I began my prayer. “Father, pour your holy spirit over me and my little boy, ma—”
The next contraction came in tenfold and I screamed bloody murder. My toes curled as I took a deep breath and began pushing. Three pushes later and I was holding my little boy. Except he wasn’t little, he was huge. My heart ached as tears begun streaming down my face. I knew that I need something done down there, I hadn’t stopped bleeding since I gave birth to my placenta.
“Hello, little boy. Well… you’re not so little are you?” I kissed his head that had a full head of dark hair—just like Luce. God, he looked like Luce. My eyes began shutting out, and I struggled and fought to keep them awake. Curling to my side, I tucked Luce Jnr into my arms, so if I fell asleep, or worse, he wouldn’t fall off the bed.
I cried for the baby I wish I could know. I cried for the wrong decision in trusting Nun Nancy and lastly, I cried for the loss of losing my baby, my precious boy. Darkness began to shade my vision as I attempted to kiss Luce Jnr on the head, only my body was heavy and deep down I knew it was shutting down.
“I love you,” I whispered before the darkness of the unknown sucked me in.
Fourteen-Years-Old
I was four when my father started his assaults on me. Four. My mother left when I was a baby and I’ve not known her since. My father—Donald—was my very own devil, and the apartment we lived in was my very own hell. As I got older, the assaults became more forceful, more violent. The day he took my virginity was the day he began a new game that he liked to play. I thought of killing him in his sleep more times than I could count, but that wasn’t who I wanted to be.
“Meadow!” Donald yelled from down our tiny hallway in our run-down apartment. The walls were peeling from age and the early morning train that would zoom past my bedroom window every hour. Hot water was a luxury that we could not afford, and our power would run out at least twice a month. He never paid for it unless he really needed it.
“Meadow, get the fuck in here!” he repeated from the living room, his voice blaring through my walls, sending shivers down my spine. I gulped, clutching the 9 mm Glock in my hand with a single tear rolling down my cheek. The heavy footsteps rattled the thin walls, and I quickly pushed the gun under my mattress. Rubbing my tears away, I stood from my bed and straightened my attire.
“Sorry, I fell asleep,” I said to him as he swung my door open, smashing the back of it against the wall. I flinched at the sudden crack from the door knob splitting the wall open.
“You fell asleep?” he questioned with a laugh. His gray hair was short and his skinny frame still the same. He was frail, his skin scaling in flakes with stains of yellow seeping into it. I bet if I wanted to, I could kick his ass. But deep down, I was a slave to my abuser. I was terrified of him. School was my only out, but even there I’d get picked on. Friends were out of the question for me and my raggy clothes which only made people repel away from me. The girls would laugh at me and the boys would gag at my mere existence. I didn’t mind, I would live through their snide remarks for the rest of my life if it meant I never had to see Donald, even if it was only seven hours a day.
He walked up to me, a loud slap sounding around the room at the same time my cheek stung from the impact. My malnourished body hit the spring mattress in my room and I clutched my cheek with my hand.
“Get up you little bitch, we need to go to the store! You’re not leaving my sight.” He gripped onto my long unkempt hair, yanking the oily mess so roughly, the sting of my hair being pulled out sounded around my scalp. I kept quiet and never spoke. I did what I did every time something like this happened—I went to my happy place. That place is filled with red roses and the ocean, where I have a shack on the beach that I could go to sleep every night with the sound of waves crashing against the sand and the air so thick with salt it would make my eyes sting. The grip around my neck snapped me back to reality. He picked me up off the bed by my neck and laughed, throwing me back down to the ground.
Beginning to walk out, he turned toward me. “Get up little bitch, we are going out.”
After doing some grocery shopping, which consisted of baked beans and bread, we walked up the stairs to our room. The apartment complex we lived in was one big half-way house for the homeless. The outside walls are so badly damaged that the plumbing tubes were falling out of them. Betsy, the landlady, was one scary woman who you do not want chasing you down for rent. You heard gunshots throughout the night, screaming babies and arguing, but this was all I’d ever known because we’d lived there all my life.