ABUSED
A Daughter’s Story
by L.L. Bartlett
Copyright © 2010 by L. L. Bartlett
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
L.L. Bartlett's powerful "Abused: A Daughter’s Story" grabs hold immediately and doesn't let go. This heart-tugger's hero, Emily, displays amazing resilience and strength. I know I'll remember this story for a long, long time.
--Julie Hyzy, Barry- and Anthony-award winning author of the White House Chef Mysteries
ABUSED
A Daughter’s Story
by L.L. Bartlett
“Take the picture,” Daddy said from behind me.
“I don’t want to.”
“Take it,” he grated, and I knew better than to defy one of Daddy’s orders.
I brought the little camera’s viewfinder up to eye level and framed the shot. Mama looked almost pretty, dressed in a new floral print blouse, her hair neatly arranged, and make-up’s blush staining her cheeks. I wanted to believe she was only asleep, that the past five years hadn’t happened. But they had, and nothing could ever erase the events that had led to this day.
I squeezed off a shot, then another. I didn’t want Daddy to say I hadn’t done my best to obey him.
“Now get one of the whole coffin,” he said. “I’m paying a lot of money for this, and I want to be able to show it off for years to come.”
Take it yourself, I wanted to scream. I thought it indecent of him to make me do this. What would the neighbors think? Besides, I wanted to remember Mama alive, her head thrown back, her vibrant laugh rattling the windows. But she hadn’t been like that for years. She hadn’t had anything to laugh about for a long, long time.
I stood back and took another two pictures, then handed him the camera.
“I don’t feel well,” I said. “I’m going to sit down for a while.”
Daddy’s face twisted into a scowl. “This is how life turns out, girl. We’re all gonna end up dead. Even you—so get used to it.”
I looked away. Meeting his gaze would only be seen as a challenge, and I wasn’t about to do that here at the funeral parlor. Instead, I slowly turned and headed for a row of chairs.
Our neighbors were clustered in knots, talking and occasionally laughing. My little sister, Amber, sat in one of the chairs, her hollow-eyed stare focused on the floor. She hadn’t spoken much in the two days since Mama died, and I was worried about her.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she murmured, turning her grief-stricken eyes toward me.
“What, honey?” I asked, glad to hear her young voice. She was ten. I was seventeen.
“The doctor said she’d be home in a couple of weeks. He said she’d get better. I didn’t just dream it. You heard him say so, too, didn’t you, Emily?”
Amber’s tear-filled blue eyes bore into mine.
“Nobody’s perfect,” I said, and put my hand on her shoulder, brushing back her long blonde hair. “Even doctors make mistakes.”
“What’s gonna happen to us now?”
I had to swallow before I could answer. There was no way I could take away all her fears.
“Now that Daddy’s home, we’ll just have to make the best of it.”
“I don’t want to live with him,” she growled. She tried to look at the coffin, but couldn’t seem to make herself do it. “He did this to her. He’ll kill us, too.”
“You’ll be fine. I’ll take care of you—and the others. You’ll see.”
“But it’ll never be better. We’ll always be unhappy with him.”
For one so young, Amber had seen enough misery to last a lifetime. We all had.
I sat back in my chair and thought about the day Mama came home from the doctor’s office with a big smile on her face, her eyes alight with glee. “I’m pregnant,” she said, and crouched down to kid level. “Do you know what that means, Emily?”
I’d been six. “A new baby?” I guessed.
“That’s right.”
“We don’t need a new baby,” I told her.
“Oh yes we do,” she said. “But you’ll always be Mama’s big girl.”
My brother Bobby was five back then. We lived in a small but comfortable house, and Bobby and I had our own bedrooms.
“Where’s the baby going to sleep?” I asked suspiciously, feeling threatened that my life would have to change.
“If it’s a girl, in your room,” Mama said. “If it’s a boy, he’ll sleep with Bobby. But no matter what, I’m going to let you pick out new curtains and a new bedspread so everything will look pretty. Wouldn’t you like that?”
I remember staring at my scuffed brown school shoes, not at all happy with the prospect of sharing my living space with some crying baby.
“I’d rather have a puppy. Couldn’t we get a puppy instead?” I asked.
Mama just smiled and went back into the kitchen.
After a few months, I did get used to the idea of a new baby, and even started to look forward to the prospect. Then one morning, it was Daddy who woke me up and told me to get ready for school, which had never happened before.
“Where’s Mama?” I asked, getting out of bed, already started tucking in the blanket and sheet. Daddy had been in the Marines, and wouldn’t tolerate an unmade bed.
“I took her to the hospital last night. You’ve got a new baby sister.”
My elation turned to apprehension. I had been planning on a brother. I’d been so sure it would be a boy I’d insisted that Mama put the crib in Bobby’s room. Now I’d have to move my toy box and make room for all the other junk Mama had accumulated for this baby.
“Wash up and get dressed,” Daddy told me.
Three days later, Mama brought the new baby home. Little Amber was bright red and looked like a doll. Mama let me hold her, and told me I’d be in charge of powdering her butt at changing time. It seemed like an important job, and I took it seriously.
Sharing a room wasn’t so bad. I just had to be quiet when the baby slept. As she got older, I kept all my good toys on the closet’s high shelf, otherwise Amber would throw them around the room and break them.
Amber was two when Mama got pregnant again.
“How the hell could you let that happen?” Daddy shouted.
The door to their bedroom was closed and Bobby and I exchanged worried glances. A closed door meant trouble and even Amber seemed to understand that something bad was about to happen. She started to cry, and I quickly took her upstairs. I sat down on my bed and pulled her onto my lap and tried to distract her by singing, but every time she heard a crash downstairs, her cries would get louder.
“Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry,” I soothed her, afraid Daddy might take his anger out on her, too.
I heard Bobby’s running footsteps flying up the stairs, and the door to his room slam. I d
idn’t need to look inside to know that he’d thrown himself down on his bed, pillow clasped around his ears, to help muffle his own sobs.
Mama had a black eye the next morning. When I asked her about it, she said she’d walked into a door. She tried to laugh it off, and changed the subject—telling me what a big help I was to her.
“And I’m going to need even more of your help when the new baby comes,” she said, and ran hot water into the sink.
“Another one?” I asked with dread.
“It’s a blessing,” Mama said, but her voice cracked.
“Does this mean we aren’t going to get a dishwasher? Daddy promised you a dishwasher.”
“We’ll make do without one. We always have,” she said, and slid the breakfast dishes into the suds. “Now get ready for school.”
I prayed even harder than the last time. This time it would be a boy. Mama said Amber would get a bed to match mine, and the crib would go in Bobby’s room.
But it wasn’t a boy.
“Another girl?” I wailed when Daddy told us the news one Sunday morning.
“Her name is Dorothy. Named after Grandma.” But Amber couldn’t say Dorothy, so we called her Dee-Dee.
“This new baby is going to be a lot of work. I expect you to help your mother out,” Daddy said. “Do you know how to run the washing machine?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s time you learned.”
I also learned to wash dishes, mop floors, mow the lawn, and I always seemed to be changing diapers. I couldn’t go out to play after school because Mama always needed help with something.
“You’re the oldest,” she’d tell me when Bobby would slip away to play softball with his friends. “It’s your responsibility to help.”
My friend Jeannie would come over sometimes. She thought it was fun to change diapers and fold laundry. But as an only child, she didn’t have to do it on a daily basis. And when she went home, she could watch TV and play with her kitten.
Even though Daddy worked two jobs, there never seemed to be enough money. The fridge was always stocked with food and beer, but there wasn’t any money left for fun things for us kids.
Daddy belonged to two bowling teams, and once in a while he’d take Bobby and me fishing on his big blue boat, but those trips had become scarce after Amber was born, and never happened at all after Dee-Dee arrived. He still kept the boat. It sat in our driveway during the fall and winter months.
Dee-Dee was only five months old when I heard Mama crying on the phone one day.
“He’s gonna kill me,” she kept saying over and over again, her eyes filled with panic. The last time I’d seen that kind of fear had been when she’d told Daddy she was pregnant with Dee-Dee.
But she couldn’t be pregnant—not again.
Mama put Dee-Dee to bed early and sent Bobby, Amber and me to the neighbors that evening before Daddy came home from his second job. I remember Mrs. Boyd looking worriedly out the window. When she saw Daddy storm out the door and get into his car, she told her husband to watch us and hurried over to our house.
Bobby and Amber were watching TV, and didn’t seem to notice, glad because they got to see some old sitcom instead of Daddy’s stupid game shows, but I stayed glued to the window.
It seemed like hours before Mrs. Boyd came back and took us home. The kitchen was immaculate, and the laundry was neatly folded on the old scratched coffee table. Mama sat on our worn, old couch with an ice pack held to her cheek.
She never mentioned her pregnancy, but soon she was wearing maternity clothes again.
Christopher was born the day after Dee-Dee’s first birthday. We thought it was neat that, in the future, the new baby and Dee-Dee could share their birthdays, and I was glad because this time a crib would definitely go in Bobby’s room.
Daddy never seemed to be home, and when he was around, he was always screaming at us, issuing orders, and telling us we were stupid and a liability to him. Other fathers cut the grass, took their kids to softball games, and came to the school’s open house, but Daddy never did. He was either working or off with his buddies.
My friend Jeannie came over less and less.
“You’re no fun,” she finally told me at school one day. “All you ever do is work around the house. You can never go to Girl Scouts or the movies. You’re just boring!”
I came home crushed. She’d been the only real friend I had. There were tears in Mama’s eyes when I told her, but Chris started to cry and I could smell his diaper. Dee-Dee had been sick all day and had just thrown up on her high chair.
“I’ll take care of Chris,” I said, grudgingly, seeing she had her hands full, and dragged him into Mama’s room.
I hated that new baby. All he ever did was cry and mess his clothes.
“It’s all your fault,” I told him, as I pulled the soiled diaper from around his narrow hips, throwing it into the diaper pail. “Ever since you came, life’s been even crappier around here.”
Little Chris screwed his face into a frown and began to cry.
“Shut up!” I hollered, but the baby only began to wail louder.
“I said SHUT UP!” And for good measure, I pinched him. “There, now you’ve got something to cry about.”
“Emily!” Mama snapped from the doorway.
She picked up the howling baby, getting his poop all over her shirt. “Don’t cry, baby,” she crooned, then turned her angry gaze on me. “Where did you ever learn such cruelty?”
Without even thinking, I blurted, “From Daddy.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “What do you mean?”
“He always does that to Amber or Dee-Dee when they cry. Once he pinched Bobby so hard he left a big bruise on his arm.”
Mama sank down on the bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. She looked ugly, her thin, white face pinched, and for the first time I noticed her drab brown hair was streaked with gray. Three babies in four years had turned Mama into an old woman.
Soon, she was sobbing as hard as Chris.
My stomach churned in panic.
“I’m sorry, Mama, I won’t do it again. I promise. Please stop crying,” and then I realized that I was crying, too. I could hear Dee-Dee in the kitchen, and saw Amber standing in the doorway, tears streaming down her little red cheeks.
Daddy came home late that night. Always a light sleeper, I awoke when I heard raised voices coming from the living room. I closed the bedroom door, so as not to wake Amber and Dee Dee, and tip-toed halfway down the stairs so I could hear better.
“To think that you would hurt one of your own children,” Mama was saying.
“A little discipline never hurt anyone,” Daddy countered.
“But to pinch a crying baby—”
“You’re too damned soft on all those kids. Now come on, take off that nightgown and come to bed.”
“No, I won’t. We don’t have any rubbers and you’ll be the first to scream if I end up knocked up again. Besides, I’m tired of being at your beck and call. You could at least show me some affection when we make love, instead of—”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” Daddy cut her off, and I crept back upstairs.
I felt a lot older than my eleven years.
After that, Mama tried not to depend on me so much, but I could see that being a full-time mother of five kids—two of them in diapers—and keeping up with cooking and laundry was often more than she could handle. I helped out as much as I could and tried not to get angry that I’d been forced to take on more than any child should. And I avoided Daddy as much as possible.
As the months dragged on, it seemed like we saw less and less of Daddy. Mama always said he was working, but we never seemed to have any more money.
Christopher was about eighteen months old when I realized the extent of the trouble in my parents’ marriage. I came home from school and found Mama crying while she folded clothes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She wiped her nose on a tissue and con
tinued to fold Christopher’s hand-me-down baby clothes. “Nothing. I got something in my eye.”
The phone rang and the baby started to cry. “Go check on Chris,” Mama said, and I dutifully went upstairs to get him up from his nap.
When I came back down, I grabbed a diaper and started to change him. I could hear Mama on the phone, talking to Grandma, and I tried to listen.
“Darlene Murray saw them at the bowling alley. She left at the same time they did and said they got into Rob’s car. Then they drove off. She stopped at the grocery store and saw his car again, parked in that same apartment complex.” She paused. “I don’t know. Two months ago he told me it was over. And you know I don’t believe in divorce. It wouldn’t be good for the children. Besides, I haven’t even talked to him about it yet.” She paused again. “I know. But I can’t push him into anything. What would we do if he left? You know how vindictive he can be.”
I finished changing Chris’s diaper, slung him on my hip, and went into the living room.
Mama’s face froze, going white.
“I can’t talk any more. I’ll call you later. Yes, I promise. Bye.” She hung up.
“It isn’t nice to listen in on other people’s telephone conversations,” Mama said, using her most stern voice.
“It isn’t nice for a man to cheat on his wife and family, either,” I said.
Mama’s mouth dropped open, her cheeks blushing dark pink.
“We don’t need him, Mama. We can make out just fine without him.”
“Don’t even think such a thing,” she said. “And don’t you dare say anything to Bobby or anyone else about this.”
“No, Mama,” I said.
She took Chris from my arms. “Finish folding the wash, will you? I have to go make supper.” She headed for the kitchen.
Probably macaroni and cheese—again. That’s all we ever seemed to eat. I folded the laundry and put it away.
So Daddy had a girlfriend. I wasn’t surprised. But the thought of divorce didn’t frighten me. I worried more about him hurting Mama or one of the kids during one of his drunken rages.
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