Prison Escape

Chapter 3: A Promise

Chapter 3

            I guess now would be a good time to tell you that Liza is my daughter. No I don’t mean I treat her like my daughter, but she is my legitimate daughter. Sad part is she doesn’t even know I’m actually her mom. She just thinks of me as daddy’s special friend. I wish it was that easy.

            You see my mom got a certain type of lung cancer whenever I was eight years old. I never actually found out what kind of cancer, my dad didn’t want to worry me. So yeah, that happened. Then it got worse, a lot worse. My dad would go to appointments with her and hold her hand, smile at her and make her think everything was okay. . After years of holding her hand and being the optimistic one in one of the duo, he finally faced reality. He finally accepted she was going to die when the doctors told them the cancer was terminal. Then at the age of eleven she finally couldn’t make it any longer. When my mom died, I was left with my dad. He didn’t deal with this very well. That’s quite an understatement honestly. He always had a drink or two when things got rough, but never enough to get a buzz. But when mom died, his drinking got worse.

            After two years of heavy drinking and bringing home a random woman every now and then, he got in debt and lost basically all our money to needless gambling. One night he got in a car. And no he wasn’t drinking and driving, he let his drunken friend do that for him. Then there was a car accident and blah blah blah. You probably have heard that story a million times before, but hey, stuff happens.

            Well, I didn’t have much family to begin with. There was always my mom, my dad, and me. My mom got pregnant with me when she was 19, so you can say she was basically a teen pregnancy. Going into her freshman year of college, my grandparents gave her an ultimatum. My dad and me or them. So they choose us, and as a result my grandparents cut her off. This meant not college and no more holidays with the grandparents.

            So I had no family take me in. That’s where Eli comes in. He was my dad’s old friend from high school, and they had remained friends though the year. He said he would take me in, let me eat his food and such. But not adopt me. It’s complicated. It’s just basically an arrangement that says I live with him and some other things. He was 29 at the time, and I just thought he was a nice guy. I was wrong.

            Things were good up until my freshman year of high school. 15 at the time, Eli made a decision that changed my life forever. Eli decided he needed a child he could give his extremely limited funds to one day. So because no one was really into him enough to bare his child at the time he decided that he only had one opinion left. Me.

            So I got pregnant, but not willingly. It was my first time, and that’s what made it even worse. I couldn’t deal with people looking at me like a 15 year old whore, so I dropped out the summer of my sophomore year. It was horrible, I could feel my future falling out from under my feet. I wanted to be a Journalist in at a big newspaper where people would read my work every day. I had this dream that people would buy a paper just so they could see what I had to say. I knew that with a child, as a teenager that that would never happen.

            So the months went by and the pregnancy went as pregnancies usually do. The differences where that Eli would never let me go to the doctor. He would just Google ways to cure typical pregnancy side effects. Then he made me have a home birth. It was horrible, not knowing if my little girl was perfect when she was born. The only thing that got me through everything was knowing that I would get to hold her in my arms. I was going to name her Scarlet. I had always loved that name. But then Eli stole her from me. He decided not to let me claim her as mine. Said that he could get in trouble and that I would have to go to a foster home, definitely never seeing her again. So I decided to stay in her life, but not as her mother.

            So Eli had another woman claim her, even made sure that she was my same blood type. She and Eli put Liza down on her birth certificate, so that’s how she got her name.

            I sat up and looked over at him, lying in my bed, taking up all the space. So I stood from my chair and over to my closet. My alarm clock says its 2:49 am. Great, I thought to myself as I pulled on a black NYU hoodie and some grey under armour sweats.

            As I got to the kitchen I open fridge to reveal that it was empty. As I looked around the same kitchen, now eliminated by the refrigerator light, I saw so many things that needed to be done. The dishes we stacked high and I think I might have seen a fly circle it. Also, our gas stove needed to be cleaned desperately. Then I saw my reflection in a mirror that hangs in a perfect opening between our kitchen and the living room. I looked horrible. My brown shoulder length hair was straight, as it naturally is, but it was in a mess around the top of my head. Probably because I am a very active sleeper, and probably, in part, from when Eli pulled me up by it. It was like bed head, only a little worse. My eyes were sunken in from my lack of sleep over the past week. Dark bags stuck out like a poor thumb. You could tell things had been rough recently. I’ve got to start getting some sleep. I thought to myself I stood there, staring at my reflection.

            I must have looked horrible today at the market. Put on some more makeup next time you go out. My subconscious told me. I know I should, it’s not like I don’t own makeup, it’s just I don’t see the need. I felt some sudden heat around my abdomen, then looked down to see a pair of untanned, hairy arms. Eli.

            “What are you doing?” he said into my ear. I must have woken him up when I was looking for something to eat.

            “Looking in a mirror.”

            Well, that obviously wasn’t the answer he wanted because I suddenly felt some uncomfortable pressure around my middle.

            “I don’t need the attitude,” he whispered darkly in my ear.

            “Sorry,” I said looking down at my bare feet.

            “Just come back to bed,” he said beginning to pull me backwards. In a rush of panic I replied quickly.

            “No, um, that’s ok,” I stuttered to him, “I, um, have to grab something to eat. And, uh, put the dishes in the washing machine before the food dries much more. You did have it fixed right?”

            “I fixed it. No need to waste money to have someone come into my house and do a job I can do on my own,” he said defensively. Just like him to be cheap. He will splurge on clothes and other things for the outside appearance so people don’t give us a second look. But when it comes to something that involves our house or food, he’s as tight as the Jonas Brother’s jeans.

            “Ok, er, well I have to work on that,” I said as I escaped his arms, “I’ll be there in a little while.”

            “Ok. I’ll be waiting,” and with that he turned and walked sleepily back towards our bedroom.

            Whenever he was gone I breathed a sigh of relief. I had escaped him for at least 30 minutes. And I’m going to make the most of it, I thought as I propped myself up on the corner and looked out the dirty window. Though all everything that’s happened in the last five years, there is one feeling that never leaves me. That I’m trapped. But while I was sitting there looking out that dirty old window, into the dirty old streets we live on, I made myself a promise. That one day I will be free. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but he will not rule my life.

            And with that I jumped off the corner, put in the dishes, and walked down the hallway to out bedroom.