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It was still early in the morning, only ten o’clock, and I knew Brad would be coming back in the evening. So, I had some time to get all my stuff together, but I was not about to waste any time. I wanted to be out of the state before he showed up to find me here. I ran around my apartment, gathering anything that was important to me.
I got my guitar in its case and gathered my writing journals that were lingering around the apartment. I had journals located in several places because I never wanted to have to find one when something came to my mind. I wanted to have it written down as soon as it hit me. I took the small plastic bin under my bathroom vanity and gathered up all my toiletries, and threw the lid on top.
When I went to leave the bathroom, I caught myself in the mirror and could see the bruises beginning to come out. I didn’t move for a good minute, just staring at myself in the mirror, hating myself for letting a man do this to me.
Anger and hate were brewing in me, and I lifted my arm and slammed the mirror with my fist.
“Fuck,” I yelled. “Get yourself together, Kenna. You need to hurry up,” I said to myself.
I quickly went into my bedroom and yanked the small suitcase I had stored under my bed. I grabbed all my panties and bras, as well as many clothes as I could fit into the suitcase. I loaded another bag with shoes and anything else I could from my closet. After taking my phone charger that was plugged into the wall, I made my way back to the front of my apartment with my suitcase in my hand—not the one I hit the mirror with. That one was a little cut up from the glass—and the bag draped on my shoulder. I looked around and realized I had just packed up my life in less than an hour.
“Shit, I truly had nothing here,” I thought.
It only took two quick trips to get my car loaded. I took one last look up at my apartment on the second floor and, with a deep breath, turned back to my car and got in.
As I pulled out of the parking lot, I wiped away the tears that came out of my burning eyes.
I had a thirteen-hundred-mile drive to get from hell to home. I had nothing planned out, just all my stuff loaded in my blue Toyota Camry, the same car that brought me to Massachusetts. That drive seemed like a lifetime ago, but in reality, it was just over four years ago. So much had happened in those years. I had come to Massachusetts for school and to follow my dreams of becoming a songwriter and, on my own two feet, away from my overprotective father and brothers.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved each one of them, but I was never going to find myself under their wings. I needed to become independent. I needed to learn who I was and who I could become. I never guessed in those few years. I would find myself running from a man who hurt me emotionally, mentally, and physically.
I had my foot on the gas and was headed down I-95 toward New York City. I had enough gas to get to Connecticut before I would need to stop. Focusing on the road ahead of me, I could feel my palms starting to sweat from gripping the steering wheel so hard. My mind was going into a tunnel of memories.
I was so happy and excited to start my adventure in college. I arrived motivated and determined to make my dreams a reality. Everything started perfectly. I was writing all the time, writing about happiness, adventure, and independence. It didn’t take long to find myself at open mic nights singing my songs. That’s how I met so many local artists. I somehow found myself writing songs for other bands, which is what I liked. I had a good voice and grew up singing. My mother was a singer, and she taught me to play the guitar.
My mind started to go back to when I was little, probably around eight years old, when my mother bought me my first guitar and sat with me daily, teaching me how to play. When I was ten, I wrote my first song. It was about a butterfly and a flower. It wasn’t any good, but my mother learned the song and helped me put it on the guitar and would sing it with me.
Taking flight like a butterfly, searching for the brightness in life.
This verse always brought a smile to both of our faces. My mother was beautiful with long red hair. It was wavy like mine but fell all the way down her back. Her eyes were green, almost an emerald color. I looked a lot like my mother; we both had red hair and green eyes, but my eyes never sparked the emerald color she had. She would look at me with such pride and love. It always made me wish I had her bright shade of emerald eyes.
One day, her emerald eyes just didn’t shine as brightly. She became tired all the time. I would come home from school, and she would be napping. I was young but knew something was going on. She was getting fragile and became very weak. I can remember the last time I was with her. She had gotten so weak that nurses were starting to come into our home. I would lay in bed with her and hold her hand, the hand that held mine, strumming the cords of the guitar she had taught me to play, had turned thin and fragile as if I would crush her hand with the slightest grip.
“Let your voice be heard, my beautiful girl. You have so much to give this world with your voice. I will always be listening to the beautiful melodies that come from my butterfly.” Those were the last words my mother spoke to me.
It was a Tuesday evening in February when my mother passed away from ovarian cancer. I was in my room playing my guitar when I could hear my brothers crying and my daddy telling them it would be okay. I could not bring myself to leave my room. I just sat on my bed with the guitar that my mother gifted me and played until my fingers started to hurt, and my eyes grew too tired from what felt like endless tears.
I was so deep into my thoughts of my mother that I hadn’t realized I was hitting the border of Connecticut. I peeked at my gas tank and knew I would need to stop at the next stop to get gas. As I pulled up to the gas pump, I grabbed my sunglasses from the passenger seat in hopes of hiding the bruising and black eye that was starting to really show.
While I pumped my gas, I scanned around at all the people in the rest area either getting gas or coming in and out of the store with snacks for the road. I saw a mother holding her daughter's hand tight as they left the store and walked back to their car. I began to hum the very first song I wrote, butterflies and flowers, and I could see the memory clear as day in my mind of my mother and me sitting in the backyard, her emerald eyes beaming at me as we sang the song together.
It had been over a decade since my mother was gone, but in moments like right now, I could feel her like she was right beside me, whispering in my ear,‘Let your voice be heard.’
I needed to get my voice back.
5
MACKENNA
Heading back onto I-95, the sun was shining bright. I still had a couple more hours before the sun would set and Brad would return to my vacant apartment. I changed my phone to silent because I knew the moment he saw my stuff gone, he would freak out and blow up my phone with calls and texts. I didn’t want to hear it. I just wanted to keep going and get as far away as I possibly could. For the first time in a long time, I wanted to be home.
The big question was, what would home be like now? It had been over a year since I’d been back home. The last time I was there was for my daddy’s funeral. My big tough dad was very overprotective of me and instilled that family-first mentality on my brothers.
He would always say, “Boys, she is your number one. You’ll always make sure she is taken care of and protected.”
One time, when I was twelve, there was a boy in my class giving me a hard time. Everyone thought he had a crush on me. I don’t remember his name. He moved away right before high school, but at the time, he lived in our neighborhood. One day, he was riding his bike by my house with a few of his friends, and he yelled something mean to me. To be honest, I was too busy playing my guitar on the front porch to even notice what he yelled, but my daddy heard him as he was working on the car in the driveway.
That night at dinner, he told me never to let a boy talk to me that way and that I would need to start going to the gym a few times a week to learn some moves to protect myself. I chuckled to myself, thinking, what good that did. I wanted no part in the gym, but I never said no to Daddy, so I smiled and said, “Okay.”
