Crimson Snow

by Ina Carter

  I wanted to shut my eyes and scream, to erase from my vision the carnal act that was grotesquely staring me in the face. The room was not even dark to conceal the identity of the people inside or what they were doing. I saw Cattie topless, down on her knees in front of a naked guy. He was shoving his dick harshly into her mouth, holding her by the hair, moaning like a beast.

  I turned away from the nightmare scene, and my back hit the wall. The loud clamor of the door being shut made my ears ring. My eyelids shut like I was hoping the darkness would somehow erase the images from my head.

  “Look at me.” I heard Kevin’s command, somewhere closer to my ear. I had no will to defy him and opened my eyes.

  All I saw was his pain, reflecting mine like we were one person split in two.

  “Is this what you wanted from me? Am I your ‘meal ticket,’ Princess?” Kevin sounded broken, disappointed, and hurt. His anger had turned into sadness, and his green eyes were glassy with tears.

  Instinctively I reached for him, trying to offer him comfort, but he flinched and pulled away.

  “Kevin, it’s me - Julie. It’s still me…” I whispered the words that I’d held inside me the whole day. I watched his reaction, and there was no shock, no surprise. He knew. The only thing my words did was to deepen the sorrow in his eyes.

  “Julie is dead, Princess! I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care to find out…”

  He loosened his grip on my hand, turned around, and his body slumped down the opposite wall. He sat on the ground and buried his head between his hands like he couldn’t stand to look at me.

  I don’t remember how I got outside. I just knew I couldn’t fall apart in front of Kevin, and my feet carried me away. Pandora’s Box opened, and I hit a wall somewhere and crumbled to the ground when the onslaught of memories hit me.

  (twelve years ago)

  Kevin and I had the best day ever. It was August 22 and his tenth birthday. He got some money from his Daddy, and he bought us tickets for the movies. It was the last week before school started and the movie theater in town had a deal for re-runs of old kids’ classics. We saw my favorite – “Lilo and Stitch”, and then on the way out, Kevin dared me to sneak into the other theater that was showing an R rated film. I don’t know what the movie was about but there were bad words and some people kissing. We both ran out and laughed that the movie sucked.

  Then, Kev took my hand, and we went to our favorite spot in the meadow behind my house. There was this oak tree that was our “house,” as we called it. He pulled out of his backpack a bunch of candy he got from the convenience store. We ate a whole bag of Twizzlers and then went on a hunt for that elusive badger we’d been after all summer. Kevin had this stupid idea that if we caught it, we could train it to be our pet. It was one of the hottest days that summer and “our pet” was in hiding. By late evening we were also tired and thirsty, so we went back to town to buy some soda.

  It was almost dark when we walked back to my house. Kevin always walked me to the entrance of the trailer park, but that day he went past the gate.

  “It’s getting dark, Jules, I don’t want some stray dog to bite you.” He swung his twig like he was ready to hit anything that came at us.

  We were laughing, and neither of us saw the danger approaching.

  “You little bastard. How many times I have to tell you to stay away from my girl.” I heard daddy’s shouts as soon as I felt his fingers dig into my shoulder.

  He was mad, and he was hurting me. He pulled me to him too harshly, and I fell flat on my face. I started crying from the pain in my scraped knee and was trying to stand up when I saw Kevin’s angry red face. He screamed, “Leave her alone,” and came at daddy, hitting him in the stomach with his branch. He always scared the bullies, but he was a small boy and my father was a big man. “Fucking bastard.” Daddy yelled through the pain and pulled the branch from Kevin’s hands, throwing it to the side.

  Then, he grabbed my brother by the shirt and threw him to the ground, kicking him in the legs like a dog. Kevin crumbled into himself, pulling his knees up, and covering his head for protection. I screamed so loud that my lungs hurt. Daddy swayed when he tried to kick Kevin once more and stumbled and fell into the dirt. He was about to get up when I saw mamma running toward us.

  She looked scared, but she pushed at him. Protecting us.

  “Leave my kids alone, Mike. Never touch them again, or I swear I’ll kill you!” she screamed in his face.

  Then, she reached for Kevin, kneeled down, and pulled him into her lap, rocking his body like he was a little kid. Her tears started running down her face as she consoled her little boy.

  Daddy just swore, and then scattered towards our trailer, leaving us alone. I knelt down next to mamma and hugged her waist as we both cried. Kevin was just quiet, his body limp in mamma’s arms. I was afraid he might be badly hurt or even dead, but then he opened his eyes, and I felt his fingers touching mine.

  “Are you hurt, Jules?” he whispered. He was worried for me while he was the one who took the biggest hit. I shook my head at him through the tears, and his hand squeezed mine softly.

  Mamma stopped crying and turned Kevin around, looking into his face. She gently pushed the hair from his face and kissed his forehead. “How about you, baby. Anything hurting?” she asked.

  Kevin tried to stand up to show both of us he was okay, but I saw the pain in his eyes and how he flinched when he stepped down on his feet.

  “I’ll be fine, Ma.” He winced. “Don’t take Julie back there.” He nodded to our house.

  Mamma got up and looked at both of us. “I am not taking her back. Both of you come… We’ll go to Stacy’s tonight.”

  Stacy was Mamma’s friend from the diner. She lived in the park down a street from us and had a little boy, maybe three-four years old. Kevin tried to argue.

  “I got to go home, Ma. Daddy would be mad if I don’t come home.” There was fear in his eyes, which made me wonder if his dad also hit him. Kevin didn’t like to talk about his daddy, and I never asked him if he was good to him.

  “I’ll call the farm Kev and tell them to give Jack a message. I’ll tell him I want to be with my boy on his birthday.”

  Kevin looked at her, surprised she remembered. She reached at him desperately and hugged him tightly, kissing his shaggy hair and his face, wetting his cheeks with her tears.

  For the first time, I saw Kevin cry, too. He wrapped his arms around her and held tight to his mamma.

  When we made it to Stacy’s, Mamma had a whispered conversation with her friend at the door and then the woman invited us inside. Her mobile home was in the newer part of the park and was bigger than ours and had two bedrooms at both ends. At our house, mamma and daddy did a partition in the living room, making a tiny room for me that had only a bed and nothing else. I looked at Kevin, curious what kind of house he lived in. It was strange that we spent every day for three years together, and I didn’t know much about his life besides basic stuff.

  Stacy’s husband was working out of town, so it was just her and her baby Grady. He was already asleep in her bedroom. She was nice to us and fed us homemade lasagna, not that microwave one from the frozen section in the store. Mamma was sitting at the table, not eating, but watching Kevin and me with a strange expression on her face. She came with us to the bedroom where Stacy said we’d sleep. There was a big bed, the biggest I’d seen, and could have fit all three of us. Kevin took off his shorts and got into bed next to me, but mamma came over, lifted his shirt, and looked him all over. I winced when I saw the swelling on his side and on his stomach. The bluish -reddish bruises were the size of daddy’s shoes.

  “Maybe I should take you to the doctor, baby?” Mamma wondered out loud.

  “No, Connie, I am okay. Nothing’s broken.” He pulled down his shirt and then the covers up to his neck. He turned away from her and then cuddled next to me. On instinct, I wrapped my arms around him, wanting to protect him from the whole world. I looked at mamma an
d saw the guilt and tears in her eyes. He had used her given name, didn’t call her ma like before, like it was hitting him, blaming her for her abandonment, for everything that had happened that day. Not me though – he clung to me like I was his only hope.

  Mamma turned off the light and left the room quietly, maybe so we didn’t see her cry.

  “I love you, Jules,” Kevin whispered in my ear in the darkness. “One day, I am gonna take you away from this hellhole!”

  I clung to his promise and to him. “I love you too, Kevin,” I whispered back.

  That night I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom. Kevin was fast asleep on his stomach, his hand still around my waist. I slipped out of bed and into the hallway.

  I heard Mamma cry and saw her and Stacy at the kitchen table. There was an almost empty bottle of wine in front of them. All I heard was mamma saying, “He is my only boy, and I did wrong by him…”

  I ran off to bed and went back to sleep and didn’t hear when or if she ever came back.

  The sun was rising when we were woken up by sirens and flashing blue and red lights outside.

  They took mamma out, and a police officer put handcuffs on her wrists, tying her hands behind her back. I had no idea what was happening. I was still dressed only in my shirt, barefoot and sleepy, but the fear that something was wrong and it was my fault was too strong. I started crying, and Kevin pulled me to him, wrapping his arm tightly around my shoulder.

  Stacy was by the front door, her eyes puffy from crying. “You nasty bitch!” Mamma screamed at her, just before they put her into the police car. I turned to the woman and screamed, too. “Where are they taking Mamma? She didn’t do anything to Kevin. She saved him.”

  I was convinced this is all that was going on, and by the look of it, Kevin was, too.

  “Jules, c’mon. Let’s go dress up. We’ll go to the police and tell them what happened.” He directed me.

  I followed him, and we quickly pulled on our clothes. We were putting on our shoes when a police officer entered the house. He took one look at us and knew we were ready to bolt, so he closed the door behind him, blocking our exit. I looked out the window and saw Stacy carrying Grady on her hip, talking to two other men in uniforms.

  “Sir, Mamma didn’t hit Kevin. It was an accident.” I stepped in front of my brother and told the lie. Mamma always told me I should say this to social people or at school if they asked how I got hurt. Daddy never hit me before, but sometimes I came home with scraped knees or bruises from playing with Kevin in the meadow.

  The man looked at me strangely, like he was studying my face closely. Then, he observed Kevin the same way.

  “How about we sit down, and you two answer some questions?” He nodded to the kitchen table.

  Kevin and I exchanged looks but followed him, sitting next to each other on two chairs. Kevin grabbed my hand under the table, and it made me feel safe. It was all going to be fine, I told myself.

  The man asked us our names, how old we were, and when our birthdays were. I found it strange that he never asked about what happened the previous night. He was writing things down on a notepad and then told us we should go down with him to the station to talk to his boss.

  “It’s okay, Jules. They will let us and Ma go.” Kevin assured me, but his face was worried like he was saying that only so I wouldn’t be scared.

  We got in the back of the police car and stayed silent the whole way. My brother held my hand like he was afraid to let go.

  They didn’t take us to the police station but to the hospital. A nurse and a doctor came into the room, and they made us take our clothes off. The police officer that drove us there was also in the room, and another woman who took pictures of Kevin’s bruises and my scraped knees. The nurse smiled at us when she took first my blood and then Kevin’s. She also stuck a cotton stick on the inside of our cheeks.

  When the medical exam was done, the policeman looked at us, still grasping at each other, huddled together like two birds in the cold. His eyes looked sad.

  “I am sorry, Julie, but we’ll have to talk to you and Kevin alone. Can you come with me to the other room?” he asked quietly.

  “No, I am not going anywhere without Kevin!” I found my voice and stated firmly. I looked at my brother, the fear settling in.

  “It’s okay, Jules. I’ve seen this on the TV. They got to ask us the same thing, but separately,” he whispered in my ear, “You just tell the truth, and I’ll do the same. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

  The police guy might have heard him because he nodded. “Listen to Kevin,” he said quietly.

  I got off the table, my hand feeling empty without Kevin’s. I looked over my shoulder at him, and he smiled.

  After that, my world fell apart.

  I was taken to another room with a big table and many chairs. A woman came in, sat across from me, and started telling me things about how Mamma was not my real mom and neither was Daddy. She said Mamma told Stacy she stole me when I was a baby from some hospital in the California State. I knew those were lies, and I told her Stacy is a liar. All I could think of was Kevin, not about Mamma and Daddy. She was trying to tell me he was not my brother, either. When I heard that I had to go with her and stay for a while with some nice people, I started crying.

  “Is Kevin coming too?” I sobbed.

  “No, sweetheart. He would have to stay in another place.”

  I tried to run away from the room. All I wanted was to get back to my brother. The officer must have been guarding the room from the outside because he grabbed me before I could get away from him.

  At the same time, I saw another man taking Kevin out of the doctor’s room. My brother looked at me, and I would never forget his eyes. Desperate, fearful, broken. His whole face was distorted by the pain. It was radiating from his whole being.

  I kicked and screamed. Called Kevin’s name. I bit the hand that was holding me prisoner. Kevin was also pulling away, trying to kick the policeman keeping him captive.

  I don’t know why, but they let us go. We ran to meet in the middle of the corridor and collapsed down to our knees, wrapping our arms around each other. And we cried.

  “You are my sister, Jules. My friend. My… everything,” Kevin sobbed, and his words were echoing my exact thoughts.

  “Please, Kevin! Don’t let them take you away from me! Please!” I begged him.

  But they were already pulling him from my arms, breaking our souls, ripping away from me the one person I loved the most in this world.

  “I’ll find you, Jules! I’ll come for you!” Those were the last words he said to me…

  I was still on the hard floor of that hospital, and a man was holding me down. His hands were cruel, and they hurt me. He was grabbing at my flesh, but my soul hurt so much that it felt extraneous, like it was not my body that was being violated. I smelled alcohol, but the bile in my throat was from the despair clogging my insides. Suddenly the pain was gone, the weight lifted off me, but I was freefalling into darkness, deep, deep down to the inferno of my personal hell.

  Chapter 8

  And it was darkness all over again. In my nightmare, there were tiny snippets of good. The feeling of safety by being in his arms, the hand that caressed my forehead, words I didn’t remember, but they were familiar. A whisper from a time I was happy before evil took over my life.

  I briefly came out of the fog, hearing voices from somewhere afar. They were harsh and hurt my ears.

  “The guy is in the hospital with two broken ribs… You are lucky I was there to stop you from killing him…”

  I didn’t know who those people were, and I didn’t care. All I wanted was to sleep forever and wake up somewhere without pain….

  After the voices melted into silence, there was quiet for a long time. I curled into a fetal position and rocked myself deeper into the slumber. My mouth was dry, but like magic, something pressed to my lips, and when I parted them soothing liquid sated my thirst. And I slept a
gain.

  I don’t know what made me climb out of the depths of Hell. Maybe it was Mamma’s voice telling me, “God always helps his children, baby. He is watching over you and would make everything right.”

  I haven’t prayed to God since I was eight, but in the middle of the endless black hole swallowing me, I saw a light. The feeling that made me bolt up in bed was one of hope. My heavy-leaden eyes glued together for God knows how long, opened wide, and at the same time, I inhaled deeply and air entered my lungs, jolting me to life.

  The light blinded me for a long moment and it took a while for my vision to adjust to the brightness. My brain was slower to start working properly and process my surroundings. I registered random things that gave me comfort– like the green color of the bedcover, the smiling woman in the photo art on the wall, and the sticker on my guitar, with the words “Kia Ora,” that Clive said was New Zealand’s Maori greeting. The idiosyncrasy of the fact that my guitar was sitting in the corner of an otherwise unfamiliar room cleared my head like a curtain was suddenly pulled in front of my eyes and it all came into focus.

  I didn’t know where I was, and the thought made me panic. I lifted the bed cover and looked at my clothes, or more like the lack of them. I was wearing my own underwear and bra, but the t-shirt was two sizes too big and had the Dodgers’ logo on it. Definitely not mine, and likely a man’s size.

  The bed I was occupying was a big king-size—the room was clean and nicely furnished, with the heavy curtains pulled back, and light coming from outside. I squinted my eyes, trying to get an idea of where I was, but all I could make out through the window was a tree and a cloudless blue sky. I was about to bolt out of bed, but my feet felt like wooden planks, and my muscles were still contracted from being in the same position for a long time. My brain was not sending any commands to my treacherous body to move.

  The door to the room opened, and the incomer startled me. My hand, like it had a mind of its own, shot up and grasped onto some hard object lying on the pillow next to me. I pointed the thing at the man who walked in, and my gesture made him step back, his eyes alarmed.