“You didn’t come visit me on my birthday.”

I hear my mom’s voice in the pitch black of my dream. The darkness spreads all around me. I can’t see.

“I missed you,” she says but her voice sounds closer this time and it echoes all around me. The only other sounds are my chaotic breathing and the pounding of my heart as fear filters into my blood. Every pulse feels harder and forces the desperation to get out of here to climb high into my throat.

Run.

I try to run; I try to scream. But I can’t.

Open your eyes. Wake up!

I wish I could obey my own pleas.

Slowly my eyes open, but I’m not in my bed. I’m in the alley on Park Street. I swear I feel tears on my face. My throat is raw from hours of screaming. My nails are broken and there’s blood everywhere. The metallic scent of it, the feel of it dried but still sticky and wet in other places over my skin, it’s all I can smell and feel.

My body is so heavy.

“Why didn’t you come visit me?” My mother’s voice taunts me as I try to lift my head.

My body’s heavy, lying on the ground. My cheek is flat against the cold, hard asphalt.

“I wanted to sing you a lullaby, baby girl. I miss being your mama.” I feel fresh tears start.

“Please don’t,” I whimper where I am. The pain flows as freely as the fear of seeing her again. I wish I could run.

“So, did I, baby girl,” my mother responds to my unspoken thoughts. “Or for someone to help me,” she adds.

I hear footsteps behind me and my heart pounds harder and faster. The adrenaline in my body is useless.

On instinct, I scream for help, but my voice is so quiet.

“No one can hear you, baby girl.” She’s closer. My body trembles and I try so hard to move, but not a single limb obeys. I try my fingers. One by one, please. Please move, but nothing moves. I’m cemented where I am.

“Well, maybe they can, but they don’t listen.”

The chill from the night air gets colder as a darker shadow covers my body. She’s behind me now. I try to swallow, so I can clear my throat and beg her, but it’s pointless.

“It’s time for your lullaby,” she threatens.

“I promise I’ll sleep.” My words come out as a strangled plea. I remember the way the heavy base of the glass vodka bottle landed against my temple. She didn’t sing it like this, so calmly. It started out this way though. And once she started, she never stopped. Not until I was unconscious. She knew when I was pretending. She always knew.

“Go to sleep,” she sings to me in a gravelly voice, dry and slurred from drinking, “go to sleep, lit-tle Chlo-e.”

Tears stream down my cheeks.

“Close your eyes, rest your head.”

Remembering how she beat me furiously with the bottle.

She drags her finger across my skin, trailing along the curve where my neck meets my shoulders. Her nail is jagged and slick with fresh blood. Pulling my hair behind my neck so she can whisper in my ear, she finishes the lullaby, “It’s time for bed.”