by MC Webb
“D-d-d-don’t be scared, Piper. I j-j-just want to l-l-look at you. That’s all!” He stuttered out the words. I felt my face flush as his words sank in.
“No! Get out Daniel.” I shouted back at him.
Look at me? My head was spinning. I begged him to leave. More than once. I began to shiver, both cold and scared, as he tried to get the curtain from my clutched hands. Stopping just short of force, he began to stutter again.
“I-I-I just want to s-s-s-see you,” he begged.
I felt heat rise to my head, and my eleven-year-old-self answered, “But why?” Truly confused. I did not understand his meaning. I knew nudity was a no-no, and Nana always told me that good girls kept themselves covered. I was so embarrassed, I didn’t know what to do. I was shivering and knew I couldn’t reach for my towel without opening the curtain. I began to falter and cry.
“Daniel, please leave. Why are you doing this?”
Why would anyone want to see me naked? That was just gross. I sure didn’t want to see anyone naked.
He didn’t answer right away, but when he did his voice came out clear. “Because you’re s-s-soft and sweet. I’d never hurt you. I just want to l-l-l-look at you. That’s all, I s-s-s-swear.”
I thought he was crazy. What was I supposed to do? I could run, but he was between me and the door. Daniel could easily block my path.
“P-p-piper? C-c-come on n-n-n-now.
If I just do this and get it over with, then I can go to bed. I felt sick at my stomach and more than a little ashamed. Then again, there was that spark of excitement that thought of someone wanting to just look at me, which made me feel somewhat wanted. Ugly, skinny pale me.
If looking was all, I could live with it, and Daniel was always nice to me. I trusted him. We had spent many hours together, and he had never harmed me. Not ever.
I sucked in my breath, numb with cold now. It was the second week of January, and we had a wood furnace that barely heated one room. With shaking fingers and great reluctance, I gathered myself, and finally I said, “Okay,” through clenched teeth.
Slowly, with my eyes shut, I opened the curtain. I stood naked for at least a minute. When I did finally open my eyes, Daniel was just looking at me.
Pitiful and pathetic as he was, I was unafraid and unashamed. After another minute of taking me in, he slowly came towards me. I stood stock-still as he wrapped me in my towel. I tensed when he put his arms around me, rubbing my back, up then down, up then down, in long slow strokes. My entire body was shaking.
“Shh, shh, shh, beautiful girl,” he whispered and kissed my forehead, “C-c-come out of there and l-l-l-let me d-d-dry your pretty hair.”
“I would rather you not Daniel,”
He insisted I allow him to dry my hair. I just wanted to be left alone, but then again, this made me feel pretty. Cared for. Something I hadn’t had in a long time. I thirsted for attention and was in the same breath afraid I was going to hell for it.
I gave in and allowed him to dry my hair, as long as I was covered with my towel. What was wrong with him just drying my hair? I ask myself this question over and over until it was done. When Daniel finally finished, I felt him pick up a strand of my hair and smell it. It was creepy. His fingers slid gently down my hair, from crown to end, then Daniel turned and left the bathroom without another word.
I breathed deep and dressed at warp speed in my too-small pajamas. My lips were blue with cold, or maybe shock. I didn’t know. I went to bed feeling dirty, as if soap had never touched my skin. Never had I wished for my Nana more than that night. Scared, lonely, and confused, I said a small prayer, and went to sleep watching Who’s the Boss? on my black and white TV.
I woke up to my mother vacuuming the bare rugs in the living room. I had no clue what time it was and guessed it had to be early. A glance at the clock on wall told me it was five a.m. I looked at my mother wishing I could tell her the strange event with Daniel, but I knew she wouldn’t care anyway.
A cigarette and the cord in one hand, and the handle in the other, she pushed and pulled the vacuum in one spot, long enough for me to realize that it was very early and she was drunk. She had probably not been to bed at all the night before.
Every few days she would go into these crazed cleaning fits. Wiping everything. Vacuuming. The woman slept in her own vomit most nights, yet when these urges hit, you had better stay out of the way, or you would pay dearly. I wiped the sleep from my eyes, and went to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth.
I felt nauseated at the sight of the torn shower curtain. When I reentered my room I noticed an old movie playing. Gregory Peck. One of my favorites. The volume was turned down as usual, because I left it on day and night. I knew the film by heart and knew the words without hearing them. The movie was Behold a Pale Horse, one of Papaw’s favorites, as well as mine.
Absently, I began to change. I had my shirt over my head with my vision blocked when the first blow landed, knocking me to the floor. I knew instantly my mother was upon me.
“Get up, you ugly whore!” she screamed as she jerked my shirt the rest of the way off.
“What, Mother?” I screamed back and tried to grab at the shirt to cover myself. She threw something at me, and I ducked just in time. Whatever it was it barely missed my head and smashed into the wall just behind me.
She was definitely still drunk from the night before. Her clothes were splattered with bits of this and that. Her hair was tangled, and her makeup, once so precise, was smudged under her bloodshot eyes.
She stood before me, a wild animal—mean and belligerent. Daniel came in. I didn’t turn to look at him. I held my arms to cover my bare chest. Mother raised her manic eyes and looked at him. A wicked smile slowly crept across her face. Slowly, she raised her left hand. Hanging from it was my locket. All the blood drained from my face. She cocked her head sideways, still smiling.
“What do ya get for gifts like this, Danny boy?” she said mockingly. She took a long puff of her cigarette and looked down at me. “What did ya do for this, you filthy whore?” she asked, blowing smoke in my face.
I said nothing. For one, I didn’t know what she meant, and two, I knew it would be worse if I said anything in return.
“D-d-d-deb? Let’s g-g-go to bed, Honey,” Daniel began.
“Shut up!” she spat at him.
I wanted Daniel to grab her and get her out of there, but he was an idiot, and at that moment, I hated him. For what, I wasn’t sure, but I knew it was for something awful. Didn’t Nathan always tell me to trust my gut? My gut was screaming danger from both Daniel and my mother at that moment.
My mother turned her back to me and reached into my closet, and I wanted desperately to find something to cover myself, but I didn’t dare move. It was freezing, and I stood statue-still in just my panties. When she turned back to me I thought I was about to be whipped with a wire hanger, but instead she was holding the tie my dad had worn every other Sunday to church, a gift from Nathan and me the Father’s Day before last. I’d watched him countless times, tying that tie with such care and accuracy. When he had finished, he’d admire it in the mirror.
“That would put those Oxford boys to shame,” he would brag with a wink.
I began to tie it for him a couple of weeks later. Every Sunday I couldn’t wait to get myself ready, so I could stand on the toilet lid and tie his tie for him. When I had finished, he would look in the mirror, then at me out of the corner of his eyes.
“Not bad for a prissy little princess. Not bad at all,” he would tease me, knowing I hated being called that.
Now my mother had it. She was twisting it, in and out of her hands. I reached for it, afraid she would tear it. She slapped me hard across the cheek. The sting shocked me still. Laughing, mother then twisted the tie around my neck, and, with strength I had no idea she possessed, she wrestled me to the mattress. I felt the blood vessels in my eyes begin to protest at the pressure around my neck.
“Come on, Danny,” she croo
ned in a mocking, baby voice. “Let’s see what you two have been up to!”
I was fighting, literally for my life. I heard Daniel asking her to stop.
“This is what you wanted? Take it! I’m offering it to you!” she said sounding demonic.
Mother loosened the tie enough to give me a gulp of precious air. I sucked it in, and then it was gone again. I looked to Daniel, begging him to stop her.
“Grab her,” my mother demanded.
I kicked wildly. Daniel placed his hands on my ankles, and when he looked down at me on the mattress, I knew in that instant he would not help me. In that moment, I saw what he was. It had been hidden from me, maybe by my own need for a caring person in my life. I had somehow convinced myself that at least he cared what happened to me, when everyone else had left me. My dad, my brother, and my own mother.
Daniel was my friend, my father figure, a person who asked about my day, and sat with me watching TV—simple little things I so needed in my young, secluded life. Cut off from school and my grandparents, Daniel was the only person I had.
“Please!” I screamed, and my throat felt clawed on the inside. “Daniel, please don’t! Mother, I’m sorry! Mother, please!”
But she was lost to me. I begged and began to shake with sobs. A fist fell hard on my mouth, and blood began to gather at the back of my throat. I had to turn my head sideways to cough it up. Words were spoken, but by whom, I didn’t know. What was said made no sense to me.
Daniel released my legs, and he left my line of vision. Tears were running into my ears now, and blood ran from my lips. Mother continued to squeeze the tie around my neck, but would let up just enough to allow me to breathe before passing out.
I smelled the alcohol and cigarette smoke so strong on her, it gagged me. She bent low to my ear, and said, “This is what life is about, Piper. Best you learn that now and just accept it. You should thank me. It’s not like you don’t want it.”
I felt the weight of Daniel climb on top of me. I fought, kicking, and scratching the best I could, but he held me down with little effort.
“Mother! Please!” I begged her. I felt my panties rip, as they were pulled off me.
I tried to fight. I pleaded, but neither listened. When Daniel entered me, the pain rendered me silent. The shock of it took what little breath I had. His breath was hot on my face. His odor, I knew, I would never forget. I jerked and twitched in misery as he pushed deeper into my body.
I screamed out from the pain, and my mother’s closed fist came down hard on my face. Once, twice, three times. Blood pooled to the back of my throat again. I kept my head sideways to allow it to run out freely so I wouldn’t drown in it.
I coughed, but my mother pulled the tie tighter every time I did anything except lie there. Daniel reached my mother’s mouth, and they began kissing above me. Frantic, I looked around my room, which was now blurry to me, as I was running out of air.
I was leaving my body. I had to, or I would surely die from pain. I went still and silent. My effort left me. I wished to die. My last memory of that day was Gregory Peck’s face on my black and white TV.
I was murdered. Even though my heart continued to beat, I was very much deceased. All faded to black.
chapter two
Piper~
When I woke, I lay very still, with my eyes shut tight. I listened, and then I felt. Sounds of mumbling and flesh hitting flesh came from somewhere in my room. I swallowed just enough to know my throat was both raw and swollen. Pain cut through me like a knife.
My body was stiff, and at an awkward angle, as if someone had tossed me like a pillow onto the mattress. After a moment of sensing everything I could with my eyes closed, I tried to open one eye. My lids wouldn’t budge. They were stuck with gunk from crying, and probably blood as well. The hitting and mumbling got louder, and I pulled my protesting eyes wide open.
I was still naked, and at some point, my hands had been tied above me with an extension cord, usually used for a small lamp I read by at night. My feet were free. My legs were numb, and my body ached all over. The taste in my mouth was rotten with blood.
A harder sound came from the corner of my room. The only light came from the hallway, but as my eyes began to adjust, I could tell it was Daniel. His heavy feet were pacing back and forth.
The light glinted off a half-empty bottle of whiskey. He was pacing, crying, mumbling, and every other second, hitting himself in the head. I watched this, too scared to move, knowing what he was capable of.
I was freezing from the cold draft. The inner parts of my legs were sore and wet, sticky with fluids and dried blood. I remember a deer I had watched Nathan field dress, after he had killed it with a bow. I had worried the deer could still feel, even after its heart stopped beating. This is what it must feel like if the deer were still alive as he gutted it.
My big brother was gone, but in that instant, I wished he would burst through the door, and gut Daniel while his heart was beating. No mercy for this monster.
I jerked involuntarily, and Daniel stopped to look down at me. He sank to his knees beside me and began rubbing my head like he was petting a dog.
“Oh, t-t-t-t-thank God! I thought she’d k-k-killed you,” he said in a rushed whisper, the stench of stale alcohol washing over me. I gagged at the smell and recoiled at his touch.
“You m-m-m-mustn’t be afraid, Honey. I-I-I tried to be g-g-g-g-gentle. She wanted m-m-me to hurt you. She…I-I-I…” He stopped, searching for words. “I d-d-d-didn’t want it to be this w-w-w-way. I planned on it b-b-being special, but now we c-c-can be with each other. I’m s-s-sorry you w-w-w-were hurt. That w-w-won’t happen a-a-again. I won’t l-l-let it.”
I tried to back away from him, but I was held in place by the cord. I lay perfectly still, and Daniel put his forehead against mine. I shivered, repulsed by him.
“Let me go, Daniel,” I said, my voice cracking.
This man was my friend. At least, he was the only person left to me who I considered a friend, and until recently, he had shown me the attention and love I so needed after the loss of my dad.
I was eleven years old. My father was dead. My mother hated me and told me she wished I were dead. My brother, my best friend, had gone to Nashville in hopes of making it big, whatever that meant. My grandparents were forbidden to speak to me, and now I was being comforted by my rapist.
“Let me go,” I whispered with all my strength. My voice was not my own. Would it ever be again?
“No,” Daniel got up and shook his head. “No,” he said again, and drank from his bottle.
I watched in horror as he paced and hit at his face, again speaking incoherently. I was strapped to something above my head, but I was paralyzed with fear. The realization hit me that I should be dead, yet I wasn’t, whether I liked it or not, witnessing this crazed man’s breakdown.
The pain was getting worse, and my ears thumped with my heartbeat. I decided to be submissive.
“Daniel?” I said softly.
He hit his knees again. I was so cold, I was numb, and I could no longer feel my hands.
“I need to use the bathroom.”
Without saying anything, Daniel left the room. I heard the water running in the bathroom. I began to fight the heaviness that was threatening to take me under again. I pulled at the cords on my wrists as hard as I could, stopping just short of tearing my flesh. Daniel came back into the room and began to untie me. I would not speak, and I couldn’t if I wanted to. My throat was nearly swollen shut now.
Daniel picked me up and carried me to the tub. I ached from head to feet. My hands tingled, and my head rushed with blood. I couldn’t fight him if I tried. There wasn’t an inch of me that wasn’t hurting, or wasn’t numb from the bitter cold.
Daniel sat me gently in the tub, and I jumped as my blue-tinged skin hit the water. I gasped from the warmth of it. My skin rose in goose pimples. Slowly, I lay back in the tub. I wanted to sink in it, and drown, be sucked down the drain, and never feel again.
>
I didn’t care when Daniel began washing me. I sat perfectly still. No tears. Nothing. I had died in the other room at eleven years old, at the hands of someone my father had cherished, at the hands of my own mother, and this man she had allowed into our lives. I was dead and gone, but my body remained. My mind stayed still, as Daniel washed my hair and body. I shut my eyes and floated away.
When I was dry, Daniel carried me into the room he shared with my mother and put me on the bed. He began to pace again. I watched as he began to talk, and all I wanted to do was lay there on the dirty, bare mattress that smelled sour from nights of vomit from my mother’s drunken binges.
“You s-s-see? We c-c-can be together n-n-n-now?” he said excited, as I began to try and focus on his words. “I-I-I mean, we can’t m-m-marry till you’re s-s-sixteen, but that’s j-j-just a paper, right?” he smiled at me.
I blinked, realizing for the first time ever that this guy was really nuts. He wasn’t sweet because he was mentally challenged, but literally crazy. As he looked at me, his eyes jumped with excitement behind his thick glasses. He raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to respond. I just looked at him and said nothing.
“You’re t-t-tired,” he said, as if this were just another night. “I will l-l-let you s-s-sleep. We have t-t-t-he rest of our lives. Deborah is g-g-gone, and you are mine f-f-f-forever.”
At this, I willed all my strength forward and managed to croak out, “Gone?” I instantly wished I hadn’t spoken, as pain seared through my throat.
“Yes. She will n-n-never hurt y-y-you again. This is not what I w-w-wanted to happen, but she g-g-gave me n-n-no choice.” He began pacing again. I had to close my eyes. I couldn’t keep up with him. “That D-d-deborah,” he said in disgust. “She w-w-wanted our agreement ‘fulfilled,’” he said, in a mock, high-pitched voice. “Well, I d-did fulfill that c-c-cunt,” he spat.
I didn’t understand, and I wondered if he realized I was even in the room anymore.
“Ha!” he yelled, and I jumped startled. He stopped pacing and came and kneeled beside me on the floor.
