I don't own Kim Possible.
A nine year old girl hated the fighting between her parents. It had gotten physical and her older brother Michael told her to stay away from it, but she never did. After all, he was only eleven so she didn't have to listen to him.
She watched her father literally throw her mother out the back door of the house. The girl watched in horror as this happened. How could her father just do that to her mother? "Daddy!" She yelled at him.
"What?" He turned around and glared at her. Noelle was a nervous little girl. She usually never yelled out at her father, ever. She swallowed hard and let him hit her across the cheek to get it over with. She let the tears leak from her eyes. She knew her father liked it when she cried, so she did. He smiled at her and walked upstairs to his bedroom. From upstairs though, she heard a couple of slaps followed by some screams that came from Michael. She had to forget about them because her mother was more important now.
She opened the screen door and saw her mother laying on the green grass. Her blonde hair was going in various directions behind her head. She must have turned over, Noelle assumed. She approached her mother and sat down on the grass next to her. The two made eye contact. Noelle could tell her mother wasn't high on drugs this time. She liked these moments because her mother would actually speak to her and maybe even give her a hug; maybe even tell her that she loves her, but that was rare so she didn't expect it. "Hey baby." That was a good sign. Noelle loved when her mother called her baby instead of just Noelle. She didn't really like her name. It was a good opportunity to ask, she assumed.
"Why is my name Noelle mommy?" She said quietly. Her voice was only about above a whisper.
"Oh, you are such a nervous child." Her mother started and began stroking her hair in a motherly fashion. Noelle could feel the bony fingers occasionally brush against her scalp. "Well, you were born in France. You know that." Noelle nodded. "And your birthday is around Christmas time, so Noelle is French. It means something like born on Christmas day. You were close enough, so I gave you that name. Actually, Henry was the one who urged me to name you on the spot."
"So he helped name me?" She said happily because Henry was her favorite big brother even though he was barely home and hung out with his friends all of the time.
"It was his idea to name you actually." Her mother said, smiling at the memory.
"What do you mean mommy?" She asked her, kind of confused and somewhat hurt.
"You were born premature, which means you were born two months early or so. I gave birth to you at the house back in France and your father and I didn't think you'd make it. I didn't want to name you because I had a feeling you'd die. But Henry wanted no part in that. So I named you Noelle Marie. I didn't put much thought into it actually, but your name has the most meaning in the whole family." Her mother explained to her.
"You mean that…that you were waiting for me to die right when I was born?" Noelle was in tears, but she wasn't sobbing. She learned how to control her cries so that she wouldn't sound like a blubbering fool as her father put it.
"Pretty much. But don't cry about it. Henry saved you. Besides, you're here, aren't you?" Noelle was beginning to regret speaking to her mother. Sometimes she would treat her so nicely, but there was also the risk her mother would tell her something upsetting. Noelle remembered when she was only six, her mother told her Santa Claus wasn't real. That really upset her.
Noelle watched her mother sit up and reach into her pocket in her jacket. For a brief moment, she could see her mother's frail frame. Noelle had seen other mommies and they weren't as skinny as her mommy. Henry had told her that their mother couldn't have been more than ninety pounds. That kind of scared Noelle because she knew that wasn't a good weight for her mommy. She saw her pull out a bag of white powder from her pocket. She watched her mother put some of the drug on her knee and snort it up her nose. She put the rest of it away when she was done.
Noelle could tell her mother was getting high, but she stayed sitting next to her. She was still crying but didn't utter a word. Last time she got up after she watched her snort the stuff, her mother pulled her back down next to her and held her tight against her bony frame and cried into her perfect blonde hair. Noelle didn't like that because it was just uncomfortable and she knew it wasn't out of love. "Are you hurting, Noelle? You're crying, that means you're in pain." She could only sit there and watch the drug take effect. "Want to make the hurt go away that daddy caused you?" Had her mother just forgot about the previous conversation they had that quickly? But she hated how her daddy made her feel, so she nodded yes, that she wanted the bruises to stop hurting and the hitting to stop. She could still feel a small tingling sensation from her father's hand that struck her cheek. "Well, daddy has done more to me than he did to you. He rapes me, you know." Noelle didn't really know what that meant, so she began to focus on the grass. "But seeing that you're only what? Eight? Nine? I guess you've got it hard. Want me to show you my secret to make the pain go away?"
"Yes mommy." She knew that no matter what the answer, her mother would show her anyway just like last week, when she took off her shirt and told her that she was fat and couldn't eat breakfast anymore.
She saw her mother take a knife out of her pocket. It was small; a pocketknife would be a better word for it. She drew the blade and rolled up her shirt. Noelle didn't like how her mother's arms looked. It reminded her of a chicken bone with only the skin stretched over it. Michael had done that once to his chicken at dinner. He wasn't fond of the skin on it and Noelle wasn't either anymore.
Her mother put the blade up to her skin and cut it as if it were paper. It was a clean cut with blood dripping out of it. She lifted the blade and did it again. "It makes me feel so much better. You try." She handed Noelle the knife. It was silver with some crimson on the tip of it. Noelle's mother pulled up her sleeve for her. "Don't do the wrist Noelle, just the forearm." She pointed to her own spot where the blood spilled out of it.
"Does it hurt?" She asked.
"At first, but you feel better afterwards. Would I lie to you?" Her mother had never lied to her. She told her the truth about everything, even Santa Claus. So, Noelle took the blade and touched it to her arm. She pressed down on it and drew her own blood. She winced in pain, but kept going. She had to because her mother was watching and it would make her feel better. She imagined the microscopic sounds her cells must be making and heard the flesh tare inside of her head. She imagined it sounded like Velcro. She immediately stopped. This just brought more physical pain. She told her mother. "You can't focus on the physical pain, but the emotional pain. It's a different kind of pain, the kind that hurts but isn't really there. Get it?"
"Yes mommy, but it still hurts." She said and didn't care to wipe the tears fall down her face. Instead, she focused staring at the blood dripping down her arm.
"Well, it hurts at first but you get used to it." They sat there in the back yard for almost four hours because they were both afraid to go back in that house. However, her mother stood up shakily and pulled her daughter up. "Let's go back inside. It's almost time for dinner. Daddy actually made dinner tonight. But we can't eat it."
"Why not mommy? I'm hungry." Noelle followed her mother inside the door.
"Because you've let yourself go young lady."
"You mean I'm fat?" Noelle asked, looking at her flat stomach.
"Yes. We both are. We can't eat dinner or breakfast. Lunch is acceptable because it's hard to resist a sandwich."
"But how come the boys get to eat?"
"Because they will be men and men need strength. We are girls and we can't be stronger than the men. Men are the fighters, women are only objects owned by them. Why do you think we take the man's last name?" Noelle thought about her mother's words and she was glad she hadn't told her about the secret martial arts class she was taking.
"But my friends eat three meals a day and snacks." She pointed out to her mother.
"But your friends won't be as pretty and skinny as you will be. Trust me, your mommy knows best. Now, go up to your room and wait for dinner to be over." Her mother went up the stairs and Noelle followed her, but took a right instead of a left. She entered her room and shut the door.
She looked out her window and noticed the sun had set and it was getting dark rapidly. She then noticed that the man from the apartment building next to her house was looking out of his window too. She was fascinated by his dark eyes surrounded by his large glasses that sat on his face. He did look a bit nerdy, but that didn't really bother her. She opened her window to talk to him again. Sure, he had to be in his late twenties, early thirties, but that didn't bother her. She had to ask him something important. "Do you think I'm fat?" She shouted to him.
"Of course not." He responded.
"Have you ever been in pain? Not the physical kind, but the one that's eating you up inside?" She asked him. She asked him a lot of questions and she didn't even know his name. But she'd never ask that because he didn't know hers. And it would just complicate things, or so her mother told her. If you tell a man your name, you're just asking to be swept off your feet and marry him. Don't question it. Why? Because have I ever lied to you, Noelle?
"Yes." He admitted.
"How did you cope with it?"
"I ignored it."
"Would you do this to yourself to get rid of it?" She showed him the cut that had begun to heal across her forearm. His eyes went wide with surprise. But before he could get a word in, Noelle heard her door open. She quietly, but quickly shut her window and closed the curtains. This happened a lot and the man in the apartment building didn't mind when she did that. The reason for her doing this was because she knew it was wrong to talk to strangers and her mother told her that if she spoke with an adult male without another adult present, he'd surely want to marry her. And her mother never lied to her. She turned around to see who it was. She feared it was her father, but it washed away when she saw it was Henry. She hadn't seen him in days because he had been so busy, so she smiled her pretty smile, showing off her pearly white teeth. He was the only one who could get her to smile like that. "You're home!" She said happily. She ran up to him and he easily picked her up. She wrapped her skinny arms around his muscular neck.
"What happened to your arm?" Henry expressed in concern.
"Mommy said it would get rid of emotional pain. But it didn't work. It just made my arm bleed and hurt." She admitted.
"Well, no matter what mom says, don't do it again, okay?"
"But she's mommy and she never lies to me." Noelle looked up at him.
"Just don't do it again, okay? Take my word for it. What you did to yourself isn't good for you."
"I wasn't gonna do it again anyway. I don't like bleeding." Henry smiled at her and put her down.
"Glad to hear it." He paused. "Why aren't you down there eating dinner with everyone else?"
"Mommy says girls only eat lunch."
"What else does mom tell you?"
"Girl things. But I'm getting fat. I can't eat dinner anyways. I don't want to be ugly." Henry watched his sister go over to her mirror and lift up her shirt part way to examine her stomach. He was surprised when he saw it cave in. He watched her poke at it and pinch the skin in disgust and she kept repeated to herself that she was fat and ugly and she couldn't eat until she lost more weight. She was corrupted by her own mother. No, not corrupted. Noelle was too young for that. Brainwashed was a better term. He didn't know how he'd turn that around.
"What else does mom tell you about Noelle?"
"Like I said, girl things." She continued to poke at her skin, calling it fat. "She told me that my imaginary friend wasn't real a couple weeks ago."
"Who was your imaginary friend?" He asked. Maybe his mother did something right for a change. She was nine, too old for imaginary friends in his opinion.
"His name was God." She paused. "Actually, a lot of people have imaginary friends named God. Mommy says people think he'll save them, but they're wrong. So I was praying to something that doesn't exist. Mommy says I was foolish." Henry couldn't say anything about that. He himself was an agnostic so he couldn't claim that God was real when he barely believed it himself.
"What else does she tell you?" He asked her, afraid to know what the answers would be.
"Why are you so interested?" Noelle asked. Because you're brainwashed. He thought to himself. "It's girl stuff, you wouldn't want to know." She truly believed their mother told her the truth about everything.
"I just haven't seen you in days, that's all." Henry said. "But just to let you know, I don't think that your Sensei will like that you don't eat dinner."
"Why not?" Noelle asked with genuine interest.
"Because food gives you energy and without energy, you won't be able to do martial arts." For some reason, she got angry. She could only express her anger in front of Henry because she knew he wouldn't hurt her for it. So, he let her scream and stomp around until she stopped and cried. She was probably starved and he noticed the cut on her arm opened up.
"Maybe my pain will bleed out." She sniffed.
"Pain doesn't bleed out. It's not that easy." He whispered to her and calmed her down. She nodded her head and sat back up. "I'll go get you something to eat." She nodded and let him go. Once he left the room, Noelle looked under her bed and found a sharp object.
"If I eat, I can do what I love but then I'd get fat and ugly and no one will like me. But if I stop eating, I get skinny and pretty like mommy but I have to give up something I love." She dragged the broken metal hanger across her skin, parallel to the last cut she had made. She made two more cuts, then put the hanger down and shoved it under her bed. This time, she enjoyed watching the blood slowly drip off of her arm. She didn't wipe it off because she didn't want to disturb the feeling of it drip down the skin, or the straight line the drop traveled down. It amazed her that something so beautifully red was inside of her, flowing through her body. Her mommy was right, the pain went away.