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“Let’s all take a seat so we can begin.”
Jami’s lips firmed again, and she turned toward where the counselor had chosen to sit. The angle showed a portion of her neck, where the bruises from the week before had faded in color, though they were still visible. Celia wondered who had caused them.
“Who would like to share today?” the counselor asked. Celia always wondered if they taught them how to use that voice as part of their schooling. It was a cross between soothing and encouraging, with a bit of professionalism thrown in.
She let the words and stories flow around her. There was something about listening to other people’s struggles. It didn’t always make her feel better, but it did make her feel a bit more normal.
“Do none of you ever want to get out?” Jami asked, cutting off the older woman’s words about how she knew her husband couldn’t help the outbursts due to his illness.
The counselor leaned forward, but instead of the frown Celia was expecting for the rude interruption, there was gentle concern. “Would you like to share your story next?”
“No,” Jami said. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for. Each person is experiencing their own personal story, and there’s no right or wrong. There’s finding what is the best choice that will make you happy.”
“It just seems…” Jami bit her lip, her hands gripping the plastic of the chair beneath her. “All of you are finding ways to cope, to deal with things. Does escape never come up?”
“You never fully escape,” Celia murmured, her own hands clenching together.
Many of the others shifted in their chairs, looking away from her.
The counselor leaned forward. “Cece, did you want to share more of your thoughts on that?”
Jami’s blue eyes lifted to focus on her.
Celia took a breath. “I escaped a while ago, back when I was fifteen. Yet here I am.”
“How?” Jami asked, an intensity in her voice. “How did you escape?”
Celia winced, but a teenage Malcolm rose in her thoughts, easing the lump in her throat. “I had help. A cousin of mine found out what was going on. But that was also the worst memory I have of my mother.” She took a breath, wondering if she was finally ready. All the counseling sessions, and she had never shared that memory. But here there was Malcolm. And there was Trenton. “I told you before about how my mother pushed me down the stairs. Her intentions were clear to me. My father blamed the illness and said a push down the stairs wasn’t a way that someone would do something like that. He assured me that my mother didn’t want to kill me.”
Celia had known he was wrong, but she also knew he was doing his best to keep things together. Other times followed. Her mother had stashed a knife one time, but Celia had been able to wrestle it away and her father made sure no more were in the house. She’d checked on her mother another time at the exact right moment to smother the beginnings of a fire that she had started in her room. Matches were then removed. The days where she was responsible for looking after her mother made her stomach ache. That was when she’d started to have trouble eating.
“My mother’s illness was steadily getting worse, but my father needed to work, and we couldn’t afford regular care for her. I started missing more and more school. I remember on that last day listening to the recording of the school calling, wanting to speak to one of my parents about my attendance.” She drew silent, feeling like she was back in that kitchen, longing for what had once been.
“She called to me from upstairs, her voice sounding so tiny. Not like her at all. I hurried up to find her.” Dreading what she would find, Celia admitted to herself.
Her mother wasn’t in her room. Instead, the window stood open, the screen nowhere in sight. Those flowered curtains drifted in with the breeze, and her mother’s voice came to her from out on the roof.
“She sounded so happy. Excited even.” That had surprised her. Some of the tension had left as she’d hurried over to the window, searching for her mother. Her parents’ room had always been the highest point in the house. It was the only thing up the stairs, which was why Celia had dreaded going up there. The window looked out over the lower section of roof, and that was where her mother had gone. The woman’s arms were out, her eyes turned up toward the sun as she balanced on the precipice of the roof. Then her foot slipped, and Celia had no more time to think. She scrambled onto the roof after her mother.
“I thought I caught her in time. But really, she hadn’t been slipping at all,” Celia murmured, the lump returning in her throat.
“Got you!” her mother had cried, her arms clamping hard around Celia’s, trapping her hands against her sides. The dark eyes shined in the bright sunlight. The bared teeth sent a shiver through her.
Celia had tried for the calming voice her father had coached her on. “Mom, you know this isn’t safe. Let’s go back inside.”
Her mother’s face leaned even closer. “I know. You try to hide it from him, but I know. You’re as crazy as me. Maybe crazier.”
“You’re not crazy, Mom,” Celia lied, everything within her screaming to get away.
“I can’t be saved, but I can save you,” her mother said. And then she’d shoved her.
“It was similar to the stairs, but also so different. My shoulder hit the slanting roof, and I tried to scramble for a hold. Then the sense of nothingness came. I made the mistake of trying to brace my fall with my hands.” Celia lifted them, staring down at what appeared whole and healthy. “The doctors did a good job resetting the bones that I broke that day.”
The pain had been too much for Celia. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even lift her head. A part of her still worried that her mother would fall as well. That now that she was alone, she would jump and finally get what she’d wanted all along.
“She didn’t, though. Later, I pictured her calmly climbing back through the window to find the scissors she had hidden away. That was the sharpest thing she could find, what with my father getting rid of all the kitchen knives.” Celia bowed her head, her fingers curling together in her lap.
