THE LADY IS A STRIPPER
Daddy took me outside to the back of the yard. There was a huge ant hill near the back fence. I could guess what was on his mind as he grabbed a stick when we got near. I was already crying tears of humiliation and fear. He stirred the ant hill up and made me squat over them while he took a chair and placed it in the shade so he could watch the fun with that small malicious half smile on his face. The large red ants drew blood several times as they bit me with their needle-like pincers. A half hour later, he let me get up and called me to him. He punched me in the stomach.
It promised to be the worst summer of my life. I was fourteen.
I'd brought this one on myself, I thought later, lying on my bed. My sister and I shared an old thirty foot trailer parked in the yard behind our house. It was hot outside and, without air conditioning, being shut up in the trailer was like being sent to roast in an oven. If only I hadn't messed up on the proofreading again. What made me do that?
I thought again, for the millionth time how much I wanted to run away. But I felt so guilty. Daddy already said I was worthless, that I had no loyalty to my family. Wouldn't that make me the ultimate traitor? Yet, I had to believe, wanted to believe, there must be something better than this.
I've tried to explain this to various people in my life but maybe I really am different and that's why they don't understand. I've been told that I can take a lot. That is true, but I do have a limit although it isn't something set up in advance. I've always explained it thus: It's like I have a switch inside my head and when I've had enough I can hear the switch turn off and then it's as though the power supply has been cut and nothing can make it go on. Nothing. The switch went off in June, the month before my fifteenth birthday.
It had been a horrible week. Every day I helped Daddy proofread and every time I made a mistake or hesitated he would kick my shins hard with his steel toed work boots. Two or three times a day he would give me a beating.
In the evening he'd hack away at my hair, sometimes leaving scissor cuts on my scalp. When I looked in the mirror, I could see that what hair I had left stood up on the back of my head. Except for the unevenness of it, I looked like a military inductee. The next step would be shaving me bald and he'd already threatened it. I had no reason to doubt him.
My legs were completely black and blue. The shins were cut and swollen from repeated kicking. I hurt everywhere but most of all I hurt when I tried to sit. My rear end was absolutely raw. I had to keep pulling my panties away from my skin to keep them from sticking. My arms looked like replicas of my legs. My hands were swollen from getting in the way. My face wasn't too bad for a change, a few healing bruises. He'd concentrated mostly on my body this time. Bodies are easier to hide. I kept that in mind as I dressed on the day I made up my mind to leave.
I had been confined to the oven-like heat of our trailer because I didn't try to "help" Daddy enough. Because I "deliberately" missed words when I read to him. Because I cried too much. Because I wasn't loving enough. I knew my faults well, having been harassed verbally and physically day and night for months on end.
I had decided earlier, that as soon as they left for their afternoon deliveries, I was leaving. Maybe I could get a job or something. Whatever horrors and uncertainties were out there, they couldn't be any worse than what was certain to continue.
I'd wanted to leave so many times but I wrestled constantly with a conscience that had been brainwashed. This was the ultimate expression of family betrayal as Daddy pointed out repeatedly after my first running away. I was sure God would hate me. I would be proving all the terrible things Daddy said about me. These were the things I'd told myself to keep from running away but today the switch had turned off. It was the first time in my life I had ever heard it but it was unmistakable. I knew I would go. I was scared now that they might not make their deliveries. That maybe he'd call me to the house for some more of what I'd been treated to earlier.
It was so hot. It had to be a hundred-thirty degrees in the trailer because it was about a hundred and ten outside. I gazed out the window and could see my little sister sitting in the shade of the shed we used to sleep in. He'd banished her there to keep us separated. I could see the little shade she had would be gone soon. She looked as hot and miserable as I was.
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