I’D MISSED THE beginning of the end because I was six and Indra was ten. She’d been allowed to stay up later while I was tucked away, asleep in my little bed. Our dad puttered around downstairs in the kitchen, making the preparations for morning. Readying the coffee maker, packing lunches and snacks for Indra and me to take to school.
The way Indra always told it, she was snuggled with Mom upstairs, safe and warm under blankets in my parents’ bedroom, watching TV.
The first sound: a knock at the door. Then, the murmur of men's voices. The chain lock sliding. A loud boom that made Indra scream. I awoke, though I don’t remember it. My mother brought Indra into our room. Told us to lock the door, to hide in the closet and not to come out until she returned.
We heard the thump-thump-thump of feet as our mom ran down the stairs. We heard her screaming and a man growling at her, calling her names. Bad names.
We stayed in our closet, hugging each other tight. The clanging, crashing sounds of a home breaking echoed through the walls of the house.
Glass shattering. Wood snapping.
My sister and I pulled each other tighter, closer, as though we might be protected if we could be absorbed by one another.
Indra used to tell me that the silence of the closet was the worst part, aside from me wetting myself. When the hush came, it felt too abrupt, as though the absence of sound could only bring even greater horror, but we stayed in the closet because our mother hadn’t come for us.
When the morning light found its way through the crack underneath the door, my sister defied our mother’s instructions and turned the knob. She took me by the hand and found me some dry pajamas. She took my hand again and together, we went downstairs.
Our father’s body lay in front of the door, his chest blown out from a shotgun blast at close range.
“Be thankful your memory didn't file that image away,” my sister said to me countless times. “It gets worse and worse every time it flashes through your brain. Each time you see it in your mind, the hole in his chest is bigger. The blood is redder. After a million times of seeing it played back to me, I swear his eyes could see me. It isn't fair the way memory twists up the things it shows you.”
We waited on the porch steps for Mom to come home. She’d be upset that we didn't stay hidden in the closet, but we couldn't stay in there anymore. It was dark, wet, and too quiet.
Whether we sat on those steps for minutes or hours, it doesn’t matter. A police car pulled up in front of our house some time after everything had ended. Indra always said the thing she had the most nightmares about was seeing that policeman, someone who was supposed to save the day and fix everything. Slogging up the little path to our house, his face a red, wet mess of tears that rolled down his cheeks and fell off his chin; he was nothing like a hero who could make it better.
Until that day, we’d never heard of a social worker. After the weepy policeman called her, he said that she'd help us; would explain everything to us.
The task that lay before her was next to impossible. Two kids as young as we were, we couldn’t yet imagine how cruel life can be.
We had no concept of randomness.
We’d never heard of serial killers.
We didn’t fully comprehend bad luck.
I think I understand now why my sister had those nightmares about that policeman. She saw too much truth on that poor bastard’s shiny, tear-streaked face. He’d already seen what was left of my mother in the woods on the way to our house. Even though neither one of us would find out for a very long time afterward what had happened to our mother, or the meaning of the word dismemberment, Indra took one look at that policeman and knew that after Hell, things could still get worse.
When we grew old enough to learn about the man the entire country referred to as the Shotgun Ripper, it gave us no satisfaction to see him caught. When the news outlets explained his pattern of blasting a hole through fathers before raping and mutilating mothers, it made no difference to us that he always spared the children.
Those weren't the details that haunted us.