I’d spent three hundred and ninety-four days crying myself to sleep, knowing no one would come and save me from my uncle’s abuse and torment. It had been me. I’d had to save myself. And on the three hundred and ninety-fifth day, when the door had creaked open, and I’d tensed under the hot breath against my cheek, and his fingers had slipped under my nightgown, I’d reached under my pillow to grab my father’s pistol I’d stolen earlier in the afternoon, and shot him in the head.
I remembered how much effort had gone into pulling the trigger, but I’d used everything I had—all my pent-up anger and shame. I remembered the way my uncle’s surprised dark eyes had grown wide seconds before, and I remembered the calmness thereafter.
He can never touch me again.
July 27th, 1999 was the day I killed him, and the day I stopped crying. A mental switch flipped the second I pulled the trigger, and my brain went on autopilot, protecting me from the trauma. My childhood, my innocence, all of it stolen from me since the first night.
I couldn’t even shed a tear when my mother took her own life. She surrendered to the guilt for not protecting me from her brother, and I was already numb to it all.
I remembered when my father had found me staring at her corpse in the bedroom after he’d returned home from a business trip. He’d cried over her dead body. The blood was already dry. I remembered the way he’d looked at me as if I’d shot her myself—like I was a monster. “What have you done?” he had asked me. “What’s wrong with you?” But I’d stood stiff, watching and waiting to see if her eyes would open—waiting to hear her voice again. Understanding death, I’d known none of it would come. But I’d still waited and watched, and I hadn’t known why.
They’d found the letter she wrote on the nightstand next to her glass of pink wine, and even though it was another piece of evidence proving I hadn’t pulled the trigger myself, I may as well have. My father never looked at me the same way, though it couldn’t hurt me.
Nothing could.
I was already gone.
It wasn’t until jr. high when he’d realized I was different from other kids. It was around the same time Diane had shown up in his life when she’d pointed out everything that wasn’t “normal” about me. He’d explained what I’d been through, but she’d accepted it all as excuses. She’d make comments here and there when she thought I wasn’t listening, but I’d heard everything, and it had never bothered me because I was already gone. He’d done his fatherly duty and sent me to counseling, a psychiatrist, many doctors, but nothing had ever gotten through to me because I was already gone.
My need to rebel was to get under their skin. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t sad. I was only tired of my dad and Diane regularly sending me here and there as if it would have made a difference. They’d bounced me around, handing me off so they wouldn’t have to deal with me.
They wanted me gone.
Memories came flooding back times a hundred, but all I felt was the calm of the storm. The rage inside drifted throughout, but it was a different kind of anger. The calm kind, if there was such a thing. Ollie’s voice inside my head reminded me to stay with him, and I did. I wouldn’t allow my havoc to blow out the flame.
Even in his death, I refused to allow my uncle take one more thing away from me.
Chapter Sixteen
“If the universe has forbid us,
let’s give them something to write about.”
—Oliver Masters
LATER THAT EVENING, I was discharged from the hospital. A security guard I’d never seen before escorted me back to Dolor. The old man, with a wrinkled face and large nose, chatted the entire hour-long drive back, and I found myself missing Stanley’s silence. The old man asked a question, then answered it himself, not allowing me a word in edgewise. Not that I would have bothered to speak, but I would have liked to have had the option.
The sun descended in the sky as day turned to night, and by the time we reached the psych ward, starless black devoured the fiery sunset. The small lady sent me through the same routine I went through the first day I’d arrived, first removing my clothes before stepping under the shower. Afterward, I dressed in the gray drawstring pants, a gray shirt, and a gray sweatshirt. I rung out as much water from my hair as I could, and once I reached my room, I curled up over the stiff mattress and closed my eyes before drifting to sleep.
Dr. Conway said she would come to see me at the psych ward upon my return, but she never showed. It was morning when the tiny lady forced me out of my dorm and into the common area among others. I hadn’t seen anyone aside from the doctors since I’d been here, only heard their cries at night.
“Dr. Conway said to get you out of your room and make you sure you eat,” the tiny lady said before she turned and left me at an empty table.
A heavy-set man with a cart appeared. He didn’t ask questions as he set the tray down in front of me before taking off. The cart squeaked until it came to a stop at the next table. Looking down at my food, there was a bowl of what looked to be oatmeal and two slices of burnt bacon.
“It’s porridge,” a voice said. I glanced up as a girl took a seat in front of me. She swept her straight brown behind her and shook her overgrown bangs from her narrow face. “I’m Maddie.”
Crystal blue eyes dressed with the infamous “Looney Bin” bags stared at me for a reply.
“I’m not much in a talking mood.” I sighed.
“Lucky for me, I like to talk …” Maddie trailed off, and I wanted to slam my face into the porridge. How was this for payback. Now I knew how Zeke had felt with me. “ … so, I have been here ever since. You’re American, ya? I’ve been to America once before. To Florida, actually. My mum and dad brought us to Disney World. It wasn’t as I hoped tho—”