Sacrifice.

She lay there.... and lay there.... and lay there. She couldn't stand the suspense of waiting, but feared him actually walking down those steps. She knew she was in trouble. She could tell by the way her mother looked at her and said, "oh you just wait" And now she's lying in bed, counting the seconds. 1...2...3...4.... She heard the front door close. She started to sweat and shake. She didn't MEAN to make her mom mad. She had a headache and couldn't see straight. That's why she didn't do the dishes. But that doesn't matter. They always think she's making it up.


She can hear footsteps coming down to the basement bedroom. She closes her eyes, bracing herself. "GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED” She opens her eyes, but doesn't even have time to gather herself. He grabs her by the hair and pulls her out of bed. She starts to say something, "Dad I..." He slaps her across the face the first time, "Shut up! Do you think I want to hear the shit coming out of your mouth right now??" He grabs her face, comes down to her 13-year-old level, so close she can feel the spit flying out of his mouth, "You are grounded for 6 more months. GO stand and face the wall." She's been "grounded" so long; she lost count of how much time she has done. He pushes her, and she goes flying across the room, landing hard on the ground. She tries to stand. Not again. If she stands and faces the wall all night, she'll fall asleep in class again and get in trouble. He sees her hesitate, walks over to her, picks her up, gives her one more slap. It hurts so badly, it makes her face instantly feel like its on fire. She swallows back a cry.


She retreats to her corner. Her heart race slows down as she can hear her stepfather walk up the stairs. Why does this happen. Sometimes she thinks it would be easier to understand if he was drunk. But he's not, he doesn't drink. He just has that much rage and hate in him. She looks at the wall. She is forced to stand in a little room off of her bedroom where the clothes are washed. Last time she was in trouble, they made her sit in the bathroom upstairs facing the wall. Humiliating her by making her leave the door open as she used the toilet. Her stepfather was sick, twisted. He got off on making her feel humiliated. He did everything in his power to make sure her punishments were psychologically damaging as well as physical.


When she was in sixth grade, he grounded her from clothes. He forced her to walk around the house, clothes less. Made her walk outside to throw the garbage away naked. She had to sit at the dinner table with her family, eating a peanut butter sandwich, naked, while the rest of the family ate a hot meal. She was forced to wear the same outfit to school everyday for two weeks. She knew kids were teasing her and making fun of her behind her back. But did that matter to her dad? Of course not. Did her mother do anything to stop it? No. She was emotionally damaged by her first marriage, and craved the love and affection of a man. That was more important to her than making sure her daughter was safe.


During the time she was grounded from clothing, he came into her room. She had done nothing wrong, but her mother had been complaining about her. Being lifted out of bed waked her up, wearing only underwear. He smacked her, dragged her to the front door and threw her outside. It was snowing. She stood there shivering, trying to cover herself up in case a neighbor saw. He towered over her screaming, and her mother rushes outside. Finally, was she going to put a stop to this? But no, she grabs onto her husband trying to make him calm down, while her 11 year old, naked girl, stood there crying in the snow.


As she is standing there facing the wall, she starts to think about what she can do to be better. She should have just done the dishes is all she can think about. Its now almost one o'clock in the morning and she has school at seven thirty. Maybe he will come let me go to bed, she thinks. But she knows in the back of her mind he won't.  Her legs start to ache. She'll sit down just for a second, praying he doesn't walk down stairs to check on her. She's so exhausted. When she had come home from school that day, she started her chores. Her chores always came before homework. First she gathers all the dishes. The dishes of 7 people. She empties the dishwasher. She washes the dishes in the sink and all over the counters and table. It usually takes her about an hour. Then she cleans the kitchen, wiping down the counters, sweeping and mopping. Then she moves to the living room, picks up the baby's toys and all of her mother's things that she left around. She vacuums the living room and then moves to the family room, repeating the process. Then on to the bedrooms, the bathrooms. All while her mother lounges around, watching. Eventually her mom will get up, throw together some dinner. Then they eat. This is where the girl messes up. After dinner, she is supposed to do the dishes again and clean up the kitchen and put away the food. Then she gets to start on her homework. She starts getting a headache. She tells her mother. Her mother doesn't care. She starts to clean up, but then she starts getting dizzy and has to sit down. She gets these headaches a lot. But her parents think she just wants attention.


She once went an entire year wearing the wrong glasses prescription. She told her mom when she put the new glasses on that they didn’t help her any more then the old ones did. They said she was making it up. So when she went to school, she still had to sit in front of the board so she could see. When she went back the next year for her annual glasses, the doctor said, "Oh, these are the wrong prescription. They filled these glasses with the old prescription" Her mother actually apologized that day, acted like she was so sorry for not listening. One would think she had learned that this little girl wasn't just trying to get attention all the time. But of course not. Her stepfather had brain washed her mother to the point where all she did was listen to him and let him talk about how awful her kid was.


This headache. Another night her homework wouldn't be done. She always didn't start her homework till after nine o'clock, when everything else was done. And if she fell asleep while doing it, she'd get smacked on the head and reprimanded for not starting it earlier. She always wondered how she was supposed to start it earlier if she had these chores she had to do, and if they were not done, she'd get punished again. They wondered why her schoolwork was suffering. But it was always her fault, not theirs. And of course, if she got anything less than a B she was punished.


Always punishment. Never love. Not since she was 10. Oh sure, when her step dad was trying to win over her and her sisters he was nice. Gave them gifts, took them out. But as soon as her mother had that ring on her finger, he turned into a monster. She remembers the first time she called him "mean" He said, "Oh I’ll show you how mean I can be" and for 4 months, this ten year old girl was confined to her room, never allowed to eat dinner with the family. She ate by herself, in solitude. No books, no toys. She liked to read, so was grounded from that as well. All for calling him mean.


So as she sat there in the laundry room, she was listening for his footsteps. She then started to doze off. It had to be past three a.m. at this point. The next thing she knows she's being yanked up by her hair, her face gets slammed in the wall. She tastes blood. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he hisses at her. She looks around him, to her sister's bed, trying to see if her sister was awake. If she was, she was pretending to be asleep. She looks at her step dad, "can I please go to sleep?" She knows it’s a fruitless attempt. He then informs her that she will be standing and facing the wall for a week straight. She vaguely wonders if she will be allowed to go to school. Once when she was 12, he kept her locked in the closet for three days, only allowing her out to go to the bathroom. She ate her meals in that closet, alone.  She wonders what they told the school about her three-day absence.


She tried to tell a counselor that her father was doing this. But he fooled them. When child protective services came to the house, he put on this big show about how she was disturbed, a pathological liar and craved attention from everyone. They believed him. She gave up trying to get help after that. The system failed her.


Before he walked back up the stairs, he looks at her. She pleads with him one more time, "please just let me sleep for two hours before school." "Ha! You think you're going to school?" All hope drained out of her. At least at school she could sit, be treated like a human being who mattered. She starts to panic. "You can't do this" and he turns back around, slams her up against the wall, smacking her head. As he is pinning her there, her head feels like it’ll split in half. “I can do whatever I please you little bitch.” And then he drops her. She curls up into the fetal position, trying to think about anything then what is happening at that very moment. She is distantly aware that he is screaming at her, his face probably red with fury. In the background she can hear one of the babies crying upstairs. She’ll be blamed for that too.


Her parents always make her take the kids downstairs to the playroom, to leave them alone. She always had to take care of them. If one started crying, even if she hadn't done anything, she tried to quiet them as soon as she could, cause if she didn't you could count on hearing "what did you do to her?!" from her step dad. Then she'd get hit. Early in the mornings, her parents wanted to sleep. So if the baby woke up, and she didn't hear them first, her step dad would always bring them downstairs, put them in bed with her or her sister and make them get up. Didn't matter if it was 5 a.m. and they had school that day. She was expected to change the baby diapers, get them dressed and feed them, all before she went to school. She did all this while her parents slept. One Saturday, she forgot to change one of the baby's diapers. He made sure she would never forget again. After being yelled at and sent to sit on her bed, facing the wall, he left. He came back about thirty minutes later. He had an adult diaper in his hand. He forced her to put it on, and she was not permitted to use the toilet all day. He then made her stand and face the wall, naked, with nothing but this diaper on. She was twelve. She willed herself not to go urinate all day. He came and checked on her and saw that she hadn’t used the diaper. So she was forced to stand until she did. She knew she would lose all dignity if she gave into this punishment. He enjoyed watching her squirm; it was almost like torturing her. She finally couldn’t stand it anymore, and she went. She started crying, feeling humiliation beyond comprehension as she did this, but she had no other choice.
 
Sure enough her stepfather says, “Look what you did” And picks her back up, throwing her towards the door to the staircases. “You get to deal with it now.” She walks up the stairs, into her sister’s room. She picks up the child, looks at her and the baby stops crying and smiles. At this moment, she feels okay. As long as it keeps his hands off her sisters, she will take the beatings. She does what her mother failed to do. Sacrifices herself, to keep the little ones safe.