We Six

Yellow

with the slamming of the door i wake up in a cold sweat. i hear screaming coming from the kitchen, i race out my bedroom door and run down the hallway on the right is the kitchen, i take a sharp turn almost losing my balance with the sleek slide from the hard wood floor freshly waxed. my eyes dart from side to side looking for the reason my mother screamed bloody murder but nothing, an empty room with her laying on the floor next to a note carefully written in bold letters "I'M LEAVING" it said. without second thought i lay next to her my hand to her cheek, she grabs my hand and holds it to her heart. "I'm so sorry you have to hear this baby, but your dad left us" she said with faint gasps of air between each word she said still trying to recuperate for the manic crying and screaming that she did right before. "its okay mommy." i say with the best interest at heart, i loved her and that's all she needed but that's not how she felt and i would come to realize that soon. couple months went by and 3 men have already passed through our house claiming to love my mom but ultimately leaving her the same way my father did, but one horrid night everything changed. she went out for speed dating one night at a very nice restaurant as she normally did leaving me at home to watch tv and the reheated leftovers of day old pizza to eat, as usual i take the pizza and watch my favorite movie before bed. i finish up and head to bed, tucking myself into bed then closing my eyes. as soon as i begin to drift off i hear the shaking of the keys and the pop of the unlocking of the door. the two adults bullet in the home knocking everything over having drank too many glasses of wine at dinner. they make their way into her bedroom making occasional stops to take an article of clothing off of eachother. when they make it into the room i try to fall asleep to the sound of unrecognizable banging and moaning from each of them simultaneously. I open my eyes to the bright, beautiful sun peering into the singular window in my bedroom. i take a few sniffs of the brilliant air. pancakes. moms signature dish for all the men that leave her room from the night before, i come to the kitchen table and sit in the chair across from the man my mother brought home. i stare at him while he sits there in my dads old robe reading the news paper ashing the cigarette in his mouth everytime he flipped to the next page. mom's in the kitchen slaving over the hot stove walking back and forth between the counter and the burning skillet to put the finished creation on the stack of the others on top of a yellow glass plate with a trench in the middle with rivets along the elevated ring around the divot. She takes a metal butter knife and cuts a perfect square of butter and puts it on top of the fifteen stack high pancake tower the melts instantly from the burning heat of the cakes straight off the skillet. Mother grabs the plate, another knife this time accompanied by a fork matching in material, and my favorite syrup the one where the bottle was shaped like a lady giving her the illusion of having the same beautiful brown skin color as the syrup but it was just the syrup in the clear plastic bottle. Both placed in front of me and the knife and fork place in each hand, fork in the left knife in the right. I set both down on the table and pick up with both hands the bottle of syrup, i flip open the yellow cap that made her look like she was wearing a funny hat, such a bright vibrant yellow that it  stood out like a sore thumb with her whole brown outfit. i tip her upside down and watch the thick brown liquid fall all over the pancake stack, drenching the cakes making a moat around the remaining circle of space not being taken up by the pancakes. i pick up the fork and knife, lick my lips and before i dig in, he moves his open news paper to close to look and me. out of the corner of my eye still fixated on the heaven about to reach my lips i see him furrow his brow and have a kind of disgusted look on his face "are you fucking kidding me?" me and mother both like up at him in confusion, we were used to this routine but obviously he wasn't. he stands up and says "you fucking fat ass, what if i wanted those too? huh? never thought of that did yah?" and in look at him in question, but he was right by this time in the day the man mother brought home was usually gone and all the pancakes were for me while mom poured herself a glass of wine and went into the living room to watch an early program of a game show where the participants were given a question and had to match other peoples response to the same question. he gritted his teeth from me not giving him a response and growled "You fucking answer me when i'm speaking to you" and with the swift raise of his hand and the burning sensation on my cheek i flip out of my chair onto the floor i look over to where mother was standing and she meets my gaze my teared up eyes screaming for help but she just batted her snake eyes and looked away. then a sharp pain into the back of my head and suddenly the whole room went black. i must have been asleep for a while because what once was morning was now dark and cold night. i got up in a struggle, it hurt to breathe and move, i feel around my head to check the injuries, a cut on my forehead, bump on the back of my head, and a bruise on my cheek. once stable and back on my feet i go back to my room and lay down on my bed, banging and moaning from the next room again. i put my pillow over my face and cried until dawn raised i finally slept through the banging, moaning, and crying all blocking me from slumber. i wake and check my alarm clock, its now late after noon i creep out of my room and hear the sound of running water. i walk into the kitchen and mothers doing the dishes, i sit down at the table only one chair remained after the chair opposite broke during the horrific fall, mother looked at me and said "what do you want?" with the look of disgust in her eyes. i retort with "mommy you have to leave him you see what he did to me?" i cry. she turns and lunges at me holding the sharpest knife in the house right on my neck ready to thrash and leave me to bleed, "that man has money, we don't so you're going to have to fucking deal with it okay? hes the best thing that's happened to me since your dad left." she says through gritted teeth, i barely breathe scared that if my neck moved an inch the knife would puncture my skin "I thought i was?" i say. within a moment i see the a human again not the psycho the had the knife to my throat but after that she snapped back with more fury and vigor "you were, now you're a no good piece of shit that i would kill in a heartbeat but i don't want to go to jail" she says as she takes the hot wet knife she was just washing away from my throat, i gasp and run bad to my room tears filling my eyes on the way. i had to live with that for eight years, the abuse the torture but i didn't take it any longer after that. i left and i knew while i was walking away from that devil house that they were happy not sad. i roamed the streets for a couple of hours until sunlight broke the distant barrier of the city line, i looked down to see a yellow flyer for a shelter for kids who have no homes and instantly i was on my way to where the flyer said my hunger leading the way. but once i got there something felt off it wasn't a home it was a building right in the middle of town dull and basic looking, up and down each side full of windows with grey filling in each of the gaps, but i couldn't let the oddness steer me away i had no home and was starving. but little did i know i should've just sucked it up and walked away because walking into that building was about to be the worst mistake of my life.