Beaten, Betrayed, Violated.

Pennsylvania

For the next couple of years, Angila faked being nice, and my father worked all the time. When he wasn't secretly selling drugs for people who claimed to be part of some Tampa bay Mexican mafia bullshit. He apparently ran away at 14 and started selling drugs, or so he and his friends told me.  I don't know how much to believe, but that's the story, and I know my dad is horrible and vicious.
Fast forward from when we left off, and  picture that we are in Elizabethtown Pennsylvania. We have a three bedroom house, a new little sister that  I share a room with. She's... Still a toddler I'm pretty sure. My brother was in first grade, and I In fifth. I had spent the last couple years in south Carolina and seeing a three story school was intimidating. They just didn't have schools that big. So I had trouble finding my way around for the first week. I had difficulty remembering where to go. After being late twice though, you got a detention. I hadn't ever gotten one before, but they always screamed at me if I'd done the slightest going wrong. I was scared to tell them, but little did I know, there was no need. Apparently the school called home when detentions were given.
When I went home that day, I had a pool of cold dread  in my stomach.
My parents went through my back pack every day. I wasn't allowed to bring home books from the library, toys won from the treasure chest, "trash" aka anything more than a day old.
I knew she had found the detention slip by the furious look on her face.
"Why didn't you tell me? Matter of fact, why were you late?"
I never even had time to answer. And it wasn't like I had time to tell her either.
She slapped me hard across the cheek, for the first time. So stunned, I did nothing as she grabbed my by my hair and began dragging me down the basement stairs. Four or five steps from the bottom, she threw me. I was small. I had always been. I was nothing to her.
"Cry all you fucking want, bitch. No one can hear you down here. Take your fucking pants off. "
She began unbuckling her leather studded belt, taking it off.
I was crying. The fall hurt, but I was more terrified than anything.  I was a traumatized kid, about to be traumatized even more. I knew by the intent in her eyes that this wasn't going to end well.
When I didn't remove my pants, she began to kick me, mainly in my legs. Later, I found out that this was because she didn't want marks to show.
I began crying harder, wishing it would stop. Praying to god, to help me, just this once. She stopped, and shakily I began to undo my pants.
"If you don't stop crying,I'll give you something to cry for." She spat the words out venemously.
Isn't that what you did? Isn't that exactly what you're doing now, too?
" Bend over the couch. Now. Don't get up, or I'll whip you more, you fucking liar."
The belt made a whistle as it whipped through the air. The pain was intense. With each blow, she hissed words from between her barred teeth, flat lips wrapped around them. She was completely fucking crazy. "Don't. You. Ever. Hide. Things. From. Me. I. Am. Your. Mother!"
No you're not! I screamed it in my head, because I was having a panic attack, and screaming in pain. There were no words now, just the cracking of  leather on skin. I think it ended at fifteen lashes, on my legs back and bottom, but the last lash caught my arm. It snapped around my forearm and stung. I had collapsed, and wet myself. Humiliating. But pain does this...
"I told you not to move!"
She was breathless with psychotic rage, and she gave me one more hard, loud smack, before leaving me on the floor crying, until my father returned home to find what she'd done.
He made me take a shower, and made me go into my room. I was so scared, I didn't do anything unless I was expressly told to do so. I didn't turn on my radio, grab a book from the shelf my grandmother gave me, I didn't speak.  It went on this way for days, and then weeks, before someone at school noticed. But by then the bruises had faded, leaving only mental scars.
They sent DCF to investigate.
My parents pulled me aside before the investigators talked to me.
"If you get us arrested, or the kids taken from us, we will hunt you down, and kill you when this is over."
I was truly fucking horrified that they could think and say such things to a child, especially when they were the wrong ones. They tried so many times to tell me that it was normal to get beaten that way. That no one would care, but I knew they were wrong. Still, I was too afraid to get the help I should have. I told them that I had fallen while playing and that's where the faded bruise on my cheek had come from.
They closed the investigation not too long after that, and once they knew they could bully me into submission, things began to get much worse for me. I would get beaten over the smallest things, such as forgetting a chore. My step mother never did housework. I was their personal slave
Wash the dishes
Sweep
Mop
Wipe the counters and tables down
Clean my room
Clean my siblings toys.
Babysit.
Cook.
Do the dishes again.
Wipe everything down again.
Sweep, again most times.
No tv, homework. No friends.
Stare at the wall, or read a book.
Stay in my room, or risk looking at her the wrong way.
I had to school my face into being expressionless at all times.
If I didn't, she would find an excuse to say that I was glaring, and poke me in the eye, or sometimes choke me against a wall, until I was dizzy and resting on there so as not to fall.
That year was horrible, but little did  I know that still worse was coming, as we moved back to Florida, the summer before middle school.
That summer meant a lot to me.
The start of my only true friendship, and the start of an innocent relationship with her brother that would last for years to come.