HOME | DD

Description
I'm almost tempted to cop out and play the "Our parents didn't understand us" card, but even I can't delude myself into thinking it's that simple. Besides, I'd rather hold onto that card for later in the game.

To be fair, Mom tried to get to know us, when she had time--not that Holly and I made it easy on her. Since the very beginning, we were in a world of our own, approachable but untouchable by the rest of the world. So even when our mother found time between laundry, cooking, sleeping, and her shifts at the mill, and she would sit down with us to ask how we felt, what games we were going to play that day, or what we wanted to do on the weekend, even when we answered honestly and enthusiastically, the wall we had spent our infancy building around ourselves kept her at a safe distance. By the time Holly and I finally lowered the drawbridge and let her in, it was too late--our isolation molded us in a different shape, and we might as well have been speaking different languages.

Dad was different. I'm still not sure whether he never knew us, or knew us too well. He never tried to weasel his way into our hearts the way Mom did. He never tried to play with us or talk to us, like he could see the wall around us and decided it wasn't worth the effort to climb. Which isn't to say that he never took an interest--he just never pushed. Every day, when he got home from the garage, and he would root himself in his recliner in front of the baseball game and quietly sip at a glass of malt liquor, I could feel him watching us out of the corner of his eye; once, I almost caught him smiling. And sometimes, when the ball game was over, if it wasn't too late and he actually had a few dollars in his pocket, he'd take us out. Only, he never told us to come like "normal" fathers would, and he never begged and pleaded for our attention like our mother would have. He would just get out of his chair and put his jacket on, and say to no one in particular that he was thinking of going for a drive, if anyone wanted to join him. More often than not, we would, just for something to do, and we would inevitably wind up at the playground or drinking milkshakes at a diner in town.

That was a long time ago, though, before he got really bad. Later, he would sit in front of that same baseball game and drink until he passed out, and our mother would feed him and pull the bottle out of his hand, setting it on the side table so it wouldn't spill. She hadn't yet learned to hide the bottle, pour it down the sink; she would just look at him with sad eyes, remember better times when we were all too young to realize we weren't happy, and tell herself she could help him get better. So, playgrounds and milkshakes, and a father that probably ignored us. Those are the times I see, when I go looking for good memories and have to settle on the lesser evil.

But in the end, everything our father did wrong eventually comes back to me. I was the one that made everything worse, unbearable; I was the one that started the cycle of violence in our family. Nana, after she heard, knew as well as I did that it was all my fault. Her son was a good Catholic boy, once, and I was the one that brought violence into our home. Soon after I turned nine, she spent a whole afternoon screaming at me, telling me to apologize for what I'd done. We both knew it was my fualt, we could see it in each other's eyes. But I refused to apologize, because I knew just as much good came out of what I did as there was bad. I may have started it all, but it was my place to hold myself responsible for my father's actions, not hers. Thinking she owed me something, Holly told the old bag to shut her bloody mouth. I could see the accusation in Nana's eyes for a long time after that, but neither of us ever spoke another word about it.

It started on September 4, 1995, my first day of school--at least, it was supposed to be my first day of school; really, I'm a little surprised I even made it through the doors, with the fit I pitched. I refused to go to school without Holly, even though she couldn't come. I hollered, I kicked, I threw things, I blinded myself to the logic in everyone's arguments: her birthday fell too late in the year to start school with me, even too late to make an exception for her. She's start when she was five, a grade behind me, and I'd have to spend an entire year at school, alone. I wouldn't have any of it, and we spent a whole hour crying that morning, all of us--well, all of us except my father. Holly cried because she was sad, I cried because I was angry. Mom cried because she didn't want Dad to get angry. She just wanted us to be good for our father, who was brooding next to the front door, my packed bookbag dangling from his white-knuckled fist. In his eyes, I was quickly becoming the brat who pitched a fit every time I didn't get my way--he couldn't see that it was both of us, Holly and I, that weren't getting our way.

I started shouting, screaming that I wouldn't go to school without Holly and who cares if anyone says she's not allowed. I grabbed Holly's wrist, then, pulled her behind me as I marched toward the door. Dad incercepted us, bent down and scooped me up over one shoulder in a single motion, and walked out of the apartment, leaving Holly on the floor behind us, weeping. He carried me that way down the stairwell and out of the building, not setting me down until he had the car door open and my butt was aimed at the passenger's seat. When we were alone in the car--the first time I remember ever being alone with him--he settled his own temper and tried to reason with me.

"I know you don't like this, Hannah." He lit a cigarette, didn't roll down the window. He turned his head toward me, his eyes flicking from my face to the road too many times to count. "But this attitude isn't going to get you anywhere--nowhere good, anyway. This isn't a negotiation, you're going to school. It's just what children do at your age." I don't know if the speech was supposed to calm me down or just shut me up, make me open my eyes to the reality of the situation. Either way, it didn't work, and I just crossed my arms over my chest and turned to look at the buildings blurring by outside my window.

Dad sighed, decided to change tack. "You know, I wasn't too big on school, either, when I was your age--or older, for that matter. The world was bigger than school, and I was too cool, and they didn't have anything to teach me that I needed to learn; and look at me now, young and broke and undereducated, and the world is a whole lot smaller. You're going to be better than that, Hannah, and you're going to go to school so you can be." A touching speech, right? Even if it was about a mile off-base. Maybe he thought that was my reasoning, that I was just using Holly as an excuse, but he was wrong. Holly was the reason--Holly was always the reason. I wanted to go to school, but the prospect of going to school without her, my sister, the other half of my soul, made me ill.

Still, I guess he was trying. In spite of my insides screaming to high hell, I dried my tears and calmed down for the rest of the ride--outwardly, at least. The gears in my head were still turning, trying to come up with a solution, any solution. I had a few ideas that could work, temporarily, but none had the staying power I needed from them.

The moment the car slid into a parking space in front of the school, Dad cut the engine and got out of the car, coming around to open my door for me. I shot him with a withering glare, but finally bit my lip, hopped out of my seat, and trudged into the school. If I was going to win this fight, it wasn't going to be with him.

We were a good twenty minutes late. When we got inside we made a beeline for the principal's office, where we informed the faculty that yes, I did exist and yes, I was starting kindergarten. Today. And alone. I swallowed all my harsh feelings for the moment and looked around coolly. I had to find a way out--Holly wasn't here, it smelled funny, and I hated it. I smiled politely at the secretary while my mind raced, curtsied to the principal and Mrs Wolfe, the kindergarten teacher he introduced me to. It only took me twenty minutes to find my way out.

"Oh, my God! Hannah, what are you doing?" Mrs Wolfe chased her own voice toward me as she hollered. I had pushed a classmate, Amylynn Oakley, out of her chair, sending her flailing to the floor. She started crying before she even hit the carpeted floor, less in pain than just looking for attention, the brat. The teacher grabbed me by a shoulder, tried to swing me around to face her; I ripped myself away from her, pointing an accusatory finger at Amylynn.

"She stole my crayon!" I screamed, forcing tears to well in my eyes. I grabbed another crayon from the table and threw it at Amylynn's face for good measure.

"I...did...not!" she sobbed, reaching for her chair to pull herself back to her feet. "She's lying, Mrs Wolfe, she's lying!" I was lying. She hadn't stole my crayon, she just had the misfortune of sitting next to me. And I wasn't crying because I was angry at her, I was crying because I didn't want to be here, not without Holly. Another lie, I suppose. I didn't want to do this, especially not to some poor, innocent girl I didn't know, but I had decided I needed to. So, I kepted up the act.

"You're the liar!" I shouted. I could feel twenty pairs of eyes in the classroom turned toward us, watching, frightened. I grabbed another crayon off the table, wound back to throw like a Major League pitcher, but Mrs Wolfe's hand caught mine before I could make my release. Her grip was tight, painful, and I had a purple ring around my wrist for three days after that. I looked up at the woman, and her eyes were just as angry as mine.

"Hannah, goddammit, those crayons are everyo--"

Amylynn had recovered herself, and while Mrs Wolfe's and my eyes were locked, she took the opportunity to throw her arm into a wild smack that caught me across the cheek--that bruise lasted for a whole week. So much for being the sole aggressor. Mrs Wolfe threw her head back and forth wildly between us, unsure which of us to restrain. In the half-moment that her eyes were turned away from me, I reached out, grabbed a fistful of Amylynn's hair, and yanked.

I had meant to use her hair as leverage to throw her into the table, but I must have either pulled too hard or not hard enough, because chunks of Amylynn's hair and scalp came away in my hand with a sickly, wet ripping sound. Mercifully, the sound was quickly drowned out by the girl's earsplitting scream. Droplets of blood were pooling and dripping from the jagged bald patch above her right ear. Amylynn clapped a hand to the side of her face as she screamed, and I looked down at my own hand, shocked and disgusted to find clumps of matted hair clenched between my fingers.

I felt sick, even worse than I felt in the car, separated from Holly. I turned and started running toward the door; I don't know where I was running to, but I would have ran far, if I hadn't collided with the principal in the classroom doorway. He looked down at me, fist still clenched around tufts of strawberry blonde hair, then up at a still-screaming Amylynn and her bloodied face, and grabbed me by the wrist and started dragging me down the hallway. I kicked and screamed, not breaking my act until I was settled into a plastic armchair in his office.

As far as I know, I'm the only person in the city to have been expelled from kindergarten.
My father arrived at the school in a silent rage half an hour later. If I had thought he was angry that morning, when I refused to go to school in the first place, I was sorely mistaken. This was something else entirely; he didn't greet the secretary in the waiting room, didn't even spare a glance, let alone a word, when the principal began scolding us both. He just charged in, grabbed me by my sore wrist, and hauled me out of the office and out of the school.

The principal followed us all the way to the car, shouting at my father. I didn't hear a word he said--like Dad, I was in a sort of daze, couldn't absorb anything around me; unlike him, though, my mind was set rigid with horror at what I had just done, not anger. So, we both ignored the man as he shouted what were probably some kind of threats. Dad threw open the passenger's side door, shoved me into the seat, got into his side and revved the engine, belching a plume of exhaust into the principal's red face. We squealed out of the parkling lot, and drove too quickly home.

Once we were safely cradled in our driveway, he cut the engine, but made no move to get out of the car. I could feel him staring at me. I didn't want to face him, but I eventually turned my eyes to meet his. He was boiling with rage; years later, when I was curled in my bed listening to my parents screaming at each other, that's the expression I always imagined him wearing. And then he spoke.
"What...the Hell...did you do?"

I wanted to say, "Nothing." I shouldn't have said anything. I looked into his eyes for a long time, but I wasn't sure what I was looking for--absolution? Validation? I'm still not sure. Finally, I looked away, let my gaze fall to my lap. "I just wanted to come home to Holly." I heard his door slam shut behind him before I even finished, and I winced.

I was expecting him to haul me back into the apartment the same way he had hauled me out of it just an hour ago, but he barely spared me a glance on his way inside the buildling, alone. I counted to ten in my head before I got out of the car and locked it, walked up the front steps of our building. The picture glass in the security door was still broken four days after some teenagers threw a brick through it, so I just stepped through without bothering to unlock or open it. Dad was coming back down as I started going up; we met in the middle, and he almost bowled me back down the stairs in his blind, angry rush to get back to work. He actually looked at me this time, just for a moment before he continued his wordless descent back to the car.

I don't know what I was expecting when I entered the apartment, but it wasn't nothing. I opened the door to the sounds of Mom loading laundry into the washer and the radio in the kitchen bleating the same news stories that were playing in the car--in both directions. A small part of me wondered why she hadn't been waiting for me at the door, ready with a glare and a loud lecture and the most severe punishment I could imagine. Then again, I didn't want to tempt fate, so I made a beeline for Holly's and my bedroom, careful that the door didn't creak, just in case.

I found Holly sitting on her bed--the bottom level of our bunk-bed--with her back to the door, trying to read a book and dry her tears and not making much headway with either. I guess I solved both problems; she turned at the sound of my footsteps and a relieved smile broke through her tears. She threw the book down on the mattress and rushed to hug me, almost squealing. I put a finger to her lips before she could, looked into her eyes: Quiet. I don't know how mad Mom is.

A lot of people think Holly and I have some kind of freaky sibling hoodoo psychic connection to each other. We don't. It's just that, growing up the way we did, we became so in tune with each other that we can just kind of read each other--facial expressions, body language, the look in each other's eyes. We still speak words to communicate with each other, we just don't always need to. So when Holly looked back at me, and new tears started to well in her eyes, I heard her words in my head before she whispered them. "I thought I lost you."

I smiled my best big-sister smile and wrapped her in a hug, weaving my fingers through her hair. "That's not how it works. You're stuck with me."

She pulled back and smiled up at me, wiping at the new tears as futilely as the old ones. "But, how did you get back?"

My smile broadened to a grin. "In the car, you silly goose." She just stared at me; apparently she didn't think it was as funny as I did. I tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear. "It's probably better if you don't know."

I'm going to find out eventually.

Yeah, but just ... not right now, okay?

After a moment, she nodded, touched a hand to my purpling cheek. "It doesn't hurt," I lied, to set her mind at ease.

It didn't take long for the word to come down. The school had gone to the city, which stepped in and mandated anger management therapy as a condition of my return to school--the following year. For my part, I thought I had managed to focus my anger rather effectively, but no one seemed to share my sense of humor on the matter. Anyway, a year of therapy was a small price to pay for thirteen years with Holly at my side--of course, in hindsight, I could have done a better job of hiding my pleasure about it. Dad saw through my mock-reluctant acceptance and decided further punishment must be in order.

I hadn't been to Church in over a year, since one random Sunday when Holly and I were sleeping over at Nana's and she took us to mass. To be sure, I'd never been to Church on a Tuesday morning. Part of it was distance--Saint Edward's was "the old church" in the city, meaning that it predated city incorporation and expansion, and was placed in the most awkward place possible; it didn't matter if you cut straight through Oldtown or crossed Anchor Bridge and took the freeway around the city, it still took almost an hour to drive there from Fourth Street. Which wouldn't have been a real problem, if we were a more devout family, but Mom only set foot in a church for weddings and funerals, and Dad, despite his Catholic upbringing, fell into her lapse almsot as soon as they were married. So, we never went.

Except for now; desperate times called for desperate measures, and apparently I needed the Bible beat back into me. Somewhere, Dad found his faith again, and he made it his mission to take me to church every morning for a week, to repent for an action I felt almost no guilt over. "This is what we do, when we need to make up for something bad we've done," Dad explained in a throaty voice on the first morning, casting a sideways glance at me as we knelt in the pews closest the door. "We have to pray so that God will forgive us."

He knelt beside me, reading the Bible under his breath. I tried to read, too, but he told me I shouldn't, not until I was older and knew what to read. He said it was enough that I prayed to God for forgiveness. Only, I didn't really know how to pray, and besides, I hadn't really done anything that needed to be forgiven--I'd only done what I thought I needed to. After a few false starts, though, I finally did pray--for Amylynn, that her hair would grow back. I knew in my gut that, if given a second chance, I would have done the exact same thing if it meant staying with Holly, but that didn't mean that innocent little Amylynn needed to suffer any more than she already had.

Well, she was mostly innocent. The pain that shot through my face whenever my tongue probed the inside of my bruised cheek was a constant reminder that the scales had been balanced again.
I decided I hadn't prayed for as long as I thought I had, because when I finished, Dad was still lost in the pages of the Good Book, and showed no signs of being near finished. It was only a few minutes before I started getting antsy. The hard things that were supposed to be cushions were making my knees itchy, and there was no light except for what shone down through the stained-glass windows, and the colors made my eyes hurt. And I wasn't quite sure, but it looked like the forty-foot-tall bronze Christ hanging from his crucifix behind the pulpit was looking right at us.

He didn't much look like he wanted to be here, either.

After yet another eternity, Dad finally noticed my fraying nerves. "I guess that's long enough for today," he said, resting a hand on my shoulder. Gently. I nodded and stood up, sniffled and surprised myself when I realized I'd been crying--I hadn't even noticed.

It went on like this every day for a week, and it was all much the same. We knelt, and I prayed while he read the Bible. I lated longer and longer each time, but eventually my skin would start crawling again and we would leave. I insisted on sitting in a different pew each day, trying to avoid the statue's keen gaze, and Dad patiently obliged each time, but it never made a difference; no matter where we sat, I could always still feel His eyes on me.

That week was the only time I remember my father being completely dry for longer than it took to buy another bottle of malt liquor. I mean, he'd never been really drunk before then, not like he got later, but in every memory I have of him, he always had a drink in his hand--but not this week; he spent every tense minute of that week stone sober. Well, except for that first Monday when I was supposed to start school. That night, he didn't even bother with a glass.

Like I said, that was the day I brought violence into our home. If my outburst at Amylynn that morning was the invention of an artform, my father distilled it to a science that night. Like every time since, it started quietly and escalated. The argument started when the phone call from the principal came. Holly and I were sitting on her bed, playing War with a a deck of cartoon-character playing cards Mom bought us out of a bargain bin that weekend. We couldn't hear what exactly what our parents were saying when they started fighting in the kitchen, but we could hear their voices lilting with hostility. It wasn't until we were settled in at the supper table that we were privy to the argument.

"Well, they're your kids, too," Mom muttered, in response to something I didn't catch from our father. "Maybe if your mother didn't sprinkle them with golden pixie dust, they wouldn't be so spoiled as to think they can get whatever they wanted."

Thwump. Our father slammed his bottle down on the table. "Don't talk about my mother that way, Char. How many times have you said, 'Thank God for Emily Gray' this past year? You can't just dump your kids on their grandmother whenever you want and then spit on her name for actually being a grandmother to them. Maybe if you could find a better job, we wouldn't need to rely on her so much--then you could bitch about her as much as you like."

I looked at Holly, led her gaze to our bedroom door. Hurry up and finish. She nodded, began shoveling spaghetti in her mouth with a new determination.

"Financial advice from an alcoholic," Mom scoffed, "that's rich. If I'm such a bitch, why the Hell did you marry me in the first place?"

"You know, I'm beginning to wonder that, myself." Our father shot us a glare when we started to clear our places. "Sit down and finish your dinner, girls." There were only a few mouthfuls of food left on our plates, but Holly and sat back down and started shoveling again.

Mom shook her head. "No--clean up and get ready for bed," she insisted. She turned a glare on our father. "What, you think it'll be good for them to watch their alcoholic father yell at his wife? It'll be a wholesome life experience? Prepare them for the real world, when they grow up and marry a self-righteous asshole of their own?"

Holly and I broke the land speed record as we ran from the kitchen sink to our bedroom, shutting the door behind us to muffle the voices again. In the safety of isolation, Holly broke. Deep down, I wanted nothing more than to join her, curled up on the floor and weeping myself into dehydration, but I couldn't. That would just make it worse for her. She someone to be strong, to comfort her, and that sure wasn't going to be either of our parents right now. I knelt beside her, pulled her up into a sitting position and wrapped my arms around her neck. Once my shirt was soaked through and the choking sobs gave way to silent, defeated weeping, I stood up. I brushed her hair until it shone, helped her change into her pyjamas, and put her to bed.

From beneath the covers, she looked up at me. She didn't say anything; not even her thoughts had any words, there was just this desparate, primal look in her eyes. Still, I understood--it was only a reflection of what I felt in my own heart. I nodded my agreement and crawled under the sheets with her, wrapped an arm tight around her waist to comfort her--and myself. Through our door, the rising and falling of our parents' angry and frustrated voices marked the rhythm of our restless sleep.

I woke up when I heard our mother scream. She didn't scream like Amlynn, though, loud and long and shrill and painful; hers was almost a surprised yelp, like a puppy when you step on its tail. I leaned up on my elbow to look at Holly, but she was still asleep--still crying, but asleep. I suppressed a jump when I heard the front door slam. Light from the hallway shone in on us when the bedroom door opened; Mom leaned in against the doorframe, her face as red with tears as Holly's had been before she fell asleep. My eyes jumped to the ice pack Mom was squeezing against her wrist, then to the purple ring around my own wrist. There was a difference between us, though; the look in her eyes, the way her body seemed to crumple in around itself--she was a victim, helpless. I swore to myself then that I'd never let that happen to me. Or Holly. Most especially Holly. But there was something else in our mother's eyes. She tried to smile for me, but it faltered. It was somewhere between a thank you and I'm sorry. Then she closed the door.

I woke up early the next morning, but not as early as Holly. When I opened my eyes, she was still next to me, trying to pull my arm even tighter around her and staring at the wood-paneled belly of my bunk above us; she was afraid of leaving the room without me--I felt the same way.Once we were dressed, we walked out into the hallway hand-in-hand, to find ... peace. There was a pillow and a crumpled blanket on the sofa in the living room. Mom was in the kitchen, cooking breakfast. Our father walked in the door as we were sitting down to eat, carrying a newspaper and a carton of milk. When breakfast was finished, he and I got ready for our first trip to church, to seek our respective forgiveness.

Before we left, Holly grabbed my hand and squeezed. This isn't over, is it?

Description
I'm almost tempted to cop out and play the "Our parents didn't understand us" card, but even I can't delude myself into thinking it's that simple. Besides, I'd rather hold onto that card for later in the game.

To be fair, Mom tried to get to know us, when she had time--not that Holly and I made it easy on her. Since the very beginning, we were in a world of our own, approachable but untouchable by the rest of the world. So even when our mother found time between laundry, cooking, sleeping, and her shifts at the mill, and she would sit down with us to ask how we felt, what games we were going to play that day, or what we wanted to do on the weekend, even when we answered honestly and enthusiastically, the wall we had spent our infancy building around ourselves kept her at a safe distance. By the time Holly and I finally lowered the drawbridge and let her in, it was too late--our isolation molded us in a different shape, and we might as well have been speaking different languages.

Dad was different. I'm still not sure whether he never knew us, or knew us too well. He never tried to weasel his way into our hearts the way Mom did. He never tried to play with us or talk to us, like he could see the wall around us and decided it wasn't worth the effort to climb. Which isn't to say that he never took an interest--he just never pushed. Every day, when he got home from the garage, and he would root himself in his recliner in front of the baseball game and quietly sip at a glass of malt liquor, I could feel him watching us out of the corner of his eye; once, I almost caught him smiling. And sometimes, when the ball game was over, if it wasn't too late and he actually had a few dollars in his pocket, he'd take us out. Only, he never told us to come like "normal" fathers would, and he never begged and pleaded for our attention like our mother would have. He would just get out of his chair and put his jacket on, and say to no one in particular that he was thinking of going for a drive, if anyone wanted to join him. More often than not, we would, just for something to do, and we would inevitably wind up at the playground or drinking milkshakes at a diner in town.

That was a long time ago, though, before he got really bad. Later, he would sit in front of that same baseball game and drink until he passed out, and our mother would feed him and pull the bottle out of his hand, setting it on the side table so it wouldn't spill. She hadn't yet learned to hide the bottle, pour it down the sink; she would just look at him with sad eyes, remember better times when we were all too young to realize we weren't happy, and tell herself she could help him get better. So, playgrounds and milkshakes, and a father that probably ignored us. Those are the times I see, when I go looking for good memories and have to settle on the lesser evil.

But in the end, everything our father did wrong eventually comes back to me. I was the one that made everything worse, unbearable; I was the one that started the cycle of violence in our family. Nana, after she heard, knew as well as I did that it was all my fault. Her son was a good Catholic boy, once, and I was the one that brought violence into our home. Soon after I turned nine, she spent a whole afternoon screaming at me, telling me to apologize for what I'd done. We both knew it was my fualt, we could see it in each other's eyes. But I refused to apologize, because I knew just as much good came out of what I did as there was bad. I may have started it all, but it was my place to hold myself responsible for my father's actions, not hers. Thinking she owed me something, Holly told the old bag to shut her bloody mouth. I could see the accusation in Nana's eyes for a long time after that, but neither of us ever spoke another word about it.

It started on September 4, 1995, my first day of school--at least, it was supposed to be my first day of school; really, I'm a little surprised I even made it through the doors, with the fit I pitched. I refused to go to school without Holly, even though she couldn't come. I hollered, I kicked, I threw things, I blinded myself to the logic in everyone's arguments: her birthday fell too late in the year to start school with me, even too late to make an exception for her. She's start when she was five, a grade behind me, and I'd have to spend an entire year at school, alone. I wouldn't have any of it, and we spent a whole hour crying that morning, all of us--well, all of us except my father. Holly cried because she was sad, I cried because I was angry. Mom cried because she didn't want Dad to get angry. She just wanted us to be good for our father, who was brooding next to the front door, my packed bookbag dangling from his white-knuckled fist. In his eyes, I was quickly becoming the brat who pitched a fit every time I didn't get my way--he couldn't see that it was both of us, Holly and I, that weren't getting our way.

I started shouting, screaming that I wouldn't go to school without Holly and who cares if anyone says she's not allowed. I grabbed Holly's wrist, then, pulled her behind me as I marched toward the door. Dad incercepted us, bent down and scooped me up over one shoulder in a single motion, and walked out of the apartment, leaving Holly on the floor behind us, weeping. He carried me that way down the stairwell and out of the building, not setting me down until he had the car door open and my butt was aimed at the passenger's seat. When we were alone in the car--the first time I remember ever being alone with him--he settled his own temper and tried to reason with me.

"I know you don't like this, Hannah." He lit a cigarette, didn't roll down the window. He turned his head toward me, his eyes flicking from my face to the road too many times to count. "But this attitude isn't going to get you anywhere--nowhere good, anyway. This isn't a negotiation, you're going to school. It's just what children do at your age." I don't know if the speech was supposed to calm me down or just shut me up, make me open my eyes to the reality of the situation. Either way, it didn't work, and I just crossed my arms over my chest and turned to look at the buildings blurring by outside my window.

Dad sighed, decided to change tack. "You know, I wasn't too big on school, either, when I was your age--or older, for that matter. The world was bigger than school, and I was too cool, and they didn't have anything to teach me that I needed to learn; and look at me now, young and broke and undereducated, and the world is a whole lot smaller. You're going to be better than that, Hannah, and you're going to go to school so you can be." A touching speech, right? Even if it was about a mile off-base. Maybe he thought that was my reasoning, that I was just using Holly as an excuse, but he was wrong. Holly was the reason--Holly was always the reason. I wanted to go to school, but the prospect of going to school without her, my sister, the other half of my soul, made me ill.

Still, I guess he was trying. In spite of my insides screaming to high hell, I dried my tears and calmed down for the rest of the ride--outwardly, at least. The gears in my head were still turning, trying to come up with a solution, any solution. I had a few ideas that could work, temporarily, but none had the staying power I needed from them.

The moment the car slid into a parking space in front of the school, Dad cut the engine and got out of the car, coming around to open my door for me. I shot him with a withering glare, but finally bit my lip, hopped out of my seat, and trudged into the school. If I was going to win this fight, it wasn't going to be with him.

We were a good twenty minutes late. When we got inside we made a beeline for the principal's office, where we informed the faculty that yes, I did exist and yes, I was starting kindergarten. Today. And alone. I swallowed all my harsh feelings for the moment and looked around coolly. I had to find a way out--Holly wasn't here, it smelled funny, and I hated it. I smiled politely at the secretary while my mind raced, curtsied to the principal and Mrs Wolfe, the kindergarten teacher he introduced me to. It only took me twenty minutes to find my way out.

"Oh, my God! Hannah, what are you doing?" Mrs Wolfe chased her own voice toward me as she hollered. I had pushed a classmate, Amylynn Oakley, out of her chair, sending her flailing to the floor. She started crying before she even hit the carpeted floor, less in pain than just looking for attention, the brat. The teacher grabbed me by a shoulder, tried to swing me around to face her; I ripped myself away from her, pointing an accusatory finger at Amylynn.

"She stole my crayon!" I screamed, forcing tears to well in my eyes. I grabbed another crayon from the table and threw it at Amylynn's face for good measure.

"I...did...not!" she sobbed, reaching for her chair to pull herself back to her feet. "She's lying, Mrs Wolfe, she's lying!" I was lying. She hadn't stole my crayon, she just had the misfortune of sitting next to me. And I wasn't crying because I was angry at her, I was crying because I didn't want to be here, not without Holly. Another lie, I suppose. I didn't want to do this, especially not to some poor, innocent girl I didn't know, but I had decided I needed to. So, I kepted up the act.

"You're the liar!" I shouted. I could feel twenty pairs of eyes in the classroom turned toward us, watching, frightened. I grabbed another crayon off the table, wound back to throw like a Major League pitcher, but Mrs Wolfe's hand caught mine before I could make my release. Her grip was tight, painful, and I had a purple ring around my wrist for three days after that. I looked up at the woman, and her eyes were just as angry as mine.

"Hannah, goddammit, those crayons are everyo--"

Amylynn had recovered herself, and while Mrs Wolfe's and my eyes were locked, she took the opportunity to throw her arm into a wild smack that caught me across the cheek--that bruise lasted for a whole week. So much for being the sole aggressor. Mrs Wolfe threw her head back and forth wildly between us, unsure which of us to restrain. In the half-moment that her eyes were turned away from me, I reached out, grabbed a fistful of Amylynn's hair, and yanked.

I had meant to use her hair as leverage to throw her into the table, but I must have either pulled too hard or not hard enough, because chunks of Amylynn's hair and scalp came away in my hand with a sickly, wet ripping sound. Mercifully, the sound was quickly drowned out by the girl's earsplitting scream. Droplets of blood were pooling and dripping from the jagged bald patch above her right ear. Amylynn clapped a hand to the side of her face as she screamed, and I looked down at my own hand, shocked and disgusted to find clumps of matted hair clenched between my fingers.

I felt sick, even worse than I felt in the car, separated from Holly. I turned and started running toward the door; I don't know where I was running to, but I would have ran far, if I hadn't collided with the principal in the classroom doorway. He looked down at me, fist still clenched around tufts of strawberry blonde hair, then up at a still-screaming Amylynn and her bloodied face, and grabbed me by the wrist and started dragging me down the hallway. I kicked and screamed, not breaking my act until I was settled into a plastic armchair in his office.

As far as I know, I'm the only person in the city to have been expelled from kindergarten.
My father arrived at the school in a silent rage half an hour later. If I had thought he was angry that morning, when I refused to go to school in the first place, I was sorely mistaken. This was something else entirely; he didn't greet the secretary in the waiting room, didn't even spare a glance, let alone a word, when the principal began scolding us both. He just charged in, grabbed me by my sore wrist, and hauled me out of the office and out of the school.

The principal followed us all the way to the car, shouting at my father. I didn't hear a word he said--like Dad, I was in a sort of daze, couldn't absorb anything around me; unlike him, though, my mind was set rigid with horror at what I had just done, not anger. So, we both ignored the man as he shouted what were probably some kind of threats. Dad threw open the passenger's side door, shoved me into the seat, got into his side and revved the engine, belching a plume of exhaust into the principal's red face. We squealed out of the parkling lot, and drove too quickly home.

Once we were safely cradled in our driveway, he cut the engine, but made no move to get out of the car. I could feel him staring at me. I didn't want to face him, but I eventually turned my eyes to meet his. He was boiling with rage; years later, when I was curled in my bed listening to my parents screaming at each other, that's the expression I always imagined him wearing. And then he spoke.
"What...the Hell...did you do?"

I wanted to say, "Nothing." I shouldn't have said anything. I looked into his eyes for a long time, but I wasn't sure what I was looking for--absolution? Validation? I'm still not sure. Finally, I looked away, let my gaze fall to my lap. "I just wanted to come home to Holly." I heard his door slam shut behind him before I even finished, and I winced.

I was expecting him to haul me back into the apartment the same way he had hauled me out of it just an hour ago, but he barely spared me a glance on his way inside the buildling, alone. I counted to ten in my head before I got out of the car and locked it, walked up the front steps of our building. The picture glass in the security door was still broken four days after some teenagers threw a brick through it, so I just stepped through without bothering to unlock or open it. Dad was coming back down as I started going up; we met in the middle, and he almost bowled me back down the stairs in his blind, angry rush to get back to work. He actually looked at me this time, just for a moment before he continued his wordless descent back to the car.

I don't know what I was expecting when I entered the apartment, but it wasn't nothing. I opened the door to the sounds of Mom loading laundry into the washer and the radio in the kitchen bleating the same news stories that were playing in the car--in both directions. A small part of me wondered why she hadn't been waiting for me at the door, ready with a glare and a loud lecture and the most severe punishment I could imagine. Then again, I didn't want to tempt fate, so I made a beeline for Holly's and my bedroom, careful that the door didn't creak, just in case.

I found Holly sitting on her bed--the bottom level of our bunk-bed--with her back to the door, trying to read a book and dry her tears and not making much headway with either. I guess I solved both problems; she turned at the sound of my footsteps and a relieved smile broke through her tears. She threw the book down on the mattress and rushed to hug me, almost squealing. I put a finger to her lips before she could, looked into her eyes: Quiet. I don't know how mad Mom is.

A lot of people think Holly and I have some kind of freaky sibling hoodoo psychic connection to each other. We don't. It's just that, growing up the way we did, we became so in tune with each other that we can just kind of read each other--facial expressions, body language, the look in each other's eyes. We still speak words to communicate with each other, we just don't always need to. So when Holly looked back at me, and new tears started to well in her eyes, I heard her words in my head before she whispered them. "I thought I lost you."

I smiled my best big-sister smile and wrapped her in a hug, weaving my fingers through her hair. "That's not how it works. You're stuck with me."

She pulled back and smiled up at me, wiping at the new tears as futilely as the old ones. "But, how did you get back?"

My smile broadened to a grin. "In the car, you silly goose." She just stared at me; apparently she didn't think it was as funny as I did. I tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear. "It's probably better if you don't know."

I'm going to find out eventually.

Yeah, but just ... not right now, okay?

After a moment, she nodded, touched a hand to my purpling cheek. "It doesn't hurt," I lied, to set her mind at ease.

It didn't take long for the word to come down. The school had gone to the city, which stepped in and mandated anger management therapy as a condition of my return to school--the following year. For my part, I thought I had managed to focus my anger rather effectively, but no one seemed to share my sense of humor on the matter. Anyway, a year of therapy was a small price to pay for thirteen years with Holly at my side--of course, in hindsight, I could have done a better job of hiding my pleasure about it. Dad saw through my mock-reluctant acceptance and decided further punishment must be in order.

I hadn't been to Church in over a year, since one random Sunday when Holly and I were sleeping over at Nana's and she took us to mass. To be sure, I'd never been to Church on a Tuesday morning. Part of it was distance--Saint Edward's was "the old church" in the city, meaning that it predated city incorporation and expansion, and was placed in the most awkward place possible; it didn't matter if you cut straight through Oldtown or crossed Anchor Bridge and took the freeway around the city, it still took almost an hour to drive there from Fourth Street. Which wouldn't have been a real problem, if we were a more devout family, but Mom only set foot in a church for weddings and funerals, and Dad, despite his Catholic upbringing, fell into her lapse almsot as soon as they were married. So, we never went.

Except for now; desperate times called for desperate measures, and apparently I needed the Bible beat back into me. Somewhere, Dad found his faith again, and he made it his mission to take me to church every morning for a week, to repent for an action I felt almost no guilt over. "This is what we do, when we need to make up for something bad we've done," Dad explained in a throaty voice on the first morning, casting a sideways glance at me as we knelt in the pews closest the door. "We have to pray so that God will forgive us."

He knelt beside me, reading the Bible under his breath. I tried to read, too, but he told me I shouldn't, not until I was older and knew what to read. He said it was enough that I prayed to God for forgiveness. Only, I didn't really know how to pray, and besides, I hadn't really done anything that needed to be forgiven--I'd only done what I thought I needed to. After a few false starts, though, I finally did pray--for Amylynn, that her hair would grow back. I knew in my gut that, if given a second chance, I would have done the exact same thing if it meant staying with Holly, but that didn't mean that innocent little Amylynn needed to suffer any more than she already had.

Well, she was mostly innocent. The pain that shot through my face whenever my tongue probed the inside of my bruised cheek was a constant reminder that the scales had been balanced again.
I decided I hadn't prayed for as long as I thought I had, because when I finished, Dad was still lost in the pages of the Good Book, and showed no signs of being near finished. It was only a few minutes before I started getting antsy. The hard things that were supposed to be cushions were making my knees itchy, and there was no light except for what shone down through the stained-glass windows, and the colors made my eyes hurt. And I wasn't quite sure, but it looked like the forty-foot-tall bronze Christ hanging from his crucifix behind the pulpit was looking right at us.

He didn't much look like he wanted to be here, either.

After yet another eternity, Dad finally noticed my fraying nerves. "I guess that's long enough for today," he said, resting a hand on my shoulder. Gently. I nodded and stood up, sniffled and surprised myself when I realized I'd been crying--I hadn't even noticed.

It went on like this every day for a week, and it was all much the same. We knelt, and I prayed while he read the Bible. I lated longer and longer each time, but eventually my skin would start crawling again and we would leave. I insisted on sitting in a different pew each day, trying to avoid the statue's keen gaze, and Dad patiently obliged each time, but it never made a difference; no matter where we sat, I could always still feel His eyes on me.

That week was the only time I remember my father being completely dry for longer than it took to buy another bottle of malt liquor. I mean, he'd never been really drunk before then, not like he got later, but in every memory I have of him, he always had a drink in his hand--but not this week; he spent every tense minute of that week stone sober. Well, except for that first Monday when I was supposed to start school. That night, he didn't even bother with a glass.

Like I said, that was the day I brought violence into our home. If my outburst at Amylynn that morning was the invention of an artform, my father distilled it to a science that night. Like every time since, it started quietly and escalated. The argument started when the phone call from the principal came. Holly and I were sitting on her bed, playing War with a a deck of cartoon-character playing cards Mom bought us out of a bargain bin that weekend. We couldn't hear what exactly what our parents were saying when they started fighting in the kitchen, but we could hear their voices lilting with hostility. It wasn't until we were settled in at the supper table that we were privy to the argument.

"Well, they're your kids, too," Mom muttered, in response to something I didn't catch from our father. "Maybe if your mother didn't sprinkle them with golden pixie dust, they wouldn't be so spoiled as to think they can get whatever they wanted."

Thwump. Our father slammed his bottle down on the table. "Don't talk about my mother that way, Char. How many times have you said, 'Thank God for Emily Gray' this past year? You can't just dump your kids on their grandmother whenever you want and then spit on her name for actually being a grandmother to them. Maybe if you could find a better job, we wouldn't need to rely on her so much--then you could bitch about her as much as you like."

I looked at Holly, led her gaze to our bedroom door. Hurry up and finish. She nodded, began shoveling spaghetti in her mouth with a new determination.

"Financial advice from an alcoholic," Mom scoffed, "that's rich. If I'm such a bitch, why the Hell did you marry me in the first place?"

"You know, I'm beginning to wonder that, myself." Our father shot us a glare when we started to clear our places. "Sit down and finish your dinner, girls." There were only a few mouthfuls of food left on our plates, but Holly and sat back down and started shoveling again.

Mom shook her head. "No--clean up and get ready for bed," she insisted. She turned a glare on our father. "What, you think it'll be good for them to watch their alcoholic father yell at his wife? It'll be a wholesome life experience? Prepare them for the real world, when they grow up and marry a self-righteous asshole of their own?"

Holly and I broke the land speed record as we ran from the kitchen sink to our bedroom, shutting the door behind us to muffle the voices again. In the safety of isolation, Holly broke. Deep down, I wanted nothing more than to join her, curled up on the floor and weeping myself into dehydration, but I couldn't. That would just make it worse for her. She someone to be strong, to comfort her, and that sure wasn't going to be either of our parents right now. I knelt beside her, pulled her up into a sitting position and wrapped my arms around her neck. Once my shirt was soaked through and the choking sobs gave way to silent, defeated weeping, I stood up. I brushed her hair until it shone, helped her change into her pyjamas, and put her to bed.

From beneath the covers, she looked up at me. She didn't say anything; not even her thoughts had any words, there was just this desparate, primal look in her eyes. Still, I understood--it was only a reflection of what I felt in my own heart. I nodded my agreement and crawled under the sheets with her, wrapped an arm tight around her waist to comfort her--and myself. Through our door, the rising and falling of our parents' angry and frustrated voices marked the rhythm of our restless sleep.

I woke up when I heard our mother scream. She didn't scream like Amlynn, though, loud and long and shrill and painful; hers was almost a surprised yelp, like a puppy when you step on its tail. I leaned up on my elbow to look at Holly, but she was still asleep--still crying, but asleep. I suppressed a jump when I heard the front door slam. Light from the hallway shone in on us when the bedroom door opened; Mom leaned in against the doorframe, her face as red with tears as Holly's had been before she fell asleep. My eyes jumped to the ice pack Mom was squeezing against her wrist, then to the purple ring around my own wrist. There was a difference between us, though; the look in her eyes, the way her body seemed to crumple in around itself--she was a victim, helpless. I swore to myself then that I'd never let that happen to me. Or Holly. Most especially Holly. But there was something else in our mother's eyes. She tried to smile for me, but it faltered. It was somewhere between a thank you and I'm sorry. Then she closed the door.

I woke up early the next morning, but not as early as Holly. When I opened my eyes, she was still next to me, trying to pull my arm even tighter around her and staring at the wood-paneled belly of my bunk above us; she was afraid of leaving the room without me--I felt the same way.Once we were dressed, we walked out into the hallway hand-in-hand, to find ... peace. There was a pillow and a crumpled blanket on the sofa in the living room. Mom was in the kitchen, cooking breakfast. Our father walked in the door as we were sitting down to eat, carrying a newspaper and a carton of milk. When breakfast was finished, he and I got ready for our first trip to church, to seek our respective forgiveness.

Before we left, Holly grabbed my hand and squeezed. This isn't over, is it?