*****
…it hurts …it hurts… but it won’t matter none in a little while anyway. I’ll just sit here in the dark and wait. Wait for him. And remember. Remember all the reasons, all the nights. I can remember some happy times, but they was scattered about like chocolate sprinkles melting on a smoking gun.
I must have been real little when he started coming into my room to hurt me at night ‘cause I can’t even remember any times when he didn’t come. He would get drunk at Smitty T’s and come home late and bang into the walls and curse. I used to laugh when he ran into things, but not anymore.
And Mama, well, it seemed like Mama was always sick, laying in the big bed, all wrapped up in a ratty old quilt Gram made her when she was little. Big purple bruises showed up like magic on Mama’s face, her shoulders, her arms and her neck. Sometimes a tooth would get loose or her long black hair would fall out in big clumps all over her pillow.
She was real sad. I didn’t like Mama being so sad. I loved Mama.
Nighttimes were the worst. Mama always cried at night.
When Mama got real sick ‘cause she was having a baby soon, that’s when he started coming just about every night. I think I was five or six, real little and scrawny. He was so big his head almost scraped the doorframe. He swooped into my room like a giant black shadow-monster or vampire in those old black and white movies. And his mouth tasted so bad I almost threw up.
Days were okay. He usually slept until I was already gone for school. And when I got back, he was at work or Smitty T’s getting drunk, so I could spend time with Mama. Mostly I just held her hand and helped her make dinner and tried not to look in her face to see how sad and scared she looked.
Then one day I came home from school and he was there, waiting for me. He said Mama was in the hospital having the baby. Then he pushed me into my room.
In the daytime.
Mama came home from the hospital with a tiny wrinkled bundle of red screams and curling fingers. I stayed home a lot from school to help out with the baby. Mama named her Alice. That’s a real nice name. I liked feeding Alice and didn’t really mind changing her messy diapers too much. Pretty soon she sort of smoothed out and got real cute and would smile at the faces I made at her. Mama sometimes even smiled.
He didn’t come into my room so often at night, but I could hear Mama crying again.
Mama got real skinny and could hardly stand. Her face got all white which made the purple splotches look even darker and more scary. Mama needed lots of help with the baby. I stopped going to school so I could help her take care of Alice.
Mama said I should always take care of Alice.
It was usually a lot of fun being with Alice. We played on the floor in Mama’s bedroom so she could watch us. Once Alice fell and hit her head on the corner of the table next to Mama’s bed and cried and cried. I cried, too, and me and Alice held on to each other like we was the only ones in the whole wide world.
That’s when I promised her I wouldn’t let nothing happen to her, ever, ever.
Sometimes Mama would tell me to get the old cigar box out from behind the headboard on her side of the bed. It was stuck back pretty far and I always had a hard time trying to wiggle it out. The first time she told me to get it, I couldn’t figure out what she wanted a smelly old cigar for, but after she lifted the lid I saw lots of money, mostly fives and tens. Mama would take some and tell me to go to Penney’s to get Alice a new dress ‘cause she was growing so fast. I asked Mama where she got all the money and she patted me on the cheek and said she’d been saving for a rainy day.
This I didn’t get at all, seeing how it was the middle of July and really hot and blue outside.
‘Course now I know what she meant. I understand a lot of things better now.
Alice was growing up really pretty. She looked a lot like Mama in those old pictures I found in a book once, with pretty dark hair and great big brown eyes and long long eyelashes. I don’t know who I look like. I’m real skinny and have wavy brown hair and light gray eyes and a big hook nose and nobody here looks like that. Mama said once that I look just like Sam, but I don’t know any Sam and Mama wouldn’t tell me who he was.
Mama got sicker and sicker. Her skin looked like it would fall off if you touched it. And always there was those big marks on her, coming out of different places and then turning green and fading away. And then they started staying green for longer and longer, ‘til she was almost all green and looked like she was wearing a Halloween mask.
Pretty soon she died, I guess. He said she had to go to the hospital but she never came back and I was too scared to ask.
He started coming every night after Mama left. I asked him to please not come so often ‘cause it hurt so much, but it didn’t matter none to him. He just laughed, his big yellow teeth glittering in the dark, and reached for me, clawing at my clothes and hurting me.
Sometimes I hated Mama for going away.
And Alice just kept getting prettier.
I saw him looking at Alice with those creepy vampire eyes right after her eighth birthday and got real scared. So I dressed her in the ugliest clothes I could find at Penney’s and cut her hair real short like a boys’. I hoped he would leave her alone then. But he got real mad when he saw her, grabbed me and some scissors and cut all my hair off, too. He threw me on the floor like a rag doll and kicked me in the stomach. I cried and tried to get away from him, but he kept kicking me all the way down the hall to my bedroom.
It hurt so much, what he did them. It was much worse than anything he did before. The pain went all the way up inside my brain. I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die.
But I didn’t die.
I showed Alice how to push the dresser up against her bedroom door at night. I won’t let him do that to Alice.
I have to take care of Alice.
One hot sweaty night I guess he wasn’t so drunk a usual ‘cause he didn’t run into the walls. He pounded on Alice’s door and yelled at her to open it. I got up and went to him. I told him to take me instead.
He did.
And I started crying at night just like Mama.
I kept Mama’s cigar box in my room, way back in the closet behind my old raincoat. I thought about running away with Alice, but there was hardly no money left. I kept having to use it to buy food for Alice and me ‘cause most of the time he was too drunk and forgot.
Alice just kept getting prettier, even with short hair. She started getting little tiny boobies lots earlier than I did. And even though I tried to hide them by making Alice wear great big sweaters, he could see. He kept looking at them and licking his lips and his hands kind of grabbed at the air. I was afraid he would come after her when I wasn’t there, so I took here everywhere with me, even to the bathroom.
Sometimes when Alice and me would walk to the store to buy milk, boys looked at Alice real hard and made funny noises and followed us around until I turned and yelled at them to get lost. They called me mean names but they left us alone. Some construction men whistled at Alice and said nasty things every time we walked by. I always ignored them and we walked real fast to get away. Then one day the lady at the grocery store said Alice was just about the prettiest thing she had ever seen and boy, was her mama gonna have a hard time with the boys in a few years. I knew the lady didn’t mean it was Mama who would have a hard time with the boys.
She meant Alice.
Once when he came home drunk and banged real hard on Alice’s door, I told him to take me but he pushed me out of the way. I saw Alice’s door moving a little with each pounding and could hear her crying, huh-huh-huh, real soft and scared. I got up off the floor. I unbuttoned my shirt and opened it. I yelled at him to take me instead. He looked and grabbed me hard..
It hurt so much.
But he left Alice alone.
There was hardly no money left so I went looking all around mama’s old room for more cigar boxes. I didn’t find any.
But I did find the gun.
I didn’t know they made guns that small. At first I thought it was a toy, but it was so heavy and cold and it felt almost alive, like it was waiting for something. I was afraid of it, but I kept it anyway.
It kept getting harder to take care of Alice. She was so pretty. And he got madder and meaner and kept hitting and hitting me ‘cause I wouldn’t let him get to her. My face got all purple and green just like Mama’s. And sometimes, I hurt way down deep inside, in places I didn’t even know I had.
And everywhere that Alice and me went, boys followed us and men whistled and honked their horns. I got real scared. I couldn’t keep them all away from Alice.
The money is all gone and there is no milk and it hurts so much all the time…
So now I am waiting for him to come home. I am sitting the dark listening to the creaks the house makes and remembering.
Here he comes. He is a big black shadow moving in the lighter shadows. He bangs into the walls and curses. He stops in front of Alice’s bedroom. He pounds on the door. He yells for her to open it.
She won’t answer him.
I turn the warm gun over and over in my hands. My fingers trace the little curly designs on the silver handle. My legs shake. My mouth is dry.
Soon he’ll see my door is open.
And I’ll take care of him just like I took care of Alice.
******
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
I wrote this story many years ago after hearing about a couple of old ladies (sisters) who were very close throughout their lives. The elder sister had protected the younger much like the nameless girl in this story, but they both survived more or less intact.
This story has received several awards, been published a couple of times and was even performed in a dramatic reading about five years ago at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center. Some people do not know how to take it, some are made very uncomfortable, others deny that anything like this could happen and others, after reading or hearing it, have told me their own very personal stories of childhood abuse. I am proud to have written something that seems to affect people as much as this one simple story has.
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