Lying here on this cold, white, tiled floor keeps me awake no matter how hard I try to fall asleep. I can't stop thinking. I look down at my bare, scarred wrists and can't help but think. Think, think, think. Thinking just makes me angry again - at myself, at them, at... at everything! Stop! Thud. Thinking! Thud. Stop! Thud...
I can remember when I was really young, maybe five or six years old. I was so happy then. I mean, I was truly happy. It was just me and my mom. We would take long walks together, at dusk. By the time we got home it would be dark and the lightning bugs would be out and mom would get a mason jar and poke holes in the lid. Then, we would run around the field together and try to catch a lightning bug. The lightning bug would be my night light. Right before saying my prayers I'd put the lighting bug on the window sill next to my bed and whisper to it all my hopes and dreams. Mom said that when we let it go it would one day bring my dreams back to me. It worked a few times; like when I wished for a pink bike with sparkly tassels on the handles. A week later I found a pink bike with sparkly tassels on the handles leaning right against our freedom tree. We called it the freedom tree because that's where we let out the lightning bugs. I always felt a rush of joy when we let the lightning bug out. I knew the lightning bug would feel better being released; it was going to a better place.
Mom and I would sit at the freedom tree for hours everyday. We would talk and read and sit in silence, just sharing the peace. It was just this one tree in a few acres of gold grass which hid within a deep woods. The woods were nice to walk in. The ground would crunch with every step and trees were just far enough apart to touch with my fingertips with arms stretched wide. In between the boughs of needles and leaves, streams of sunlight would burst through like the head of a shower was spraying you with warmth and joy.
It was nice while it lasted. When I was nine or ten, mom met Barry. Barry was an ass, but my mom clumsily fell in love with him. I tried to love him and mom said I should love him like a dad, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get past his phony-ass act. Mom just didn't see it. She saw his facade, his white-tooth smile, and happy brown eyes, but I saw him, his alligator grin, and his glassy, shark eyes. He acted so happy and innocent, like he gave a rats ass about me. But when mom left the room he would tell me how wretched I was, what a waste of space I was, how I was a burden to anyone I met. One time, while mom was getting changed to go to the movies, Buddy gave me one of those talks. I had never felt anything like I did that day. That was the first time I had gotten angry. He was telling me how worthless I was just before glass of milk crashed into his perfectly chiseled nose.
I was proud of myself. I had won. At least it was true for the thirty seconds before my mother hurried into the room, hearing the crash. She saw Buddy covered in milk and bloody and for the first time in six years I was really yelled at and sent to my room. They went to the hospital and I was locked in my room. After they left I shimmied the screen of my window up and crawled out, crashing to the ground with a thud.
I can feel my tee-shirt sticking to the tile and a warm stickiness on my shoulders. What I can't feel is the back of my head. I lift my heavy hand to my matted hair. It's warm and wet. I hold the same hand in front of my eyes. I can see the sheen of wetness, but it's to dark to tell what color it is. I sit up slowly but the weight in my head pushes me down again. My legs shiver at another attempt of gaining an upright position, and a large throb pulsates through my skull and throws me to the ground again, hard. I grow angry at my clumsy body and start to shake. As always, when I felt this way, I wanted to punch something. I can't get to my feet or crawl to a wall, so I throw my shaky fists into my abdomen. Something cracks, my anger withdraws, and everything goes black again.
I broke out of the house on a regular basis, shimmying the screen window open and hopping out. I got taller and thinner and climbing out the window came with ease now. It was getting back in the house, without getting caught, that was the bitch. The window was just slightly higher than my arms could reach. So the third night I broke out I stole a few logs from the fire wood pile and stacked them like stairs under my window.
Mom never suspected me of anything. When I came home from school, I would lock myself in my room and do my homework and read. Those years with Barry in the house were the loneliest years of my life. I had no friends at school and spent my nights alone in my room or in the branches of the freedom tree. I enjoyed my nights in the freedom tree. I would fall asleep each night, watching the lightning bug my mother and I once chased. I would wonder why my mother would share a bed with a two-faced pig like Barry.
When the sun rose in the morning, blanketing the grass with gold, I would wake up and climb back in through the window, onto my bed, and continue to sleep until my alarm shout at me to shove off to school.
I wake to a bright light shining in the window. I know it's the cops coming for me. I roll to my stomach and slowly crawl and claw my way to a door. I reach for the knob, struggling and finally yank the door open. There's a set of stairs going down to the smell of must. I crawl to the first step and swing my legs around. My feet miss the step I'm aiming for, hit the one below it and catapult me forward. I roll, head over heels, down the stairs, landing on my back. It's dark down here, my whole body is numb, and my brain in swirling around in my skull; so, I shut my eyes.
I was an A student in school. When I was young mom and I would celebrate and go out to eat. But once Barry arrived, going out to eat was a rarity; well, at least for me. Mom and Barry always went out to eat or to a bar. My nights usually consisted of a frozen TV dinner that I heated in the microwave and brought to my room.
There were several attempts in middle school to get mom to notice my excellent grades and get a nice dinner; but they were in vain and Barry would get me in trouble somehow and send me to my room. So once I got to high school, I gave up. He won. The report cards with all A's would end up in my trash barrel and would never be seen again.
It was freshman year that a new member joined the family. Barry had finally gotten mom knocked up. They named the kid Willamine, after Barry's mother. I made the mistake of opening my mother at the hospital and telling mom it was a stupid name. She just said "Lilian Jordan Rowan, get out!"
I hated when she used my full name. She used to call me just Lily. Everyone always called me Lily; but when Barry came and I started to get it trouble more often, mom began announcing my full name. When Barry and mom got married in Vegas, she wanted to changed my last name to Barry's last name – Slewdan. We – mom, Barry, and I – were 'discussing' it at the kitchen table. When she told me their plans for my new name, I flipped out.
"No! No way!"
Of course she responded
"Honey think about; it would really bring this family together."
"NO! I don't want to think about it! It's my name and I'm keeping it!"
Barry's face was getting red.
"Slewdan is a stupid-ass name! I will never share a name with that ass-hole!"
Pointing my finger in his face, to emphasize my point. He grabbed my wrist, twisted it and came close to breaking it.
"You listen to me you little bitch, I'm your dad now, and you gonna take the last name!"
I tore my wrist out of his grip, slapped him across the face, and while his face was turned I kicked him square between the legs. He fell to the ground. I stood over him, screaming.
"You are not my dad, you ass! I will never be your daughter and I will never share a name with a scum bag like you!"
He sprung up, took me by my long red hair, and threw me into the wall. He bashed my head into the kitchen table, drawing blood. Mom never once said a word. She sat on the floor in the corner with her hands covering her face. She sat there while I was beat into unconsciousness.
The next day I had my friend help me cut all my hair off into a pixie cut and dye it black.
Anyways, the first night Willamina came home, it was a night during summer vacation, and I made my usual escape to my freedom tree. I could hear her crying inside while I climbed up to my favorite branch. It was dark out and I watched the lightning bugs perform their ballet in mid-air and my eyes began to fall shut with the weight of the day.
I was suddenly ripped out of sleep and off my branch by a stern wrist around my ankle. I fell the seven feet from my branch and hit the ground with bone-crushing thud. I was instantly introduced to steel-toe-boot kicks to my ribs. I got up slowly, falling back down with each kick from Barry. I finally got to my feet and started off in a sprint to my window.
When I got to my window, my log stairs were gone. I attempted to jump up into my window. I was able to grab the window sill and my legs scrambled up the siding of the house; but I was grabbed by the back of my shirt and torn from my progress. Barry flipped me around and held me to the house by my neck so just the tips of my toes were touching the ground. He slapped me, hard, across the face.
"Why the fuck aren't you in the house?"
He slapped me again.
"Your mother needs your help with the baby!"
He slapped me again.
"Get your sneaky fuckin' ass back in there, you slut!"
He slapped once more and let me drop to the ground, gasping for air. He kicked me in the butt and yelled at me to get in the house. I scrambled into the kitchen through the side door. I shuffled to the nursery. Mom looked up from the rocking chair and saw my bruised and bloody face. She placed the, now quiet, baby in it's cradle, rushed to the bathroom. I heard the faucet running.
She came back with a damp towel and began dabbing my cuts in silence, she avoided looking at my eyes, but she once met my gaze, and she stifled a sob, and tears began running down her face. But her eyes flinched up past my shoulder and she stopped dabbing at my dirty face.
Barry slowly stomped into the room,towards the cradle, and the baby stirred. He roughly pulled Willamina out of her crib who immediately began howling. He shoved her into my arms and pushed my into the rocking chair. He grabbed my mom by the waist and pulled her out. He glared at me and finally slammed the door shut, creating another wave of wails from the new born child. I sat in the dark with babe, put her to bed, and slept in the chair.
Next door I could hear mom making love with Barry and wondered how she could sleep with such a pig and leave me with his child.
When I awoke in the morning, my window was nailed shut. For the rest of the summer, Willamina was my responsibility.