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I didn’t, Darrenknewthat, and he still left me here defenseless.
I was twelve-years-old and a frontline soldier in the war that raged within my family home. The enemy I found myself up against was bigger and stronger, and my ally had abandoned me when I needed him most.
I’d known something was wrong that morning he walked me to school. I could feel it in my bones as I watched him walk away from me – as I called after him like a fucking child.
For the first few days after my older brother’s abrupt departure, I had waited with bated breath, praying that everything would somehow blow over and Darren would walk back through the front door.
The move was completely out of character for me.
I didn’tpray.
But the evening I came home from my first day of secondary school, and discovered he was gone, I found myself whispering oaths and promises to the man in the sky, offering up anything and everything I could think of, in exchange for the safe return of my brother.
My ally.
My prayers went unanswered, and I had lost more ground than I could afford to in the weeks that had since passed.
Disgusted with myself for hiding behind a locked door, I tried to reason with my pride, knowing deep down that going back out there tonight would be the equivalent of signing my own death warrant.
You barely made it out alive...
Loud sniffles filled my room just then, and I bit back a growl, letting my head smack against the bedroom door I was perched against, hurley in hand.
“Don’t listen to it,” I instructed my sibling – which one, I had no clue because the three that still resided in this shithole were currently hiding under my duvet. “Block him out.”
“It’s so scary, Joe,” Tadhg sniffled, appearing from beneath my quilt on the top bunk. “What if he’s hurting Mammy again?”
“He’s not,” I snapped, lying through my teeth to my six-year-old brother. “She’s grand. Now go to sleep.”
“I can’t,” he croaked out.
“You have to,” my ten-year-old sister whisper-hissed. “You know what will happen if he realizes that we’re awake.”
“Shut up, Shannon,” Tadhg wailed. “I’m scared…”
“I know you are, Tadhg,” she continued softly, appearing from beneath the covers with our three-year-old brother, Ollie, curled up on her lap. “That’s why we have to stay quiet.”
“The lot of ye need to go the fuck to sleep,” I ordered, taking on the protector role that I had unceremoniously been thrust into. “You’re grand. Mam’s grand. We’re all grand. Everything’s fucking grand.”
“But what if he is hurting her again?”
I had no doubt that hewas, in fact, hurting her again.
Problem was, I couldn’t do shit about it.
God knows I’d tried.
The broken nose I was sporting from earlier tonight proved just how little I could do about the animal we called our father.
Thankfully, Tadhg and Shannon didn’t seem to understand the way in which our father was hurting our mother.
I, on the other hand, had been ten years old when I learned the meaning of the word rape.
It wasn't the first time I'd seen him force her down, nor was it the first time I’d heard the word tossed around in conversation, but itwasthe first time that I managed to connect the word to the action and make sense of what had been happening to my mother.
Make sense of what that animal had forced her to take into her unwilling body.
Repeatedly.
