There was this one time, I was maybe 5 or 6? Could have been 7 because my birthday was the next day.

It was lilo and stitch themed and it had rained really bad, flooding the pool. The cake was blue and turned your teeth blue too.

And my mom pulled me aside whenever my older sister's friends arrived and told me that if they asked— to tell them the welts on my hip were temporary tattoos.

It was a really believable lie. They were shaped like flowers. Two sore, puffy, purple and red little flowers on my hip from the night before.

I'd done bad, pushing my little brother down.

See, I had gone to the zoo a few days before and I'd gotten this totally awesome streamer, like a real wooden one with fabric. Not those cheap plastic kind. I loved that streamer, and I lost it somewhere.

I thought my younger brother had stolen it, and approximately 5 to 7 year old me was very upset. So I pushed him down and scraped up his back pretty bad.

***

"Hands on the bed," she said. This is normal. When I did bad, or my sissy did bad, or even my baby brother, it was a whooping.
I do what I'm told. I know it's going to hurt cause I only have my bathing suit on. My very first Bikini. Plus my mom let me borrow her blue skirt to wear over my bottoms.

My bed is metal framed, and that's what I'm grabbing, waiting. It's white.
Normally when we got spankings, mom and dad grabbed Old Blue, this fabric belt my dad doesn’t wear anymore.

I don't remember waiting for very long, but I see when she comes in the door, she doesn't have Old Blue. Instead, it's this other belt she has, I sometimes see her wear it. It's leather and has holes in it shaped like flowers.

I turn and hold on really tight, waiting. It's three. Usually. Just three.

It hurts, stings a lot more than Old Blue ever did and I'm already crying. Two more.

She hits me again. This time, it misses my butt and hits my side. And I let go of the bed, I'm not supposed to do that and she yells at me. I remember I have little, pudgy hands. They're red because she hit me again, and missed. It got my fingers and I scream.

That's three. It's supposed to be over after that. That's how it usually works, unless you lie.

If you lie, she hits you more than what they promised because she lies too.

I hurt, my head is so hot and I can't breathe and I can't think and I figure, maybe if I'm facing her, she won't hit me. She probably wouldn't stop if I did that, right?
So I turn around and I run past her to the corner to make her stop.

I am very wrong in what I figure.
She just turns around and hits me more, very hard.
On my face and arms and legs and it hurts so much. I'm stuck. I'm trapped and I can't go anywhere. I need to go somewhere or I think she will break me and I can't go to school with bruises like this. She was supposed to stop.

Why didn't she stop?

I don't know how I do it, but I run, really fast. Between her and the dresser before she can catch me, and I even got all the way out the door.
I keep running, it's dark out and I figure I can run away, I'm so far down the road that I could stay at Beverly's..I don't want to stay with her.

Also there's no point, I think. Of running. I'm small, and my feet hurt. I didn't have time to grab my shoes or a hobo bag on a stick, and I don't have anywhere to go.

So...really...I should just go home. I can sneak in the back door. Momma won't know I came back until the next morning.
Also...my birthday party is tomorrow and I don't think it would be nice to not be there. I am supposed to be good. I am a good girl. I'm good.

I hope.

This is normal. This is what mommy and daddy do to make bad kids like me behave and be good. And I can do that, I can be anything. Everything.

Whatever they want.

I can be good.

***

I don't know why, but this is the story I tell people the most. I remember telling it the first time, to my friend Jamie.

The look on her face was priceless!
That look of pity and horror that makes my insides burn and my skin ache and sting and my heart pull apart.

It was just a funny story, really.
This outrageous thing my mom did when I was a kid— no lasting impact on my psyche or anything! Noo, that honor unfortunately has to be split up between Mom, Dad, and Beverly.

It is...so funny though. Because I'm the only one laughing at this silly story. Of course, when I talk to my mom about it now, she's very adamant that is exactly and only that...
A funny story of that one time she beat me so hard that I ran away and then made me tell all my friends the bruises were temporary tattoos.

100% normal thing to do.

Definitely top tier mom goals, as you know.

Well...I think that just about summed up everything you needed to know about this book, where it's going. What I'm gonna be talking about.

Feel free to leave. Truly.

I mean it, cause it's only gonna get worse. It will get, like, maybe a little bit better? But don't expect any Disney-esque turn around to happen.

Anyways. I wrote this at 4 in the morning, so I'm going to try to go to sleep and probably contemplate my existence.
See you in the next chapter.