Hi

It’s been a moment I know. Some of it is the keyboard some of it is me.

The keyboard is simple I am going to order one tonight. Me not as much.

I was fingering a scar before I started typing this I got it when I was 11. It was a Saturday. I was in the kitchen getting dinner started. Lemon chicken. Bonnie came home from work and she wasn’t in a mood. I figured it was gonna be a good day.

She wasn’t always in a good mood when she came home.

She went upstairs and came down not long after. I could hear her walking, pacing it seemed up and down the hall. I guess I assumed she was just making sure that I’d done my list of chores. For a change I had. Like I said I thought it was gonna be a good day.

She asked where her uniforms were. One of the things I had to do that day was wash and iron her uniforms for the week. Bonnie was an LPN and particular about her presentation. It’s likely how I ended up on the other end of the spectrum but that’s another blog post. I’d hung them in her closet and told her. You were in my room she asked? Looking and listening back I can hear and see the switch in her, but I didn’t then. My Molly you in danger sense didn’t switch on but it should have. Yes I said and went back to washing the chicken. Vinegar and salt water brine.

She’d always said stay out her room and I did mostly. I didn’t see the harm in hanging up her uniforms. They were done so I put them where they went. I’d gone all day getting things done hoping to avoid her wrath that night. I wasn’t fortunate. I said hey were finished so I thought I’d hang them up for you. Oh so you thinking for me now was her response and then I realized what I should have a moment earlier. It was coming.

No additional response was going to change things so I stood silent. That was the default. That’s how I steeled myself for what came next. That’s how I survived. If I let her yell that might be all that came from it. Just get through this moment. Except no mommy came out my mouth. I still don’t know why. I knew better. Yet there it was all the same. The first slap came before the mommy could fully disappear from the air. More came. Apparently I was into pain even back then because I just kept talking. I’m sorry I was just trying to help you. That’s what I said.

That got the broom. The broom was for thinking I could help. For thinking. For doing other than what I was told to do. The story doesn’t end there though. Your girl was on fire. I didn’t want to get hit by the broom anymore so I grabbed it. Bonnie was still bigger and stronger then me but I was a solid kid at 11 on a mission. When she wasn’t able to wrestle the broom from me I thought maybe it was over. She let it go. In its place she picked up the small knife it was using to trim the fat off the chicken the one sitting in the salt and vinegar brine. I don’t remember how she got my thigh, but I remember the pain. The burning. The idea that she wasn’t going to stop. Technically she didn’t. Will, her boyfriend of the time pulled her off me. I was there on the kitchen floor by the hot stove bleeding through my fingers and screaming from the pain.

I’m sure it was only a few minutes but it felt longer. I watched my blood, I felt the heat I wondered what I’d done to earn it this time. I was still there when she came back with butterfly bandaids to close the wound. I’m 46 and the scar is still with me physically and mentally.

I still walk through this life wearing those scars. It still bleeds through and affects my relationships today. I’m still 11 on the kitchen floor. It’s time to get up.

Aphrodite Brown