I stared at the face of my little sister Angie. She was five. She looked just like my mom, I mean, she resembled her. I licked my lips, felt the tears blurring my eyes. I looked at pictures of my mom a lot, but I felt like I couldn't remember her. I could barely remember her voice. Only when I was with Angie could I really remember. I blinked the tears away and smiled at something she said, smiled at her little baby tooth smile. Poor Angie. She probably didn't remember mom at all. But then, maybe she was the lucky one.
My dad would kill me if he knew I was with Angie. We were at Emma Nelson's house, because Emma was babysitting. I lived with my dad, Angie lived with her dad. That was neat. Symmetrical, I mean. And on that one I got the short end of the stick. Angie's dad was cool, and nice, and kind of young, well, early thirties at least. He was funny and laid back and kind of a go with the flow kind of guy. My dad? Well, he wasn't like that at all.
Yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said my dad would kill me if he knew I was with Angie. Of course he wouldn't literally kill me, not meaning to. But he would beat me. That was true. I knew it was true because I saw the bruises that the beatings left. I've seen welt marks on my back from his belt, and I do have vague memories of my dad taking the belt from around his waist and raising it up, but that's where my memories stop. I've seen bruises, dark purple and blue and black, all along my chest and stomach. I've seen these bruises fade to this sickly yellow, and I've felt the ache from that. But I can't exactly remember what happened. Just the start of it, my dad's narrowed angry eyes, the sarcastic tone in his voice. Then it goes blank. That kind of scares me. Why can't I remember? Is it that bad? I guess it is.
But that doesn't matter. It's fine. I'm fine. At school I pretend like I'm a regular kid and nothing at all is going on. I laugh and joke and talk to people and do my homework. I keep up appearances. Sometimes I fall asleep in school because I have trouble sleeping, and that sucks. Teachers have one of two reactions. Some of them are kind of mad, like, 'don't sleep in my class,' But some of them are concerned, like they think there's something wrong. I don't like that reaction. I don't like those looks of sympathy. That sucks. It does.
Angie is playing with her barbies. She loves those things and she has a ton of them. Most of them have blond hair, kind of raggy looking blond hair, like the Barbie lives in a trailer park with dirt and weeds for a lawn and plastic flamingos stuck in the ground. Some of them have dark hair, some have red, some are Chinese and have straight black hair and slanted eyes. A few are black but they have straight black hair and narrow noses. The ones she always throws at me to use are the Skippers, they're like the younger barbies, junior high barbies or something. So I'll take those and just dress them up like vampires or something, drawing in little fangs. Angie loves it.
"Craig," she says in her little voice, a tiny squeak of a voice. I look up, raise my eyebrows, wait for her to say whatever she's going to say.
"Craig, what was mom like?"
Huh. I closed my eyes for a second. What could I say? I remembered when my mom lived with me, when she was still married to my dad. She wasn't happy. I could see that then, and I can remember it now. She was quiet then, she never laughed. Some days she wouldn't even get dressed. She'd watch T.V. and she'd pretend to be interested in things I was saying but she wasn't really. I bet my dad was hitting her, too. I'll bet he was. She was much happier after she left and married Joey. I don't think I'd ever heard her laugh until she moved in with him. And then when Angie was born she was, she seemed so happy. So I didn't tell her that anything was wrong at home. Then she got sick so fast. It was so fast. I had kept thinking she'd be okay, like those movies on T.V., I thought she'd pull through somehow.
"She was...she was real nice. She loved you a lot. Yeah. She laughed a lot, once she married your dad,"
Angie stroked her Barbie's hair and thought about this. She'd been just a baby when mom died. I wondered if she remembered anything about her at all.
"Craig," she said, and I braced myself for another question.
"How come you have a different dad than me?"
I looked at the fangs I'd drawn onto this Skipper, and I liked the sinister look it gave her. I chewed on my bottom lip.
"Uh, well, mom married my dad first and they had me, then she married your dad and they had you," There. That was simple.
"Your dad's mean, huh?" she said, and she wasn't looking at me. She was cutting the Barbie's hair, one long uneven cut at the plastic shoulders.
"N-no. No. He's fine. He isn't mean," I was kind of, I don't know. Why would she say that? I'd never said anything about him to her, hardly anything. Why would she think he was mean?
"Oh," she said, letting it go. I glanced at the clock. It was almost six. That meant I had to go. I stood up, handed her the Skipper.
"Well, kid, I gotta go," I said, kissing her forehead.
"Bye," she said, looking up at me with those eyes that were just like mom's. I didn't want to go. I never knew what I'd have to face at home. I took a deep breath. It didn't matter. I had to go, and soon, because if I was late that wasn't good. Not at all.
"Bye, Emma!" I called out. Emma was in the other room doing homework. I pushed on the door and walked out into the fading light, the cool air. I didn't want to go home and I felt the dread in the center of my stomach.