Scarlet
WHEN I HAD closed the little pink diary full of a child’s monsters and nightmares, I picked up my keys, walked outside, and went directly to my car. I didn’t take my purse. I didn’t put on pants or shoes. None of this registered with me until I was one hour from Moulton. With no phone, no money, no shoes, no pants I realized I didn’t exactly know how I was going to get gas.
The light was on for my gas gauge but I didn’t know how long it had been on. I hadn’t looked. The words I read, the wounds it ripped open, the memories I’d managed to block out were back. The tightness in my throat and pounding of my heart weren’t from fear. I wasn’t scared. I’d been scared for too long. My childhood had been taken from me. No, I wasn’t falling apart.
I was mad. I was motherfucking furious. I had been a child and the one person on this planet that was meant to protect me, love me, had been a cruel, selfish, monster. She’d been as dark and twisted as the men she let into my room. My world had been molded by pure sickness. Disgusting terrible things had happened to me. And she had let it. For drugs. She wanted drugs that the man who I’d called my father wouldn’t give her money for. So she had used her child to get them from sick bastards.
As I passed the city limits my car began to jerk and sputter, then the power was gone and I coasted over to the side of the road. I was given this car by a man who could have kept me safe. If he’d been around. I might not have been his daughter but I was a kid who needed saving. He’d let it go on causing years and years of damage before he stopped it. Innocence I couldn’t get back.
Opening the car door, I took my pink diary of horror and left the keys in the car that had been given to me for appearances . . . I leaned over, opened the glove compartment and took the matches that said Bright Eyes Diner on them. That was it. All I needed from this car.
I began walking. Toward the prison I’d been raised in. The pretty white picket fence that had appeared normal and happy on the outside. While all the ugliness in the world was inside.
The diary was clasped tightly in my fist. I didn’t even want to look at it. The childish pink plastic coating with the silver lettering normally held memories girls cherished when they grew up. Dixie had diaries full of stories about ponies and Asher smiling at her. She had stories about baking cookies for Santa and the day her mom took her to get fitted for a bra the first time.
Not mine though. The only happy story in it was the last one. The day I shoved Emily James and made a best friend. Dixie had been bright and clean. No dirty secrets. She was like a perfect being. I had once thought being close to her would help cleanse me in a way. But no. Nothing could replace the past.
My feet were getting filthy I noticed. Good. I was going to the most soiled, disgusting place I knew in this world. I should be as dirty on the outside as she’d made me on the inside. My hair was tangled. My makeup smeared from last night. None of that mattered. Why should it? Appearances meant nothing. I knew that all too well.
Turning on the street I’d walked down a million times. I spat on the ground. Fury began to simmer as my temple pounded in a rhythm. I noticed nothing. Paid no attention to my surroundings until I was standing in the front yard of the house I’d been raised in.
Every horrible second I spent in that house came back to me. After reading the diary, I had remembered the things I’d managed to block out. The moments I’d cried begging a God if there was one listening to me to take me. I didn’t want to live. What seven-year-old girl should even consider death an option? It was a sad world where this was even an issue. I didn’t want to think of another little girl or boy living through what I did.
If I was given one wish in this world that would be it—to save them. The kids being abused. Sexually and physically. Children shouldn’t be hurt. They should know security. Pain and fear comes later in life, but it shouldn’t be a part of childhood.
My feet moved me forward. I had no control over my body. It was as if it knew what needed to happen. I had come here without thinking about it. The fact I was in a tee shirt and nothing else proved that. I had needed to be here with this book facing this demon. This hell had been all I’d known until Dixie. Until her parents let me come to their house. Not once having a clue they were giving me the only joy I had ever experienced. The family dinners I was a part of with them taught me that life wasn’t a twisted place. That drug addict mothers and sexual abuse wasn’t the norm. There were real families.
I stood on the porch. It was in need of a new paint job. The white cheery outside was peeling and things seemed worn. Forgotten. My father had given up appearances it seemed. My mother had never truly cared. She just needed her next fix. If she had a supply of narcotics she was good.
I held the pink diary in my hands. It was slightly damp where I’d gripped it tight as I walked from the car to the house. This tiny book held the secrets of this house. The memories I wanted to erase. The past I wished hadn’t been mine. Or anyone’s. Not even my worst enemy would I wish this life on.
My fingertip pressed the doorbell. The familiar chime played loudly. She was here. Her car was parked out front. I didn’t even know what time it was. I left my phone back at the trailer. I had nothing but my strength. I wasn’t that little girl anymore.
The door opened after several minutes. Before I pressed the bell again. Hungover, aged and worn out, my mother opened the door. She squinted as if I had woken her up at six in the morning. It had to be after twelve.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she slurred her words. The woman who had birthed me had never wanted me. She wanted a life she would never lead.
“This,” I said holding up the pink diary in my left hand. “I am here because of the words in this diary. A child’s diary, Mother. Words written by a little girl who had no one. Not one goddamn soul on this planet to care for her. Protect her. Not one!” My voice had grown hysterical. I could hear the hysteria. I didn’t care if I was yelling. I didn’t care if neighbors heard me. Where had they been? When men were coming and going from this house with a child inside. Where were they?
“What are you talking about?” she snapped at me, still squinting against the afternoon sun. Her wrinkles were showing her age too soon. The tone of her skin was closer to yellow than tan. The drugs were aging her faster than fate would.
“The secrets of my childhood. The fear. The terror that my world consisted of. That’s what I am talking about. The moments you used me for your addiction. When I should have been playing with my dolls without tears in my eyes.” I stopped and inhaled deeply. My throat felt tight.
“Are you here to bitch to me about that? Jesus fucking Christ, Scarlet. You lived. You liked it,” she spat. “Just look at the whore you turned into. Chasing boys like Bray Sutton. You’re no better than me. Go ahead and judge me, girl. But you weren’t planned. I didn’t need or want a child. You came anyway. I had to find a way to deal with this shit life.”
Her words should have hurt me. They should have damaged me. But those times were long past. I had survived this woman. I wasn’t lost. I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t unlovable.
Saying more seemed pointless. I hadn’t come here to listen to her talk. I had started to hate the sound of her voice years ago. Instead, I slid the book under my arm and pulled a match out of the pack in my hand. Then I struck it. The flame burned orange and I took the diary of my past and held the flame to it until the pages caught fire. The orange glow grew and I was mesmerized by the way it felt. Seeing those horror stories slowly burn bright.
“What the hell are you doing?” my mother screamed.
I lit another match and dropped it on the dry rotting rug under my feet then stepped back as the flame took hold of the aged straw. I could hear my mother screaming at me but I ignored it. Much the way she ignored my cries as a child. When men I didn’t know touched me in places that hurt. In places no adult should touch a child.
Match after match I lit then dropped at my feet, then moved back waiting for it to catch fire to the wooden porch. Finally, it did. The rugs flame was strong enough to catch the wooden porch in its heat. Stepping off the porch, I began to light the bushes on fire. Thankful for my good fortune they had very little rain this spring.
In the distance, I heard sirens. I heard my mother screaming at me to stop as she ran out to the road for safety. I heard it all. I just didn’t give a fuck.
Seeing this part of my life burning like the hell it was, cleansed me. Was it revenge? I don’t know. But it felt freeing. With each flame, each flicker, every crackle from the wood that had housed my nightmares, I was freed.