The wind whistled past as I stood standing there. Looking through my oldest childhood memories. Straining to account for what had happened, truly, and what must have been a lie. I wrapped my arms around myself, cold and alone in the bitter place where my memories lay.
As I looked around, trying to make sense of the jumbled mess my thoughts were, I reached out, and on impulse plucked a piece of paper down from the space around me. The paper was crumpled and had a hole in it from being tacked against a wall. It was I in the very beginning of my life, just me, my mother, and my childhood cat.
I gasped and like a flash of lightning emotions overran me. Memories of my father never being there. Of him coming in to save me, but only making my situation worse. Memory upon memory of pain. Emotions that would forever stain what was once a brilliant white.
The more I remembered the more the emotions took hold, and slowly I could no longer feel anything but them. From the sadness I felt boiled a hatred and that hatred coiled back like a lonesome snake waiting to strike whenever–
Suddenly, unlike it had begun, the emotions vanished and I was left with the feeling of tears streaking against my face, the feeling of a cold, hard ground beneath me. There was much, much more to come.
I tossed the picture out into the midst and waited, wallowing in my own self pity. I had known this was going to be hard when I began. I wish I hadn’t come. But I am glad I had. Glad, but regretful. Whatever was next was undoubtedly going to be worse.
I was quite literally shaken from my thoughts as what felt like a train came barreling through. My attention shifted and followed the train as it zoomed past, leaving only a lingering laughter soon engulfed by the surrounding silence.
I placed my head in the palms of my hand and forced myself to think, think about what I was there to do. To relive the memories of my childhood.
Still shaken by the events of before I got up and looked in the direction of which the train had been following. Surely if I could find the train again I could find something to liven up this place, surely. Just surely! I jumped up and took off running in the direction of which it felt the train had went.
Empty space stretched out endlessly around me and there was no sign of a train, of laughter, or anything for that matter. Yet, I still had hope. And that hope blossomed inside me, spiraling out, banishing the winter and turning everything around me into spring. The spring of 2004, my second birthday.
I recall sitting there, on the kitchen table in our small apartment. Looking around all the lovely faces, all smiling as the brought out the cake. My mother had been slaving in the kitchen for hours, as the one from the store had been ruined on the long car ride. It was Elmo's face designed by the icing atop it and I was thrilled.
I looked down at the Elmo face before me and with a split second decision, right as they all started singing, I smashed my feet into the icing. Cake flew across the table in chunks, splattering myself and some others with bits and pieces of Elmo's face.
One of the pieces hit my eye and the blackness spread, taking me out of the memory and back into the dark, frightful place.
********
It was late. Time was unknown to me, just a hazy figure in the back of my head. My mom said she would only be an hour at the most. When was that? I don’t know… That was when the sun was up. Now the moon reigns over the sky, high up in the air and illuminating everything with its hazy glow.
I could hear my little brother crying from upstairs, he was 1. I was scared. She promised. She promised it wouldn’t happen again. She promised she would be here for us.
My brother’s crying got worse and I scrunched further into my corner, Sasha in my hand. I loved Sasha. She was the only one I could trust would be there for me. In the mornings she would drink my unwanted milk from my cereal. My sweet, precious, beloved ray of sunshine wrapped in a warm, fiery coat of fire. The memory sputtered out like a match, the light dissipating into the darkness once more.
I cried. Tears were unstoppable. Inevitable. I cried and cried. Sasha’s whiskers tickled my face as she tried to lick it clean. I looked down and smiled at her, hugging her closer, and the tears came silently now.
I heard a ringing coming from the living room, down the hall, as the grandfather clock rang out twelve. I listened as it rang, counting it. One… Two… Three… Ten… Eleven… Twelve...
The rings left as well, as does everything in time. In the momentary silence everything was calm, then cut through by a clear knife of the screams from upstairs. I sighed, getting used to it once more, and tried. Oh, how I tried! I tried, and failed to sleep upon the cold, tile, floor.
I laid there, closing my eyes, only to open them in an instant for the fear of not seeing what was around me frightened me beyond belief.
Sasha meowed at me, looking up. She was probably hungry. We all were. I was only 6! How should I know how to cook? How to care for a baby?
This wasn’t my first trip in this boat. In a home that wasn’t mine, yet I had grown up in it. In a place where every shadow changed to beyond recognition every moment of the day. Was that a hand I saw? No… Just a glass bottle reflecting off the bar.
Looking around tears began to slowly blur my vision. Imapring me, scaring me. Where had Sasha gone? She wasn’t there any longer. Her purrs no longer vibrating against me in their calming manner.
I got up, going to go look for her, when I heard a crash. Like a flash, one memory to the next, I was somewhere else. No, the same place, a different time. I saw my mother, drunk, disoriented, walking in the door with some man following behind.
“Mommy!” I ran up. Something was different, I was… Shorter? No, younger. This was a year earlier, I was 5.
My mother looked down at me without recognition, burning a hole into me. “Mommy?” I asked, concerned. Why wasn’t mommy being mommy?
She turned around and looked over at the guy then back down at me, laughing. “I’m not your mother. Run along now. Go play,” and with that pushed me out of the house, locking the door.
I pounded over and over again against the door, getting the same response. Silence. I sat down on the porch step and wrapped my arms around me. It was cold and my tears felt like ice against my once warm heart.
I cried and cried. My own mother had just locked me out of my home, and I had no clue why. Now, looking back on it, I know. I know what they were doing in the bedroom.
When the realisation hit me I was knocked back to when I was 6. Crying on the stairs of my grandparents’ house. They were in London. Or maybe it was Africa… I had not a clue. I just knew that for some reason my mother had us climb in a window after they left. They were always gone.
I got up, walking past the sitting room into the kitchen. The house was like a maze, this room was here but also there and lead to this hallway that lead to the same room. I went into the bar area, people always had fun when they drank these didn’t they? Maybe it will help me find Sasha, enjoy myself more.
I grabbed the only bottle I could reach and struggled with the cork. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was 6. I tried to pull it off but my little child hands slipped and the bottle crashed onto the floor with a pop. Red liquid spilled from where the top had broken, and I jumped back in surprise, bringing a tingling sensation behind my feet. Ignoring it, I picked up the bottle, bringing it up towards my face.
As the red neared my face I recoiled, the smell taking me by surprise. I ignored it and brought what was in the bottle to my lips, into my mouth. I didn’t feel a difference and figured it must not actually do anything.
I walked out of the bar area, red trailing like a ribbon from my ankles. I looked down, wondering what the sticky feeling on my feet was. When I saw the injury the pain hit and I fell, screaming in tears to the floor.
Sasha ran up to me, my one true friend, and checked if I was okay. I worked up the tolerance to crawl over into the kitchen, pain accompanying each movement. I went over and grabbed some paper towels, pressing some against my ankle and some to clean up the mess I made.
I made my way back over to the bar and placed the paper towels over where the red has spilled. I cleaned up the floor and tossed the dirty towels into the nearby trashcan.
I knew that if I was found there, in the bar, it would be suspicious. I left the area and found myself back on the stairs. Curled up, crying, waiting, bleeding, helpless.
Who knows how long I waited there, waited for something I hardly dared to hope would come. If I moved, and though it hurt to do so I couldn’t keep still, I could see out the window that the sun was starting to come up.
I heard an engine from outside and looked over, curious. I could see my grandfather’s truck outside. What? He wasn’t supposed to be back yet.
I tried to get up, to leave, but instead I fell back down, trembling in fear. I didn’t know why but I got the feeling I wasn’t supposed to be there.
As he walked up I tried to disappear into the shadows, tried to hide myself, hide from his rage. He was a scary man of over 6 feet, towering over me with his constant look of disapproval.
He came up the drive, across the winding sidewalk. He approached the door, some sort of black thing in his hand. I cowered. Slunk deeper into the shadows and hoping, praying, for my safety.
He opened the door, lights from the street filling the area and illuminating everything around me. The light blinded me, making me close my eyes against it.
I opened my eyes and one more found myself back in the bitter place my memories lay.
