As soon as my mother left the house, I knew what would take place: The molestation; the screams; the feelings of helplessness. It always happened at the same time. Like clockwork at 1:00 a.m., he came like a thief in the night. No matter how much we avoided it, no matter how many times we begged our mother not to stay the night away from home, nothing ever saved us. She always said no. The bitch made us stay there with him, and even though we cried and pleaded, her answer was always no. If she did not know what was going on, she should have. The shit was happening under her own roof, so I could never give her the benefit of the doubt. Fuck her too! She invited him into her home and unknowingly into her daughters’ bed. He was always there, with a fucking grin on his face. We were trapped, and our fates were inevitable.
My sister, Anisa was the victim, and our stepfather, Perry was the bastard who shattered our childhoods. Lollipops and daisies were never a part of our world. All we knew was pain and corruption. It seemed as though abuse and neglect were the only constants in our lives. All we had was each other, and whenever he snatched Anisa from her bed, I always felt her pain.
“Please stop… please, it hurts!” Anisa screamed.
Tears stained my cheeks. I could hear my sister crying, but I couldn’t do anything. I wished that we could switch places; that was how much I loved her. I knew the pain that she went through, and would take it all for her if I could, but I couldn’t. He never chose me. It was always her. She was fourteen, and budding into womanhood early, while I was only twelve and still composed of all elbows and knees. There wasn’t a curve to my body, so he ignored me mostly, but he violated Anisa, which meant he violated me.
I could hear the bed creaking from the other room, the headboard banging against the wall as a constant reminder of the atrocity that was happening behind closed doors. We wanted to tell someone, but who would believe us? Perry was smart. He made sure that he never hit Anisa. He never even left a mark. The sucking he did on her premature breasts was done lightly as to not leave any sign of trespass. We were scared, always walking around on eggshells and feeling like strangers in our own house.
The knocking of the headboard against the wall stopped, and I knew that it was finally over.
I waited in the bottom of the closet just as Anisa instructed me to. She always told me to hide and not come out until she came for me. The closet door creaked open and there stood my big sister. Her hair was wild and her eyes were red from crying. I took her hand and led her into the hallway bathroom. I was used to this routine. She never liked to talk afterwards, and she never looked me in the eye. I knew she was ashamed, but what she didn’t know was that I was ashamed too, because I just sat there and let it happen to her. I locked the bathroom door and ran a tub full of steaming bathwater. Anisa got right in, ignoring the sting of hot water against her bare skin. She hugged her legs to her chest, and I rubbed her hair gently while we both cried silently as she scrubbed her sins away.
The next day when I awoke, Anisa was already out of her bed. I knew our mother was home because I could hear the sounds of Teena Marie blaring throughout the house. Walking into the bathroom, I saw Anisa leaned over the toilet, gasping for air. “What’s wrong, Nis?” I asked.
“Nothing, Miamor. Get out… go and get ready for school,” she said. She barely got the words out before she was throwing up again.
“I’m going to get Mama,” I said. I had never been one of those tattle-telling little kids, but I didn’t know what else to do. I could tell from the way Anisa was sprawled all over the toilet that she needed more help than I could offer.
“No!” she yelled, grabbing my arm to stop me from leaving the bathroom. She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve and began to cry.
“Anisa, what’s wrong?” I asked.
Anisa couldn’t stop crying. The deep sob that escaped her lips was a cry that was too mature for such a young girl. The cry signified what she had endured and the things her young eyes had seen before their time. She lifted up her shirt, and I noticed a slight bulge in her belly. It wasn’t big at all, but my sister was naturally skinny. Her stomach had always been pancake flat, so the bump seemed out of place on her. I wondered how I could’ve missed it. I had seen Anisa naked plenty of times, and I had even noticed that she had gained a little bit of weight, but the thought of pregnancy never ever crossed my young mind. I was naïve and green to the game. For months, Perry had been raping my sister, and neither of us ever thought of the possibility of a baby.
“I’m pregnant, Mia!” she cried. “I don’t know what to do! I tried to tell him no. He wouldn’t stop.” “We have to tell,” I said.
“Miamor, no! I don’t want anybody to know!” Anisa whispered as she grasped my arm, her teary eyes desperately searching mine as if I could solve this problem. “I have to get rid of it. You have to promise me you won’t say a word.”
I nodded my head, but tears filled my eyes as I watched Anisa lower her shirt. She was pregnant at fourteen by our mother’s husband.
Bam! Bam! Bam! My mother knocked on the door. “I hope y’all ready for school! You better get your asses dressed so you can catch this bus!”
I wanted to open the door and tell my mother everything that we had been through, but Anisa was still gripping my hand. “Don’t say anything, okay?”
As badly as I wanted to tell, I couldn’t. I trusted my sister and was loyal to her. If she wanted me to keep this secret, then I would. I wiped my eyes, flushed the toilet, and sprayed air freshener in the air before opening the door.
We dressed in silence and headed off to school, our souls heavy and our minds on problems that we were both too young to truly comprehend.
Brooklyn born and raised, we kept to ourselves. It was only Anisa and I. We weren’t cliqued up like some of the other bitches in our borough. We had already been jumped on twice behind some beef that Anisa had caught with some girls from her high school, so I learned quickly to stay bladed up. I had seen Anisa put a razor blade in her mouth and carry it around all day without taking it out. I had cut my shit up a couple times trying to be like her, and when they caught us both slipping, she finally taught me how to tuck a blade away in my mouth just in case I ever needed it.
We knew the spots that these girls hung around, and we usually avoided those paths at all costs just to stay out of unnecessary conflict. So when Anisa hit a left and headed up toward their block, I stopped mid-step, not knowing why she would walk right into an ass whooping.
“Nisa, what are you doing? You know if we go that way we’re going to have to fight. You’re pregnant, Nis. We can’t fight them girls off right now,” I said.
“I know. I don’t want to win the fight, I just want to fight,” Anisa said with a determined look in her eyes.
I didn’t understand at that moment what she was getting at, but I soon found out. “What?” I asked in confusion, looking at her like she was half stupid.
“Look, I’ve got to get this baby out of me, Miamor, and I can’t tell Mama. I’m too young to go to a doctor and get an abortion by myself. I know this girl who was pregnant, but she got her ass beat and lost her baby. I got to do this, Miamor. This is the only way. You go the safe way. Get on the bus and go to school. I’ll see you when you get home,” she said. She hugged me and pushed me in the other direction.
Reluctantly, I walked away, confused. My heart kept telling me to go back, but I always listened to Anisa no matter what. I had to roll with her plan. We were both so naïve to think that this homemade method of abortion was the way to go. We had no idea how dangerous it was or the damage that Anisa was doing to her body.
I headed to school, but the thought of my sister fighting alone ate me up inside. After walking four blocks toward the bus stop, I turned around and ran full speed back toward Anisa. It was the first time I had ever disobeyed her. I knew she would be mad, but I couldn’t stand the thought of her fighting without me by her side. That’s how we were. Where one went, the other one followed, and no matter what she said, I couldn’t let her go through this alone. I ran as fast as I could, nearly out of breath when I reached the crowd of girls. I saw the group of girls jumping on Anisa, and surprisingly, she wasn’t even trying to fight back. They were stomping her out under the overpass of the train, and my heart ached as I saw them kicking her repeatedly in her stomach and back.