I
I woke up about six hours later still a little bit sore. I went straight into the bathroom and took another shower. No matter how long and hard I scrubbed I still felt dirty. I changed the gauze on my breast and stomach and brushed my teeth thoroughly. I glanced down at my wrist and saw my scar. I had an identical one on my other wrist, too. They were about two in a half years old. I had done it the wrong way; otherwise, I’d be dead right now. I had sliced the blade from left to right -- like they do in the movies -- but in reality you’re supposed to start from the start of your palm to the inside of your elbow, if you want the job done right. I quickly blocked out that old memory and rinsed. I got dressed in blue jeans and a black tee-shirt of the band ‘Seether’. I limped out into the living room and was thankful that Mom and Craig were still in their room. I sunk into the love seat and flipped on the television. While I sat there watching my program I painted my toe and finger nails -- I had nothing better to do.
A couple minutes later, I saw the bedroom door at the end of the hallway swing open out of the corner of my eye. Mom came walking out with her stomach stretching out the white tee-shirt she was wearing. She didn’t have any pants on, just her undergarments. She was due to deliver in another month and I dreaded the day. I wished so bad that I could be happy for my soon to be sibling, but I just couldn’t. This was no place to raise a child. It wouldn’t be able to live healthy, probably start doing drugs at a very young age. It was disgusting, really. I looked at Mom. She was disgusting, too. Her pale skin lit up the dark kitchen in which she stood, brewing coffee.
Craig walked out of the bedroom rubbing his head, wearing nothing but stained underwear. His body reeked of liquor and sex. He scratched his crotch while looking at me. “So … plan on telling me where you went last night?”
“I already told you, I just went out for a walk,” I whispered.
Then without notice, he leaped at me and grasped his hand around my throat, choking me. “Yeah well didn’t I tell you that you’d pay for that little stunt you pulled last night? I’m gonna go take a shit. I expect you to be in my bedroom when I get out.” I held the tears in as I watched him wobble off into the bathroom. I was sick of crying. I gently rubbed my now sore throat and looked behind me at Mom, who was now eating a bowl of cereal, and begged for help with my eyes.
“Don’t look at me with that shit,” she muttered, and went back to her Cheerios. I glanced down at my wrists and highly considered reopening my scars, but then I heard someone at the front door knocking.
“I’ll get it,” I stated, and stood up to my feet. I must have forgotten about the previous night because I quietly yelped out in pain when I started walking, or rather limping really. When I swung the door open, I was facing a man wearing light blue jeans and a jean jacket of the same color. His blue Chicago Cubs cap was tightly wrapped around his skull. His eyes looked me over with amazement and I wondered if he was some sort of creep or something. He was probably just one of Craig’s loser friends. “Hello?” I said. I was taken back when I noticed tears coming out of his eyes. “Um … can I help you?” This man seemed oddly familiar.
“It’s me,” the man said. “It’s Daddy, baby. Don’t you remember me? I used to have a bunch of hair?”
Could this man be my father? It certainly was possible. So many questions wanted to burst out of my body all at once but before I was able to let one escape, Mom interrupted us. “Kristie, honey,” she said, “go to your room. Now.”
I pleaded against it at first but in the end, I threw in the towel and surrendered to my room. I tried to eavesdrop but their voices were too low, but fortunately (maybe it should have been unfortunately, I don’t know) they started to yell at each other. I couldn’t really make out the words they were saying because their pronunciation was slurred. My heart froze when I heard the bathroom door creak open. I heard more yelling and then a thud. Something had fallen heavily on the carpet floor. What was going on? Was there fighting involved? Was this mysterious man really my father? All these questions and the pain from my genitals, breast and stomach caused the tears to start pouring out again. I clenched my hands around my bed sheet and gritted my teeth.
Before I knew it, my white painted door swung open and that man was storming in my room. He tossed a yellow legal pad on my bed and stared me into the eyes. I took note that we both shared the same color blue. “You may or may not remember me,” he said, “but I am your father. Call me on that number in a couple of hours. I love you, sweetheart.”
I watched as he left in shock. He had called me sweetheart, and that sounded o’ so familiar. I remembered that my father had used to call me sweetheart, with that same exact voice, too. Another vague memory, but a memory nonetheless.
I looked down at the legal pad and quickly memorized the phone number sloppily written on the yellow paper. I was certain that it would not be in my presence for very much longer, but it was okay; the digits were safely put away in the back of my head.
II
I was greatly amused and amazed at the sight of my knocked out step-dad. He rested on his stomach with drool escaping from between his lips. He almost reminded me of a puppy dog taking a nap, but then the familiar image of him thrusting on top of me came back to my head. I looked around to make sure Mom wasn’t in sight and kicked Craig right in the ribs. I kicked him two more times for good measure and smiled.
I made my way into the kitchen and pulled myself a glass of milk. I wondered where Mom was. Then I heard the distinct sound of tears escaping from her bedroom. I felt bad for her. I didn’t want to, because she was basically trash, but she was still my mother, you know? I set down my glass and walked into the back room, which was devoured by darkness. I was still able to see well enough, though. And what I saw turned my stomach. Mom was sitting on her bed crying her eyes out, just like I had been doing not even ten minutes ago. However, unlike me, she held a thin yellowish tube between her teeth, the other end of the tube being tied tightly around her arm. The needle was halfway injected into her veins when I walked in. “Mom …”
“Kristie, goddamn it, get the fuck out of here! Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Mom … you shouldn’t be doing that. You have a baby in your stomach … you’re gonna kill it or make it come out all deformed.”
Death seemed like the most merciful option for the poor offspring.
“Oh what the fuck do you care, you little spoiled bitch?” Mom snapped. She was done with the needle so she whipped the syringe at my face, missing it by inches. “Now fuck off!”
Crying, I limped into my room and screamed my head off into my pillow. Why was everybody always crying? This was just one fucked family of tears. I hated it. I wanted out. I wanted to get out of this place as fast as I could. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Maybe I would come back and take the baby from them once it was delivered, but that would be the only time and reason that I would ever return.
I desperately wanted to see blood. My blood. I wanted to watch it leak from my wrists and drip onto my bed. I wanted to feed it to Craig, make the bastard pay.
But before I could carry that thought out, I fell into a deep sleep.
III
I woke up and the sun was already down. How long had I been asleep? The left side of my face was numb from lying on the same position for apparently a long period of time, so I rubbed it a little to try to wake it up. I sat up and stretched my limbs, glancing over at the alarm clock on my nightstand. Two-fifteen in the a.m. it read.
My eyes happened to catch the torn up hoodie in the corner of my room. I saw where the glass had shredded it and painful memories from the night before came unfolding across my lap. I gritted my teeth and squeezed the side of my head with my hands. I rocked back and forth for ten minutes and sighed. I needed to do something. No, I wasn’t going to cut myself again, if that’s what you’re thinking. At least not now. Time would tell I guess.
What I needed was money. And remembering what had happened earlier that day I quickly picked up the telephone in my room. I roamed deep in the back of my brain and dug up the phone number that had been written on the legal pad Mom torn to pieces. I hastily dialed the digits.
Somebody picked up before the first ring could complete itself and said hello. I was almost positive it was the voice of the man who had claimed to be my father. I opened my mouth to talk but immediately closed it. What was I going to say? ‘Hi, dude, I’m not sure if I believe you but can I have some money so me and my boyfriend could skip town‘? Yeah, like that would work.
“I remember you,” was what I finally ended up saying. We talked for a couple more seconds and then I told him to come pick me up outside the apartment. He seemed happy to do it.
Jeez, I hoped he wasn’t one of those old perverted pedophiles. That would really suck, but I think I could still probably get him to cough up some dough nevertheless.
IV
He picked me up like twenty minutes later. I was wearing an almost identical hoodie than my other one. I always wore something with long sleeves when I was out in public; otherwise, everybody just stared at my scars like they were contagious. I hopped in the car and told him to get going, and so we did. I informed him that this all night diner would probably be the best place to go, so that was where we went. We both ordered coffee in silence.
“So,” he said, “how’s school?” I almost laughed at him. He was so nervous! Maybe he really was my father. But still … he was in prison, and you don’t go to prison just for nothing. I told him that everything at school was just fine and he asked about my grades and I told him they were good. Then we talked for like a half hour about more school related topics. I told him about my poetry ribbon I had been awarded the previously month. He seemed really astonished that I was a Poet. I was a little taken back at how interested he was in me. Either he was a pedophile or my father, and I was leaning towards the latter. He was actually starting to go from vaguely to very familiar.
I was in the middle of stilling sugar into my fourth cup of coffee when a man walking by on the sidewalk outside the window caught my eye. He was wearing a brown jacket over a gray hooded sweatshirt, with the hood up. I knew he wasn’t the same piece of scum but I couldn’t help but get a detailed memory of the night before. The way he kicked me. The way he licked me. The way he bit me.
The way he fucked me.
It was all too much. Once again, I began to cry, quite abruptly, too. I realized that I needed to think of an explanation for this sudden outburst and quick, too. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember you at first,” I blurted out. “I just feel so bad --”
“Hey, now don’t be crying; keep your chin up,” my father told me. “If anything I should be apologizing for being such a sh -- crappy Dad. But, Kristie, I swear I am changed. I want to start over. Can we do that? I want to be the father you never had.”
“Of course, Dad,” I cried. “I want to live with you; I can’t take it in that apartment. It’s impossible to live with Them. All they do is get high and drunk and beat each and even me sometimes. I hate it.”
“Who beats you? Craig?”
“Daddy, leave it alone, okay?” I was surprised in myself that I had adapted to the whole ‘daddy’ nickname so quickly. That wasn’t like me. “I’m sick of all the violence as it is. How can I live with you?”
“Well, I highly doubt your mother is going to be signing over custody so I’ll have to take her to court.”
“Let’s do it,” I said, with a smile across my face.
“It isn’t that easy, sweetheart. I gotta get a lawyer, and a good one probably costs between fifteen and twenty thousand.” I started to frown with made him say, “Hey, it’s okay. I’ll get the money, that isn’t a problem. We’ll be together, Kristie, I promise. I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you, too, Daddy,” I said. I kind of felt bad on what I had planned, but it was something I had to do nonetheless. I had to get out of this hick town. I had to be with Leon; he was my soul mate, after all.
V
My newly discovered father dropped me off at the apartment and I limped back upstairs. It was finally starting to get better when I walked, but it was still a little bit sore. Mom and Craig were in the bedroom, moaning the night away and working in the springs under their bed. I sighed in disgust and closed my bedroom door. A few moments later Leon picked up the phone.
“Hello?” he said, obviously just waking up.
“Hey,” I said.
“Kristie? Oh Jesus, I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you today. My dad woke me up like three hours after I dropped you off to go help him at work with some roof. I was exhausted. How are you doing? How you okay? I am really sorry; I could of have at least called you. I feel so bad …”
“Relax, it’s okay. Listen, though … I should be getting the money pretty soon. Then we can get the hell out of this place.”
