My head was pounding, the screaming in the next room stopped the blue and red lights faded as the police went off, and It was QUIET in the HOUSE. My thoughts
E-c-h-o-e-d in this silence....Errrrrrrrrrrrrrr, the door from across the hall opened, and all of sudden 3 pairs of wide eyes were looking at me.
At once, I snapped back from that endless abyss of time and space that held my thoughts captive. " Man you guys need stop wearing my clothes to bed, it is a shirt, not a night gown," I said in a stern manner. "We're hungry," my little brother cried.
It was apparently feeding time. After all that occurred, it was sobering cooking for these little ones, I wonder how much they actually absorbed. "Shit," I burned myself, hard to believe my body is still numb from all the fighting. The youngest tugged at my shirt, "your not going to be mean to us anymore are you. " What," I said in shock "remember when mommy and daddy were..."
While looking at the fresh burn on my hand, I remembered. Things were going to get really bad, when my brother and step dad were bowing up to each other, but before things got to blows my mother grabbed my older sister and through her to the floor. So I quickly grabbed the hands of my youngest sibling and pulled them to the nearest room My little sister begin to pull away, screaming and hitting my arm, "I want to see mommy." With thunder and all the rage I could muster I screamed "GET IN THE FUCKING ROOM!!!" instantly regained my composure, with a drill sergeant like spirit I instructed the oldest "get in the room, close the door, lock it, and don't leave into the noise stops," Like a soldier she responded sharply.
I crouched down"No sweetie I'm not going to be mean anymore I love you very much, and your food is going to get cold, so less talking and more eating." With a mouth full of unprocessed food, she muttered "good, I like you when you're nice, not when you're not nice."
Too excited to sleep, they asked for stories, to calm their spirits and one by one they fell to sleep. I slept at the foot of their bed, to make sure they were safe.
I woke up to a numbing sensation in my right arm. "Ok, I need to get up," I said to myself in a rather decrepit voice. When I finally opened my eyes, I came to find, these three little ones had migrated from the bed, to the floor to my back and for arm, huddled like penguins. My oldest little sister ten said " we didn't want the bed monster to get you."
Thinking long and hard " shit, was I protecting them last night or were they protecting me." Now at the ripe old age of twenty one and years of age perfecting the art of procrastination, of course while in the library at my college typing away. I know now "if I did not stand for them, I would have fallen for myself."
