She was conceived in the normal way. Or rather, the typical way since normality is merely an illusion created by those who lack self-confidence. The product of lust hiding under the false pretense of love, she was simply the child of the love-hate relationship between two lost souls wandering aimlessly, searching for purpose. To be bluntly honest, the union between the two was based more on personal need than deep feeling. The scales tended to dip more toward hate than compassion. Lust bore this beautiful Girl into a tumultuous world that would swallow her into pain and anguish, swallow her into the reality of her very existence.

No one pretended with her. No one talked in sweet, ridiculous baby talk to the Girl. She simply existed. She was not considered new for very long. Two other children preceded her, the Daughter and the Son. She was merely the last, the finale. Childhood was, but a fleeting moment. Every little girl has to grow up sometime. For her, sometime came much sooner than the other little girls who laughed and giggled and wore their hair in pigtails. The Girl lacked the sweet naivety of a child, the innocence of not understanding the adult world. She soon learned the ways of the world, listening to the screaming and crying of her parents from behind thin walls.

“SHUT UP!”
“YOU STUPID B****! I DON’T KNOW WHY I EVEN WASTE MY—”
“I’LL KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP YOU FILTHY SON OF A –”

The Mommy and the Daddy may have thought they loved each other at one time, but they more than likely realized that it was a lie shortly after marriage. The lustful illusion began to fade, and the only thing left was cold, harsh reality. Perhaps it took three children, and the stress parenthood results in, to finally drive their marriage to the breaking point. They didn’t love anymore, if they had at all. They didn’t even lust. Hate, there was only hate.

The Daddy started coming home late. He smelled of liquor and smoke and cheap perfume. The Mommy first made excuses. Then the Mommy got angry. The Daddy got mean. The Mommy would scream. The Daddy would yell. Then he would swing. The Girl would hide away in her room, under her bed, in her closet, anywhere where she could find refuge. It was the same, night after loud, agonizing night. Then it happened. The fight started out the same, but this ending had a twist.

The Daddy was late again. He was drunk and mean. He left waves of cologne and perfume wherever he stepped. The smell pierced the Girl’s nose. The Mommy started yelling.
“Where were you this time? Where? You think I’m going to wait here for you while you go gallivanting around? Who is she?”

The Daddy cussed, then swung his fists. The Mommy crashed to the floor. The Mommy got back on her feet. She picked up the ceramic panther, the pretty, black panther that hid away all of her bobby pins. She brought it down swiftly upon his drunk and swimming head. The Mommy broke the pretty panther, the tiny little pieces falling to the linoleum, so similar to the shards of the life they led. The Daddy reached for the Mommy’s throat. The Mommy reached for the little Colt pistol.

The Daddy left that night. The Girl didn’t know when he would come back, if he ever did at all. But since he left, the Mommy was happy again. She smiled and laughed. She helped the Girl and the Daughter and the Son make peacocks out of old Styrofoam. The Mommy hung them all on the wall and told the children that they were lovely.

The Mommy’s stomach growled a lot. She didn’t eat very much, only when there was enough for the Girl and the Daughter and the Son. No matter the situation, the Mommy made ends meet, even if it took a little while, even when she was hungry.

The Daddy came back, years later, but only to pick up the Girl and the Daughter and the Son in his old hippie Volkswagen van. He drove them to a little roadside restaurant, where he introduced the Susan. The Susan was young and pretty and horribly cold. She looked like summer, but to the Girl, she felt like February. The Daddy said the Susan was his new wife, and he would live with the Susan and Her Daughter. Her Daughter was naughty. She was cruel and spoiled, not unlike her mother. None of that mattered to the Daddy. He drove the children back to the Mommy before he took the Susan and Her Daughter to the house with the shiny rooms.

Little rays of sunshine seemed to filter through the dark sky of the Girl’s life. Her past seemed to still in her memory. Her chaotic life seemed to quiet just a little. But everyone knows that the storm comes after the still silence.

The Mommy brought home Men. They were disgusting Men for the most part. They drank, and they never cared much for the Girl or the Daughter or the Son. The Men never stuck around for long. They all disappeared and were quickly replaced. All, that is, except the Stepfather. The Mommy liked him, though the Girl didn’t understand why. The Stepfather and the Mommy got married in secret. The children never even knew until years later when a neighbor happened to mention it.

The Stepfather had other Children, some living in other states, only a couple living with him. He was still married to the Mother of a few of them when he and the Mommy started dating. The Mommy was simply the Stepfather’s mistress, only one of his dirty secrets. The Mother found out and left the Stepfather. He came up with a plan to move the Mommy and her children into a little ranch house hidden way back in the middle of nothingness. That way, the Mommy and the Girl and the Daughter and the Son were out of sight and out of mind, and they were all helpless to his control.

The ranch house was old, older than anything the Girl could imagine. There was no running water, no bathroom. There was an outhouse out back. When there was finally electricity, they washed the clothes on an old time washing machine. The Son, the Daughter, and the Girl took turns feeding the clothes into the wringer. At night, the only light was from the oil lamps and the moon. Sometimes the Girl thought it was as if they were real homesteaders back in the old days.

The Stepfather’s Children were awful. They came and went as they pleased. They took pills. They smoked pot. They spent their days strung out and high so they could forget the old pain. The Children rebelled against everything. They did inappropriate things in front of the little Girl. She became wise beyond her years in subjects that should be hidden until a later age. The Children didn’t completely ignore the Girl. They played games with her, cruel and painful games. They would force her to smoke pot, laughing as the Girl cried in her high. Her torment was their escape.

Pain is a reality. Physical pain is learned quickly at a young age, the sharp tendrils wrapping themselves around a sore bottom or a bumped head. Emotional pain is typically discovered later on. The Girl came upon it early on. She was exposed to the hurtful words, the stinging insults that left a mark, although she couldn’t find it. The Girl understood. She knew when to keep quiet, when to disappear. Amazingly, the survival skills of one so young could adapt to her surroundings.

The Stepfather seemed to change. He no longer tried to win the affections of the family. He would drink in front of them all. He would lash out at anyone nearby. He would beat the Mommy until she was bruised and bloody. He beat the Son, nearly killing him. He forced him to leave the house and never come back. The Son was only twelve years old.

The Stepfather had only just begun. He hurled insults like a Boy Scout throwing candy in the Fourth of July Parade. They were fast and furious and never-ending. He physically abused the Mommy and sexually abused the Daughter and the Girl whenever he pleased. He enjoyed the power, the thrill of being ‘Numero Uno’. His game was Control, and he was the expert player. He threatened the Mommy, threatening to take her life. What a poor life it was.

It only got worse. Drunk and mean, he would pull the Girl into the bedroom. He would touch her. Never, never would she feel clean. He defiled her, stealing any innocence she had, taking her childhood away far too soon. She was only twelve years old. He proved that he was ultimately in control of the Girl at all times. He was more enamored with the Daughter, the pretty, older, more developed Daughter. He was forever touching her. How he ruined the childhoods of two young children!

Any person with a brain would ask why the Mommy let this happen. Why? Why would anyone take that kind of physical and mental abuse? Why would they expose their children to that? The answer is rather simple. The Mommy was desperate. She was desperate for money, desperate for comfort, desperate for nourishment. More than anything, she was desperate for love. She didn’t know where to find it. She went looking in all the wrong places. Then she found the Stepfather.

“He’s rich!” she’d say.
“Don’t marry him, Mommy! We’ll find a way to make it by. Just please, please don’t marry him!” the Girl and the Daughter and the Son would beg.

“But he’s rich! He can take care of us! He’s the answer,” the Mommy would reply.

Perhaps her need for love and security outweighed her children’s opinions. The Mommy married the Stepfather. She got used to the comfort of a full stomach and nice clothes and material possessions. She didn’t want to give it all up to go back to welfare and poverty, to counting pennies and saving every scrap of everything. So she turned a blind eye. She ignored her children’s pleas. She let the Son leave, telling him that he was bad. She turned her head when the Daughter would cry out against the Stepfather. She pretended not to believe the Girl when she told the Mommy about the abuse. The Mommy was weak. She was afraid to leave, too afraid to stand up for her children and herself.

In today’s world, money is the king. We worship it. We spend like there’s no tomorrow and lend like today’s only the beginning. We ignore love. We trample it along with yesterday’s garbage. There are people out there who only want to be loved, to be held, to be safe, and to be adored. Greed ripped this family apart, although some mending has started. ‘Want’ played the villain and almost succeeded in destroying three innocent children.

Who would believe that the Girl, the sexually, physically, and mentally abused little Girl, could come out of such a traumatic and chaotic childhood and make something of herself? She did. The Girl finally learned after years of heartbreak that love, the love that she had been looking and longing for, was right there inside herself all along. When she learned how to love herself, she learned how to let others into her heart and love her, too. Life’s trials weren’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, but they made her stronger. She eventually found complete happiness. She met a man who became a lover, then became a partner. Together, they have made a family that stands strong because of an understanding of pain and a sense of gratefulness for what they have. Their family will continue to stand strong for many, many years to come because of that wonderful little Girl who grew into a beautiful, loving Woman.