Two AM

A little girl in a pink ballet skirt and slippers ran up the gravel driveway leading from the bus stop to her house, ignoring the rocks driving themselves into the bottoms of her feet. She finally saw the porch, where her mother waited for her to get home and words of great excitement about something she did in class today were on the tip of her tongue until she saw her mother's eyes were red from crying, and even now, tears rolled down her cheeks. The only words that were spoken were from the mother: “Daddy's gone,” and the little girl knew he wasn't coming back this time.

Since before this day, everything had gone wrong in the girl's life, and even after this, things continued to go from bad to worse. Ever since she was born, nothing had really gone right at all and nothing would change that. Now, the girl, turning into a beautiful young lady, tells her story for the first time. It hasn't ended, so it isn't complete, but it took her four years to be able to tell anything to her best friends. It took four years. More than four years of trying to block the whole thing from her mind, even though it was happening right in front of her eyes. More than four years of storing every detail in her brain, so maybe she'd explode from mental overload. More than four years of information, every little detail, was retold that night. This is her life story, from my recollection. You could say I am an unreliable narrator, though, considering the fact that it was 2:00 in the morning. Everyone knows that's the best time to have a deep conversation, lying in the dark, not really knowing if you're asleep or awake, but everyone also knows, that one's mind doesn't always work properly at that early time.

She started the story at the beginning. Literally. From the time before she was born, to the present, more than fifteen years later. Her parents met, working at the original Bob Evan's restaurant. He, a cook, and she, a waitress. They fell in love. It really was that simple. Except for the fact that they fought All the time. After dating for a year and a half, they married, but they even fought on their wedding day. He shoved her into his truck and they fought all the way to the wedding reception. It isn't a good sign when a girl cries tears of anger on her wedding day, especially when they are directed towards the bridegroom.

Soon after, the mother got pregnant and the day the couple was to find out if the baby was a boy or a girl, the father was not there. For good reason, too, because the only thing he wanted was a boy, and that day, the mother found out that she was to have a girl. In order to save herself from more fighting, she said she wanted it to be a surprise. That plan was ruined on the day the girl was to be born. As the father and grandmother of the baby stood in the hospital waiting room, the grandmother said, “Aren't you happy for your baby girl?” not knowing it was supposed to be a secret.

For the whole 23 hours of labor, including an impromptu seasection and near death for both the mother and the baby, the father would not talk to the mother, or even see her for that matter. It was the grandfather, the father's father, that held the almost-dying mother's hand throughout the whole thing.

When the father finally consented to seeing his wife and baby daughter, hours after the trying birth and almost immediate death, things seemed to look up for the moment. The sight of the baby girl made the father's face light up with delight, but that little positive outlook only lasted a short while.

The few years after the baby girl's birth, the father still desperately wanted a son. And for this very reason did he dress his daughter in football jerseys and baseball caps. Little did he care that she really hated these things (yet was too sweet to tell her father so). Instead, she would play dress-up when her father wasn't home, putting on ballerina tutus, fancy dresses and her mother's high heels.

When the girl was four, her mother was pregnant again, this time with a baby boy. The pregnancy was extremely less complicated this time, but what made it worse was the fact that the father still was not happy. He would beat his wife and daughter, mostly with words, but there was occasional outbursts when he would shove them or push them to the ground. All the girl wanted to do was avoid making her father mad, but it seemed like whenever she tried her hardest, he got all the more unhappy. This concept is hard for some adults to grasp, let alone a four-year-old toddler.

These things continued for another two years, when the father obviously favored the son over the daughter. The girl was practically ignored by her father, and when she did get the occasional attention from him, he treated her like the son he wanted in the first place. After those two years, though, the father left.

It was one day when the girl came home from school and found her mother crying with a bruised and bloody face. The man had beat his wife once again, so she was now determined to do something about it this time. She filed a lawsuit. The girl had little idea of what was going on. All she knew was that her father wasn't staying at home, so now she could wear whatever she wanted and play whatever she wanted and could just act how she wanted for the most part. She was happy her father was gone.

But that feeling was short lived, like many things in the girl's life. After a measly three years, the mother concluded that it was impossible to raise her two children on her own with her fairly low income. It just wouldn't work. So she did the only thing she could think to do, telling herself, “It's for the kids,” She got back together with her husband and they had a third child. Another girl. Why this would fix things, no one was really sure, but the mother was determined to do anything to keep the family in one piece, and have them at least look like they had it all together. It didn't work. Verbal beatings continued and it was too much for everyone. Just too much emotionally, mentally, physically. The oldest girl got to the point where she openly hated her father. She despised watching him yell at her mother for no reason and push her around for something she didn't do.

Finally, he left. For good. That meant the fighting and shouting was over, but it also meant the mother now had to raise and feed three children on her own. That day, the mother cried on the front porch until her oldest child got home from school. “Daddy's gone,” is what she said through her tears. The girl was happy, but her being the nicest person you will ever meet, comforted her mother anyway. She told her mother, “Everything will be okay. We'll get through it,” when she was really thinking, “Good riddance!”

The girl grew up fast. Since there was no father figure in the house and her mother was always either working or going out on dates with random men she met on the internet, she was the main mother figure to her younger siblings. Instead of becoming a young lady and having fun with her friends, she was a mother in an eleven -year-old's body. Instead of playing outside or coloring, she was cooking and making sure anything potentially dangerous was out of reach and out of mind. And this went on for years. The same things every day. Go to school, come home, cook, help her brother and sister with homework, try and keep them from destroying the house or each other, etc, etc.

There is no describing how hard to manage her siblings were. They would argue over the littlest things, break things for the heck of it, scream and yell just for the sake of being loud. They did anything they could to get a reaction. The house stayed a wreck because there was no use in cleaning it up much. It would just get messy again less than five minutes later.

It wasn't very long until the mother found her true “true love,” but there was one slight problem that arose first. He lived in a city three hours away. So, the mother did the only thing she thought plausible. Packed up and moved her family into a house a few miles from her new- found boyfriend. Little did she know that the man she thought she had fallen in love with was just as abusive as her first husband. He would argue about the littlest things, despised her children, took all her money. He had them right where he wanted them and that was right in the palm of his hand. They couldn't go anywhere, they didn't have any money, there was no car available to them. They had to rely solely on this man that told them he'd “take care of them” when really, he wasn't. He was doing quite the opposite, actually.

When it was found out that he was sneaking into their house late at night and peaking into their windows, the mother got suspicious. Like the other things wouldn't set any alarm off in her mind. They were being stalked by this man. All the mother wanted was someone to love, someone to love her, and all she got was thrown into another ditch she couldn't dig herself out of.

Meanwhile, little did she know, her oldest daughter was getting made fun of at school. In the girl's retelling, her mother wouldn't do anything for days sometimes. She would just sit around, sometimes cry, sometimes just stare off into space. The girl was scared to say anything to her. When she did, she just got snapped at and was given chores to do or a meal to cook.

Eventually, the mother went back to school and they got their own house where the stalker ex-boyfriend (whom they now had a restraining order against) wasn't paying the rent. Times were still tough though. At this point in time, I had little idea of what was going on. I met the girl in the midst of what I call the Stalker Scandal, but I knew nothing of it. We met by chance at school and I immediately felt some connection with this girl. She was sweet as could be, dark curly hair and rosy cheeks, everything you think of when you picture your favorite elementary school teacher, but there was something in her eyes that I could see. Something that told me, “I'm just putting on a face. Everything isn't really fine,” I could see that the moment I looked her in the eyes the first time we talked. Her eyes shone, but they shone with waiting tears, like they were being held back, waiting for the perfect time to come spilling out. The girl I met in the sixth grade had a broken heart. She didn't really trust people, but at that time, neither did I. That may be why we got along so well. We both stayed away from the topic of our past, and that was that. It was assumed by both of us that neither of us wanted to talk about it. But there was still something there that nagged at me. And I found out everything that night at 2 AM, laying in a sleeping bag in a dark basement, not knowing if we were asleep or awake. Those are the best times to have a deep conversation, you know.