“Rowan.”
It was a command even my shivering legs couldn’t ignore. So I stepped forward. I felt the palm of his hand against my cheek before I realized he had even moved. I stumbled back, but I didn’t fall.
Two steps and he was before me. My hand covered my cheek. He whipped his hand in an arc across his chest, then hit me with the back of his hand. I slammed into the dirt. I landed hard. My dad was a strong man. Trina’s cries grew louder, or maybe it was the ringing in my ears.
“Get up.”
No. If I got up, he’d hit me again. No. I wouldn’t get up.
“Jack! Stop!”
Mom ran out of the house and grabbed his arm. Dad shoved her off. I didn’t look up at him but I felt his eyes burning their rage into me.
“Jack!” she said again. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what, Amy? Discipline my own daughter? After this one,” he waved his hand at me, “I’ll teach that other girl what happens when she gets pregnant.”
Trina wailed and disappeared completely. Dad heard her, though. “Stop right there, Trina. I’m going to teach both of you girls a lesson you’ll never forget. So the two of you don’t turn out like your good-for-nothing mother here.”
I scampered back. “What did I do?” I shrieked. The sting across my cheeks emboldened me. “I’m not the one who is pregnant!” I struggled to make my eyes focus.
He lunged forward, slamming his fist into my face. Black colored my vision. Like looking through a shadow, I could just make out his outline, standing over me. Stabbing pain throbbed in my head.
“You are responsible for the death of my son!”
He looked around; his glare resting on Mom then Trina.
“Trina, come here.”
She didn’t respond.
“Trina!”
She stumbled into the light. Her face was pale, though she didn’t look frightened. She looked numb; like she didn’t think or feel a thing.
“Come here,” he demanded.
Her head moved up and down. She took another step. Her shoulder leaned against the outside of the house as she moved up the porch stairs, past my mom who reached out a hand as if to brush the hair off her shoulder. Her caress fell short, though, never actually touching Trina as she passed and moved down the other side’s steps.
Then Trina’s feet gave way under her and she fell. She was only a few feet from me. I pushed up onto my hands and knees.
“If you touch her, I’ll kill you,” I said.
Dad’s head whipped around. I struggled to my feet, willing my spinning head to stop. I didn’t fall, though. I clenched my fists, planted my feet. I tried to focus on his crotch from my blurry vision. All I needed was one kick. One good kick.
Then sirens pierced the quiet. Two police cars lurched into the driveway, slamming into a stop in front of our house. Red lights flashed across us all. A neighbor must’ve heard the shouting and called the police. Or maybe Christian had a premonition as he peeled out of our driveway that this issue was far from over.
Dad moved forward, on now-steady feet, to meet the officers as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Four of them jumped out of the two cars and ran toward us, shouting. I bent to touch Trina’s shoulder and she looked up at me. Her blue eyes were glassy and her skin was white. She looked like a china doll.
I fell to my knees and pulled her to me. My face throbbed and the vision in one of my eyes was slightly distorted, but I clutched her to me, ready to protect her from whatever came next.
The world swirled around us. I think an officer spoke to me, though I don’t know what he said. Dad’s voice droned on nearby but the words he spoke were muffled behind the ringing in my ears. At some point I heard my mom’s voice. Then I was vaguely aware when the officers cuffed my dad and led him away. Someone said something about an ambulance.
But I just sat there, Trina whimpering in my lap as I stroked her hair.
MINUTES, OR hours later, Gran showed up. She eased Trina from my lap and half-carried, half-pulled her inside the house. I didn’t realize Levi was even beside me until his head replaced Trina’s in my lap. Gran must’ve let him off his leash. I curled over his solid body and his welcomed warmth.
Gran returned. “Rowan?” She sat beside me. “Look at me.”
I turned my head.
She gasped. “Oh, my sweet baby.” She pulled me to her and kissed my head. “Oh, my sweet baby.” Under her breath, she said, “Damn that man. Damn that man.”
I ignored her. I’m sure she wanted to kill him. Maybe she really would.
“I’m going to take you to the hospital.”
“I don’t need to go to the hospital.” My voice was full of cotton and lead.
“Honey, let’s just go in and let the doctors have a look at you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me that time won’t heal.”
“But, baby. Something might be broken.”
I could hear the emotion in her voice, the tenderness of a loving grandma. I knew her heart hurt. I knew that she was keeping her rage contained for the moment.
“Nothing’s broken.”
Nothing was broken that could be fixed by staying in this house with this family. I would die if I didn’t get out of here. I didn’t need a doctor. I needed to get away. I needed to escape.
LONG INTO the night, I slid through my window and curled onto my bed. The weekend passed and come Monday, I didn’t go to school. Or the day after that. A couple of times someone knocked on the front door and rang the doorbell, but I never got up to answer it and I guess neither Mom nor Trina did either.
Mike called several times. When I didn’t answer my phone, he’d texted. One wrote that he’d driven by the house a few different times; even rang the doorbell once. One said that he was no longer accused of raping Trina. I’m not sure how that came about, but I was glad for him and didn’t question it.
There were several calls and texts from Jess. Since she didn’t have a car, it was difficult for her to get around. Our small town didn’t exactly have public transportation. In fact, our one and only cab stopped service a couple of years ago. The owner of the car, Billy, died, and no one wanted to take his place.
I’m sick I finally texted to Jess. Will be out for a while
Answer ur phone NOW
Have the flu. Bad cramps. Can’t talk.
I don’t believe u. Call now.
Wanna see my puke as proof?
Fine. U better call me soon, tho.
K
Tomorrow
K
There were two calls from Miss J. I saw that she left a message but didn’t bother to check it. She would just have to wait. And so would school. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care about colleges, graduation. I didn’t care about anything.
I sat at the desk in my room staring outside instead of at the computer, the blinking cursor mocking me. Mike and I were so far behind on our paper, I didn’t know if we could catch up. Maybe Mr. Chambers would give us an extension. Maybe Mike was actually doing it on his own, though somehow I doubted that.
I’d done the preliminary research one night when I couldn’t sleep, created an outline, even written the first page. But now nothing came to mind. I couldn’t remember why we’d chosen the topic; or, to be honest, what the topic even was.
A small makeup mirror that Gran had given me for Christmas last year sat beside the computer, reflecting a face back at me that I didn’t recognize; a face that was swollen, bruised, pained.
My face hurt. Bad. The slaps had left superficial bruises. One on my cheekbone, from the backhand, and one on my cheek. It was the fist punch that hurt. My jaw felt like it was slightly off center, though the entire right side of my face throbbed so bad I couldn’t tell exactly where he’d hit me.
I dumped the mirror into the trash can.
It was quiet in our house and outside. That was the one thing about living in such a rural area. It could get so quiet without traffic, airplanes, and an over-
abundance of people filling that silent void. Here you could hear your thoughts, whether you wanted to or not.
But today, I just didn’t have the energy to do anything else so I let the quiet envelop me like an electric blanket in the high heat of a summer month; stifling me and swallowing my breaths before they even left my body.
The sound of a car reverberated off the stoic trees and bounced around like a foghorn blaring. I glanced outside to find a brown station wagon ambling up our driveway. Miss J. had come to check on me.
She pulled the car to a stop in front of the house and got out. Her brown hair was pulled into a ponytail and she wore some sort of brown scarf that looked out of place in April.
When she started toward the house, I got up and glanced in the full-length mirror that hung on the back of my door. I looked like I’d been in the boxing ring with Mike Tyson.
I yanked a brush through my hair then pulled it back into a ponytail. It was limp and greasy since I hadn’t showered. I checked my teeth in the mirror, grabbed a mint on my way down the hall, and threw open the door before she could ring the bell.
“Hi.” I stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind me.
“Rowan! What happened to you?” She reached out to touch my face but I moved past her and went to find Levi. He sat as far forward as the chain allowed. When I bent down to him, he didn’t try to lick my cheeks, like he always did. Instead he nuzzled my shoulder and then rested his head against my arm.
“Rowan. Wait.”
I looked up and shielded my eyes against the sun. It was a bright spring day, cloudless and warm.
“I’m fine,” I answered to her unasked question. “The police came. Dad’s gone. Who knows where? Maybe he’s in jail. Maybe he’s drunk in a ditch. Maybe he found another family that he likes better.”
“Your father did this?”
“Yep.” I sank my face into Levi’s fur.
“Where’s Trina? Your mother?”
I shrugged.
The humidity was high today and soon swarms of bugs, gnats and mosquitos would make being outside unbearable. I still had on my T-shirt and hoodie, despite the warmer temperatures, and I pulled the sleeves down over my hands and rubbed the backs of my arms.
“When are you planning to come back to school?”
I looked out over the yard. Even with spring rains, it was brown and patchy. It wouldn’t grow green and lush. Not at all. Never had. Dad didn’t put much care into it, though, so I don’t know if it even had potential to be a nice yard. Guess the same could be said for our family.
“I don’t know. Guess after this,” and I waved my hand at my face, “heals.” I shrugged. “Who knows?”
We were quiet for several minutes. She pulled a blade of grass out of the ground and tied it into a knot. She threw it aside and pulled out another. Then another. And another. Her hands, petite and unblemished, moved in smooth motion. Her brown hair was held back by a large, oval tortoise shell clip but several strands fell out around her face. It made her look young.
“How old are you?” I asked.
She glanced at me. “Twenty-five. Why?”
“You’re young.”
“Hmm. I’m old enough to have gone to college.”
“What did you study?”
“Psychology and education.”
“Cool.” I started tying grass into knots too.
“I’m also working on a Master’s in psychology. Going to night school.”
“Busy times, huh?”
She chuckled. “It’s not easy. But it’s what I want to do.” She touched my arm. “So I make it work.”
I stared at her fingers and wondered if they’d ever hit another human. Somehow I thought not.
I tossed my blade of grass aside and picked up another one.
“I’m a testament to determination,” she continued. “That we can do anything we want to if we want it bad enough.”
I nodded and took her blade of grass from her fingers. Tying it into a knot, I said, “The last time my mom drove a car was a couple of days before Aidan died.” If someone asked, I wouldn’t be able to say why I brought up my mom’s car. It had been sold ages ago. But I remember where it used to sit–right near the shed. Even before Dad sold it, it had grown rusted.
“Where did she go that day?”
Miss J. and I didn’t talk about Aidan’s death. The only time she’d ever directly mentioned it was last week in her office when she decided to tell me it wasn’t my fault. But all the details were in my file; the same file that had followed me since the fifth grade, since I was ten. I flunked that year of school and that’s when I got the file that would follow me to my high school graduation.
“I don’t remember. Grocery store or somewhere. Gran had been there to watch us. Then when Mom got home, Gran left. Then Mom and Dad got into that fight.”
“That fight?”
“The fight that ended with Dad leaving us, Mom going into her room and not coming out, and Aidan crying in his bed.”
Something like the weight of a cinder block settled into my chest, like it did anytime I thought about my baby brother. It made it hard to breathe, but I didn’t let Miss J. know that. I forced my words to be steady and strong, ignoring the pain right in my middle. I gathered all the blades and lined them up in a row. “I took care of Aidan that night.”
“Did she ever come out of her room? When she heard Aidan crying?”
“She didn’t come out all night.”
“Where was your grandma?”
“She wasn’t there.”
“So no one was caring for your baby brother?”
“I was, I guess.”
Miss J. already knew all of this. If not in this level of detail, then enough to get the gist. But for some reason, I was talking about it. I guess something in me wanted to.
“So, then, what happened?”
I laughed, a sound with more high pitches and lack of control than I wanted, and shook my head. Memories tumbled around inside my brain. “I was so proud. So proud that I could help.” My voice choked on words I had never, not once, spoken. “I took care of Aidan. I got him a bottle. Changed him. Put him back to bed after rocking him.”
I ripped up a handful of brownish grass by the roots. “And then…and then I put that damned blanket on him. I didn’t cover his head. But I did put the blanket on him.” I grabbed another fistful and ripped it out. “They said it was SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or something like that. I guess babies are never supposed to have blankets on them when they sleep. They said he’d gotten overheated, or something.”
She leaned into my peripheral vision. I could sense her willing me to look at her, to see the force of conviction in her eyes, but I didn’t. She continued anyway. “Rowan, Aidan’s death was not your fault. You never should’ve been left alone with him. You were ten!”
“Yeah,” I huffed. “I was ten. And have been blamed for his death ever since.” Blamed by my family, and yes, by myself.
Miss J. leaned toward me. She didn’t touch me but I could feel the heat from her presence. She smelled like drugstore lotion, a mix of vanilla and lavender. It was a little strong, but smelled nice anyway.
It was comforting to have her close, which I’m sure she meant it to be. But she was also too close. I held still for a few seconds but then I had to scoot away, clutching my left arm in my hand.
We sat there for a long time, a couple of feet apart. I had no more words to say to her. If she said goodbye when she got up to leave, I didn’t hear her. The next thing I realized, though, was her car driving away from our home and disappearing into the sunshine.
I don’t know when she expected me back at school. She had said that if you want something bad enough, you can’t let anything stand in your way. I’d have to ask her what her story was one of these days. I had a feeling she would tell me the truth, even though she’d told me before that she was my counselor, not my friend; and that there were boundaries to respect. I bet this time, though
, she’d tell me.
And then she’d want to know what I wanted. What did I want? Out of this home. Out of this family. I wanted to graduate high school. Go to college. Change my life…get out of this home.
Get out of this home.
THERE HAD been no sign of Mom. Her door had remained shut, against us, against the world. She hadn’t even come out, that I could tell, to eat. That either meant she had sworn off food or she had a stash in her closet. The latter option was likely the case. Mom turned to junk food when her life felt out of her control, which was all the time.
Gran said she used to be petite, not quite like me, but close. Pictures of her in high school showed a smiling, thin girl with long, brown hair. In the yearbook was a picture of Mom and Dad, who were high school sweethearts. Or so Mom said. Little jabs Dad had aimed at her through the years told me that may not have been the case. Mom didn’t like to talk about it so I never pushed. Dad’s words lingered in my memory, though; his words comparing her to Trina. Something about entrapping him. Had Mom gotten pregnant on purpose?
On the morning after Miss J.’s visit, I decided to return to school and leave the catacomb that had become home. The bruises were less black and blue and more yellow and brown today. In the shower, I washed my face gently, careful not to put any pressure on my skin. Then I held up my left arm, free of bandages, to let the warm water wash over the cuts. They were healing well enough.
I knew it was wrong to cut myself. Miss J. even had a pamphlet in her bookshelf about girls who cut. And I had been so good for the past few years, not adding to the ladder of red slashes. Guess I couldn’t hold on forever, though. At some point the pain of being a member of this family was bound to catch up with me.
I scrubbed the rest of my body clean, leaving my skin and scalp raw and tender. Trina’s makeup bag, overflowing with cosmetics, half of which I didn’t know what they were used for, sat beside the sink. I rifled through it until I found a bottle of Trina’s foundation. Leaning into the bathroom mirror, I turned on all the lights, two over the mirror, one in the ceiling, and tried to apply the brown liquid. I smoothed it all over my face with my fingertips, trying to blend it around my chin. Then I reapplied a heavier layer over the bruises, patting the makeup into place.
My Name Is Rowan: The Complete Rowan Slone Trilogy Page 11
