Woman of the House

“Why doesn’t anybody believe me?”

     Nohemi Walker had been asking herself this for hours. In all actuality, though, she knew why nobody believed her. She had a bad habit of stretching the truth- and she did so quite often. Like the time when she was nine and said a boy on rollerblades with a golden bat had chased her down and beat her brand new puppy’s head in. She had actually been out walking the puppy when it had gotten away from her and been run over by a passing car. She had made up the whole elaborate “boy-on-rollerblades-with-bat” story because she thought he grandfather would be mad at her, since he had been reluctant to buy the puppy in the first place.

    She didn’t mean to lie. It was more like she said the first thing that popped into her head. It was sort of… involuntary, if you will. But this time she hadn’t been lying. For once she was telling the truth, and no one believed her. She had often lied in class just to get attention, so when she had written in her daily journal that she was being molested by her father her English teacher had just chalked it up to one of the stories she had often made up. But even though Nohemi wished it was a made up story, it wasn’t.

    Every night since her mother had died when she was 10, Nohemi’s father had been coming into her room.

    “You’re the woman of the house now, Nohemi,” he’d growled at her the first night. “Now it’s time for you to take over your womanly duties.”

    Now Nohemi was 14 and he still came to her room every night- 11:00pm, like clockwork. Just last month she had told some kids at school, but their reactions had been negative.

    “Stop making up s**t to be the center of attention, Nohemi,” one of them had told her.

    Another one shouted, “Yeah! Just give it a break already!”

    So her next resort had been to write it in the journal her freshman English class was assigned to write in every day. She watched her teacher, Mrs. Hemstead, read all the journals until she saw her pick up a bright pink composition book. Nohemi knew it was hers. It wouldn’t take Mrs. Hemstead long to read hers; she hadn’t written much. MY FATHER HAS SEX WITH ME. That’s what she’d written.

    A moment later, Mrs. Hemstead looked up from the book and glanced around the room. When she made eye contact with Nohemi, she had given her a disapproving look and tossed the pink composition book to the side in an effort to show her irritation. Nohemi had told her friends, her grandparents, everybody she could think of- but to no avail. It was just like he had said it would be. . . nobody would believe anything she said because she was what he called a “compulsive liar”.

    “You lie so much,” her father had sneered at her one day, “that when you do decide to tell the truth, nobody’ll wanna hear anything you have to say.”

    And he had been right. Now as she lay in her bed, crying, she regretted all the times she had lied.

    She kept whispering to herself over and over again, “God, why won’t anybody believe me?”

    It saddened her to know that even her grandpa, who had once loved her to the point that he would believe any and every thing she said, didn’t even believe her this time. She regretted all those times she had made up those huge, elaborate stories about things she had done or things that had happened to her. She had even made up a story once about having been raped by a neighborhood boy when she was 12. He had been arrested and nearly jailed before she had finally come forth with the truth. Yep. That’s about the time everybody started believing that everything that spewed from her mouth was rubbish. And most of the time it was. But this time she was telling the truth. SHE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH!

    But there was one person who knew the truth- her little sister Charlotte. Charlotte Walker was a beautiful, smart 13 year old, who was seemingly the apple of Frank Walker’s eye. Their father called her his “little princess”. He bought her anything she wanted and never had a harsh word for her. Nohemi, on the other hand, he hardly ever bought anything for. The only words directed her way were harsh ones. He sometimes got drunk and beat her. She was never allowed to sleep over at a friend’s house.

    “Who’s gonna take care of me if you’re not here?” That’s what he asked her every time she was invited to a slumber party.

    He had never touched Charlotte, and Nohemi doubted that he ever would. Whereas Charlotte was very obedient and compliant, Nohemi was rebellious and defiant. That’s why he always felt like he had to put her in her place, so to speak.  She talked back to her father at every turn and argued with him word for word. She felt that if he could treat her like a woman at night, he had no right to play the role of father by day.

    “Charlotte knows,” she said to herself. “Why won’t she just admit it so everybody will stop thinkin’ I’m just lyin’ again?”

    She hated Charlotte for not telling the truth. ‘Maybe this is how people feel when I lie,’ she thought. But no. This was totally different. Her life was on the line here. Every time she thought about the night Charlotte walked into the room and saw her father having sex with her, she became embarrassed and angry. Charlotte had just turned around and walked out of the room as if she had seen nothing. And when Nohemi had tried talking to Charlotte about it the next day, Charlotte had acted as if she had no clue as to what Nohemi was talking about.

    “I ain’t see nothin’, girl,” Charlotte had said, “and I don’t know what you talkin’ bout.”

    Nohemi had begun crying then. She screamed through her tears, “Yes you do, Charlie! I know you saw us ‘cause I saw you! How you gonna pretend not to know?”

    Charlotte sneered at her. “Ain’t nobody pretendin’, girl. I just don’t know what you talkin’ bout.”

   Nohemi stared at her sister with tears streaming down her face. “Charlotte,” she whispered, “you’re supposed to be my sister.” She had gone and locked herself in her room and hadn’t come out all day, not even to eat. All she did was slept and cried. Now she was lying across her bed, too sad for words, looking at the picture of her mother on her night stand.

    “I hate you,” she said to the picture. And at the moment she did hate her mother. She hated her every time her father came into her room and forced her to perform her “duty as the woman of the house”. If her mother had not succumbed to cervical cancer when Nohemi was 10, none of this would be happening to her. She hated her mother for not being there to protect her take care of her. She had been very close to her mother up until the day she passed away. Carmen Walker was a beautiful, kind, and loving woman. She had never put anything or anyone before her children. And she had always been there to protect her girls when her husband got drunk and came home on one of his rampages. She had always been there, especially for Nohemi. She was like her Rock of Gibraltar. She has always been the wall, the fortress surrounding Nohemi, keeping her from being beaten and battered by her father. But that fortress had come crumbling down like the wall of Jericho the morning her mother passed away.

    Now Nohemi didn’t have that protection; she was on her own. She felt like she had been left all alone to fight and defend herself against a monster. And it was so hard, but she would die before she just surrendered herself to anyone- even if he was her father.

    She glanced at the green face on the Timex watch on her right wrist. It was now 4:30pm. Charlotte always got home around this time because after school she would hang out at the basketball court with her friends. All they did was stand around and flirt with guys, but apparently they thought this made them cool. Their dad thought Charlotte was so sweet and innocent, so she made it a point to be home before he got in from work at 5:30.

    Nohemi heard the front door open and close, and then Charlotte shouted from the living room.

“I’m home, No!”

    The front door slammed shut and Charlotte was running up the stairs. She popped her head into Nohemi’s room and smiled.

    “Hey, No, what’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Girl, you always trippin’. You need to go and hang out with your friends or something.”

    “Yeah right,” Nohemi muttered, “you know I don’t get the luxury of hanging out.”

    “’Cause your mouth is too damn smart! Try going along with Daddy’s s**t sometimes and you can have the same privileges I have.”

    After saying this, Charlotte turned around and walked down the hall to her own room. Nohemi lay in her bed for a few minutes, then jumped up and angrily stormed into Charlotte’s room. She burst the door open and started shouting at the top of her lungs.

    “I go along with him a hell of a lot more than you do, lil’ girl!” she exclaimed. “I have to lay down with him every night, but yet I’m not allowed to hang out with my friends! But you get to run your happy a*s all up and down the streets because you don’t have a care in the world!”

    “Don’t hate on me because you don’t get to do nothing! Learn when to argue and when to shut up and you’d be much better off. And besides,” Charlotte said offhandedly, “I don’t know what you talking bout. Don’t be spreading rumors about your own daddy like that. People might start believin’ you this time.”

    Nohemi just stood in the doorway with tears in her eyes that were threatening to spill over and run down her face.

    “You know you saw us that night. And you didn’t say nothin’. Ya’ll got everybody believin’ that I’m just making this up, but I’m not!” And with that she turned around to leave.

    She hesitated right in the middle of the hallway, then turned and went back to Charlotte’s room.

    “When I ain’t here no more, Charlie,” she said tersely, “who do you think is gonna be expected to take over as the woman of the house? Just think about that. Just sit and let that s**t marinate, girlfriend.”

    “Girl, please,” Charlotte replied. “Daddy loves me way too much to treat me the way that he treats you. But the only reason he treats you so bad is because you go around telling lies on him. Now get out of my room!” She shoved Nohemi in the chest and slammed the door in her face.

    Nohemi looked at her watch again. It was now 5:15. ‘Fifteen minutes before Daddy gets home,’ she thought to herself. ‘There’s only one thing left for me to do if this is gonna end now.’ She walked own the hallway to the bathroom and stood beside the tub. She had to do, she knew that. But it seemed a lot easier when she was just thinking about it. Now she knew the meaning of easier said than done.

    She leaned over the tub and turned on the hot and cold water at the same time. She just stood and let the water run for a few seconds. Then she slowly began to undress as tears ran down her face. She had cried so much that day that her head ached terribly. She walked over to the medicine cabinet to see if there was any Excedrin. She picked up the green bottle and shook it. There were quite a few pills left. As she unscrewed the child-proof cap, she thought about what she was about to do. It didn’t make any sense to take pain killers, really. She sat the pills back on the second shelf of the medicine cabinet with shaky hands and grabbed a pack with two razor blades left in it. She tore open the pack, pulled out the blades, and closed the cabinet. She just stood there and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying so much. Other than the red-rimmed eyes, though, her face was rather pale and sunken looking. ‘I look a mess,’ she thought.

    She walked over and turned off the water, which had reached to just underneath the rim of the tub. She stepped into the bath tub, blades in hand, and eased herself down into the steaming water. As she began thinking about her mother, the water works started again. She broke down in tears as she thought about how her mother had always been there for her, protecting her. But now that she wasn’t there anymore, the only person Nohemi had was herself. And obviously she alone wasn’t enough.  One little girl, all on her own, was not enough to fight off a monster- and she was tired of trying.

    She picked up one of the razor blades from the side of the tub and put it against the vein right under the heal of her left hand. . . and then she slit.

    “F**k!” she yelled. She hadn’t anticipated it hurting this badly.

    She looked down at her wrist, which wasn’t bleeding that much at all. She hadn’t cut deeply enough, but she was dreading cutting over that same wound again. A part of her just wanted to give up on that plan all together, go back to her room, and devise another plan. But she couldn’t bear to think of her father coming into her room another night. No, she would do this now.

    She took a deep breath, and slit her wrist again. This time she pressed down as she cut. It must have worked because blood spurted from her wrist and onto the wall. It didn’t hurt anymore, but it was bleeding like hell. Her left hand was bleeding and shaking like crazy as she attempted to cut her right wrist. It took three attempts before she actually hit the right spot. Blood was oozing and spurting from both her wrists. She had blood on her face and chest, and the water had turned pink. She immersed both her arms down into the water and laid back in the tub. She had already begun to feel light-headed. She looked at the clock on the bathroom wall- it was 5:45.

    At 6:15, Frank Walker walked into his home. He threw his brief case and coat on the couch in the living room and made his way upstairs. He looked into Nohemi’s room, but she wasn’t there. Then he walked down the hall to Charlotte’s room. She was sitting in the middle of her bed doing her homework. The music she was listening to on her iPod was so loud that he could hear it from her doorway. She looked up and snatched the earbuds from her ears.

    “Hey, Daddy!” she exclaimed. “You’re late getting in tonight. What happened?”

    “Meeting. Bronson kept us late to go over the quarterly earnings. Where’s Nohemi?”

    She sighed and rolled her eyes. “She went to take a bath about 45 minutes ago, and she still in there. She act like nobody else don’t need to take a bath.”

    “Well, go in there and tell her to hurry and get out that tub. We’re gonna go out to eat tonight because I really don’t feel like cooking.” He turned and walked out of Charlotte’s room and went to Nohemi’s room. He sat on her bed to wait for her because he really needed to talk to her. Karen, the fat, old white lady from the office, had taken him aside to talk to him just before lunch. She said that her grandson Luke had told her that Nohemi had been at school telling some of the other students that her father had been molesting her. He brushed off the accusations, saying that Nohemi had been known to lie often and that he had been thinking about having her committed to a psych ward. He would have to have a talk with that girl. Just then he heard Charlotte scream.

    He walked hastily down the hallway to the bathroom that the girls shared. Charlotte was standing on the door of the bathroom with her hand over her mouth and tears running down her face. She just kept thinking over and over in head, ‘I should have told somebody. Everybody thought she was lying, but I knew the truth.’

    He moved Charlotte aside so he could get into the bathroom- and that’s when he saw her. Nohemi was lying back in the tub full of red water. Her left arm was hanging over the side of the tub, blood dripping from her fingertips. Her brown eyes were staring blankly up at the ceiling, her mouth open. Without even feeling for her pulse he knew that she was dead.

    He walked over to Charlotte, put his arms around her, and hugged her tightly. She buried her face in his chest and cried for her sister. She felt horrible for the way she had talked to Nohemi earlier and even worse for denying that she knew anything. Maybe if she had come forward and told the truth, Nohemi wouldn’t have felt so alone. Maybe if she had told the truth, Nohemi wouldn’t be lying in the bath tub lifeless.

    Frank rubbed Charlotte’s back and then held her out away from him at an arm’s length. Her put his index finger under her chin and tilted her head up so she would look in his eyes.

     He looked directly in her eyes and said, “All we have left is us- just me and you. You’re the woman of the house now, Charlotte. Now it’s time for you to take over your womanly duties.”

    She stared at him with her mouth hanging open, her heart full of fear, as he walked downstairs to call the paramedics to come and take away his dead daughter and lover.