Concrete Angel
The paper bag in her backpack always held bread and old ham. She'd never had the time to make anything else. The time was spent on coaxing her father to stop drinking and flinching whenever he acknowledged her.
Her classmates always murmured behind her back that she was a freak, a weirdo, a girl too egotistic to have any friends. None of them realized that the dress she was wearing everyday was the only one that covered all the scars and bruises. They assumed that she had a dozen of the same dress.
On the bad days, her dad would use his own fists to hit his children. Somehow, it hurt so much more than the bloodied belt. On those days, sometimes he'd hit her face. When she turns up at school, the students taunt her with the same lines; "She fell down the stairs, she walked into the door. The klutz, the one and only Lisbon."
All she could do when they yelled that was look at her feet and clench her teeth because she knew that however bad the taunting was, it would get worse if her father was found out.
The teacher always frowned at the students, ordered them to stop. She guessed on the first few days of school that the child, Teresa, was hurting. The teacher always thought about how to question the girl. She never found a right time to confront her though.
Teresa had learnt how to have a poker face on everyday. But she wished that when someone asked if she was okay and she says, "I'm fine," that someone will know that she is not.
At home, she'd sit on her bed crying under the blankets. She couldn't let her brothers see her like that. They were still so young. They needed hope. Her thoughts would drift to her twelfth birthday, blood on the windshield of the abandoned car and the figure of her mother lying in the middle of the road, a wrapped box in her hand. She'd then think about ways she could end her own life, always reminding herself that her brothers needed her.
Every night she throws herself in front of her brothers begging them silently to hide in the closet. Then she'd beg her dad to stop hitting her. When he did, he would start yelling. Though the walls were thick, her dad's voice was loud but no body came to save her.
Some nights he'd be apologetic. But he'd tie her on his bed and start taking her clothes off. She'd cry, and by the morning, it would have ended.
Still, she knew that foster care could split her and her brothers up, for that's where they'd be if her father was found out. Then they'd have no one who truly cared for them close by.
Her name was in the papers all the time when she was in SFPD. The crimes she's solved. The killers she's caught. To her team, she never shows the little girl inside who is begging to come out. She's known to some people as 'the statue'. She could count the people who know about her past on one hand.
These days, she knows she's loved. She still doesn't show her pain though. Being part of the CBI is a dream come true, even if it wasn't what she expected. She's no longer 'the statue', but 'the compassionate'. Sometimes she still breaks down at home, but she knows that, no matter what, her friends will be there for her.
