Dad’s locked himself in the basement. As far as I’m concerned, he can lock himself in hell. Isabelle is plastic-wrap tight to me as we lay together on Mom’s bed. The TV is on. My eyes are on it, but I don’t watch. I wonder if Isabelle is able to lose herself in the flashing, loud cartoon. I wonder if Isabelle will ever be okay again because I’m not. I’m consumed with the darkness of violation, betrayal and shame.
He hit Mom, and he tossed me into the wall. My wrist throbs and so does my back. But my pain is nothing compared to Mom’s. Was Dad hitting Mom the same as him shoving me? Is it abuse? Is that the same or is it different?
There’s a numbness in my brain that won’t let me connect his actions with my emotions. I’m like one of Isabelle’s bandaged-by-toilet-paper dolls. Frozen, empty and emotionless.
Isabelle and I stayed in here with Mom last night. Most of it was spent consoling my sobbing mother and pressing ice to her wounds. We had the same mantra of a conversation.
Call the police, Mom.
I can’t.
Call the police, Mom.
I can’t. They won’t help me. They can’t help me. No one can.
I’m going to call the police. I’m going to tell them what happened.
Who will believe you? The cops just pulled you half-naked out of a car with Jesse Lachlin. They arrested him and pity you.
Mom went in to take a shower thirty minutes ago. The water ran for fifteen minutes, but since then it’s been silence. I glance at the door and light peeks out from underneath. A slice of worry breaks through my emotional paralysis. Yes, her body was broken and bruised, but so was her spirit. Her state of mind is fragile, and a question dances around the crazy in my mind. Would she hurt herself to escape?
I kiss Isabelle on the top of the head and cuddle her closer for a second, whispering that I’ll be right back. What I’m not prepared for is how she clings to me.
“Don’t go.” Isabelle’s grip on my arm becomes painful.
I place my hand over hers and try to gently peel her fingers off of me. “I need to check on Mom. I’ll be right back, okay?”
She slides off the bed, dragging the king-size comforter with her. Unfortunately, the biggest security blanket in the world can’t help us. “I’ll come with you.”
Realizing I won’t win this battle, I give up, and when I knock on the door of the bathroom, Isabelle fastens herself to my leg.
“Mom,” I call out. “Are you okay?”
Some shifting and she says, “I’m fine.”
No, she’s not. “Will you please open the door?”
Mom doesn’t open the door, but she does undo the lock. I bundle my sister like a burrito by the door, face her toward the TV and convince her to stay put, promising to keep the door ajar.
The hinges squeak as it opens, and it’s weird to think that a few weeks ago I was in here preparing for a date with Stewart. Mom was happy, my father was happy, but I wasn’t. I was sick, my soul was sick and I was dying. Now everyone is dying.
Mom’s wrapped in a wet towel and sits up in ball on the tile floor near her sunken bathtub. Her hair is wet, uncombed, and she shivers. I grab a stack of towels and drape them over her. It’s hard to look directly at her as the right side of her face is bruised and her lip is swollen.
I sit beside her and wonder what to say or what to do. I’m confused because she’s the parent and she should take care of me. But maybe that’s what she’s been doing, protecting me the only way she knew how. “You came into my room and touched him on purpose, didn’t you?”
She’s silent, and there’s a part of me that wants her to stay quiet, but she eventually says, “It’s better that he hits me. I don’t want you to be hurt. I have never wanted you to hurt.”
“Throw him out.”
“I can’t.”
So sick and tired of hearing I can’t, I hit the floor with my fist. “Throw him out.”
“I can’t!” she shouts, and that causes me to look at her. Mom never loses her temper. That’s Dad’s job. “I’ve tried, Scarlett. For years. He won’t go. Just because I tell him to leave doesn’t mean he has to. This is his house, his home. The deed is in his name. So is every car and every bank account. Don’t you understand? I own nothing. I have no legal right to a thing. I can’t throw him out. He’s the one who can throw me out, and then who’s going to be here to protect you girls? No one, and I can’t live with that. I have never been able to stomach the idea of leaving here to save myself and risk putting you girls in the path of his wrath.”
“Then we leave,” I say. “We pack our bags, we grab Isabelle and we leave.”
“With what?” Mom demands. “Didn’t you hear me? We don’t have anything. You don’t think I’ve thought of leaving hundreds of times over the years? If I leave here, I leave with the clothes on my back.
“I have no money to feed you, no money to house you, no money for a lawyer, and your father would have full custody of the two of you before I could turn the doorknob of the front door. Your father has money, he has influence. He has friends in the system, friends who have gone through ugly divorces, powerful friends who will side with him. I’ll lose, and I cannot leave you here to defend yourselves. I can’t. I won’t.”
“But he’s hurting you. The law will protect us.”
“Do you remember Nikki Harvey? Her husband was a police officer, and he hit her for years. The abuse became so bad that she ended up in surgery. While she was in surgery, he filed a protection order against her claiming that she had attacked him and what he did to her was self-defense. By the time she made it out of surgery, he already had emergency custody of the children and she didn’t have a penny to her name. It took her years to rebuild her life. TV makes leaving look so easy, but it’s not, Scarlett. The system can be manipulated. The system is broken.”
My mind is a whirlwind as I try to grasp an answer. Any answer. And like a miracle, the answer is there. The plan. The one Pastor Hughes went over with me. The one he said could save my life. “Then we go to a women’s shelter. We don’t have to stay here. We don’t need anything. We start from scratch, as a family. Just you, me and Isabelle.”
“The nearest one is an hour away,” she says quietly.
“Then we take his car and we go there.”
“He’ll follow. He’ll say we stole his car.”
“Then we give him the car back after we get there, and the shelter will find a way to help us.” I visited one of the websites Pastor Hughes shared with me. Their message was clear—all we have to do is leave. “Pastor Hughes says we aren’t alone. We can go to a shelter.”
“We’re staying.” Mom sounds like Isabelle when she doesn’t want to eat her vegetables.
“If you can’t throw Dad out, then we need to leave. I hear what you’re saying, and I’m not suggesting that this will be easy, but we have to give this a shot. We need to leave.”
Mom clutches the towel I laid over her. “It’s easier to stay. It’s easier to make it work. He was doing well, and he was changing. If you think about it, you lied, and you continued to lie when we trusted you to tell us the truth.
“And think of how much pain you put your father through last night. We were so terrified something horrible had happened to you. After what your father went through with his sister, what you did last night with Jesse Lachlin was heartless.”
A dangerous flip of a switch in my brain and my head tilts. “What are you saying?”
“I should have done a better job with you. I should have never let you be friends with Jesse when you were younger. Maybe I should have sent you to a private school. I should have done better to teach you to follow the rules. If we follow the rules then everything will be perfect. Your father would never be angry, and then we’d be happy.”
Her words vibrate along my body, and my mind starts to split into tiny fractures. “Are you blaming me? Are you blaming yourself?”
Mom’s eyes water, and she wipes the tears away. “Why couldn’t you forgive your father? Why couldn’t you have just learned to not be so upset? If we had just followed the rules, we would have been okay. He doesn’t get angry when we follow the rules, but now we have to start all over again and he’s going to be so hurt.”
He’s hurt? She’s the one with bruises on her body. “Dad hurt you, Mom. He hurt me. This isn’t my fault, and this isn’t your fault. This is Dad’s fault, and it’s time for you to stop making excuses for him.”
Mom stands. I’m shaking as I rise and follow her into her bedroom. She doesn’t go for her closet, nor does she go for her dresser. Instead she slips on her robe and heads for the door.
“Where are you going?”
She glances over her shoulder, but she doesn’t look me in the eye. “Think of how heartbroken your father has to be. He thought he lost you. I should have been more supportive. I should have done a better job helping him calm down last night.”
My mind completely cracks, and I try to grasp how the conversation turned so wrong, so quickly. “This isn’t your fault.”
She shakes her head as if she doesn’t agree and then leaves the room.
“It’s not your fault,” I yell, but it doesn’t matter how loud I am. She’s not listening. “It’s none of our faults! It’s his! He’s to blame!”
“Scarlett?” Isabelle’s child-like voice, the voice of fear and innocence, cuts me deep. “Are things better now?”
I tremble so violently that my teeth chatter. “We need to leave.”
“What?”
We need to leave. But how? I have no car, and even if I did, I don’t know how to drive. Dad took my money, and I’m broke. We have no place to go, no one who will believe us, no one who will take us in. I spin as the walls of the room start to close in. We’re trapped, and there’s nothing I can do. I sink to the floor as bile rises in my throat. What do I do? God, what do I do?
A touch on my arm, and Isabelle has moved in front of me. “Do you want to hold my hand? When I get scared at school, my teacher holds my hand.”
She holds out both of her hands, palms up, and I blink as I see the little lines on her left hand—who she was born to be. Then lines on her right hand—who she is due to her choices and circumstances. On her right hand, her life line is broken and so is her heart line.
Glory asked me if I had the courage to change the lines on my hand. I don’t know if I can change me, but I have to be strong enough to change the lines on my sister’s. “If I ask you to be quiet, and do absolutely everything I tell you to do, will you leave me with me?”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe.”
Isabelle nods her agreement.
“How do you feel about climbing a tree?”
* * *
Climbing down the tree with my sister was terrifying. She was a little too eager, going a little too fast, and I finally have an appreciation of how Jesse feels when he climbs with me.
Going out one of the doors would have been preferable, but opening the door would set off the alarm throughout the house, alerting my parents we were leaving, and I don’t know the code to turn off the security system.
I feel like a fugitive, and it’s a terrible sensation. I have this itch between my shoulder blades, a sensation that there’s a bull’s-eye painted on my back.
If the cycle holds true then Mom and Dad will spend hours drowning in each other’s misery before they reemerge in their attempt to be parents again. When they do emerge and find us gone, Dad will search, and I don’t want him to find me, not until I’m ready.
A cold, light rain mists over me, and it makes the hike through the field treacherous, especially with my sister riding piggyback. Her arms are knotted tight around my neck, choking me, but I don’t reprimand her. She’s scared enough, and I do my best to readjust.
It’s Sunday, and the tiny white church comes into view. It seems like a lifetime since I was here for Suzanne’s funeral. I guess it has been. I’m not the same person I was back then, and I’ll never be that person again.
People who had been gathered together talking after service wave goodbye to each other, get in their cars and pull away. There’s only one car left, and I’m praying it belongs to the one person I need. At the street, I stop, slip my sister to the ground and have a moment of déjà vu. I glance over my shoulder at the weeping willow and there’s a flash of disappointment that Glory’s not there. I didn’t think I did real friendships, but I now consider her one.
Taking Isabelle’s hand in mine, we cross the street, walk up the steps and into the aging church. Pastor Hughes is near the front, busying himself at the altar, but he freezes when he spots me and my sister.
The circulating air in the church hits my wet skin, and goose bumps form. I can imagine how we look—bedraggled, drowned rats. Wet hair stuck to our scalps, and our jeans and sweaters are darkened from the rain. Beads of water drop from us onto the carpet.
“What happened?” Pastor Hughes asks.
What if I made the wrong choice? What if I tell him and he sends us back? What if he just tells me to give counseling another try?
“My daddy hit my mom,” Isabelle says, and the admission in her soft voice rocks through me like rolling thunder.
Pastor Hughes slowly walks toward us as if we’re wounded animals he’s scared he’ll frighten off. When he reaches us, he pulls his cell out of his pocket and offers it to me. “What did I tell you do to when your dad hit your mom?”
My throat swells as a million voices of doubt enter my head. “Can you call?”
“I can if that’s what you want me to do, and I will if you don’t. But you need to take control of the situation. You need to do this, Scarlett. You need to take control of your life.”
My lips pull down and it’s hard to speak. “Mom will deny what he did.”
“But that doesn’t mean they won’t believe you.”
“They won’t.”
“I believe you.”
“Because you already knew he hit her.”
“I knew there was past abuse between your parents, but we were under the impression that the abuse had happened years ago.”
My eyes snap shut as disappointment rolls through me. Mom lied to me. She lied to the counselors, but she wouldn’t see it that way. She’d see it as telling most of the truth. Then again, I shouldn’t be shocked.
“You need to understand this,” Pastor Hughes says, “even if I didn’t know about the past abuse, I still would believe you.”
I grip my sister’s hand tighter. Is this real? Is he lying?
“I believe you,” he repeats.
The sweet words hold me like a hug, and I pray to God I’m making the right choice. I accept the cell, and Pastor Hughes holds out his hand to my sister for her to take. “I’m Pastor Hughes. Something tells me you haven’t had anything to eat yet today. Which one would you like? Breakfast or lunch?”
My sister looks up at me, waiting for my judgment if this man is friend or foe. If he is to be trusted or denied. I understand her need for confirmation. Our trust radars have been broken for years, but now that I know what love is, I’m getting a better sense of where to turn.
I give Isabelle a nod, and she places her hand in his. She doesn’t answer his question, but I know my sister. “Breakfast. Her favorite is pancakes.”
“Then pancakes you will get. Scarlett, you hold on to that cell until you make the call. Once you do, you can give it back to me. Until then, let’s go to my office so we can call my wife and ask her to bring breakfast and some warm clothes for both of you.”
With Isabell holding both of our hands, the three of us walk toward his office.