Page 75 of Dark Ugly Places

“I can do it if you can …”

She nods, her face trained on the floor. “Just make sure you don’t hurt her.”

I’m inches from her, my hands on her small, round shoulders. Her breath smells like toast and salty butter. Her eyes are sad but resolute because she thinks she knows what she is doing.

But she doesn’t. Not really.

I’ve been where Nicola is going. The deep well of darkness we’re sending her to was my home for nine months once. Emmy doesn’t understand. How could she? The point is, I have to pretend like sending Nicola there won’t destroy her a little bit. But the dark, ugly places where terror lurks and memories get banished will chip away at her, and over time, she’ll start to forget what it’s like to live in the light. The truth is, I don’t know what will happen to her, if she will ever be able to come back.

Sacrifices must be made. One must suffer for the good of the many.

But haven’t I suffered enough?

I put on my smile, look confidently into Emmy’s eyes, and tell her, “Of course I won’t hurt your mother, Emmy. She will always be safe with me.”

30

Nicola

I’m deep in the dark place now, where memories swirl around me, and my actual life is so far away, like a half-forgotten dream. The memory appearing now is a thick miasma of color and sound, shapes and figures sharpening until I can see my childhood bedroom, the pale pink lamp at my bedside, the worn fabric of my comforter, the walls covered in magazine pictures of places I longed to escape to.

“Nicola? What are you doing?” My mother’s voice cuts through the darkness, and she appears in her dark blue robe, face made up like she was going out, hair in curlers.

I sit up and stare at her, back in my nine-year-old body. “What?”

She glares at me, a strange suspicion in her eyes as though she’s caught me red-handed. “You’re doing it again, talking to yourself.”

“I’m not.”

She comes and sits on my bed. Her blue eyeshadow and black mascara make her eyes seem so small, I have to search for her pupils. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

I nod once.

“Good. Because sometimes I wonder what’s going on up there.” She laughs and taps my temple with her forefinger, the temple that would later throb as an adult, a beacon, a warning. I know what she fears most of all. That the sickness that grips my father has been passed down.

“I’m just thinking.”

“What about?”

“About Daddy, mostly,” I tell her. “He’s angry all the time.”

My mother sighs. “Your father has his challenges. He tries very hard, you know. It isn’t easy for him. But he still loves you girls. You know that, right?”

A stiff hand pats my back, but there’s no comfort there. I want to crawl away from her and hide inside the floor, but I can’t move. The darkness is holding me prisoner.

My mind flashes, and the scene changes again. My mother is whisked away, an apparition, a ghost disappearing into the blackness. Overhead lights illuminate. I recognize the smell first. It’s her smell. Clorox bleach and perfumed soap. The bathroom vanity lights are so bright bright bright I can hardly see. I’m huddled in a corner. At my back, I recognize his raised voice, the steam hitting my bare skin, the thick pang of fear oozing from my gut and creeping along my spine. Terrified to turn around, terrified not to. Do any of my friends have this happen to them when they disobey? The bathroom fogs with steam, and soon, I taste soap forced into my mouth. I feel the sting of the burning water on my skin, the redness like a sunburn.

In my mother’s bathroom, the clean, cold tiles are waiting for me. My body hits them, and I cry out in pain. “He isn’t a bad man,” my mother’s voice echoes distantly, though she’s nowhere to be found. “He just has a temper.”

I flinch at the sound of my father’s voice, cracking with rage and the wear of shouting.

Please, just stop, I pray silently. But nothing seems to stop my father once I’ve gotten in his way. My hands clutch my body, and I think I can hear another voice. Not mine. Not my mother’s. Not my father’s.

Hers.

I bolt from the bathroom and run upstairs, tripping on the thick, stained carpet. My head whacks against the baluster of the stairs, and white stars glitter in my periphery. I scramble up, reaching for the top, eager to escape the hot wrath of my father behind me. Through my bedroom door, I bolt toward the closet. Inside, I slam the door, lock it, and topple the dresser over against it, barricading it so he can’t enter. The door thumps once, then twice.

“Open this door right now!” he shouts. His fists and body hit the door. A grunt of frustration. My body quivers uncontrollably with adrenaline. The stillness and muffled quiet of the closet surround me, and I sink to the floor, my back to the dresser, just in case.