Tribulation [h.s]

23

"All these voices in my head get loud
I wish that I could shut them out
I'm sorry that I let you down
Let you down."

-

There are a lot of things that I'm afraid of: spiders, thunderstorms, people, knives, the list goes on, but nothing is more terrifying than getting a phone call from Maggie's Principal who tells me that there was an accident — an "altercation" she claimed — which was her fucking way of telling me that Maggie got hurt.

Bursting through the Principal's office doors, my eyes immediately find Maggie. She's shifting uncomfortably in a chair with her feet dangling and her head hung low. She picks at her nails anxiously, clearly uncomfortable under the scrutiny she receives from a woman sitting directly across from her who has her son in her lap.

Bitterness racks my bones when I see how that woman looks at my little sister. I believe in treating people with kindness. After all, that's all I try to do, but that all goes out the window when Maggie is involved.

I don't get angry easily or often, but one quick, sure-fire way to have me losing my shit is messing with Maggie.

No one messes with my sister.

"Ms. Vera, please come in and have a seat." In three long strides, I make my way over to Maggie and kneel before the chair she sits in, grabbing ahold of her tiny hands. I don't give two shits about the Principal and her formalities.

"Maggie baby, what happened?" Maggie glances up, looking surprised to see me, but quickly looks back down at her lap. She tried to hide from my unyielding gaze, but I already saw what she was trying to hide from me.

A ringing fills my ears as my heart stalls in my chest. A pit forms in my stomach so suddenly, it steals my breath away. Maggie's small hands grip tightly onto mine when a soft, barely audible gasp leaves my lips.

I rip one of my hands from hers and grab her face, smushing her cheeks as I force her head up. She tries to fight me, but I need to see her face again. I'm praying that my eyes are playing tricks on me, but they aren't.

She has a black eye.

"Oh my God..."

Maggie bursts out crying. "I'm sorry, I-I'm sorry, Allie! Please don't be mad!"

Why would I be mad?

If she's assuming I'd be mad, something terrible must have happened. Fat tears roll down her rosy cheeks, and when I go to wipe her tears away, she shrinks back and avoids my touch.

When you raise a child, you learn to decode and understand their types of cries. There's the fake cry with crocodile tears; there's the hunger cry, the attention cry, the overstimulated cry, the sleepy cry, and then there's the pain-filled cry. The pain-filled cry is the cry that has my body jolting and working on autopilot. It has my heart racing, palms sweating, and eyes going wide.

It is by far the most terrifying and heartbreaking cry there is. It's unadulterated, raw, and filled with fear; the fear of letting me down, the fear of being in trouble, the fear of being hurt again. She's scared, ashamed, and humiliated. She tries to hide behind her hands, and she forces herself back into the corner of the chair, kicking her legs and breathing heavily between sobs and broken "I'm sorry's."

Maggie isn't one for tantrums, but she is one for nervous breakdowns. It's never usually this bad, though. I've only ever seen her this bad when she wakes up from her night-terrors, screaming bloody murder, unable to tell the difference between reality and a nightmare. Today, however, she cries and screams in the Principals office, and her cries are shattering my heart.