CHAPTER Twenty-Nine
“Mommy, why does Daddy hurt us?”
Mommy’s eyes got real watery, and she blinked a lot. She smiled but it didn’t look right. Not like a real smile. It looked like it hurt her to do it.
She began to brush my hair again. “Daddy hurts us because he loves us.”
I frowned. That didn’t sound right. “I don’t understand.”
Mommy nodded like she didn’t understand either. “He has to. To make sure we act right.”
“But I do! I promise! I try to be a very good girl.”
“I know, Langga. I know.”
I heard Mommy sniffling. She cried a lot. Usually when Daddy was home. He laughed at her when she cried. He laughed at me when I cried too so I tried not to do it. I didn’t like it when he noticed me. That always led to pain.
“Mommy, I don’t like it when Daddy loves me,” I whispered, though he was nowhere in sight. Daddy didn’t always come home. I liked that.
Mommy was quiet. Maybe I had made her sad. Maybe she thought I was bad.
“I don’t like it either, Langga,” she whispered back.
I turned around to face her. “If you don’t like it, then why doesn’t he stop? Can’t you make him stop?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head as tears rolled down her face.
Seeing Mommy cry made me sad. I didn’t mean to upset her. I reached out to wipe them away. “Why not?”
“Because…because I’m scared.”
My face grew hot, and my own eyes got watery like Mommy’s. My throat felt funny, like something was stuck in it. I tried to swallow it down, but it only made it harder to breathe. To breathe through the pain.
“I’m scared too, Mommy.”
A stinging sensation on my cheek and a muffled voice tugged at the seams of my consciousness. Then pain. So much pain. My head. My neck. It all felt stiff, as if I had been sleeping awkwardly for hours. But when my hand grasped my forehead and felt warm stickiness, I knew that an uncomfortable night’s rest was not the cause of my unease. I couldn’t be so lucky.
“Wake up, you little bitch!”
A palm struck my cheek, engulfing it in pricking flames. I tasted blood from the flesh inside my mouth that had ripped open from the impact. I coughed and sputtered, too stunned to cry out.
“I said wake up!”
I knew this voice. I knew it like I knew the fears etched on each star on my windowsill. Knew it like the monsters that haunted my dreams. Knew it like the ache that spread through my chest from years of loneliness and rejection.
He was the reason for it all. He had created those fears. Had spawned those monsters, and had left behind that debilitating ache.
Him.
He was here. He had found me.
Pure, undiluted fear raced through my veins and seized every sense. I was paralyzed with it, rendered completely useless against him. Screaming, fighting, crying—it was futile. He stole it all from me.
“You thought you could run from me,” he sneered. “You thought you could hide, and you would be safe. Ha! You’ll never be safe. I’ll always find you.”
Against my better judgment, I opened my eyes. They stung from the blood that dripped from my forehead, blurring my vision. Green eyes, wild with rage, yet so similar to mine, stared back at me. Full lips, resembling my own, were tightened into a murderous sneer over yellowed teeth.
He was me, and I was him. Features so alike that there was no denying that he was my father, and I was his daughter. Features that made my mother hate me because I was the living, breathing reminder of the man that killed her.
“Now that I have your attention, you little cunt, time for you to give me what I want,” he growled.
I could hear the words but I didn’t understand. I didn’t get what he wanted from me. Hadn’t he done enough?
You answer Daddy when he speaks to you. Don’t hesitate. Daddy doesn’t like it when you do that.
“I don’t know what you want,” I croaked, around my swollen tongue. My lips felt foreign. Puffy, like the rest of my jaw, the way they did when pumped full of Novocain from the dentist. But I wasn’t numb. No. I felt everything. I writhed in overwhelming pain.
My father knelt in front of me. “Don’t play dumb with me!” he spewed, grabbing a handful of my hair and yanking my face close to his. I took in his crazed features, trying to focus my senses. He was obviously older, and the years had not been kind to him. Drugs and alcohol had corroded his once dashing face, leaving his jaundiced skin marred with pockmarks and scars. Some of his teeth were missing, and the ones that were left were yellow or rotten. His brown, once full, shiny hair was thin and matted. And his eyes—eyes that once shone brightly whenever he picked up a guitar, eyes that had occasionally exuded kindness and love, eyes that looked exactly like mine—were dead and cold. Lifeless.
My father was dead inside. He was gone, just like my mother. He had taken their lives in a murder-suicide a long time ago. I had been an orphan all this time; I just hadn’t realized it.
“Please,” I begged, my voice no more than a strangled whisper. “I don’t know what you want from me. I’ll give you anything. Anything! Just please don’t hurt me.”
He shoved me back, releasing the tight grip on my hair before breaking into a full-belly guffaw. “You stupid little bitch. My money! You will give me my money! Where is it? I want it now! Give it to me! Now!”
I winced. Not from the stinging in my scalp. Not from the oozing gash on my forehead that was dripping blood down the side of my face. Not even from the cuts inside my mouth that made it painful to talk. It was him. Seeing him so crazed and delusional. So desperate and out of control.
I hated this man. Hated him with everything inside me, yet, I couldn’t help but hurt for him. He was a broken boy once. His father did to him what he had done to me. What he was doing to me now.
This man was once my father. No matter how much I despised him, he was half of me. But the man before me right now was a stranger. A cracked-out, sickening stranger that I had never seen before.
“I’ll give it to you, I swear! But I don’t have it here. It’s at the bank. If you let me go, I’ll get it for you. I promise. Just let me go, and I’ll get it all!”
Fury washed over his ugly face, and he bared his decayed teeth, taking a step towards me. “No. I want it now!”
I scurried back, colliding with the couch. My hands searched for something – anything—that I could use as a weapon, but the closest lamp was feet away. I whimpered in desperate resignation. “I can’t get it to you now! I have to get it from the bank!”
“Well, if I can’t have it now, then I’ll take something else.”
His hand went for his belt buckle, and I felt a brand of terror that I couldn’t even imagine. It was the kind of inconceivable fear that spawned nightmares. Reprehensible dread that forever ruined you. Murdered your spirit. Slaughtered your soul.
My stomach roiled violently, causing the taste of bile to invade my mouth. Cold sweat blanketed my skin, mixing with the blood that ran from my face. Tremors assaulted every inch of my body, and my senses were overwhelmed with panic.
No. Please don’t. Please don’t do this.
I wanted to say the words. Wanted to beg him to spare me, but fear had seized my vocal chords. It had stolen my breath as well as my sanity. I had to be hallucinating. This couldn’t be happening. No. I refused to believe this was real.
“You’re a little slut, aren’t you? A little slut that opens her legs for any guy. Well, now it’s time to open your legs and that nasty little mouth for Daddy.”
“No!” The word ripped from my throat in a sob. “NoNoNo!”
“You’ve been a very bad girl, Kamilla. A whore, just like your slut mother! So, first I’m going to beat you. Then I’m going to take what’s mine. I’m going to f*ck you like the whore you are.”
He took another step towards me, unleashing his belt from his pants. He folded it in half and slid the leather between his fingers slowly, a ritual I had seen him do dozens of times. A ritual that sucked the breath right from my lungs and demolished the tidy, fragile compartments of my psyche…
“You’ve been a bad girl, Kamilla. A very bad girl. And now I have to punish you.”
“No! Please, no, Daddy! Please! I’m so sorry. I promise to be good! Please, no. Don’t hurt me!”
“See what you make me do, Kamilla? I have to. I have to hurt you because I love you.”
“Please. Please, don’t.”
“Don’t make me angry. Your mother made me angry, and you see what happened to her. Do you want to be like her? Do you want to be a dirty whore like your mother?”
“No, Daddy.”
“Then come here and get what you deserve. It’s your fault; you make me do this, Kamilla. You make me hurt you.”
He stood before me, his pants unfastened and his brown leather belt at his side. He smelled of stale beer, and filth as if he hadn’t showered in weeks. “This is what you deserve, Kamilla. You’re a dirty, filthy whore. And whores need to be beaten. You make me do this to you. You make me hurt you. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love you.”
Before I could utter a semblance of a plea, he raised his arm up over his head and brought it down in a blur of haggard skin and worn leather. I didn’t even have time to brace for the attack, let alone shield myself from it.
The first blow landed across my shoulder and face, setting it ablaze, bursting with reds and oranges. I felt my skin split open with the impact. My eye suffered the worst of it, and I couldn’t tell if it was swollen shut or if the blow had taken out my eyesight. It was all pain. All fire. I couldn’t differentiate it. Couldn’t tell where the agony ended and relief began.
The second one made me see stars. Not the beautiful, twinkling ones that inhabited the night sky. The ones that appeared in blurry splotches behind swollen eyelids. The ones that told you that unconsciousness was near, whispering promises of vivid dreams, if you just succumbed to it. It hurt too much to scream, and I was too weak to even cry. I was tired. So tired. I wanted to sleep and escape this pain. I wanted those dreams that the stars boasted. I needed them.
The third slash across my face claimed me. Dragged me under in a deep sea of numbness and detachment. A place where pain was no longer felt, fear was not my captor, and my father’s love did not rip me apart and scatter each piece of me, making it impossible to ever be whole again.
I almost felt this peace once. I was five, and it was waiting for me, beckoning me to the bottom of a swimming pool.
And now… now I had found it. I found the peace that came with death. And this time, I didn’t fight against it. I ran to it with outstretched arms.