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Never.
And when Jimmy’s assaults continued, even when she knew they were happening, she remained silent.
Somehow, even though he’d done a lot of touching, and had forced me to touch him, too, Jimmy hadn’t ever raped me.
He never tried to have sex with me.
I guess I was grateful for that, but I wondered if it was simply something he was working up to.
Regardless, I hated the sexual assault and would take the physical beatings over that any day of the week, which was why I merely did what I could to shield myself now.
By the time it finally stopped, it was a wonder I could move. I had no idea how I managed to pick myself up off the floor—something I did only after Jimmy had walked out of the room and toward the bedroom he shared with my mother.
As for her, she was still passed out on the couch. She hadn’t moved at all. The entire time her daughter was having the life being beaten out of her, my mother never woke up.
And that was what did me in.
I didn’t know why, but for some reason, it was acknowledging that fact that led me to make the decision that I made that night. This was how it would always be.
When I got to my room and locked the door, even if I knew Jimmy would spend the rest of the night in his bed, I wanted nothing more than to just crawl into my own bed and sleep for the next week.
But I couldn’t.
This was enough. I couldn’t continue to do this.
I had to get out.
It was well past the time for me to leave. School didn’t matter, especially considering I spent more days at home recovering from what my mother’s husband was doing to me instead of being there learning.
With my mind made up, I quickly packed a bag. I took the bare minimum of what I needed and shoved it inside. Then, I crawled into my bed for one last time. Maybe that was foolish, but at this hour, I had no idea where I was going to go.
So, I was going to give myself one last night to sleep in this house, in this bed. Tomorrow morning, with my bag all packed, I was going to leave.
It was going to be my new start.
I didn’t know how I’d do it, and there was no telling where I’d end up. But I had to start looking out for myself, because it was clear that nobody else was going to do it for me.
Life wasn’t going to be about anything but survival now.
And given all that I’d been through, I was convinced I could handle it.
TWO
Hanna
“Whoa! Where’d you get that?”
At the sound of a young voice that was too close to me, I forced myself to look up. I was sitting under a tree in the park not far from my house, because it was the only place where I could go to clear my mind and attempt to come up with a plan.
I left my house this morning, and I did it without seeing anyone before I left. I never even cared to seek out my mother. She couldn’t be bothered with me last night, and I’d decided I’d had enough of coming in last on her list of priorities.
But it was difficult to leave. Not because I didn’t think it was going to be the best option for me in the long run, but because my body ached so badly. Truthfully, I wanted to stay in my bed. The problem was that I knew if I didn’t get up and force myself to leave this morning, it was unlikely that I’d ever leave; unless, of course, it was in a body bag.
I might have felt pretty downtrodden about the state of my life, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want the one I had.
So, as scared as I was to go, as worried as I might have been about my ability to survive being fourteen and on my own, I wasn’t convinced my chances of survival were much better living with my mom and Jimmy.
Being unwilling to stick around to find out if that’s where things would wind up, I left. And now I was here, in a park, attempting to figure out how I was going to survive.
