PROLOGUE

 

She hid under the bed, carefully controlling her breathing. She didn’t move, not even a twitch. Her pink dress was dirty from the pine hardwood floor and her pink shoes were scuffed. The curls of her raven hair billowed around her head like a halo. She could see their shoes, moving around as if dancing to a tender love song.

Only she knew it was no dance.

And it was no love song.

She heard the sound of his fist as it smashed against her mama’s cheek. Her mama immediately crumpled to the floor like a rag doll, dazed and moaning. Blood spilled from a corner of her swollen mouth like a red stream.

Her mama’s face ballooned, her cheek shattered from the blow. One eye was swollen shut, protruding like a golf ball. With her good eye, mother and daughter made eye contact in a moment of sorrow and sheer terror.

She wanted to help her mama and save her from him. But she knew that she would be no match for his brute strength and drunken rage. In that moment of mental connection, her mama told her to remain still as the night so that she too would not face the fists and battering he had inflicted upon her.

With all of her willpower she closed her eyes tightly; her instincts telling her nothing would ever be the same again. Not that she ever wanted things to be.

Not this way.

Not with him.

When her eyes opened, her mama was no longer on the floor. She had been dragged to her feet and thrown onto the bed like a sack of soiled clothes.

“Bitch!” She heard him roar like a lion, hovering over her mama as if her shadow.

Then he hit her again. The blow must have been tremendous, for her mama’s dentures went flying across the floor like a bird, landing harmlessly beneath a chair in the corner. She was pounded several more times. Her mama’s blood curdling screams had turned to faint whimpers.

Then the bed suddenly sank to the point where she thought she might be crushed or cut by the jagged springs nearly touching her. It was all she could do not to make a sound, though inside she was crying as loudly as she could muster.

He had gotten on the bed with her mother.

“This ain’t over, bitch,” he spat. “Not by a long shot!”

She listened as she heard him unbuckle his pants.

“I’ll show you to smart mouth me. When I’m done with you, you’ll know who’s boss, and who ain’t nothin’ but a damned ugly assed whore!”

She could hear some rustling noises, heavy breathing, and groans—the last coming from him by the wicked deepness of it. She couldn’t bear to think of what he was doing to her mama. But she knew it was something awful. Something that would make her curse him even more than she already did.

When he was finished, she heard him roll over. Moments later he was snoring like a bear, the sound coming from deep within his throat, punctuated by labored breathing. She could hear no sounds from her mama, but suspected she was too afraid to even breathe—afraid he would wake up and continue hurting her.

She was also afraid. After waiting there paralyzed with fear for what seemed like an eternity, she nudged her way beneath the springs till she was out from under the bed. Her pink dress was covered with dust and blood from where her mama had fallen.

She stood up, intent on taking her mama away from him forever. But it took only one look at her to know this would never be. Her face was almost unrecognizable—horribly discolored and at least twice the size as normal. Her clothes had been ripped apart, exposing a frail thin body, marred with marks and bruises both fresh and from other beatings he’d inflicted upon her. Her legs were spread wide, blood oozing from between them, seeping onto the sheet like red dye.

Her mama’s eyes were wide open, as if held that way by toothpicks. Whatever life was in them had vanished forever.

Beside her, he lay naked in a drunken sleep, his breathing erratic and uncertain.

She felt the hatred in her build like steam in an engine. This was softened only by the love for her mama and hardened again by her feelings of helplessness and guilt.

She climbed atop her mother’s battered, broken, and bloodied body and lay there with her thumb in her mouth like it contained magical properties. It was as if she would be rocked to sleep and would wake up and find that everything was all right.

Deep down she knew that would never be the case. He had seen to that.

She began to hum a song she made up on the spot, somehow soothing her, no longer caring if he woke and hurt her as he had her mama.

After all, she could feel no greater pain, bleak darkness, or emptiness than she felt at the moment.