Page 62 of Dark Ugly Places

When they bought the house—the two-story Cape Cod home with that green lawn—I thought it would be my turn, but it wasn’t.

I’ve been here a long, long time. Way before the car accident.

Do you want to remember, Nicola, or do you want to just keep living this way, hurting like you do?

Silence. I know she’s bitter. I can feel her as she can me in this worn-out body of ours.

From Emmy’s new stash on the floor, I unwrap a little black tee shirt that’s more my size and pair it with the skirt that’s too big. In the closet, I dig out a belt and wrap it round, then find a cardigan with brown edges on the sleeves, which I roll up to look more presentable. My midsection squirms, Nicola vying for control. Don’t do this, she begs.

A memory surges at the thought, sudden for both of us.

The cold glass of the kitchen table. The cheap plastic chairs her mother and father had long since forgotten to replace. The mellow lighting from one overhead bulb in their ceiling. Janice was already asleep, but Nicola stayed up to help her mother clean the house before her father returned.

When he did, her mother would serve dinner, and they’d eat in silence, Nicola hoping to be sent up to bed sometime soon. But this one particular night, something was off, a mood of malcontent brewing from her father so palpable Nicola could almost taste it. She was carrying the lasagna from the stove, the large, glass pan hot and slippery in her gloved hands. Steadily, she carried it to him, watching her steps—one, two, three—across the stained linoleum floor. But as she approached him to set the lasagna on the table, her foot caught a bulge in the floor, and she tripped, the hot pan catching her father’s arm.

He lunged at her, his hand raised, his nostrils flared, and his breath sour on her face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

It happened so fast—the blow to her cheek—I had little time to react. She landed hard against the linoleum and fell back, her head thumping against the oven door. I heard the crack as she hit it, the back of her head splitting open—a hairline fracture. The trickle of blood ran down her forehead into her mouth, the taste iron-y. Her father raged. She had made him do it. It was all her fault. Did she like him now when he was this angry? Was this what she wanted?

But Nicola couldn’t hear him. Her ears were ringing with my voice, a lullaby I sang to her sometimes when she needed to be somewhere else.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.

Mama’s gonna find you a mockingbird.

And if that mockingbird don’t sing,

She’ll snap its neck and drown it in the bathroom sink.

She rocked back and forth, humming my song in her head, as if at any moment she might drift away and never return.

Her father yelled, and she clutched her body. This is what you get, you stupid girl. This is what you get get get, she thought.

She thought she had made him this way, brought it out of him. So maybe she could make him better again. Maybe it was her fault. Her fault. Her fault fault fault.

I did this, Nicola said to me. Help me. Please help me.

And so I did. Not because I couldn’t do it before but because she asked me to, there and then. Shhhh, quiet, I told her. You didn’t do this. This isn’t your fault. This could never be your fault. Now get up.

I felt her body resist, her bones frozen solid. Her head was shaking “no” ever so slightly. No no no.

Get up. Go to him, I insisted.

But she wouldn’t move. She just sat there on the floor rocking. Bleeding. Crying.

So, I did what I had to do.

The rocking stopped. The bleeding slowed. I pushed back the tears.

Tilting my head up, I locked onto her father, my eyes boring into him. “If you ever touch me again, I will kill you,” I said, letting my voice get quiet.

Her father stepped back, startled. Then his expression turned stony, and he lunged at me and smacked me hard across the mouth. A fresh trickle of blood ran from my lips down my chin, and I smiled—a blood-filled grin—knowing that I wouldn’t let him go on much longer.

26

Nicola

The darkness is so thick I can almost touch it. Martha’s got me pinned down now, and I don’t have the strength to push her off. Dr. Constance says I won’t develop any strength unless I’m prepared to face things as they really are. She says I won’t get better unless I release my anger and that, without forgiveness, I can’t move on until I accept what happened. But I do accept it. That’s the problem. And I wonder if she knows that there are parts of me that can never heal.