March, 2006
“Don’t you come a step farther, Stevie Brown! Ya ain’t go no right and ya know it!”
“I have every right, Joyce, she’s my daughter.”
The words drift from somewhere far away, weaving in and out of her consciousness as she drifts in the heat of bloodred haze. Everything aches. Everything. There’s not a patch of her body, anywhere, that isn’t a blaze of nerve-endings screaming in concert.
She hurts.
“I’m taking her to the hospital, Stevie, and you ain’t stopping me this time. She can’t hardly WALK. How she got here is beyond me, jus’ look at the blood! Ain’t gonna let you get away with it, not no more. Ya can’t beat a Change into’er!”
“I brought a healer. Ya ain’t taken her nowhere. Now git out the way, before I move ya myself.”
“Ain’t no healer, ain’t nothing but ya latest who….”
Crack.
She flinches. She knows that sound. And she knows what comes next, too. Maija (though that isn’t what she was known by then and there), who shouldn’t have been able to even make it to Mama Joyce’s door this time, who still ain’t sure just how she managed it in the first place, does her best to ignore the fact that she’s got more than one broken rib, a concussion, a broken nose, and gaia knows what else – just so she can pull herself upright, and struggle to stand.
She won’t face him layin down.
She won’t give him the satisfaction of being well an’ truly broke.
It takes every ounce of willpower she possesses to do so, but when he gets to the room, she’s standing – unsteady, but mostly upright. She is there too, beside him like she had a right to be. For his part, Stevie don’t look too good either, and while she clearly got the worse end of the fight, he is not unmarked. She smirks at the sight, which causes the split in her lip to ooze once more.
It’s the first time she’s fought back.
It won’t be the last.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
December 31, 2007
All around Seattle the celebrations have already started as people are prepared to ring in the new year. Glasses are raised, songs are song, toasts are made, dances are danced. Everyone is excited for the new beginning.
Well, most everyone.
At a small one story brownstone house, there is no air of festivity. Instead, there is the quiet clank of dishes as they are pulled from cupboards, of measuring cups against the side of bowls, of soft conversation as the two women – well, one woman, one hardly grown teen – work together at the counter and in front of the stove.
Mama Joyce is hard woman. She took no guff, and you certainly didn’t want to cross her. She was tall and thin, and never had any children of her own. Most of the locals ended up at her table more often than not, though, because there was always a pot of something on the stove, and despite her harshness, Mama Joyce cared.
Sometimes, that’s all you can hope for.
Maija (though that is not what she is known as there/then) is in the kitchen with Mama Joyce, helping her put together a meal meant to feed 10, maybe 12 people who will stumble home in the wee hours of the morning, starving and looking for something to sop up the alcohol before they head home.
rap!
Maija jumps, as the wooden spoon smacks across her knuckles, and not lightly either. She rubs the sting away as she looks up at Mama Joyce.
“Them biscuits ain’t gonna raise none if ya ain’t stop kneadin ’em! Ain’t no one like a tough biscuit. Now piece ’em together like I showed ya, an’ get em in the oven.”
“Yes, Mama.” Maija learned early not to argue, and that in Mama J’s kitchen it as her way, or no way at all. And she was right about the biscuits, too.
They work quietly for a while longer, comfortable in the silence, not needing to break it for empty words of comfort. Maija’s moving slowly, and Mama J knows exactly why, even if there ain’t a visible mark on the young girl this time. Someone’s been learning to pick the perfect spot to land his hits, his kicks, to leave no visible mark – everything’s easily hidden under clothing. The list of bones that have been broken is long, and some days it’s easier to list what hasn’t been broken rather than what has. When it gets bad, the healer he’s boning patches her up, and it all begins againn. It’s been a vicious cycle of almost two years now. A cycle that Maija ain’t sure how to break.
The biscuits are slid into the oven, hands are dusted off, and the stew stirred. It’s only then that Mama Joyce hands Maija an envelope with her name scrawled on it. Maija looks at it, and then up at the older woman, the one person who’s represented Safety to the battered kin girl as long as she can remember. Mama Joyce ain’t a demonstrative woman, so when she pushes Maija’s hair back out of her face and kisses her forehead, Maija couldn’t be more shocked – or so she thought, until she opened the envelope and saw what was inside.
The contents of the envelope remained hidden for another three months. Then she landed in the hospital ICU, raced there by the ambulance that Mama Joyce called when Stevie and his cohorts went too far. Way too far. Maija was damned lucky to make it through that beating – lucky to survive once again.
She didn’t go back home but briefly after that. In fact, she only made that and one other stop – and that was Mama Joyce’s, to collect that envelope hidden there, before a stop at home to grab her backpack and a few items of clothing. Out of her journal she tore out the first five pages of the current book, and with the switchblade she decided to leave behind, stabbed through four sketches to pin them to the door of her room. She hoped the message was clear – there were two of him, one of her, and another of Uncle Roy. All stabbed through the middle of their face.
The other picture, that fifth one, was folded in half and left under the flour jar on Mama Joyce’s counter. It was a sketch of Mama J at the stove, wielding her wooden spoon. It was the only goodbye that Maija would leave. It was the only one she could leave, without risking Stevie’s wrath coming down on the only woman who gave a shit if Maija lived or died. She didn’t tell her she was leaving, or where she was going. It was the only way to keep her safe.
She was done being hurt by him.
She was done with his lies.
She was done.
By morning, she was long gone, with only the empty rooms – and unfortunately, Mama Joyce – left behind to face Stevie’s fury.