“You drank all the **** **** juice! That was my **** juice!”
Opening my eyes, I peered wearily at the glowing blue clock: 1:47. Feeling around under my pillow, I grasped the two hard objects that were placed there. I flicked on the flashlight and sat up in bed. Mercy, declared the cover. I’d been working on it for the past three nights and was almost done.
“When are you going to get it through your thick heads you aren’t the only ones who live here?”
“Neither are you! The girls are trying to sleep!”
Not anymore we aren’t. Across the hall, Claire had flicked her lamp and was working on the puzzle spread across her bedside table.
“I don’t care about that, you fat, lazy, ****! I care about everyone here drinking my **** juice that I paid for with my money! They want to drink it, they can **** go get jobs and pay it their own **** selves!”
“They can’t do that! And feeding them is our job!”
“So now you’re **** blaming it on my again! It’s always my **** fault!”
I drowned the rest of the familiar rant out as I got lost in the world of the Mohawk culture. I pulled myself out just in time to hear my father stomping down the hallway to my parents’ bedroom. I snapped off my light and lay flat on the bed. Claire, who had been less absorbed, was already engulfed in darkness.
He paused outside our doors. I closed my eyes tight and didn’t dare open them until I heard him moving away for fear he would see them glint off the hall nightlight.
Settling back into sleeping position, book and flashlight secure under my pillow, I drifted off again, careful not to think of the packed suitcase in the closet five feet away.
I was nine that winter. Claire was twelve.
We were too young.
Too young.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’ve never finished Christmas in one go before. Someone always starts yelling and stomps off.
The winter of my eleventh year, it seemed I wouldn’t get to start.
It was three days before Christmas, and Claire had a friend to spend the night, the first one either of us had ever had. It had been an almost peaceful past week. We were in my room, the radio playing Christmas carols, the older girls doing each others’ nails on the floor, and I reading a book on my bed.
Voices rose up from the living room. Unconsciously, I slid off the bed and turned up the music to drown it out. The voices got louder. So did the radio.
They were nearly screaming now. Then suddenly, the voices stopped. Seconds later, Mother was in the doorway. Claire turned off the radio.
“Sorry, girls. We need to cut the sleepover short.” She looked at each of us, the meaning clear in her eyes.
I grabbed my bag.
We stayed in a motel that night. A cheap one, the kind where the thermostat is broken and you pay 50 bucks a night. I slept fitfully in the lumpy bed I shared with Claire, wishing for the first time for the closest place to a home I knew.
We returned the next morning. No mention of our one night flight was ever made.
Still too young.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I was thirteen, a boy in Claire’s class killed himself. The classic slitting of the wrists. Shock resonated throughout the school.
“Never saw it coming.” “He seemed so happy.” “He had the perfect life.” “Never though he was capable of suicide.”
I was always annoyed when people thought there were actually people out there who had no reason and were not capable of killing themselves. I’m more surprised at the number of people who don’t commit suicide. There’s always a reason, even if some are smaller than others.
Take the girl with the re-re-recycled clothes. Her family is poor. If she weren’t around, there would be more money for other things. The class brain, he’s always pressured to be the smartest, and nothing less is acceptable. Then there’s the little brother who can never seem to measure up.
Everyone has a reason. It just may take longer for some people to break.
My cracks have been forming since the day I was born.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Well, Raily, you’re a mystery,” proclaimed the doctor. “We can’t be sure what’s wrong with your chest. We think it might be Tietze’s Syndrome.”
Yeah? And last time you “thought” it might be pleurisy.
“I’m going to prescribe you some mild painkillers–”
To be taken with my steroids?
“–And some zomitriptin and ??? for your migraines.”
So a nasal spray, a dissolving tablet, and two types of pills? For problems you don’t know anything about?
“For those circles, we’re pretty sure it’s a harmless skin condition. Just rub some of this cream on them twice a day and it should go away.”
And now some lotion for the “pretty sure”…
“And then we get to your bruises.”
From my inner monologue, I sat up straight, snapping to attention. When I’d first noticed them, I’d had one word on my mind. I was no idiot; I knew what they could mean. So had Mother, which was the only reason she’d brought me in to the hospital. Last time it had taken total paralyzation from chest pain to get there.
“Your blood work is normal, and we’re not sure what’s going on to cause it–”
So I need to stick around for observation until you figure it out.
“-so we’re just going to have you keep watch and see if they changed or you get more. You’re fourteen. You probably bumped into something or someone this past week and didn’t even think anything of it.”
That’s it? I have unexplained bruises because I’m a teenager? What kind of diagnosis is that? I like the “we don’t know” one better!
But Mother was content. “Thanks for looking at her. Come on, Rai.”
“Oh, and one more thing,” the doctor called after us. “Stress could also be a factor in the manifestation of your symptoms, so try to stay relaxed, especially at home, all right?”
We didn’t go to the doctor again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I had learned not to fight. I just remained silent and let the conflicts of the world slide around me. It was the only defense mechanism I knew. And it was working. When people argued, I ignored them. When someone hurt me, I let it bounce harmlessly off my armor. Tears were a foreign concept.
I turned fifteen.
But I was still too young.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Same old fight. Same topics. More intensity. Different terms.
Claire was eighteen and in college. She still lived at home and was working at the cornerstore. She drove a car that was in name hers, but in writing belonged to our parents.
The controller was missing. Yet neither of us had used the T.V. that day. A thorough search of the house turned up nothing. We were "**** ungrateful *****s," "mindless idiots," and "**** morons."
I crawled into my shell and bore it.
Claire wasn’t like me. She learned what she saw. She learned to fight. So fight she did. With everything she was worth.
He didn't like that.
“I think you forgot that the day you turned eighteen living here was a privilege, not a **** right!”
“Well fine! Then have a nice life, but I’m out of here!”
After taking a phone call from a classmate who needed help on homework (I told her the background voices were on the T.V.), I was in my room, trying to drown out the argument with my own thoughts. The second I heard that, however, my thoughts shut down. I was deaf and blind to the world, hardening my heart and mind against the growing terror. My whole body was shaking. My father had begun taking out his drunken, drug-induced anger on Claire as well as my mother since she turned sixteen. Selfish as it was, I needed her to protect me. Mother wasn’t even around right then, as she worked nights.
The door slammed. “Don’t you **** dare take my car! It’s under my name! I’ll call the police for theft!” he bellowed. “You can walk wherever you’re going! Don’t you **** dare!”
He wasn’t trying to stop her from leaving, just from taking what he considered rightfully his.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs. I stared fearfully at my doorway, knowing there was only one other person in the house. Petrified by an unknown horror, I threw my door shut and locked it.
Just in time, too, for the next thing I knew, he was there pounding on it. “Open the **** door, right now, or I’ll take it off the hinges!”
He was in new form now. I’d never seen or heard him so out of control. I was shaking so violently now I couldn’t hold myself up. He went away, possibly to get tools to dismantle the door, but my mind was in shambles.
A horrible moment of clarity burst through. I knew what I needed to do, what I or Claire or even Mother should have done years ago. When I was four Claire made me memorize two sets of numbers. Neither was for the house phone.
I hestitated. My life had been spent hiding everything. Why would I be believed now? Why me?
Why anyone?
The pounding on the steps came again.
I was only sane and in control enough to recall, let alone try dialing, the simpler of the two. The portable phone was still on my bed where I left it. I crawled over on my watery legs and fumbled with the buttons.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
