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“Shut up.” He hits me again. “Fuck, fuck. You’re so worth the wait.” He’s moaning in his thick accented voice.

His brown skin, glinting in low light, his dark eyes even darker as he tears me apart.

“Fuck, a virgin.” He looks down at me, an unhinged, predatory glint in his eyes, bright against the dimness of the room.

“Pain.” I cry, I wail, I beg yet he keeps on hitting me both inside and outside, and my whimpers and painful sobs fall on deaf ears.

My scream is loud. His ragged breaths are louder. But louder than both is the lullaby.

Four gentle lines meant to lull a child to sleep, swallowing every other sound.

And with every passing second, they grow louder.

Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop,

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,

Something warm spills inside me before he pulls himself out and I don’t open my eyes until I hear a sound of a zipper.

“If you tell anyone, I’ll be doing this to your sister and then your mother.” He warns but everything is dull.

It’s almost dead. Or maybe I am.

And down will come baby, cradle and all.

That night when I get back home on wobbly legs and sticky stuff mixed with my blood trickling down my thighs, my sister pulls me into a hug and tells me she was worried.

She asks where I’d gone. Says she’d been waiting for me at her friend’s house, but I never showed up.

I don’t answer, I just disappear into my room and shut the door.

The next day, Mum and Dad arrive in the afternoon, already angry because I skipped school, and while Mum scolds me, Dad says nothing.

He only glares, both of them looking down at me as if I’m a small and filthy cockroach beneath their feet.

“H-he…the man, he t-touched me.” The words fall past my lips and I don’t look up as I speak. The silence is too deafening and lasts for seconds, minutes, perhaps an hour.

My mum grabs my hand, forcing me to stand on my feet and twists my ear. “You problem child.” She hisses.

Adults are mean too.

FORTY-TWO

Elara

Age Fourteen

I'm not making things up. I yell internally.

A year later, and they still don't believe me.

The man has been doing things to me whenever my parents leave town and they still don’t believe me.

Our family is broken.

They don’t see the cuts I get from cutting a stupid apple, just that I’m reckless. They don’t see the tears that spill down my cheeks and they don’t hear my cries.

I am broken.