Chapter I
Shadows
Marsha
It was 2:30 in the morning when I finally walked in the front door. In my head I exclaimed, “Honey I’m home.” But I knew there was no point. Not only did I kick out my piece of shit boyfriend a couple nights before, but if I said anything it would wake up the kids. My kids, the joys of my life, the apples of my eyes, and the burdens on my back. I was too young when I had them, but I was in love and I didn’t believe in abortions, back then anyway.
Me and Max had it all figured out. He was going to join the Army once he graduated high school and I was going to drop out and get my GED. He was seventeen and I was a year his junior, what else could we do? Nevaeh was born about four months before his graduation. My mom had kicked me out and his parents refused to help us, so I ended up sleeping on the couch of my best friend’s mom. I don’t know what made my mom think that the right punishment for a pregnant teenager was kicking her out of the house, but that’s what she did. I was working at a fast food place before I gave birth so I had a little money saved up for when little Nevaeh came along. That money only lasted a month. So when we needed diapers and formula and neither my mom nor Max’s parents would help us, he turned to selling drugs. He made some quick money but got busted about two months after he started. This meant bye bye to the Army and hello to a bunch of new problems. One being that our baby now had two parents without a high school diploma, we had no money, no place to stay, and no realistic plans for the future.
I hate reminiscing, there’s nothing good to look back on. All I know is that now I’m a single, twenty nine year old, high school drop out with three kids and a locked up baby daddy, sneaking into my apartment so the kids don’t wake up. How pathetic. I can’t even keep a man for more than a year because it seems like all I seem to attract are scum bags. But what can I expect? I have three kids. What kind of man in his right mind wouldn’t go running once he sees all of my baggage? I have to take what I can get.
Nevaeh
I think I just heard the door, I hope that’s mom and not that crappy boyfriend she kicked out the other day. I don’t even understand how she stayed with him for so long. I guess it was because he was a free babysitter. Well, that is if you consider sitting in the house all day glued to the TV and drinking babysitting. I mean he beat her every time she came home after 2 in the morning claiming that one of his friends called and said they saw her with another guy. We all knew he was lying. He doesn’t even have a phone and he never answers the house phone so I don’t know where he got his stories from.
Then there were the nights when he would sneak into my bedroom once the twins fell asleep. I hated him. He started about three months after he and my mom started dating. At first he would just come inside and look at me. But once I started wearing huge sweatshirts and sweatpants to bed, thinking it would make him stop, it just got worse. About a week after my brilliant idea, he started touching me. I always tried to pretend to be asleep because I was afraid that if he knew I was awake he would take it further. He eventually got bored with just touching a thirteen year old girl and moved to worse things, things that I couldn’t pretend to be asleep for.
He threatened my family afterwards. He said, “If you tell anyone I’ll kill everyone you love.” Of course I believed him, but just in case I didn’t, he beat my mom especially hard that night and said it would be worse if I opened my mouth. I remember the next night I put a knife under my pillow. My plan was to cut it off if he tried to put it near me. I chickened out. That would only make him mad, if I was going to use the knife I was going to have to take him out with it. That was something that I wasn’t strong enough to do. So I just cried. I cried because of the pain that he was causing me. I cried because I knew that my mom was too tired to realize the change in my attitude. I cried because I knew that I wasn’t strong enough to save myself and my family.
Junior
“What was that?” I asked my twin sister. “I think Jamal is back,” but she didn’t answer. She was probably asleep. She always slept through the worse nights and I never wanted to wake her up, so I stayed awake in my real life nightmare, alone. Jamal was a big guy, they always were. Mom never picked any skinny one’s that I had a chance of taking down for her. Jamal was definitely the biggest and the meanest of all mom’s boyfriends. He would always hit her and leave her with black eyes and bruises everywhere. I never knew Black people could have black eyes until Jamal came around. But with skin the shade of caramel, I guess it only made sense that she would be able to turn the shade of plums and blueberries.
The first time he hit her I didn’t know what was going on. They always argued but this time was different. I heard them yelling and then the yelling just stopped after a big crash. Then my mom started crying. I ran out of my room because I thought she tripped and Sasha was right behind me. That’s when I saw Jamal’s hand punching her face. Sasha looked really scared and she didn’t move but I went running at him with my fists up. My dad told me that I was the man of this house while he was in jail and it was my job to protect the women. I punched him a few times in his back before he swung around and threw me into the wall. Then everything went dark.
When I opened my eyes again my mom was standing over me with blood running out of her nose. “Mom are you ok?”
“I’m fine.”
I don’t know what happened, but Jamal was gone when I woke up and the apartment was really messed up. After that night, it became normal. The fights happened almost every night, most of the time Sasha just pulled the covers over her head and cried. I always came out of my room and yelled at him. Once and a while I would see Nevaeh limp out of her room and try to stop Jamal. I could never figure out why she was limping, she didn’t play any sports but she was clumsy. But I still couldn’t figure out how she always managed to get hurt, especially at night time because she was always fine before she went to bed.
I wish my dad was here so this wouldn’t happen to my mom. He would protect her from these guys.
Sasha
I woke up when the front door opened. I wasn’t sure if it was mom or Jamal but either way I was going to pretend to be asleep. A few seconds later I heard Junior ask me if I thought Jamal was back. I just ignored him. If he thought I was awake then he would come to me and see the tears pouring down my face. He and Nevaeh were stronger than me. I couldn’t stand to see that monster hit my mom. I knew she kicked him out two days ago, but it wouldn’t be the first time that she forgave him and let him come back.
I wonder where he went when he left. I always prayed that he was living on the street in a dumpster. Guys like him didn’t deserve a family to help them out. A man wasn’t supposed to hit a woman, at least that’s what they always said on TV. It was weird though, because they always say that in the movies, but, just like my mom, the women always stay with the guy that hits them.
I was sure that my mom was going to dump him the first night we saw him punch her. I mean he threw Junior into a wall and he didn’t wake up for like ten minutes. After Junior hit the wall me and Nevaeh ran over to him and she was on the phone calling 911 right after. Jamal left when Nevaeh told him that she was calling the cops. He was afraid to get locked up again. He slammed the door as he left but not before knocking everything in his path over. My mom crawled over to Junior and we all stayed there until he woke up.
I don’t know why Jamal was so scared of the cops. He knew that they hardly ever showed up in this neighborhood. That night was no different. We waited for about thirty minutes for them to show. None of us were surprised when they didn’t. A few days before someone robbed and shot our neighbor. The cops didn’t come until the next day. By then, Mr. Johnson had already taken the bus to the hospital. Funny, I heard the cops showed up at the hospital to ask him if he was shot because he was involved in drugs.
After that night I tried to keep out of site. Especially since a few months after that Jamal started touching me. He told me that I was pretty and special and he wanted to show me how beautiful he thought I was. I didn’t like it. I told him to stop but he said if he stopped touching me he would start touching Nevaeh and I didn’t want her to have to go through that, so I let him. She was always sad and I knew that would make her worse. She was getting bigger lately. I wonder if she’s gaining weight because she’s sad about mom.
I stay in my room most of the time now. Junior was usually in here and Jamal never tried anything when he was around. I guess I believe in that saying, “out of sight, out of mind”. Jamal would corner me in the kitchen sometimes or find me when I got out of the shower but most of time I think he forget about me. That’s why I stopped running out of my room every time that my mom and him got into a fight; he remembered that the next day when mom was gone. I always heard him yelling at Junior and Nevaeh for getting into grown folks business.
That’s the reason that I just laid still when Junior asked me if I thought it was him. I hoped it wasn’t but if it was, I wasn’t giving him any reason to think about me later on.