We Were Ghosts--The Secret Life of a Survivor

by Tabitha Barret

  I cried into my pillow and wept for him, wept for what he was going through. I wept for myself and for all the emotions seeing him in pain triggered. All my fear, anger, pain, and despair that I kept locked away flooded to the surface until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. My scattered emotions threw me into a hysterical state as all the images I tried to hide away overtook my mind. I couldn’t stop my rage as I thought about being touched and groped. I wanted to tear my skin from my body, but it was useless.

  Rocking on my bed, I tried to push everything away so I could gain control, but it was difficult. I hated thinking about what was happening to me because I had no way to combat it. Thinking about it only made it worse because I felt small and insignificant. Knowing that Zack was hurting too made me feel a little less alone, but I was mad that he was also suffering in silence.

  When I heard the bell on the garage door chime, I stopped breathing. It was the warning bell and I was out of time. It was 5:00 PM and Phil was home.

  My tears shut off like a sprinkler and I sat stiffly on my bed. I wiped my face and dabbed at my running nose. I was forced to put away everything I was feeling. I locked Zack away in my secret vault for later. I wasn’t supposed to be talking to a boy. I wasn’t supposed to know about his terrible situation. Everything that I was or would ever be sank down into my stomach and I allowed the numbness to take control. I couldn’t show any signs of distress or weakness. He would interrogate me if I expressed anything other than indifference for my day. I would be forced to tell him about Zack if there was any trace of emotion on my face.

  I leaned over and opened my door. I heard him coming up the stairs by the time I sat back down on the bed. I was fully composed when he reached my room.

  “Your mother is coming home early because she isn’t feeling well. Hurry up and take your pants off,” he commanded as he threw his coat over the back of my desk chair.

  Chapter 7

  In the morning, I was still in a stupor over the revelation that I wasn’t the only abused kid on the block. I hadn’t slept all night because I kept hearing the sound of the belt hitting Zack’s body. Twice I had gotten up in the middle of the night, afraid that I was going to vomit. I spent a lot of time staring at my reflection in the bathroom, trying to figure out how to help Zack and the rest of the time lamenting the fact that I couldn’t help myself.

  If Zack’s mother were being abused, there wouldn’t be many options for Zack to get away from his father. I was stuck in my own hell because my mother couldn’t afford to move out of Phil’s house, or rather, had grown accustomed to no longer being poor and refused to go back to that lifestyle. I had tried to convince my grandmother and my aunt to let me spend as much time as possible with them, which they agreed to, but Phil had stepped in and told them that I had too much homework and chores to be away from home.

  I felt bad for Zack, but moreover, I was angry for him. It didn’t seem fair that both of us should have to deal with something as horrible as this.

  Walking through the hallways that morning, I wondered who else was in a similar situation. I had no idea what the statics were regarding child abuse, but Zack and I must have broken some kind of record for the town. I silently scanned the crowd of students and wondered if Andrew was a dick because someone beat him or if Taylor picked on the girls because he had some kind of trauma that he was dealing with. In the end, I decided that they were just stupid jerks.

  I ran through the list of plan B’s that I had in my back pocket every time I had the crazy idea of telling someone about my miserable circumstances. The school had botched their response to the incident where one of the seniors had brought his camera to school and snapped a few pictures when he lifted a freshman’s skirt. How could they handle what Zack or I were going through when they messed up on something less serious like that?

  The girl had been mortified, but the school only gave the senior detention for a week. He didn’t have to sit through lectures on how embarrassing and hurtful his actions had been. No one, except for the Guidance Counselor, talked to the girl about the incident. It may have seemed like a minor thing, but they hadn’t even asked for the camera negatives since they were considered private property and had no interest in involving the police. I often wondered what had happened to the film negatives and if the senior in question had developed the photos. The girl’s parents were mad, but somehow the school made everything go away. The girl was harassed by the other stupid boys in her class and she ended up moving.

  I thought about calling the cops on Zack’s father, but deniability was always the problem. Zack’s father could say that the bruises were from sports, or typical teen activities like biking or skateboarding. Abusers knew how to lie, something I had firsthand experience with. If his mother was afraid of her husband, the cops wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Having watched a lot of cop shows, I knew that domestic disturbance cases were hard to deal with. The abused kids or wives/husbands usually dropped the charges out of fear or a strange sense of loyalty to their abusers.

  It was possible to seek out an older, wiser person to help me, but then I would get the standard refusal of acceptance and have to listen to the excuse that maybe Zack deserved being punished for doing something I didn’t know about. It wasn’t against the law to physically punish a child by spanking them. Unfortunately, being hit with a belt was something my grandparents would wistfully talk about doing to my mom, aunts, and uncles, so it was doubtful that anyone a generation older than me would believe that this was a serious issue.

  No. The situation was precarious and the wrong move could make things worse for Zack. Instead, I decided that the best thing I could do was be there for him, even if he tried to push me away.

  I ran through many variations of what I would say to Zack so that I could offer my support, but each of them sounded stupid and made it seem like I had been spying on him. It was one of those impossible subjects to broach.

  Hey, I heard that you were hit with a belt yesterday. I’m really sorry about that.

  Gee, I went to your house and found out about your terrible secret. Want to talk about it?

  Here’s a cookie, I’m sorry that your father is a jerk and hits you.

  None of these sentences could be uttered by a decent human being, so I fell into a sad state somewhere between depression and silent rage.

  When I didn’t see Zack at his locker in the morning, I was worried about him. I thought that maybe he was too injured to come to school. The thought made me sick, until I realized that hospitals asked questions. They would want to know how a sixteen year old had fallen multiple times on a railing or piece of a wood the exact width of a belt. Most likely, his father knew the exact point between a day home in bed healing and a trip to the emergency room if this kind of thing happened often.

  I spent the day in a complete fog, barely remembering that I was supposed to hang out with Megan that night. When she asked me which movie I wanted to watch, I blurted out the first thing I could think of and said The Breakfast Club. I cringed when I remembered that Judd Nelson’s character was also abused by his father. It made me spiral even further until Kris noticed my funk at lunch.

  “You seem off today. I noticed that Zack isn’t here. I heard that he made the football team,” she said, taking a sip of her soda and curling a loose strand of her blonde hair around her finger.

  Of course, Kris would assume I was sad that Zack wasn’t at school.

  “Yeah, I heard that he had an off day at tryouts,” I said vaguely, hoping to deflect any more questions about Zack and football.

  “That’s too bad. I heard that he was all-state at his other school, though I don’t really know what that means, aside from the fact that it’s a positive thing,” she shrugged.

  I grinned at her information, always curious about her sources. “How do you find these things out?” I asked, knowing that she didn’t gossip with anyone. Kris preferred to keep a low profile and get through the day. Her mom was tough on her and crazy about maki
ng her do chores. Her mom was nice, but a little intense.

  She motioned to the jock table with her head. “Sean and Bill always talk through me in Spanish, like I’m not there and I don’t occupy the space between their seats. I often have to pass notes for them. They are too stupid to fold them, so I glance at them when I can. Anyway, they were really impressed by the things Zack had done during tryouts, though I couldn’t tell you what any of it meant. I just got the general idea that Zack was really good at whatever position he played,” she said, popping a cheese ball into her mouth and crunching into it.

  “I think he was really nervous about playing,” I said absently as I watched Megan attempt to gulp down her entire soda with only two minutes before the bell rang.

  Kris nodded and looked at me as if Megan was crazy for attempting the feat. Jill stood up, grabbed her personal belongings, and stepped away from Megan, who would most likely end up spraying someone with her mouthful of soda. Inevitably, Kris and I were forced to retreat from the table as soda splashed in our general direction. Though Megan had managed to swallow most of the soda, she dropped the can and it spilled across the table.

  “You guys go ahead, I’ll wait for the janitor and help clean this up,” Megan said, dismayed that her books were now a sticky mess.

  Jill patted her shoulder and the rest of us tried not to laugh at her pathetic pout.

  Later that afternoon, I ventured into the woods to see if Zack was fighting the trees again, but he was nowhere in sight. I considered knocking on his door to check on him, but decided against it; otherwise, I would be late getting back to my house.

  After dinner, I packed my purse with some candy and a bag of microwaved popcorn as back up in case we went through whatever Megan’s mom had bought as snacks. I ran a brush through my hair to kill the knots that had formed during my fretting. I put on some chap stick and my sneakers and headed down to the living room.

  My mom was sitting on the couch with a blanket over her lap. “I’m ready,” I smiled. Though the car ride wasn’t long, I did enjoy chatting with her during the drive. She wanted me to date boys and hang out with my friends. She was forced to argue with Phil when he tried to restrict my movements, though she didn’t always win the fights because of his chess-move counterarguments. Sometimes I felt like Phil had every second of my life planned out from the time I stepped off the bus in the afternoon until I stepped on the bus to go to school. I was convinced that he had a giant time grid stashed away in his office so that he knew where I was at any given moment.

  Mom never seemed to see the larger picture and figure out that Phil couldn’t care less about how much I studied or what I got on my tests. He only cared about controlling every aspect of my personal life while keeping his secret safe. Then again, he often did the same thing to her. He would ask her where she was going and demand to know what time she was coming home. It would get to the point where she would decide against visiting her friends or relatives—anyone who might question his erratic behavior and bring it to my mother’s attention—and stay home.

  “I’m not feeling well. My stomach is upset. I was hoping that dinner would help to settle it, hence the soup and sandwiches, but it didn’t help,” she said rubbing her stomach. “Phil can take you.”

  Ice trickled through my veins at the thought of being in the car with him. “It’s okay, I don’t have to go,” I said, tossing my purse into the corner of the living room next to the end table.

  “Oh no, you should go. You promised Megan that you would see her tonight. You bailed on her last week when I was working late. You should see your friend and have fun. I wish you would spend more time with your friends,” she said sincerely.

  I thought about making myself vomit to prove that I couldn’t go, but Phil already had his car keys in his hand.

  “Okay, Mom. Feel better,” I mumbled as I retrieved my purse.

  Once I was secured inside the car, the questions started.

  “There aren’t going to be any boys there, right?” Phil asked more as a statement. It was his standard opening tactic.

  “It’s just me and Megan,” I replied automatically.

  “If I find out that she invited anyone else over...,” he threatened.

  “No one else will be there, just like every other time I go,” I huffed.

  There was a time before Phil, when I had a normal life, but I was eight and too young to remember a lot of it. The ironic part was that Phil hated me when he started dating my mom. He didn’t like children and thought they were a nuisance. He had a military background and liked having order in life and lots of rules.

  When my mother decided to move in with him, there was a period of adjustment where my semi-bohemian mother, who didn’t mind having clothing on the floor and dishes in the sink, had to learn to follow the rules. Saturday mornings were for cleaning our rooms and doing laundry, not for sleeping in. My mother moved out or threatened to move out a few times, but ultimately returned to him. Looking back, I assume he made her recite the house rules and swear to live by them, if only metaphorically. Phil enjoyed having control over everyone and everything around him, which was why he didn’t have many friends.

  I tuned back in just as my favorite part of Phil’s rant started. “You know what will happen if they find out about us. They will know who you really are. They will find out what you enjoy,” he said as if I cared about what he said. I was smart enough to know that he was trying to scare me, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t interested in upending my crappy life. I had nowhere to go.

  It bothered me that he used the word “us” as if he considered what he did to me a relationship. We apparently were a couple in his eyes, which made my stomach crawl. I hated him and I hated the things he did to me. No matter how many times he threatened to expose our “relationship” and blame me for starting it, I clung to the truth. I wanted nothing to do with him or his demented urges.

  I had once considered living with my father, who I considered a part-time dad, but it would have been nearly as bad. He was a known cheater and his wife kept him on a short leash. She would sit in the car and honk the horn if my dad lingered at my house too long when picking me up. My stepsister did nothing but talk about moving out when she was eighteen because she hated baby-sitting my younger half-brother. Though I would be free from Phil, I knew I would never really be free. Phil didn’t like to lose at anything. He was also very good at spying and snooping, coupled with stalking. I had lost track of how many times I had been at the mall with Megan or hanging out at the park down the street from her house and I looked up to find Phil lurking nearby, watching me. His biggest fear was that I would crash his well-planned world and expose him for the monster he was. He would never allow me to slip through his fingers and live with someone who might believe me and have him arrested.

  “Why are you wearing that shirt? It looks too tight to me,” he said, moving on to the visual condemnation of my clothes, searching for hints that I was really planning to sneak out and meet another male.

  I glanced down at my bright pink T-shirt and wondered what he was talking about. If I were going out on date, I would never wear something I often slept in.

  My stomach knotted at the word date. What was I going to do about the dance, aside from fake an illness or a broken limb? Phil would insist on driving me and interrogating me on the way home. The thought made me dizzy since there was a slim chance that I might actually dance with someone. I was mad at myself for my stupid slip-up. For one bright second, I had thought that I was a real girl, a girl who was in command of her destiny—a girl who might actually have found a boy who liked her. Of course, I still wasn’t sure if Zack liked me as a girlfriend or a friend. That was a problem for another time since Phil was still questioning me.

  I sidestepped most of his typical questions and promised to be in front of Megan’s house, ready to leave at 10:00 PM sharp; otherwise, he would honk the horn until I came to the car and embarrass me. He refused to be civil and meet Megan’s mom and
dad. It was one of many strange games he liked to play, though sometimes I wondered if he avoided people so that they couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.

  He drove past Megan’s house once without stopping. He liked to survey the drop-off point in an effort to catch me in a lie. There was one time when Megan’s neighbor was standing in her front yard talking to her dad. Tom was a handsome twentysomething who had come home for Spring Break and was asking her father if he could get a job with his landscaping company.

  Phil had taken one look at the broad chested god and pulled away from Megan’s house with his tires squealing. I was grounded for a month because he refused to accept that Tom was not my boyfriend and that I had only spoken to him once. Our entire conversation had consisted of, “goodbye”. According to Phil, goodbye meant, “you are my boyfriend and I enjoy sleeping with you.” It took a few months to get past that nightmare.

  Circling around the block, he slowed to a crawl and investigated the dark lawn and driveway for Tom or anyone who wanted to be Tom. He finally pulled into the driveway, but locked the power locks before I could bolt from the car.

  “Who do you belong to?” he asked, staring at me.

  I had so many responses to throw back at him, but only one would unlock the car. “You,” I muttered.