LJ Idol Three Strikes: Prompt 13 — Kintsugi

[flipflop_diva]

She is three years old, and she is hiding in a closet with her big sister, listening to the thunder crash overhead while her parents’ shouts fill in the gaps.

Angry words that she doesn’t understand seem to echo overhead. She hears her father shout and her mother cry.

Her sister’s arms aren’t big enough to block out the noise.

She wants it to stop. She needs it to stop. The storm. The yelling. The angry words.

But none of it does. It keeps going, raging through the night, getting worse before it finally dies out.

In the morning, her father is gone. Her mother is silent. Her sister is crying.

And her own heart feels like it’s breaking.

--

She is eight years old, and she is cowering in a corner. Her stepfather’s harsh words are penetrating her entire being.

“I’ll give you something to cry about!” he screams. “You worthless, dumb girl!”

He waves a belt in his hand, a reminder that he is more powerful than her, that he is stronger than she will ever be.

All she can do is nod, her body frozen, and try to whisper what he wants to hear.

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I’m sorry.”

He keeps yelling. She waits for the strike of the belt, the feel of its leather against her skin. She thinks maybe it will feel better to get it over with.

It doesn’t come, but neither do the words stop.

They fill her body, shattering her from the inside.

--

She is twelve years old, and her mother hasn’t talked to her in three days. She hasn’t looked at her or touched her or even acknowledged her existence.

Neither has her stepfather.

Her sister has only spoken in whispers as they cross paths in the hallway.

Part of her wants to be happy. No one is yelling. No one is sending her disappointed looks. No one is speaking words that will play in her mind on repeat for weeks on end.

But she is lonely and sad. And she is scared.

She knows when the words do come back, they won’t be good. She wishes she could leave, but there is nowhere to go, no one she can think of who would care.

So she stays and she hides and she waits. An empty shell of a person with nothing left inside her.

--

She is sixteen years old when her mother picks her stepfather over her for the last time, when her mother refuses to listen to what is happening in the middle of the night.

Her mother doesn’t yell when she kicks her out, doesn’t cry, doesn’t even say goodbye. Just hands her a twenty-dollar bill and shuts the door in her face.

She makes it halfway down the block before she crumples in the middle of the sidewalk and sobs.

She’s alone and scared and unsure. She doesn’t think she has the strength to get up off the sidewalk let alone face the rest of her life.

She wants to lay down and let it all end.

There are pieces of her very being scattered all around her, and she doesn’t even know if she could fix any of them if she tried.

--

She is sixteen years old when her best friend’s mother picks her up off the sidewalk where she is crying and puts her in her car. She drives her to her best friend’s house and leads her into a guest room. She makes her dinner and tells her she can stay as long as she wants.

That night she lies in a strange bed in a strange room in a house she has been in and out of since she was a child and thinks about the future.

She thinks about going to school in the morning and coming back to this strange room in the afternoon.

And for the first time that she can remember, she doesn’t feel terrified.

She feels scared — scared of what will happen, scared of where she will go — but she doesn’t worry about whether she will see tomorrow or the next day.

Inside her chest, a few pieces of her broken heart start to rebuild.

--

She is nineteen years old when the pregnancy test reveals two lines. Her stepfather’s words echo in her head as she stares as it.

Slut. Whore. Worthless. Disgusting.

She wonders if he is right.

She spends two weeks too terrified to tell anyone. She pushes her boyfriend away and doesn’t answer the phone when Mary, her best friend’s mother and her own surrogate mother, calls to check on her. She snaps at her roommate and is mean to her friends.

Until the morning she can’t look at herself in the mirror anymore.

She calls Mary and tells her what’s happened. She calls her boyfriend and tells him too.

Mary makes her an appointment at a clinic downtown, but the day before she’s supposed to go, she slips on ice and falls down the stairs. The blood between her legs tells her what happened before the doctors do.

She feels like maybe this is her fault, like maybe it’s what she deserves, but her boyfriend holds her hand and Mary stays with her when he needs to run to class, and for the first time in her life she wonders if maybe she is more than her stepfather said she is.

--

She is twenty-six years old and newly single when the pregnancy test reveals two lines for the second time, the result of one last bout of passion. But this time she smiles as she sees the result. This time she thinks she might be ready.

That night she dreams. About yelling at a faceless child. Waving a belt around. Throwing their toys against the walls until they shatter. Forcing them to sit at a table and eat every bite of food on their plate.

She wakes in terror, sweat dripping down her back.

How could she ever think she could be a mother? How could she ever think she could raise a child?

But then the picture in her mind changes. She sees that faceless child again, but this time she is hugging them, holding them, playing with them, pushing them higher and higher in a swing as they laugh and shriek.

And she knows. She knows she doesn’t have to be her father or her mother or her stepfather. She knows she can be different, can be better.

For the first time in her life, she feels like she can do this, like she can become the person she’s always been meant to be.

Her heart is rebuilding and this time the skin is tough.

--

She is twenty-nine years old the first time she makes her daughter cry. She doesn’t mean to do it, but Audrey isn’t listening and she isn’t cooperating and she’s throwing her clothes around the room and if she is late to work one more time, she is going to be fired.

So she screams, the frustration overcoming her, and she throws a small tennis shoe at the wall. And Audrey freezes, terror on her face.

And in that instant, as she sees her daughter’s fear, she is plunged back into that closet where she hid with her sister and into the corner where she cowered from her stepfather and on to that sidewalk where she sobbed the day her mother kicked her out.

And in the next instant, she is crouched down by her daughter, apologizing, whispering she’s sorry, whispering she loves her, whispering she will never do anything like that again, whispering she will be better.

And in that same instant, she wonders if she should give up, if she should give Audrey to her father to raise, if her daughter would be better off without her.

But then she feels her daughter’s little arms wrap around her and she feels her warm breath on her neck and she hears her little voice say “I love you, Mommy,” and her heart floods with a joy she can’t explain as her eyes close and the demons of her past loosen their hold.

She knows it’s not that easy, she knows the past has a way of holding on tightly, sometimes too tightly, but she knows that she is ready. She is not a scared little girl anymore.

She is a grown woman. She is a fighter. She is a survivor.

And she is stronger than she has ever been.



Fiction.



This was written for therealljidol Three Strikes Mini Season. If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me! You should also go read all the other amazing entries. You can find them all here. Voting should be up Wednesday night!

Comments

[erulissedances]

Oh my, this was great. Watching this woman grow through an impossible life, and grow stronger and better, was wonderful.

- Erulisse (one L)

[ofearthandstars]

Beautiful. <3 I love that she was able to reset and overcome old patterns.

[roina_arwen]

This was so well written it actually brought me to tears. ❤️

[gunwithoutmusic]

Really well done! I know this is fiction, but I'm glad that you went the route of saying, "No, the cycle of abuse doesn't have to continue." It's easy for people that grew up in abusive households to continue that cycle but it's so important to break free and be better for the next generation.

[drippedonpaper]

You really portrayed well the way that one of the worst things in abuse is the feeling that the victim DESERVES it. It's so hard to break that pattern of thinking, even after one lives away from the abuser.

Your words are simple, yet you cover 26 years so well. Very beautiful entry!

[dsrmousey]

Wow... This really touched me. In some ways parallel to my first two and a half decades. Nicely done. Peace~~~Desiree

[banana_galaxy]

I was really touched when Mary came to collect her after she was kicked out. I felt like that was the real turning point that allowed her to grow into the woman she became. It seems like these sorts of stories turn out much differently when there isn't someone like Mary in the victim/survivor's life.

[alycewilson]

You do a good job of showing us the progression of the protagonist, how she's been broken and then rebuilt herself.