I lay here a woman, occasionally still trapped in the mindset of a little girl. Life is something I observed rather than experience. I can't sleep so I do what I always do, put on soft music and close my eyes, and let the demons of my past come to bring me back through the river of time, back to the places where I began to shatter.
My first memory is of broken glass. I jumped out of my parents bed and ran down the hallway of our small trailer, and walked into the kitchen. I see the woman I would grow to hate on the ground, on her hands and knees, gently picking up pieces of a broken tea pot as shouting rumbled around us like thunder.
My mother and father, the ever happy couple.
Even though I have grown to absolutely despise the woman sitting in front of me, my heart still rips at the sight of her on the ground, cuts in her hands and knees, her nose bleeding, her eyes vacant as my father (a six foot seven behemoth) shouted over her.
"What did you do to me, you stupid bitch?" he screamed over and over as he hurled pieces of my mom's most prized possession at her (her great grandmother's antique tea set from Ireland). The pieces shattered around us like small bombs. Everyone, obliterating our family, and my mother's sanity.
I looked in his usually brown eyes and they were completely black. Spit was flying out of his mouth, grossly punctuating every disrespect he launched at my mother. My mother didn't seem to notice him at all. She didn't flinch as she knelt in the glass. She didn't cower as he got closer and closer his words getting more and more violent. Neither of them seemed to notice me until I ran between them.
"STOP!!!" I yelled with all the fury a tiny four year old in pink princess footie pajamas could muster.
Suddenly my father seemed to snap out of it. Almost like coming out of a spell. His pupils shrunk, his arms dropped to his sides and he shook his head a few times.
He didn't say anything to either of us as he turned and walked to the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
I turned to my mom as she dropped the pieces of the tea cup and wrapped her arms around her small shoulders.
She had long, curly, dirty blonde hair that was frizzy and unruly. Her face was pale and gaunt, the color completely drained out of it except for the deep purple bags under her eyes and the deep red blood dripping from her nose.
I grabbed the broom and did my four year old best work cleaning up the pieces of broken glass, all the while my mother sat silently sobbing. I couldn't get her to respond to me so I went to get my older brother, always her golden baby. Always her world.
Her cries became audible as she saw him and yanked him into her arms. His tiny six year old arms clung to her desperately as they dissolved into tears huddled together on the floor. I stood next to them, not sure how to be involved but desperately wanting to. Ever the outsider.
I looked over my mother's shoulder, and that's the first time I saw my Great Grandmother.
I know her better in death than I ever did in life even though my middle name, Evangeline, is in her honor. She died the year after I was born, two weeks after my first birthday. But she never left me.