Six year old Tara Baker sat on her bed reading a Cat in the Hat book. The bruises on her arms still black and blue from her beating earlier that night. A cold breeze blew through her window and blew through her blonde hair sending a chill down her spine. As she got up to close her window, she noticed something strange. Two men in dark clothes were walking up her walkway to her front door. She closed her window and went back over to her bed when she heard her mother scream a few minutes later. She thought that the men were here on “business” for her mother, but it was unusual for her mother to scream like that. Her mother yells, but she doesn’t scream. Thinking nothing of it, Tara continued reading.
A minute later, becoming frustrated with the lack of pages in the book, Tara fell back on her pillows and looked at her ceiling. After a few moments, she looked around her room for something to do. Her room was a dull pink with white furniture. She had a bed, a desk, and a bureau. There was also a small closet across from her bed that sometimes she would hide in from her mother or father during their drunken rages. Other than the furniture, Tara’s room was pretty much empty. She didn’t have any toys or games and her walls were bare. It was not like a six year olds room at all.
Tara went back to her window. This time, one of the men was coming from around the back of the house, and the other from the side. As they walked out of the driveway and down the street, Tara smelt a smell like smoke. She noticed smoke flowing into her room form under the door and then she glanced back out the window to see yellow and orange flames flickering up the side of the house.
Terrified, Tara opened her bedroom door and was immediately choked by smoke. She caught a breath, and walked down the hallway, and down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, she peered into the living room straining to see any life. There was nothing. Walking into the kitchen, she saw through a smoky haze, the silhouette of a woman, her mother, lying on the floor. The kitchen was completely torn apart like someone had been looking for something.
Tara ran to her mother’s side and shook her. “Mommy, please get up! We have to get out of here. Please get up.” Tara pleaded. She pushed her mother over and saw a puddle of blood under her. She looked at her hands and noticed that the blood was there too. With tears pouring down her face, Tara said her goodbyes to her mother, grabbed her coat off of the rack, and ran out of the house.
She looked back when she was on the sidewalk across from her house, and thought about what would happen to her. She didn’t care and she was happy to be free from that house and all of the horrors that happened inside. While washing the blood off of her hands in a stream nearby, Tara thought about what to do, and where to go. She then reached a conclusion about where she was going to stay and headed there right away, as it was becoming dark. Walking down the trail behind her neighbors, she thought about what had happened that night.
Her mother came home as usual and Tara was sitting at the kitchen table. Her mother, Vicky, threw a plate of what appeared to be spam and carrots in front of her. A cup of milk followed. Tara looked at her mother and said hi to her.
“Oh? Well then, hello there child of mine who has ruined my life. Who makes me cringe when I look at the stretch marks on my body every morning when I wake up? Who only thinks of herself and who burdens me with her presence? Then hello honey.” Her mother then popped a pill and while looking out the window asked, “Where is your f*****g father?”
Tara looked at her plate. She didn’t like profanity. She played with the mystery meat in front of her and munched a carrot, surprised they were fresh. It was very rare that there was fresh food in the house. She didn’t dare smell the cup of milk in the cup. She saw the expiration date on it a month ago.
Tara’s mother looked at her and yelled, “What? Is it not good enough? Is this food not good enough for you? Is this house? Is this life? Well suck it up and get over it.”
“The carrots are good mommy.” Tara said. Vicky looked at her out of the corner of her eye and then rolled her eyes. She grabbed her purse and walked over to the door.
“Are you going to work?” Tara asked. Her mother looked at her.
“Ya, ‘cause I got a brat child here at home and a dead beat husband who can’t provide either.”
“I’m sorry I am not a good child mom.” Tara said.
“Ya, me too.” Her mother answered then walked out the door. Tara watched her mom cross the street and disappear from view.
When her mother left, she was wearing a short jean skirt that barely covered the tops of her thighs and a faded purple tank top with big gold jewelry. Her shoes were black platform flip flops with little rhinestones around the straps. Some rhinestones were missing. Her hair was straight blonde with long bangs, and looked a little greasy. Her make up was thick and it consisted of black eyeliner, mascara, and a brown eye shadow. Her face was simple. Normal cheek bones, tweezed eyebrows, crows feet. She had deep smile lines which surprised Tara because she had rarely seen her mother smile. Her mother looked rough. She drank a lot and she smoked. Her clothes smelt like cigarette and so did her hair. She would leave for work around six and sometimes wouldn’t come home for days. Tara didn’t really know what her mother did for work but she would sometimes see her come home in a strange car.
Dave, Tara’s father, walked in about fifteen minutes after her mother left. He went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and looked at her. He was a tall man about six feet. He was thin with muscle tone. He had deep blue eyed and short brown hair. He had a little bit of five o’clock shadow, and he was wearing a dark blue sweater with blue jeans. He was handsome.
“Mommy went to work, daddy.” Tara told him. Her father looked out the window for a long moment and mumbled something like, “that woman is gonna get herself killed.” He looked at her and raised an eyebrow, and turned away to the living room.
“What dad?” Tara asked.
“Nothing, Tara. It’s not important. Now move you’re blocking the TV.”
“Guess what I read at the library today?” Tara was excited to tell her father about when she learned. Her father gave an annoyed sigh.
“What Tara?”
“I learned that if you have the square root of a number, it means that the answer is dividable by two of the same numbers like, the square root of nine is three because three times three is nine, and the square root of sixteen is…”
“Tara, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and I really don’t care. Now move you make a better door than a window.” And with his leg, he pushed Tara out of the way. She looked at him and noticed how he was mindlessly staring at the TV. She decided to leave.
“I think I will go upstairs now.” She glanced at her father and looked for the slightest reaction from him, but there was none. “I’m going to bed now.” Once again, there was no reaction. “Good night.” And she walked up the stairs to her room.
She spent most of the night imagining what it would be like if her family were closer, and if pain hadn’t ever existed. And if her mom and dad treated her like the parents did her classmates. She knew that no one else’s parents beat them. Her mom hit her the most, and her dad yelled at her and would slap her and run after her when he was drunk. When she wasn’t at home, she was picked on at school because she wore the same clothes sometimes and sometimes she was a little dirty. She never liked not being able to be a kid or play with friends, not that anyone would want to play with her. When she told her mom about not having friends her mom would simply say things like ‘“who would want to play with you?”’ and walk away. Tara was hurt by this, but believed it.
She heard her mother come home which was unusual because she had only been gone for a couple of hours. Her parents started talking so Tara snuck out of her room and crawled down the hallway to the vent. The vent was right over the kitchen, and by the sound of it, it seemed to her they were in there. She looked through the vent and saw her mother and father arguing.
“What is your problem, Dave?” her mother yelled.
“My problem? My problem is that my wife is out sleeping around like a s**t leaving her family here while she goes strolling around town with other men.” Her father yelled.
“Oh, so now you care? You seemed perfectly fine with it when I brought it to your attention and you shouldn’t be bitching about it because the money keeps food on the table and a roof over your head and…, I can’t deal with this right now.”
“What about Tara?”
“What about her?”
“She is your daughter too. And…”
“David, don’t even bring her up right now because…” her mother interrupted.
“I’m not finished.” Her father said sternly. “Remember what it was like? What it used to be like? We were so close. Back in high school, we always said that we would never let anything come between us, and now look at us. What happened? What do you think Tara thinks about all of this? Seeing her mother come home drunk in strange cars? Having her mother hit her all of the time?”
“I don’t give a s**t about what she thinks. And you want to know what happened to us back in high school? She happened. Haven’t you noticed that? If we didn’t have Tara, then I doubt that we would be having this conversation. But no, you had to go and say ‘no, no, it’s okay, we don’t need a condom. We’ll be careful.’ And look, nine months later what do we got? Ill tells you what we got David. We got a little accident in diapers that required every second of our day and every penny in our pockets. And don’t even go there because you know damn well that I’m not the only one who has laid a hand on her. What about you huh? Chasing her and yelling at her when you have had too much to drink. Things have changed David, and if you have a problem with it, then you can leave. You’re not a father.”
“And you’re a mother?”
“Someday she will thank me for all that I’ve don’t for her.”
“All of the things you’ve done for her?! What, like sell your body, get high and come home to scream at her and hit her? Then b***h to me about how much your life sucks?
Huh, all that you’ve done my a*s. Yep, I can picture it now. ‘Hey, thanks mommy for beating me and telling me that you hate me. It was really eye opening for me and I want you to know I love you even though you always hated me. Sorry for not being what you hoped for, and screwing up your life; my bad. Want to go get some coffee?’ Do you really expect her to say that to you?”
“Well, being the devil child that she is I think that that is what I deserve I should get.”
“You are the most selfish b***h I have ever known.”
“Get out. Get out of my house David!
“Whatever. Why don’t you find some time in your schedule for your family.” As he was walking out, he mumbled “f*****g b***h.”
Her mother turned around and threw her hands in the air and shouted “s**t.” She then pulled a small plastic pouch out of her bra and opened it. Tara watched as her mother sprinkled the white powder in vertical lines across the kitchen table. Her mother then put her nose to the table and made snorting noises. Tara watched as the lines disappeared one by one. Then her mother looked out the window and slowly turned to look at the vent. She saw Tara’s eyes looking at here and slowly walked under the vent to look straight into her daughter’s eyes. “You little b***h!” she yelled and Tara ran as fast as she could to her room.
Her mother was chasing her now; she could hear her footsteps coming up the stairs. Tara slammed her door and looked frantically for a place to hide. She dove for the bed but her mother was quicker. Vicky grabbed her ankles and pulled Tara out from under the bed. Tara was screaming now, clawing the carpet to stay under the bed. Her mother picked her up and slammed her on the bed and flipped her over so they were eye to eye. “Do you see what you do?!” her mother said. “You have ruined my life. Your father just walked out on me.”
“You told him to leave.” Tara regretted those words as soon as they left her mouth.
“You little…” her mother slapped her across the face and grasped her wrists even harder.
“I hope you know you are the most no good, evil, stupidest child on the planet. You don’t deserve to live. You are an accident. One millimeter of latex and you wouldn’t be here and I regret not having that latex everyday of my life when I see your face. Her mother picked her up and started shaking her. Her hands were squeezing her arms so tight now. Tara almost started to cry but stopped herself. She tried her hardest to break free but she couldn’t. Vicky let her go and pushed her up against the wall and left. Only then did she start crying.
Tara kicked up stones in her path. She stopped and tried to catch some frogs that were in the ponds along the path and she would try to skip stones across the shallow waters but could never figure out how to do it. When the path ended, it ended with a thick brush growing out of the murky waters of the pond. It was a small clearing but the forest around the pond was too thick to walk around and she didn’t have the time to try. Tara knew it was getting dark and she knew that to reach where she wanted to go, she had to go through the pond; though she had done it only twice. Then, a twig snapped from behind her. She turned around slowly. It felt like someone was watching her. Was someone following her? She skimmed the trail she was just on with her eyes but sow no one. She turned back to the pond but the only problem now was her fear of water and it was getting dark. She glanced over her shoulder and then turned back to the waters and memories of what happened two years before came running back to her.
When she was four, she went on a boating trip with her grandparents before they died and the lake they were in was similar to the pond in front of her only deeper and wider, but the water was brown without thick brush all around. There were lily pads on the top and God knows what swimming in it. Her grandfather took a sharp right turn and Tara flew right out. Hitting the water was like falling on to a sheet of glass with shards flying all around. The water was thick, muddy with blood warm water to break her fall. She remembered what it was like; what she was thinking. The dirt in the water stung her eyes like a swarm of bees. The feeling of water flooding her lungs made her gasp for air but there was only water around her. She could here the hum of the boat getting closer and the distant sound of people yelling. It was then when someone pulled her out of the water that a wave of blackness engulfed her. Tara thought she was going to die. When she awoke from her black out, she was cold wet and still choking on water. The events of that day will never leave her mend. She figured out how to keep that nightmare away, but standing in front of this marshy area made the memories hit her like a freight train.
Tara got those thoughts out of her head and hopped onto the first clump of earth that was sticking out of the water. It was a big jump to get to it though. Tara had to run and jump to get to it. Hopping to a couple more after that, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and she looked to her left. She froze when she saw a black water snake at least five feet long. It looked at her for a long moment and then slithered into water and disappeared under the surface. Tara closed her eyes tightly and calmed herself, then made her way to the other side of the pond when she had two more patches to jump to get to the other side, she slipped. The fear came back to her again when she hit the water. Struggling to get to the surface, Tara clawed at weeds and dirt and sunken tree limbs. When she reached the mainland, Tara was shivering, wet, and dirty. Wiping tears off of her face and pulling leaves from her hair, she made her way to her destination.
Reaching the old abandoned shed, it was pitch black with only the moon to light her way. Opening the door, she had to pull down cobwebs and clean a spot on the floor. When she lay down, she started to cry. She cried for her mother, she cried for her family, she cried for what she had lost, and she cried for not knowing what was left for her to gain. Then, sleep took over.
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