Inside My Head

When I was 5

I was crying. Well, not exactly crying, but the closest I ever used to get. I hid in the back of the basement in a tiny, self-made crawl space. I could hear Andrew shouting upstairs. Alyssa shouted back. I heard metal clatter, a scream, a door slamming. Then all was silent.
I waited for a long time, feeling the pain in my back and ribs slowly grow. Finally, I crawled out of my hiding place, and went upstairs. Alyssa was in the kitchen, cleaning a huge knife. There was a mark from where it had hit on the doorframe. There was one little drip of blood on the side of Alyssa's neck.
"Lyssa?" Tears were starting to block my vision. She turned around.
"Sophia," she exclaimed with concern, running over and wrapping me in her arms. Alyssa rocked back and forth on the floor, me in her lap. I could feel her tears running into my hair. I flinched when her hands touched my back. "Let's go get you a bath, okay?" She wiped the tears from her eyes. "It will help it heal."
I sat in the bath while Alyssa washed my hair.
Mom was at Julia's house with Micah and Gloria. Dad was at work. We didn't talk to them about it anyway. The first time I tried to tell mom she called me a liar and a f***ing little brat. Whenever dad thought we were lying he hit us. I stopped trying to tell them anything when I was four.
I can't really blame dad. He grew up in a military family in Germany. He and mom were both on their second marriage. When he married mom he also adopted her two kids. Nine months later I came along. I was supposed to be his learning experience, but now he had a five year old, a six year old, and a baby, along with an oversensitive, emotionally abusive wife.
Mother, on the other hand, promised to never be like her mother. Her first marriage ended because she made that promise, then broke it a week later and kept breaking it for three years. Jason got tired of it. She became worse than her mother.
Neither of them were ever around to save us from our brother's anger.
Alyssa took me to the back yard and helped me through the fence to our friend Hannah's house.
"Go to the tree house, okay? I'll come get you when mom and dad get home."
I nodded.
I climbed up to the tree house in the tall oak in Hannah's back yard. I closed the trap door and crawled to the corner where I had my books. I was reading "The Call of the Wild". It was nice to immerse myself in books. Books take you away from the pain of reality for a while, to far away lands, where parents and brothers don't hurt you. As I read I slowly forgot the pain in my back.
About two hours later I was startled by Alyssa's appearance at the trap door.
"Mom is home with the little kids and wants us to do the laundry."
"Okay."
We climbed down the rope ladder and through the fence to our backyard.