Tell me a story...dredge up the darkness and force it into the light...

January, 1994.

The walls shook as he hit them, leaving holes where his fists met anything solid. Each impact makes me flinch, and I retreat to the far side of my room after having closed and locked my bedroom door. I pull the blanket over my head, and wish that I could be anywhere but there. Screams reverberate down the hall and through the thin wall that separate my room from theirs. Things hit the wall, and I can only imagine the room descending into chaos. Tears fall and I fear what will come of that night...and I think about Carina, but I can't hear her. I assume she is asleep, and I am too afraid to leave my room, so I simply cower in the corner.

The slam of the front door makes me jump, and through the small slit in my blinds, I watch the El Camino tear out of the driveway as the sun falls behind the treeline. For a moment, I breathe a sigh of relief. He has gone, and I pull the blanket from my head and move towards the door.

*Crash*

The sound of glass shattering close by stops me in my tracks, and for a moment, I search for the direction of the sound. It baffles me, especially as the beating and slamming outside my bedroom door begins again, this time with an almost renewed fervor. I check out my window again to make sure that he was still gone, and the driveway was short a car. The sounds must be coming from my mother...

A soft wimper slowly turns into the cry of a baby across the hall. I wait, trying to see if mom would go to her, but the slamming in the other room continued. Shoving down my fear, I unlock my door as quietly as I can and move to open it slightly. My eyes adjust to the darkness of the hall, and are met with holes along the wall and glass shattered from the picture of God that hung at that end of the hallway.

I slip on my flip flops and jump over most of the glass, making it into my sister's room. Closing the door behind me, I tried to sing through the tears that were streaming down my face. Though my home was not stable, it had never been like this. I feared for everything in that moment, but I tried desperately to console my one year old sister.

As I held her and rocked her, singing a song from the school christmas play that year, silence once again fell upon the house. I sat and sang quietly to the calmed child, envying the fact that she did not have to realize what was going on. Her world was not falling apart, and if I could help it, I would never let it.

'MARISSA! GET OUT HERE!'

The scream made me jump, and slowly I stood and cracked the door wide enough to look down the hallway. There, at the end of the hall on the couch, was my mother drinking from a bottle of wine she had found at some point. Reluctantly, I wrapped my sister in a blanket and creeped out of the room.

This was the first time that I would see the results of the fight that night, and if I did not know better, I would have thought a tornado had moved through. I navigated the glass that now lined the end of the hall where she had torn pictures off the wall, only to end up with wet feet when I made it to her bedroom door. My eyes drifted into the lit room to see the now drained waterbed; a huge gash cut through the middle of it.

I caught my breath and forced myself to walk out to where my mom could see us. I stopped as far from her as possible when I saw her...she was sitting on the couch, a nearly drained bottle of wine in one hand, and the biggest butcher knife in the house in the other. She tapped the tip of the knife on her wrist as she tipped the bottle, and she looked up at me.

'You take your sister next door and call an ambulance.'

It was so hard to find my voice, and when I did, all I could manage was a weak 'Why?'

She pointed the knife in my direction...'JUST DO IT!'

I put my sister in her stroller and rolled it onto the back porch. In the doorway, I turned. My mother was sitting there, ready and willing to kill herself. I wasnt stupid...I knew what she was getting at. The wine was almost gone, and obsessivly she focused on the tip of the knife.

'But mom...I love you.' The tears of an eleven year old fell hard...and she only returned a cold stare. I thought I knew my mother, but that look said something I never want to revisit.

'No you dont. You dont need a mother. You deserve your father, you can't even call Robert dad. You dont even give him a chance. I dont want you here so go away.'

'But mom...please...'

'GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!'

'Theres a reason I dont call him dad.' I was breaking down. Finally, my fear of him was outdone by the fear of losing my mother.

'Oh really? Because you are a selfish brat?'

'No. Because he does things.' My stomach feels sick and my mind is attacked by the images of the night that I bury as the sun rises each morning. I struggle to say it, to tell her, and to keep the thoughts buried at the same time. She explodes into a renewed fit of rage, and around me the house is torn piece by piece. Again, the point is directed in my direction...

'You stay there.'

She gets on the phone, calling his parents...

'Guess what your son has been doing?' The sarcasm and psychotic tone of her voice is so thick...I cant recognize her...She goes into detail to the shocked parents, and then hangs up. Carina is still on the porch, which is probably the safest place for her, but every time I try to move, the point of the knife is redirected at me. My eyes plead with her to let me go, but she makes me sit there until he came home.

Sick to my stomach, and weak from the fear and the tears, I curl up in the corner of the couch farthest from the both. He sits across from me, and mom taps the knife on the table.

'Tell him what you told me'

Fear jolts through me. She was supposed to keep it from him. I beg her silently, but she doesnt seem to care. Through sobs, I repeat what I told my mother not that long before. His glare falls upon me, but I curl tighter into a ball and wish the world would go away. They break into more screaming, mom weilding the knife and Robert staying just out of her reach. It was then I was scared for my life...because I just didnt think that I would survive that night. Someone was not going to make it, and I figured that it would be me.

Through clenched eyes, flashing lights caught my attention slowly, and I forced them open in time to see three policemen walk through the door. Mom turned towards them, knife in hand, and began spouting the story of what he had done, not realizing that all they cared about was the fact that she was waving a knife around....

*****

That night, the took Robert away in handcuffs, mom away in a straight jacket, carina went with his parents, and I went with my great aunt and uncle. The house was left in a state of total disarray, only to be taken stock of later. All told, mom and Robert together had caused 700$ in damage, but once he had left, she tore a path through the house that ended with a price tag of over $5000 in damage.

Robert was home the next day, having been released on bond, and already having a lawyer hired for him by his parents. Mom spent three weeks in the mental ward of the local hospital. Social workers came and went, each one of them barraging me with the same questions. In the end, they said that I was too quiet and unwilling to speak about the details, and Robert passed a lie detector test, so he walked free. A month later, he was granted full custody of Carina.

As for me, I stayed with my Aunt and Uncle for a month before returning to my mother. We spent the next three months living at the titusville salvation army shelter...