

# Amber Walter

# INGRID'S PRISON

### A novel

Penman Publishing

Chicago

Also by Amber Walter

The Three Year Lie

Copyright 2013 by Amber Walter

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U. S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Penman Publishing

www.penmanpublishing.com

First Edition: September 2013

The publisher is not responsible for websites ( or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Certain names and identifying details of people portrayed in this book have been changed. "Ingrid," "Martin," "Leslie," "Cassandra," "Damien," "Edith," "Jayson," "Christian," and "Ryan" are all pseudonyms.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

Walter, Amber, December 1987-

Ingrid's Prison: a novel/Amber Walter 1st Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9858545-3-9

Printed in the United States of America

Book Design by Rosamond Grupp

Back cover Blurb written by Wendy Crawford

Novel Editied by Kim Farnell

Photo of Amber (front and back) courtesy of Amber Walter

First Paperback Edition

www.amberwalterbooks.com

Twitter @Amber_Walter

amber.walter@ymail.com

For anyone in the world who has ever experienced the heartbreaking effects of child abuse. You are loved.

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

# Contents

1: GIFTED MEMORIES 9

2: BOY MEETS GIRL AND LIFE HAPPENS 18

3: DADDY'S GIRL 26

4: THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM 36

8: HUNGRY AND ANGRY 74

9: INUMANITY & FOOD 82

10: TWO NEW BROTHERS 87

11: BANANAS 96

12: CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES 103

13: DECISIONS 117

14: NOBODY LISTENED 128

15: MY ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY 136

16: IN THE SHOWER 144

17: A LIFELINE...? 148

AFTERWORD 154

Whether you are an innocent child or an experienced adult, life has a way of wavering and changing when you least expect it. Sometimes the changes that occur are imperceptible and without impact. At other times your world as you knew it is abruptly transformed into something unrecognizable. You find yourself suddenly there, a stranger in a strange and unfamiliar land.

_As an adult, you have a certain amount of control over how you will adjust to your new world_ — _perhaps even the choice to stay in it or not. Since you are an adult, you have more of the understanding and knowledge needed to cope. As a child, you are tossed about like a tiny bird that has been blown to the ground from its cozy nest during a mighty windstorm and is at the mercy of all that surrounds it._

# 1: GIFTED MEMORIES

December 6 1987

I have no recollection of when my world began, of the night when I exited my mother's womb and entered the world. I couldn't possibly remember having my umbilical cord cut by my daddy. Nor could I understand that I was still unnamed hours later, because my parents had decided to name me Jason Brandon Walter months ago. This could perhaps be noted as the first of many wrong decisions my parents made in regards to me.

Of course, when I finally came out of my mother's womb, after an eighteen hour, scream filled birth it was obvious I was a girl and not a boy after all.

Up until my birth, my parents, Martin and Leslie Crown Walter, had believed me to be a boy, and now for the second time they were faced with the task of coming up with a name for their new baby.

While pregnant, Mom had been reading _The Chronicles of Amber_ , a series of fantasy novels written by Roger Zelazny and was in the midst of _The Nine Princes of Amber_ when she went into labor. She had also fallen in love with the character Amberle Elessedil in _The Elfstones of Shannara_ written by Terry Brookes. That was how my name Amber was chosen. My aunt Alana, my dad's younger sister, always loved the name Danielle, so that became my middle name.

My dad had chosen the name Jason Brandon Walter at the time of my mom's six month ultrasound. Jason means "healer" and Brandon was simply the name of one of his best childhood friends. My dad told me how excited he was to learn that he would have a son, someone who would carry on the Walter family name.

"Naturally I was thrilled, being the last of the male Walter's. I didn't think your Aunt Alana would ever have children, so back then you were it."

But, unbeknownst to my parents, and apparently my mom's gynecologist, my umbilical cord happened to be floating in-between my legs at the ultrasound where they dubbed me as a "he" and not a "she". It must have resembled a penis to the nurse administering that ultrasound. Luckily for me, my dad wasn't some huge sports man dying to have a son, nor was my mom pining for a little boy to sometime in the future, refer to as her "little momma's boy". So there I was that evening, all pink and squishy, smelling of baby powder and hospital fluids. I'm sure I was a screaming wrinkly mess and certainly a new thing my dad had to worry about, an added responsibility to his once very carefree lifestyle, which was soon to be something of the past.

I was a life, a brand new life that he and my mom had created.

"We need to count her fingers and toes," one of the nurses told the new father, my dad.

"What?" he asked in horror. He watched as they rinsed me off and laid me on the tiny bed meant for newborns where they would also weigh me.

And they proceeded to count my fingers and toes.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten." My dad told me he must have counted my extremities about a dozen times.

"It never even occurred to me that there could be something wrong with you, that you might not be perfect. In the eighties people didn't talk too much about birth defects and things of that sort."

He often told me the story of my birth when I was three and four years old, sometimes before bed.

"I was terrified—those damn nurses had me thinking you could be blind, or even deaf. They checked everything on you. I just thought you were automatically the way you were supposed to be."

From what both of my parents have told me, my birth was long, drawn-out, and a very strenuous event.

"Your mother was a nightmare from the minute her water broke in the middle of our bedroom when she got up to go pee."

"Fuck you, Martin. You did this to me!" my mom screamed later in the hospital as she attempted to push me out into the world, hot angry tears spilling from her wild blue eyes from both agony and spite.

"Get out of here! I can't even look at you. Go get my mother!"

She continued screaming, but not before pulling out a fistful of my Daddy's long permed hair as he bent down to kiss her perspiring forehead.

"Ouch! Damn it Leslie, calm down. You're going to be fine." He gathered his hair into a pony tail and out of her reach.

"You try pushing an eight pound bowling ball out of your body and tell me you're fine!"

Her screams followed his scrub clad body out of the delivery room where he found my grandmother Edith.

"Your daughter would like to see you."

My grandmother looked up from the cold, plastic blue waiting room chair, unfocused pale blue eyes already glazed over from booze.

"Of course she would." She stood up and placed an unsteady hand on my dad's arm. "Take me to her."

After eighteen hours of labor and all the vital tests being done, the doctor handed me over to my mother, bundled up in a standard St. Joe's hospital white blanket with a thin pink and blue stripe.

"No, you hold her Martin. Or take her away. I'm tired." My mother shooed the doctor carrying me away. "And what do I have to do to get some more pain meds in this place? She ripped me apart!"

She sobbed for hours that night, post-partum blues wrapping around her already un-motherly psyche.

Maybe that night was when the resentment my mother already had for me began to grow even bigger, the resentment she had against her first born child and the man she once loved. I know it began before I was born, when realization set in that her partying days would soon be over because my daddy had gone as far as taking her to court to get a judge protect from me from my mother's desire to abort.

When my mom discovered her pregnancy, she went to my dad, seeking his support in putting an end to the pregnancy. I can visualize the scene almost as if I were there.

"I can't possibly have a kid right now. I'm not ready for this Martin, you know this. And neither are you," my mom told my dad, her voice escalating with every word.

"Leslie, you are going to have this baby. Our baby. It's my baby too!" Martin could feel the anger building inside.

"Are you kidding me Martin?" she scoffed. "Look at me, I'm a size two and that will surely change with a baby! You know how hard I work out to keep my figure! Plus I just got my tits done! No way."

"You try and abort this child and I will take you to court. I have every right for this child to be born as you do Leslie. Don't force me to make this ugly." He ran his hand through his hair, pacing back and forth then stood right in front of her.

"Let's not forget about the photos and video I have of your late night "partying. All those ice filled nights with your little girlfriends from work," he threatened, his voice a low growl. "Cokehead." He spat the last word at her.

"Fuck you! You should talk, you fucking lazy stoner. I hate you!" she threw a nearby soda can at him "as if you weren't there partying right beside me Martin. You fucking hypocrite! Are you kidding me?"

He threw his arms up near his face, Mountain Dew spilling onto his Pink Floyd t-Shirt. "You are one psychotic bitch Les."

It wasn't the best introduction to life.

_Your mother never wanted you Amber, I saved your life, and you repay me like this?_ is something I have probably heard fifty times too many in my lifetime.

My mom denies this allegation entirely. "You are my first born Amber, the best thing that ever happened to me, peanut."

Of course, I can't possibly know the truth. But I can tell you that no father should ever say that to their child about their mother, truth or not. That comment, hurtful as it may have been, was just another indication of how the rest of my childhood would transpire. I was already in the prison that would be a main feature of my life. First as a baby, then a little girl, and finally a teenage Lolita.

Getting back to the day I was born, I would like to think that despite everything, my parents were ecstatic when they heard my first cry. I have fantasized that tears of joy trickled down their cheeks as their hearts melted with absolutely unconditional love as they held the pink-clad bundle the nurses handed them after months of pregnancy and a wearisome birth process. But from what I know about the rest of my life, this was not the case

Over the years, I've read in several different psychology textbooks that scientific research and studies indicate that the brain structure that involves memory is not fully developed for the first three to four years of life—sometimes not until later if there's a tragic event in the child's life. All I am able to go on is what I have dubbed _gifted_ memories. Gifted memories are those that a person may not actually remember seeing or experiencing, but have been formed in their mind through the telling of other people who did actually see or experience said memory. A gifted memory seems like an actual memory because it has been imagined so many times, even though it's not actually a true memory.

Most people I know have gifted memories, but sometimes they aren't able to separate the gifted memories from the real ones. They may not even realize that their gifted memories are not technically true memories. Of course, gifted memories are formed from the perspective of those who retell the story or experience. Gifted memories may also be received according to the perspective of the receiver.

The earliest gifted memory I have is one my mom and dad used to tell me about when I was a small child. I wasn't even two years old when it happened.

It was a warm summer day in our hometown of Phoenix, Arizona where it was not uncommon to reach the hundreds in the middle of summer. To combat the scorching temperatures, my parents often took me to our community swimming pool and would swim in the pool while I sat in a floating toddler chair next to them. Cute and carefree, I floated in the pool underneath the hot sun, waving my arms and splashing the water in my face, giggling hysterically. I had no fear of water, or anything else, and playing in the pool was a favorite pastime of mine.

That day in particular I managed to flip my baby legs over (or maybe it was forward) and wound upside down in the pool, head underwater, chunky baby legs wriggling in the air as my body's natural defense mechanism began to kick in and I was fighting to breath.

Nearby, my mom and dad who had just been watching me had turned their backs while retrieving Cokes from the blue and white igloo cooler that sat by the pool's edge. They had been playing with me in the water—splashing me and each other with water until this point—but looked away for a moment; a second was all it took. Once they turned back, there I was, overturned in my floaty tube. Gone was my happy face, bouncing blonde curls, and waving arms. They saw nothing but two chubby short legs draped over the side of the floating chair.

My mom was closest to me and automatically dropped the soda can, waded through the water, grabbed me and pulled me above the water to air.

"Amber. Fuck, Amber. Baby girl, breath, are you breathing?" She patted my back to burp me as I coughed up the chlorinated water. I screamed as it poured out of my tiny nostrils and mouth as my entire body convulsed rejecting the liquid from reaching my lungs.

"Martin, why weren't you watching her? Oh, my God. My poor baby girl. What is the matter with you?" she screamed at him.

Holding my dripping body close to her, Mom climbed the steps and carried me out of the pool, angrily tossing my floaty aside. She lay me down on the scorching hot cement that surrounded the pool. My arms and legs flailed and I screamed from the pain of the heat that radiated through my un-calloused, soft, pink-skinned body. My mom stood over me, and stared down at me, assuming I was screaming from my near drowning, until my dad ran to me and picked me up.

"You were right by her as well. Why must everything be my fault, Les?"

His eyes widened in disbelief when he realized she had set me down unprotected.

"Christ Leslie! The ground is a hundred degrees! Are trying to burn her as well?"

He shook his head and carried me out of the black security gate towards our condo.

"Shh, it's OK baby, it's OK," he said soothingly while attempting to remedy my pain, calm me down a bit. "Daddy's got you now, it's OK. Shh."

He took me home, swaddled me in clean, dry clothes and gave me a warm bottle. Mom came in about fifteen minutes later, slamming the cooler on the linoleum counter.

"I told you I wasn't ready for this!" she practically ran up the stairs to their bedroom and then used a library card to scrape together two perfect white lines of blow on a hand held mirror, took a rolled up dollar bill and inhaled deeply.

***

The mind has a funny way of remembering the past, especially when the past is filled with fear, violence, loneliness, and abandonment.

Many times, I've thought back to that gifted memory of almost drowning in the pool and my mom laying me on the hot concrete, and wondered if that moment was prophetic of the things to come in my life.

## "Ah, clear they see and true they say  
That one shall weep, and one shall stray."

Dorothy Parker

##

##

##

#  2: BOY MEETS GIRL AND LIFE HAPPENS

My parents were eighties cool when they first met. Mom was a cashier at Taco Bell and Daddy was lead singer in a popular up and coming band called _Tesseract_. At that time, Tesseract was a promising rock and roll band and several different recording labels were interested in signing them. They were inspired by bands such as _Pink Floyd_ , the _Doors_ , and even the _Rolling Stones_.

From the pictures that I've seen of my mom, I can see why my dad was initially attracted to her. She was a cute, petite, blonde-haired woman with beautiful baby blue eyes and a Bridgette Bardot type demeanor. Daddy was a rocker, and embraced the long hair, tight jeans, and _Members Only_ jackets, so naturally he was pretty cool looking back then.

On one rare occasion where my father was not bad mouthing my mother, he once told me that the day he met my mother was one of the happiest days of his life.

"She was my beautiful little Leslie and could do no wrong. She once loved me the way people do in the movies."

He'd turn his face to the side to hide the tears coming to his eyes. "She adored me," he'd whisper, a sense of longing in his voice. A longing for a time of yesteryears and lost love.

I like to imagine that Martin went to Taco Bell pretty hungry after a late night jam session with the band.

"After I met your mother Taco Bell became our favorite spot after our practice sessions."

That night, he'd expected to head over to Taco Bell with his drummer Steven, his bassist Andrew, and lead guitarist, Samson to order his normal meal—three crunchy tacos supreme and a Mountain Dew—before going on his way home to the large, empty, and somewhat expensive condo he'd just begun renting.

He completely forgot his hunger once he saw my mother Leslie behind the counter. I can imagine his normally cool demeanor being replaced with him stumbling over his words when she asked him for his order. Maybe he blurted out something silly in an attempt to impress.

"Can I get a shake with those fries?" he might have said sheepishly, grinning from ear to ear.

"This is Taco Bell." Roll of Leslie's eyes. "Can't you read? We don't have fries here."

She may have been rolling her eyes, but I bet they lit up as she did so, all the while she was hoping that he'd continue to pay her attention and linger at the counter before getting his order and joining his band mates.

As he waited for his food, they exchanged glances and smiled when each realized the other was looking at them with interest.

"I was just giving you a hard time," Martin said as he leaned over the counter, his face inches away from hers. She blushed, a hand covering her mouth to stifle her giggles.

"I know." Leslie smiled deeply into his eyes through her dark lashes.

"Hot or mild sauce?"

"Hot."

He picked up his orange tray and headed to the table, then turned and said, "Like you." And then he winked.

She took a second look at his slender body, curly blond hair that trailed down the back of his jacket, and his tight gray jeans. While he wolfed down his tacos, he practiced in his mind what line he would use to ask her out when she got off work. Most likely, he sidestepped the stupid common pick-up lines and thought of something creative and sweet; something that would make any girl accept a date.

Whatever he did say to her that night, it worked, because not long after that they were married. A small but happy looking wedding. I have two photos from that short but sweet moment in time.

One photo depicts the entire wedding party, Mom's estranged parents, Grandma Edith and Grandpa Keith, Aunt Alana and my mom's sister Aunt Rochelle, two of my older and unknown cousins, Danny and Rene, and my parents who were both wearing white. My daddy had an all-white tuxedo on, and my mom had a tulled white princess like dress that hugged her trim figure and tiny waist, and billowed out on the sides all the way to the floor. They both had their hair down **.** Everyone seemed happy. The second photo I have is that of just my mother, the smiling bride being embraced by my cousin Rene who appears to be five or six, her arms around Mom's waist, also smiling. My dad told me he serenaded my mom with a song mid vow that he had written especially for her.

Since they never told me any details, I can't be sure if that's the way it happened, but I do know for a fact that they met while my mom was working at Taco Bell. Unfortunately, that's pretty much where the fairy tale, boy-meets-girl story ends and real life takes over.

After Martin and Leslie became a serious item, they enjoyed a fun carefree life for quite a while. Daddy played shows at some pretty hot venues including the notoriously famous rock genre club called The Mason Jar. In its heyday, bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and even Rob Zombie all performed on its stage. Dad's band was getting pretty close to signing with a major record label and Mom was able to attend and cheer him on in her hottest eighties concert getup. I can imagine her blonde hair teased up high and proud, neon or lacey leggings, with an off the shoulder sweater or t-shirt complete with a full face of glam and glitter makeup.

From what my parents have told me, they at one point shared many things in common; music, creativity, and even some questionable recreational drug habits. My father loved to smoke pot and watch the Leno show, while my mother had an expensive taste for cocaine. It was what it was—I have really no way of sugar coating it.

It's impossible for me to know if it was to keep up with their expensive recreational drug use, or the fact that Daddy didn't pull in too much money because of his band, but Mom decided to start a new part time job as an exotic dancer. Daddy had no problem with this decision either, as it gave him a lot more time with the band with less worry about the responsibility of paying the rent on the condo and any other bills they may have had.

My mom worked at a place called The Great Alaskan Bush Company and a slew of other local strip clubs in Phoenix and Scottsdale. Since my mother was beautiful, she had no problem fitting in and earning a sizeable amount of money. When I was ten or eleven she used to brag about how much she was able to pull in in her early dancing years pre-me, "Amber, I used to make so much money that I paid for my first convertible with _cash_." She would then sigh, a look of remorse, regret and hopelessness washing over her once very beautiful face.

I say her once beautiful face, because even then, when I was ten and eleven, the person I saw was not the gorgeous young blonde in the pictures I kept stashed, hidden away from my stepmother. The vision of my mother was one of a person highly affected from years of drug abuse. Her hair was now dull, and unruly, no longer bright blonde and full. Her once baby doll blue eyes were pink and glassy, unfocused and tired.

Her skin that was once toned and tan was pale; track marks had etched themselves in her forearms from years of needle use. She had gained a considerable amount of weight in her five foot frame and looked ten years older than she should. The most devastating thing about her appearance was the decay of her teeth. Especially the top front teeth that had grown so weak from using a crack pipe; they were nearly see through grey and only a few more uses away from crumbling.

After her newfound career in the exotic dancing industry, her once in a while recreational drug use turned into every other day use, until finally she was a full on drug addict. Mom was a party girl and perceived stripping as just an extension of the party scene.

With the stripper job came an even bigger influx of drugs. Her drug of choice went from cocaine to pretty much anything she could get her hands on. Anything to satiate that desire to be somewhere else mentally—she succumbed to the grasps of the high that would grow more difficult to reach after each hit.

She has used and abused heroine, methamphetamines, and even crack cocaine. Her moods at times would be so low she could hardly speak or move, let alone care for a baby. Other times, she was so high she would talk at excessively high speeds, clean the condo like a nut job and spin me round and round, dancing to Poison in our living room. She was a reckless force, a toxic partner, a dangerous mother.

It's not uncommon for strippers to use illegal drugs and excessive alcohol when stripping in order to numb out or dissociate from their work environment. Some believe that no matter how "good" a girl is before entering the evil clutches of the stripping world, she will inevitably turn to some vice to remove herself mentally from the task at hand. Drug use is sort of looked at as just part of the job both by those who do it and stereotypes alike. Sadly, it is extremely common for these girls to become dependent on and slaves to different numbing drugs and alcohol.

Leslie was no different. While Martin was engrossed in his music, playing shows with his band, and smoking a few joints every now and then, Leslie turned dancing into her full time job, leaving her days as a Taco Bell manager a thing of the past. She now had a job that afforded her many things she had always wanted in life but never received since she grew up poverty stricken. She could go on shopping sprees, eat out at high end restaurants, and drink the best of wines.

As with most things in life, with the good also came the terrible: a drug addiction that would haunt her for many years to come. Not only would the drug addiction affect her, but it would be a destructive force in the shaping of my life as well.

In the spring of 1987, when Martin came home from one of his band practice sessions, Leslie sat at their yellow linoleum kitchen table, arms stretched out; face buried in their crease, body slumped over.

He laid his keys down on the kitchen counter, unstrapping the acoustic guitar from his shoulder a feeling of dread beginning to mount. He could tell from the half empty bottle of wine, and the amount of used Kleenex on the table, that she was not having a good day.

"Babe" he greeted her, his voice uneasy and cautious.

When she looked up at him, he saw her normally sparkling baby blue eyes now swollen and red framed with mascara ridden and smeared lashes. Her normally vibrant skin was ashen pale and revealed dark circles beneath her eyes, and blotchy cheeks. Her blonde hair hung limp at her shoulders, unwashed and lifeless, a departure from Leslie's usual meticulous grooming habits.

"Baby, are you OK? What the hell happened to you?"

"The _hell_ that has happened to me is that I have a baby growing inside me!" Leslie yelled, slamming her small fist down on the table as she burst into tears.

I can only imagine the overwhelming shock that came over him as he sat in the chair opposite her. His heart fell into the pit of his stomach, he had dreamt of becoming a father since he was a young man. How could the woman he loved reject this idea?

He took her hand in his. "It's going to be OK, you know. It's going to be fine. We'll get through this together. I've always wanted children with you. This is good news!"

He tried to make light of the heavy situation. "It'll be just you and me, kid—and you kiddo, too." He pointed at Leslie's still flat stomach.

"That's easy for you to say, Martin!" Leslie snapped. "Having a beach ball sized belly will end my job and ruin my modeling career! Do you think the fucking club is going to let me work there when I get _fat_? It won't affect your music career! It'll ruin _my_ life. You aren't the one who will be tied down with a baby!" she sobbed hysterically, anger mounting as she imagined a life without the luxuries her stripping job afforded her. "I swore to myself I would never be broke again. Ever!"

Martin let go of Leslie's hand and leaned the wobbly chair back, teetering dangerously on the back legs. He crossed his arms and inhaled deeply. He sat silently for several minutes then sighed. "You need to get healthy again Les, you've to stop using while you're pregnant. The baby will never survive your habit. To be honest with you, I'm quite surprised _you_ survive it."

"Are you fucking kidding me? You asshole. You want me to get fat with this fucking baby and all the while you're fucking your groupie Heather?" She turned to him, tears now gone, replaced solely with hatred.

"What?" Confusion washed over his face.

"Don't you fucking act stupid, Martin. I'm on to you. Fuck you and fuck this pregnancy. There is no way in hell I am keeping this kid!" she sneered at him through clenched teeth.

Although I was but a pea-sized being within my mother's womb, I believe that at that very moment the seed of painful abandonment was planted deep within my unborn heart; so deep that it would remain there as a part of me, and would later be nourished and watered for years to come until its blossoms consumed my entire being, branching out to the later years of my life, being continuously nurtured by the people in my life who would reject and abandon me well into adulthood.

## "I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection."

## Sigmund Freud

###

###

###

###

###

###

#

# 3: DADDY'S GIRL

December 1987

Somehow, Dad managed to keep Mom from having an abortion and he got her to stay off drugs during her pregnancy. I was told by my dad that he had to basically bully my mom in to going through with it. Knowing that only proves to me my mother's strong determination to get rid of me. Knowing what she's like, it's nothing short of a miracle that she didn't attempt to abort me herself. I know she and my father disagreed about keeping me until the day I was born. My dad told me that up until the day I came out she resented being pregnant and "getting fat".

I guess you could say I never had much of a shot to begin with.

Most days, I am very thankful that she didn't get rid of me, but I'd be lying if I said I've never wished that she had.

In my lowest, saddest moments, I have wished that I _had_ been aborted; that I had never taken that first breath of life, that the oxygen from that breath hadn't start a lifelong pumping of blood into my body. I have wished to God to take back all of it, the experience of the pain of being born an unwanted and despised child; alive but not living.

During those days, I have wished that I had been tossed out with the garbage that I felt like my life was. Or better yet, that I'd never even been conceived. I would have spared both of my parents some serious heartbreak and misery. Even as an adult, I have struggled with the negative soundtracks that make life often seem unbearable.

As my mom's belly grew, her lifestyle calmed down just a little, enough to keep me, the baby growing inside of her tummy, healthy enough to grow and thrive within her womb. Gone were the nights of cocaine induced haze—the all-nighters with friends and the bachelor parties. She must have done something right, because I was born weighing over eight pounds.

Mom was forced to grow up (a bit at least) and accept the reality of her life—me. The time off drugs and a baby growing inside of her did bring some clarity and a change of heart and lifestyle to my Mom. Clarity to know that since she was indeed going through with the pregnancy, whether that choice was her own or because of my dad's threats, she needed to stay clean. Though it wasn't to last for long.

The baby that shared her body didn't ignite a maternal spark or switch on a button that caused her to change her life. She knew what she wanted and was determined to chase after it. A baby dependent on her for love and safety was never it.

Shortly after I was born, my mom went back to using drugs, but not as heavily as before she was pregnant. To some extent, having a baby did create a sense of family and united my parents. Looking at a few family photos of the three of us, I can believe that my parents were happy for some time while I was an infant.

I can tell that she tried to be a good mother; I can see that through some of the old photos that have survived my childhood. Photos of the three of us with the Easter bunny, my first birthday at McDonalds, and lying on the couch sleeping next to my mother's bare chest as she slept as well. My dad told me that I was breastfed for six months.

Motherhood didn't come naturally to Mom though. Perhaps this was because her own mother was verbally and physically abusive to her. This would explain her lack of motherly instinct. My grandma Edith was a crazy drunk who constantly abandoned her and her sisters throughout their entire childhood.

"Your grandmother, may she burn in hell," Mom said to me one day after she had died. "She used to beat the living shit out of your Aunt Rochelle and me if we even looked at her wrong. Be glad I don't drink."

She was irritated by the disruption and inconvenience I caused in her life. It seems she was torn between who she really was and who she needed to be in order to be a good mother. The gap between the two was as wide as the Grand Canyon is deep. Perhaps she missed the nurturing "mom gene," or maybe she was just so selfish that she couldn't look beyond herself to a needy, demanding baby. Maybe she was simply selfish. She surely knew she did not want to be a mother from the time she was an abused child herself. Maybe my dad should have listened.

Sadly, in this country, thousands of babies are born every year to women who reject them. Some don't want their babies because they aren't equipped emotionally or financially to take care of them in a loving, responsible manner. Others simply can't stand the burden.

Being an unwanted child myself I can tell you that no matter the reason I was undesired, I suffered knowing this harsh reality was my entire existence.

I never developed a sense of safety about my life, ever. I was a baby that developed in a hostile environment and often perceived my world as unsafe. Sadly, it became a nightmare.

It's not uncommon for an unwanted child to prefer death over a hostile life; I know I have wished for death on numerous occasions. It is no small matter when a woman does not want her unborn child. It is grave and sad, and can deeply affect the child throughout childhood and into adulthood.

It may be very difficult for those who were born into a safe and happy world to understand this effect. So often, the attitude is "Get over it!" People in my life—school counselors, friends, boyfriends who have known even a little of the sorrow of my childhood—have never quite understood the pain it has caused me and the effect it has on my life even today.

"Quit being a victim to your past. You're only letting them win." Friends have said, "You're not a baby anymore, why does this make you sad now?"

I could never really explain the pain, the longing for a mommy and daddy who loved and protected me. I realize I have had and continue to have people in my life who love me dearly, but there is no replacement for my parents. I still long for that fairy tale.

I'd venture to say that there isn't one person who deals with the after effect of such trauma who doesn't truly desire to "get over it". But it's not quite that simple. It's as though the trauma is forever singed with a hot branding iron to the core, to your heart. It's always there. You don't just get over it. You find ways to put it in perspective and cope with it so you can move forward, in spite of the gnawing feeling of the hot branding iron stamp on your heart.

For the most part, my dad took care of me when I was an infant, taking me to band practices and his work when he had to, since sometimes my aunt Alana (his sister) wasn't always able to babysit, and Mom was either out partying or working the clubs.

After the first couple years of my life, things with my mom and dad turned to the worse after she broke up his band by having an ongoing affair with the drummer, something which she has always denied. And her drug habit was kicked back into high gear, no pun intended, and she became an even bigger mess than before she had me. Her partying was out of control and she lost all sense of responsibility.

"You have got to settle down, Les. I can't do this on my own. I need your help." My dad pleaded with her on a daily basis, to no avail.

"I told you I wasn't ready for this—this life. I feel fucking trapped. You will fucking pay for doing this to me. I hate you. And I hate her."

There was one night when she came home from work at four in the morning from a bachelor party she'd performed at—high and out of her mind—freaked out on my dad, and called the police.

"What seems to be the problem, ma'am?" the uniformed officers asked my mother who was now crying at the kitchen table.

"It's him!" She pointed accusingly at my dad, mascara rolling down her cheeks, crying, but not hysterical. She knew what she was doing.

"He hits me, and he leaves our baby sitting in a dirty diaper for hours while I'm out working my ass off trying to pay our bills."

She threw quite the pity party.

That night my father was arrested and booked, and locked up for the night. He was only released the next day because my mom came to her senses, went down to the jail and retracted her accusations. After that incident they both filed for divorce due to irreconcilable differences. They could no longer stand each other let alone continue being married. This decision left my father with a bigger monetary responsibility. He needed to make more money now that my mother was no longer sharing any of hers. He was forced to focus completely on taking care of me and getting a "real" job. He began working at Keyboard City and put his music career on hold.

Since my mom was MIA more times than not, my dad took on full custody and responsibility for me. He was the one that diapered me, got up in the middle of the night for feeds and made sure I was safe and comfortable.

I don't remember seeing much of, if any of my mom after she pulled a Yoko Ono and broke up the band. She may have been there more often than I realize, but I have no bonding or loving memories of her being in my young life. Instinctively, I knew she was missing, but I had never known life any other way.

I was Daddy's little girl, and he was my entire happy world. I adored my dad and was extremely happy for a short time. He was the one I connected with; the one who made me feel safe and who taught me that the world was an OK place. He was strong enough for me to feel safe and protected, no matter what else was going on in the outside world, and he was gentle enough for me to feel coddled and loved. He spent as much time with me as he could while working. His life was not an easy one, but it included me. And it included his music, which was confined to our condo on the weekends. He still sang and wrote music, dedicating an entire song to me called, _And she will always be our Amber_.

Once upon a time I used to dream of him singing that song for me at my wedding, as I proudly looked upon him with the same love and adoration I had for him as a three and four year old child.

Some dreams just aren't meant to happen in this lifetime.

Although my father was a rocker-musician kind of guy, he still knew that I was a little girl, and that little girls loved pretty, pink and sparkling clothes and toys. Even though he didn't have much money, he bought me Barbie dolls and My Little Pony toys to play with, and he decorated my room with Strawberry Shortcake curtains, comforter, and accessories. I even had a large strawberry shaped pillow. He went to great lengths to make sure that my bedroom was everything a little princess could want.

Aunt Alana, who at the time was in a childless marriage, absolutely adored me and helped add to my collection of dolls and little girl dressy clothes. She loved me so much; she would sometimes joke with my father about adopting me and him returning to his life on the road with the band.

"Just let me take her Martin," she would say while fussing over my hair "You're a single man and I know you love your music. Let me keep her."

I can't say that I don't wish that would have happened as I can only imagine the life I would have led with her instead of the one I was dealt.

When I was a toddler, my father treated me as though I was worth all the fuss and worth every penny that the girly items I longed for and he bought for me cost him. He never made me feel as though I was a burden to him or that he didn't have time for me. Looking back, I know that during that time of my life he sacrificed a great deal to create a happy world for his little girl. I am thankful to have those memories of him today, even if some of them may only be gifted.

My dad may have bought me most of what I asked for, but that didn't stop him from being frugal. He _loved_ shopping at thrift stores for books and instruments, pretty much everything our family needed—other than food, of course—and managed to find cute outfits and toys for me at Goodwill and garage sales.

Even at the age of four and five, I knew what clothes can do for a girl, and I knew what I liked and didn't like. If it was pink or sparkly, I liked it.

I had long stringy blonde hair that my dad would attempt to tame. He did a pretty good job of it since he had long hair himself. He may not have been perfect at it, but my hair was always clean and untangled. He somehow managed to put up ponytails or do simple braids so that I looked adorable and always presentable.

When Daddy wasn't at work, we often played with my Barbie dolls or at games in the nook under the stairway of our town home.

I was always Barbie, and he was always Barbie's little sister, Skipper.

"How come you get all the pretty high heel shoes and I'm stuck with sandals?" Daddy would ask in a ridiculous high pitched voice while holding a Skipper doll.

"Cuz you are too little." I would dance my Barbie around, parading her around the play area, flinging her hair.

"What about me? I want high heel shoes too," Daddy would say in an even sillier voice, this time holding up a pink and blue sparkly My Little Pony.

I'd giggle hysterically, laughing at Daddy's ridiculous voices. "Ponies don't wear shoes, silly Daddy!"

"I know, munchkin," he'd say in his normal daddy voice and kissed my forehead.

On hot Sunday afternoons, it was our custom to go to Encanto Park where we would have lunch and ride the train. We would also walk or skate around in the sunshine, feed the ducks leftover, dried-out bread and then go to the concession stand for ice-cream.

The lady who ran the concession stand was always pleasant to us. She was an older Hispanic woman who had large brown eyes, and long grey hair and dressed in colorful blouses and long black skirts. Every weekend she waited patiently while I decided what flavor I wanted.

"What does li'l miss Amber and her papa want today?" she would say, greeting us with a large toothy grin. Two of her front teeth had gold crowns on them. "I have a new strawberry ice-cream with chocolate and peanuts. Or your favorite, Ghostbusters kind. So what do ya think? Wanna try it?" Then she'd wait patiently for me to make a choice.

After thinking about it for a long moment of "ahhs" and "umms" I would always stick with the green Ghostbuster kind.

Dad and I would sit on our favorite bench and chat like the best of friends. I loved our ice-cream dates. Having conversations with him, an adult, made me feel grown up and very important. I knew then, as a small child, that I _was_ the _most_ important thing in his life. Our time spent at the park was our devoted time for getting to know more about each other, what I was learning in preschool, what was going on at Daddy's work etc. Small child talk, but very much needed bonding. It gave me the chance to ask him about things that I didn't understand or to share my childish thoughts with him, which he seemed to be interested in.

I used to believe that there was nothing my father couldn't answer. I suppose this is normal, and one of the reasons little girls look up to their daddy.

On Easter Sunday when I was three years old, we sat on a park bench discussing what makes kites fly. I was licking my green Ghostbuster-shaped ice-cream bar as fast as I could before it melted and dripped onto my new Easter dress. I turned to ask my dad a question and noticed he had a strange look on his face. He seemed to be staring at something in the distance. He didn't hear the question I asked, and without looking at me, Daddy said, "Stay right here, munchkin. Daddy will be right back." He gave me a kiss on top of my head, and made his way over to some people sitting on a bench.

"OK," I said, my mouth full of ice-cream. I watched him make his way over to a bench near the concession stand, squat down and talk to some lady. I held my ice-cream sideways, attempting to pull out one of the pink gumball eyes with my teeth.

Unbeknownst to my young self, my life was about to be thrown off course forever. My happy normal childhood would soon be stolen for good.

Dad returned to our picnic table about five minutes later with a stupid grin on his mustache clad face. Apparently the meeting had gone well—really well.

#

#

#

#

"Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear."

William Congreve

#  4: THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

April 1991

Over the next few months, I learned that what (or I should say _who_ ) my dad had been staring at on that Easter Sunday at Encanto Park was Ingrid Espisoto. Her mandarin orange colored midriff top and blue jean shorts had not only caught his attention, but had also lassoed him and dragged him over to the concession stand where she sat on a nearby bench.

Ingrid had been sitting next to a dark-skinned woman who was wearing a similarly brightly colored outfit. She was laughing loudly, her large gold hoop earrings twirling as she shook her head, her hands waving wildly as she spoke.

She was speaking loudly in Spanish, and although I was not fluent in Spanish then, I could pick up a few words. I knew that "si" meant "yes" and "adios" meant "goodbye". In our neighborhood, many of the families were of Hispanic descent and they too spoke Spanish. I was puzzled then, as a small child, because I noticed that Ingrid's skin was light, almost porcelain, similar to mine, and yet the people in my neighborhood who spoke Spanish had really dark tanned skin.

He exchanged numbers with her and they started dating each other the following weekend.

"Be good for Stacey; Daddy will be home in a few hours." He bent over to where I was watching cartoons in the living room and kissed the top of my head.

"Where are you going, Daddy?" I looked away from the television. My dad looked a bit dressed up. He had on dark skinny jeans as usual, but had traded in his faded band t-shirt for a shirt with a collar. Hi hair was slicked back in a tight pony tail and he smelled of cologne.

His face lit up. "Remember that nice lady I met at the park on Easter?"

I nodded, "I think so"

"Well Daddy is going to dinner with her tonight." He was about to say something more when Stacey knocked on our door.

"Stacey, hi!"

"Hi Amber, Mr. Walter." She greeted us.

"I should be back around tenish. Thanks for watching her."

"Sure thing."

"Bye, munchkin. Be good. Love you"

"Love you too Daddy."

My dad didn't come home that night.

After that Sunday, my father's loneliness and longing for my mother seemed to dissipate. Instead of being gloomy, he became a lighthearted, carefree being. Before Ingrid came along, if my dad wasn't working or playing with me, he was zoned out in front of our television watching _Leno_ or _The Simpsons_ —anything that would take his mind off of his divorce from my mother. I knew he missed her because he never took any of her pictures down and he spoke of her often.

"Daddy" I would sometimes tell him before bed, "I miss Mommy; I want her to tuck me in too"

"I know munchkin" he would bend over and ruffle the hair out of my face and kiss the top of my head "Daddy misses her too." Even as a child I could see sadness overcome his face when we spoke about her.

"Don't be sad, Daddy. She'll come home someday." That blind optimism stayed with me for years to come.

"Goodnight sweetheart."

"Night Daddy"

After Ingrid began coming around, the pictures of my parents slowly disappeared until the only ones left were in my room. Gone were the photos of the three of us that used to stand on the television and hang on the walls. Ingrid slowly removed as many signs of my mom as she could.

Although Daddy had always seemed content enough around me, I thought he had sad eyes. Even when he was smiling, he looked sad. I couldn't have understood exactly why then, but those sad eyes went away when he was around Ingrid. His eyes lit up every time he spoke of her.

"Maybe there's hope for your old man after all." He smiled happily after a movie date with Ingrid.

"What do you mean, hope, Daddy?" I looked up at him from my Barbies as he paid my sitter and told her goodnight. "What hope?"

He walked over to me and sat beside me on the living room floor where I was playing. He picked up a Barbie.

"Well," he began in a silly high pitched voice. "Hope that your daddy won't be alone forever."

I giggled then said in my own Barbie voice, "How can he be alone? He has me." I sat the doll down and took his hand in my little one. "Right, Daddy? You're not alone; you have me."

He picked me up and held me close. "You're right, munchkin. Daddy has you." Then he faced me and looked into my eyes. "But sometimes daddies like to spend time with other grownups."

"Like Ingrid?"

"Yes, like Ingrid." His gaze drifted towards the door and then back to me. "She makes Daddy laugh. And she is kind. Do you like her Amber?"

"I dunno. Silly Daddy!" I squealed and went back to playing Barbies, slightly bored with the conversation.

"It's OK if you don't, munchkin. I'll stop seeing her if you want me to."

I stopped playing again and looked at him, taking a long exaggerated kid pause. "OK, Daddy, I like her. She smells good, like vanilla."

"That's good to hear."

After a few more dates Daddy was hooked. He started having Ingrid come over for afternoon swims and living room movie dates. I liked it when she came over because she usually brought me a toy or something yummy to eat.

When Ingrid visited us, she instantly greeted my dad and me with kisses on the cheek and told us in Spanish, with a few English words mixed in, how happy she was to see us. She would arrive in different brightly colored dresses, smocks and shorts, arms laden with deliciously scented Mexican food dishes. Some days she came over with tamales and Spanish rice, other days with chocolate chip cookies and "Orchata", a Mexican milky sweet drink.

"Hi, little Amber. I have a surprise for you." She gave me a hug and pulled a pink package from her straw woven purse.

"Really?" I squealed excitedly. "Can I see?"

"If it's OK with your papa."

"Of course," Daddy said, grinning happily. "Make sure you say thank you."

"Thank you, Ingrid," I said as I tore the pink paper off the small box that revealed a brand new Strawberry Shortcake doll. "I love it! Mmm." I inhaled the doll deeply after removing her from the box. "Daddy, she smells like real strawberries!"

"I'm so glad you like. I happy to hear that. And happy to see you guys again. Did you miss me?"

"I know I did," my dad said quietly, taking her hand in his and kissing the top of it.

I was always happy to hear her say how glad she was to see us. My dad's face would light up like Christmas morning at her words. I had never seen Daddy affectionate with anyone except for my mom. It didn't bother me when he was with Ingrid since he was always smiling and making jokes.

I suppose my mother cheating on him with one of his friends had all but destroyed my dad's self-confidence.

"I haven't been this happy in a long time, munchkin," he told me after Ingrid went home. "You won't understand this right now, but she makes me feel whole again. I feel inspired to write music again."

"What's inspired mean?" He was constantly using large words in front of me.

"Inspired to me means, having another thing to live for, something to look forward to, besides you. You're my biggest inspiration ever, kiddo."

For a while after Ingrid joined our world, my life remained pretty constant. Although my dad enjoyed spending time with Ingrid, he still let me know that I remained the center of _his_ world. He continued spending a large amount of time with me, if not more quality time since Ingrid had begun helping him out with the chores around the house, including caring for me.

Daddy no longer spent hours in front of the TV. Instead, he tinkered with his guitar and wrote music. The house was much cleaner too with Ingrid around. We ate less take-out and more home cooked meals.

It was nice.

Daddy certainly found himself with more free time on his hands because Ingrid insisted on cooking Mexican food, cleaning, and organizing the house when she came over.

As the weeks passed, and spring turned into summer, and summer into fall, I noticed that Ingrid's stomach was growing considerably larger. I had seen pregnant women before and knew that she had a baby inside of her stomach.

When she began to really show she would point to her stomach and say, _beb_ é several times and have me repeat it.

"Say bebé, Amber"

"Baby." I would say, "You're going to have a baby Ingrid?"

She would nod, a curious look about her face.

I picked up one of my own baby dolls. "A baby like this, Ingrid?"

"Si." She touched her stomach. "Yes, a bebé." She emphasized the word _beb_ é.

"Baby." I drew the y out longer in an attempt to say it like her.

"No Amber, bebé."

I tried to pronounce it the same way that she did, but I couldn't manage the Spanish accent in the perfect way that she expected.

She arched her strong eyebrows, frowning in frustration, and scolded me, sternly telling me that I needed to learn to speak Spanish just the way she did.

"You need to learn how to speak _Español, mijita_." Her r's always rolled.

"Your _papa_ wants you to learn. I am telling you to learn."

"I'm sorry, Ingrid, I will get better."

"Mommy, how many times do I have to tell you to call me _Mommy?_ It's hurting my feelings." Her voice rose a decibel with every word.

"Mommy?" I was confused. "I have a mommy already. You're Ingrid."

She had a pained look on her face. "That's not a nice girl. You should call me _Mommy_ too. Your daddy wants you to. Don't you want to make him happy?"

"Yes," I said quietly. I wasn't used to her talking to me in a mean tone of voice. I wanted to do what made Daddy happy so I gave it my best.

Ingrid was in her late twenties when she met my father that Easter; she was an illegal alien from a very poor city in Mexico called Michuacan.

Ingrid had been freshly smuggled into America only a few months before she met my dad. She seemed to have zero concepts of right and wrong, and the appropriate way to be an adult. When she played Barbies with me, it felt as though I were playing with another child, not an adult being silly like Daddy was when he played.

She never made me where a seat belt when she drove me up the street to the grocery store and never held my hand across the street.

"You know the devil is real, right, Amber?" she said, tucking me in bed one night before Daddy had come home from work.

"What? No, I don't like scary devils. Daddy said they're not real, like monsters aren't real." I pulled the covers up to my chin and shivered.

"When I was a little girl I didn't listen to my momma and she told the devil to scare me," Ingrid began telling me in an exaggerated manner. "I was walking home from getting water in the well by our casita and I saw a goat." She paused and her eyes grew large. "A goat with long horns and red eyes. It was the devil. I just knew it. He wanted my soul, because I was a bad girl."

"Goats are devils?" I didn't like this story one bit.

"Sometimes, yes. The devil can hide in any form though. So you better be a good girl. He's always waiting for you to slip."

I had never been called a bad girl by my daddy or anyone before Ingrid. However, I soon found out that leaving dirty clothes on the floor, not picking up after myself, and forgetting to flush the toilet were all things bad girls did.

She told me stories from the Bible, only she would always put her own horrific twist to them making them seem like something that could likely happen in my life.

"God ended the world once in water, when Noah and his ark were around. And he saved only them."

"Next time God ends the world it is going to be in fire, and you will be burned with all the other sinners if you're bad."

After a scary Bible story, she would march me to the corner where I sometimes went when I was "bad"; a dark corner in the living room in between the TV and a wall. Once I was there she would turn the light off and pretend to hear creepy devil sounds.

"See you shouldn't be such a bad girl. The devil is coming for you. _Aye dios mio_." Then off the lights would go and she would leave me in the darkness.

Terrified out of my mind, my imagination growing wild with her stories that further ignited my fear, I knelt in the dark for hours.

## "Come away. O human child!

## To the waters and the wild

## With a faery, hand in hand

## For the world's more full of weeping

## Than you can understand."

## W. B. Yeats, The Collected Poems

5: THE UNSPEAKABLE

Once Ingrid had crossed the crazy stepmother line to the absolutely evil stepmother line, my punishments grew worse. A swat on the butt would turn into two swats, then full blown spankings with a belt. Hair pulling was also one of Ingrid's favorite activities.

In the beginning, Ingrid was smart enough to cloak her abusiveness behind a false caring, motherly, façade. When Daddy was around, I could do no wrong. Yet the minute he was out the front door she sung a different tune.

"Bye, munchkin. Love you, be a good girl for Ingrid."

"Aww, she's always a good girl, Martin."

"Bye, Daddy." I followed him through the sliding glass door, towards the front and watched him walk out the front gate and get into Betsey, his car. I was starting to hate watching his car sputter off.

"Amber." I turned in response to Ingrid's menacing call. "Get inside and go clean your room. How come you're such a lazy girl? You think life is easy and we just do everything for you? Huh?"

I walked back inside and slid the sliding glass door shut.

"No." I looked down at my feet.

Ingrid came over to me and yanked the collar of my polo shirt up, her hand making rough contact with the bottom of my chin.

"No, _Mommy_ ," she growled. "And look me in the eyes when I talk to you."

"Now. Go. Clean. Your. Room!"

I ran up the stairs to the bedrooms, shutting the door behind me and looking around my room. It was pretty tidy, I wasn't sure what she wanted me to clean. Since I was frightened to simply go back downstairs I decided to organize my Barbies and their accessories. I stayed upstairs until Daddy came home from work.

She was clever. She hid her abuse very well in the beginning.

During the early part of Ingrid's pregnancy, her visits with us became more frequent and she and my dad eventually got married. I have a very little memory of the small ceremony—Ingrid in an off white, lace dress that fitted so tightly, her swollen breasts and ever growing pregnant stomach were indecently exposed. The lace was stretched over her so tightly there were tiny pieces of string in the seams that stuck out from ripping. Her dark eyes were lined in charcoal pencil and her mouth was a bright orangey red.

She had put a few blonde highlights throughout her dark hair. They were more of a warm caramel than blonde because her natural hair was so dark, almost black.

"You like my blonde hair, Amber?" she surprised us both with her brand new hair color the morning of their small wedding. "I look like I'm your momma now." She smiled proudly. "I'm blonde like a Barbie, like you." She pointed to my champagne colored blonde hair.

"Uh huh." I nodded. She looked scary and had lipstick on her teeth. I giggled, and quickly looked away.

"What's so funny? What's so funny Martin? Is she laughing at me?" This was the first time she'd raised her voice in front of Daddy.

"What Ingrid? No, baby, you look beautiful. She's just a kid; this is all new for her. She's probably laughing at me, huh munchkin? You like Daddy's suit?"

He was wearing a powder blue tux.

I giggled even harder. I had the giggles so badly I thought I was going to pee my pants.

"Today is a very special day, honey." He bent down and took my hand. "It's a special day for all of us. It's the first day of our new life."

After the wedding she moved into the condo with us. Since my dad now had a live in babysitter, he no longer took me to work with him and he had Ingrid watch me instead.

The mind has a funny way of remembering the past, especially when the past was not so beautiful. When you have a past that is filled with more heartache, than laughter, more time spent praying to God for help, rather than praying to Him with gratitude, your mind tends to remember the horrid moments so much better than the few good ones.

Perhaps the mind does that as a built in self-defense or self-preservation mechanism. It could be some weird psychological thing we all contain within us that is used to protect us by constantly reminding of the pain and dreadfulness of a given situation. Including details of _where_ it happened, _when_ it happened, _why_ it happened, and my favorite one, _who_ did it to you.

Of course, for some people, that recollection might be of a beautiful picnic in the park with your family, having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (no crust) sitting by the edge of the water of Encanto Park, feeding the squawking white and black birds with your leftovers, laughing with each other as you watch the large birds fight over your bits of bread.

Then you might get on your shiny red bicycle, a gift you just received for placing the honor roll for the fourth time that month and all is well in the world, then you crash.

You ride your beautiful two wheeled bicycle over an unseen stone over one of the paths on the bridge and you tumble down, down to the concrete. Your knee comes into contact with a sharp edge of rough broken concrete and your pink skin rips beneath the blonde hairs covering your knees (both of them), your elbows and wrists as well since you shielded your face in the fall and now you're a sobbing, bloody, sticky wet mess.

And that incident, that incident alone, reminds you of how horrible Fourth of July weekend 1990 was for you, because you fell, playing on your brand new bicycle after a beautiful picnic with your family. Funny, because to a person that has the memories I have, the one that was just described sounds beautiful to me.

I actually do have a single memory of falling on concrete while playing. I must have been four or five years old.

The condo we lived in was nestled in a pretty large complex and I used to roller blade all over the sidewalks to pass my time. I was still pretty fearless back then, having only had a couple of mild spankings and hair pullings from Ingrid at that point.

I would put on all of my required gear (helmet, mismatched knee and elbow pads) and finally my blades. I would then carefully make my way through the parking lot pulling myself over the uneven road, one hand holding the side of Betsey or whatever car was closest, the other stretched out in front of me for balance, making my way all around her until I met the sidewalk.

After that I was free to skate around and around. There were trees, other condos and a lot of sidewalk. Like most kids, I only put my protective gear on while still in sight of the house and would rip it off the moment I was far away from home and our tattle tale windows, and hide it in my berry bush, before skating freely for hours.

I was fast and good back then; I never fell, not once. There were moments when I came close to falling, but never ever anything too significant. If I ever felt as though my skate or roller blade (I had both) was about to give, I would throw myself into the nearest grassy area, tumble on my side and simply roll in the grass, completely breaking my fall on the sidewalk like a champ.

That went on for about a year, and then right before we moved into our new house the sidewalk _finally_ outsmarted me.

"Come back in twenty _minutos_ ," Ingrid said to me from the kitchen at our condo. She was making my dad some of her homemade remedy for kidney stones, raw potato juice I believe it was. Being of Mexican descent, she was full of homemade remedies and prayers.

"OK," I muttered unenthusiastically. Before Ingrid came around, I didn't have set times to come back home, nor was I spanked if I got caught not wearing my gear. Daddy would just tell me I would be the one to live with the consequences if I got hurt. That seemed fair to me.

"You're too easy on her Martin." Ingrid's r's always rolled when she spoke; it was annoying. "Just wait till she's a teenager. She will do just like her mom, just like Mattice."

Ingrid had turned _Mattice_ (Mom's maiden name) into a curse word that was meant to be more hurtful than _bitch_ , but not quite as evil as it could have been.

I made my way past the condo, around Betsy, to my secret bush and discarded my protective gear. I skated towards the community pool, planning to go see if my friend Alicia was home to play Barbies.

I had only known Alicia for a couple of months; she was a year older than me and I had met her swimming one day. We bonded over the shared potato chips and snacks her mother was offering all of the kids at the pool and we'd played together almost every day that summer.

Because of the newly enforced twenty minute play limit Ingrid had set a month before, I was in a rush to get there. I skated to Alicia's house as fast as my short legs would allow me to, not noticing a jack that some kid had left in the middle of the sidewalk that was glowing with sunlight. No sooner had I passed the pool area did the sidewalk finally get the better of me.

I didn't even see it coming.

One minute I was whizzing by an old lady and her dog, the next I was down. Concrete met my pink knees, ripping through my thin skin, causing me to cry out in pain as it coursed through my legs, elbows, wrists, and the side of my right cheek. I lay on the scorching sidewalk for an eternity until that same old lady caught up with the pile of my crumpled body, roller blades, and denim shorts, and ineffectively tried to pick me up.

I screamed out in even more pain as her dog began lapping at my brand new wounds.

"Are you OK, dear?" She stood over me, looking defeated; her frail body having been unable to lift me up.

"I'm OK," I whimpered as I caught the breath that had just been knocked out of me. I sat up, squinting at Mrs. Moulder, pushing her yellow golden retriever off me.

"Hmm, are you sure dear? Where's that stepmother of yours. Hmm? Your Daddy lets you run wild out here alone, does he?" She looked around stupidly, pointlessly.

I wiped my tears and looked down to see the damage that had been done to my knees, but quickly averted my eyes. It was awful. There would be no hiding my fall and I was surely going to get in trouble.

"I dunnno. She's at home. Daddy's at work." I wanted Mrs. Moulder to leave me alone already. I was in a lot of pain and needed to cry it out. Not in front of her though.

"Well, are you going to take those monstrous things off now?" She tssked at me, shaking her head.

"Yes." I groaned. "I'm gonna take them off and go home".

"I bet you are. Come on, Daisy. Let's go see what Pops is up to," she mumbled as she tugged on the golden retriever's red leash and walked back down the sidewalk.

I looked at my digital Barbie watch. It was the kind that had three interchangeable faces. Daddy had purchased it for me once he'd realized just how strict Ingrid was about my coming home on time. By now I only had about six minutes of playtime left before I would have to make the short trek back to the condo. Now I was a limping, oozing mess and on foot, I would simply have to head home.

I reluctantly made my way back to the berry bush and put my gear back on, grimacing all the way back home as the knee and elbow pads rubbed against my scrapes and made them smart.

"What happened Amber? You're one _minuto_ late."

Ingrid came over grabbing my wrist roughly and pointing to the time on my watch after I walked through the sliding glass door.

"It's one minute past when you should have been home. What's gonna to happen the next time, eh? Huh, _digame,_ you going to come in whenever you feel like it?"

She snatched my skates and pushed me in the sternum with her finger.

I staggered back speechless, still in much shock from my skating accident.

"Oh what, you're going to cry now? You're so weak, like your mother."

"I'm sorry Ingrid." I began to make my way upstairs to my bedroom.

"It's _Mommy_ , you will call me _Mommy_. How many times do I have to tell you? And take that crap off outside. It's dirty."

"OK."

"OK, what?"

She was now standing in the doorway that connected the kitchen/sitting room to the actual living room and stairs. Her face was contorted in a half amused, half angry smile. I could sense she was probably biting the inside of her cheek. I hoped it made her bleed.

"OK, _Mommy_." I turned around and went back through the sliding glass door, my shoulders slumped, head down to my chest and then I remembered my skates which she had placed on the counter. I turned around to reach for them so I could place those outside as well.

"No!" she said vehemently grabbing my wrist, her hand shooting out of nowhere like a striking snake.

" _Ow_!" she twisted my hand downward, around till my knuckles made contact with the cold, yellowing formica counter.

I looked at her with big tears forming behind my blue green eyes. I swallowed.

"You are grounded from those until I say. You think I will put up with such disrespect?"

I walked back outside, head hanging even lower.

I needed my daddy to come home; she wasn't so bad when he was around. I removed my gear, setting it in one of the green milk crates we had staked against the small front patio walls.

I used to catch butterflies and put them in those same crates and would wonder why they were never there the next day. Of course, Daddy explained to me with the most delicate tone, that they escaped through the many holes the milk carts were full of.

"Oh, makes sense."

So we used the crates to store my outside toys and skating gear.

I slid the glass door back open. Ingrid was now in the kitchen area chopping what I could smell were onions —and celery maybe?

"I'm making your father's favorite—spaghetti—just like your grandma."

"That sounds good." I hurried past her and up the stairs to my bedroom. I needed to shower and scrub away as much evidence of my fall as possible. Maybe I would get lucky and be able to pass off the scrapes as some other injury. I was frightened to further anger her. I went to my dresser and pulled out some clean clothes, Care Bear pajamas and Tuesday underwear (even though it was actually only Monday).

I plopped down on my bed and looked around my room. I loved my bedroom. Daddy had gone out of his way to find me Strawberry Shortcake EVERYTHING: curtains, rugs, sheets, blankies, lamp, and nightlight—with which I had accidently given myself an electric shock plugging it in to the wall one night.

My daddy, the frugal man that he was, had found most of my bedroom décor at garage sales (which he went to every weekend without fail) and Goodwill stores. I couldn't care less. My room was adorable.

It was all pink, green, and cheerful looking. I had my own TV and VCR where Daddy would let me fall asleep watching taped episodes of the Simpsons or Care Bears. I needed the television, as I often had nightmares in the middle of the night and Ingrid no longer let me go and see Daddy if I was scared. She thought it was childish and believed that children shouldn't be allowed in their parents' room. She actually put a lock on it.

My dad never questioned these decisions in the beginning, I think maybe he was relieved that there was another person at home to help out with things and take care of me.

After all, he had been a single dad for about two years by now and Ingrid hid her true colors for a long while with a mask of charm.

Ingrid was very calculating in the beginning with her constant punishments. She would punish me, grab me violently one minute, but then the next would sit and braid my hair, play Barbie with me and tell me how lucky she was to have such a beautiful new daughter.

Ingrid's moods were constantly up and down. Her highs were very high and her lows were awful. She was either extremely happy or very angry. When I was twelve, she was finally diagnosed as being bipolar.

There were moments in my childhood, many large, drawn out painful moments, where Ingrid was a living nightmare. However, there were also some very confusing moments where it seemed she had experienced a change of heart and actually wanted me to be happy. Like the few times she took me to the mall and let me pick out a new toy or a new outfit, since her generosity with gifts had stopped as soon as she'd married my dad. There were times after some sever punishments where she would give me ice for my bottom where I was developing a welt from a spanking, or she'd gently brush my hair after a pulling.

Those moments when she showed remorse or compassion never lasted long, as it seemed she was incapable of being truly loving and motherly, yet they were welcome as they usually were the only moments besides my days in the classroom where either my body or child soul wasn't beaten, broken down and in pain.

Allowing me to go swimming was one activity that Ingrid still let me do—for a short time that is. As with everything else that Ingrid wore, her swimsuits were more than revealing. She always wore a two piece. Even in her pregnant state she purchased from the junior's department. I, on the other hand, was made to wear a t-shirt and shorts over my one piece—even inside the pool!

Before Ingrid lived with us, I had several different bikinis and cute little one piece little girl bathing suits, totally appropriate for a little girl. But after Ingrid and her hypocritical, God fearing ways came along, I was forced to cover my body as much as possible.

"Little girls should not show their stomachs or legs. You need to be covered up. It's sinful if you're not."

Yet Ingrid was the poster woman for dressing in a sexualized manner. Her cleavage was always hanging out and her clothing fitted like a glove. I don't recall any of her skirts or shorts going past mid-thigh. She was also very fond of bright reds, pinks, and orange lip colors, but forbade me from putting on any of my sparkly clear lip gloss.

The few occasions when she allowed me to play in the pool, Ingrid would lie in the sweltering Arizona heat and ask different male neighbors who were also swimming, to lather her body up with Banana Boat tanning oil. She would giggle and flirt with men, any man she came in contact with, when my father wasn't around. All the time flipping her dark auburn hair and pretending to know less English than she actually did.

Like most little girls that enjoy swimming, I would do running jumps into the pool, splash the refreshing blue water all over and swim like a little fish.

"Do you know how we taught you how to swim, munchkin?" my dad used to ask me.

"No."

His ice-blue eyes would light up, back then a sparkle shine in them. "We just threw you in, and eventually you were swimming around like a fish! You were meant for the water." He seemed rather proud of that fact.

Although the community pool at our condo was nothing to write home about, it used to be my second favorite place to play at. It wound up becoming the last place I wanted to be.

Things changed maybe the third or fourth time we came back home to our condo after a trip to the pool. Just Ingrid and me. The day had been no different than any other really. In fact, Ingrid seemed nicer than normal. It could have been because of the wine coolers I'd spotted her drinking with a neighbor. The only reason I knew what she was drinking was because I had asked for a sip.

"No _mija_ , _esto es alcohol_." She took a long swig from the glass bottle wrapped in a silvery foil with a picture of a strawberry field on it. The liquid contents looked a lot like strawberry soda to me.

"What?" I still wasn't grasping the Spanish language as quickly as she would have liked.

"It's alcohol. Not for kids." She shooed me away. "Go back into the pool and play with Alicia."

"OK."

I played with my friend Alicia the remainder of the time we were at the pool. She'd arrived ten minutes after we got there and we played with a beach ball and water frisbees near the shallow end for about forty-five minutes. I was happy that day, very happy. Ingrid hadn't spanked me in almost two days and my mom had promised me on the phone that she was going to come to see me.

"Miss you baby girl," the breathy voice on the other end of the phone had said to me the night before.

"Miss you too, Mommy. I've been a good girl. I love you."

I could hear her coughing a bit in between her saying she had been sick but was feeling better and wanted to see me. I was ecstatic. I hadn't seen my mom in almost five months. I hardly remembered her.

I had a picture of her in my bedroom atop the nightstand by my twin bed right next to my beloved Strawberry Shortcake lamp. The picture was one of my mom and me when I was just an infant— we were both fast asleep. Her on our brown eighties style couch, me nuzzled on her chest. Her wispy Farrah Fawcett styled blonde hair famed her beautiful face which was turned slightly down word toward my tiny peach fuzz covered infant head. We looked so peaceful.

I often held that picture close to my body as I wept myself to sleep at night. For my entire life my mom, the fuck up that she has been to me, has still somehow remained my would be savior. I have dreamt, begged, wished, prayed to the Lord God himself more times than I will ever know to bring my mommy back to me. To have her come to my daddy's house, scoop me up in her arms and rescue me from her. From Ingrid.

Not only because Ingrid's physical and verbal abuse that only became worse by the day —my little bottom was always sore to sit on from her constant beatings —but my crazy kid energy was almost diminished. I was always tired and anxious. I was scared of my own shadow and Ingrid was to blame, her abuse was beginning to seriously take a toll on my young self.

Ingrid was supposed to treat me like a beloved little girl, a daughter, or even a child she was babysitting at worst. But no, Ingrid had a separate agenda. One that I have never faced or even spoken about until recently. What Ingrid did to me as a little girl is simply unforgivable.

After Alicia left the pool with her mother, and Ingrid had consumed more than two or three of her "strawberry sodas", she told me it was time to go. As soon as I stepped out of the pool, she grabbed my swimsuit bottoms through my wet shorts and twisted them so that the elastic in the leg holes rose up, exposing my butt cheeks. She then spanked me on the behind several times in front of everyone who was watching.

I ducked my head in embarrassment because I knew everyone could see my bare behind and everyone could see me getting spanked. I had no idea what had changed her previous good mood. I could only fathom that I had been a bad girl again. She told me to gather my toys and my brightly colored terry cloth pool towel with the image of a smiling Barbie doll on it. We made our way back to the condo and then it happened.

"Come here Amber." Ingrid was sitting on the same brown couch my mom had been on in my beloved photo.

"OK, I'm just changing." I was peeling off the t-shirt and shorts I was now forced to wear over my bathing suits. After I had removed my shorts and top I still had my one piece swimsuit on. I was getting ready to head upstairs and change into one of my girly nighties. I had an adorable set that my father had bought me; it was bright purple and came with an identical matching gown for my doll. As I began to climb the beige colored carpeted steps upstairs, Ingrid called to me again.

"I'll be down. Just gonna change," I said, turning to look back at her.

She shot me daggers with her eyes. Her stern looks were so intimidating that I instantly felt paralyzed. I thought she had turned into some sort of wicked witch or other creature and I had no idea what she might do.

"Come here I said. Now!"

"Ok." I made my way toward the couch

Ingrid grabbed my arm and pushed me down on the couch. The brown couch's itchy fabric made my legs burn. To this day, I can feel the sting on the back of my legs when I think back. And the quickening of my pulse and the dread that washed over my entire soul.

"Sit still," she ordered me, a blackness over taking her normally brown colored eyes. They grew so dark she seemed to only have a pupil.

"I wanna comb your hair. So no tangles." There was something different in her tone. It was like a private whisper.

I obeyed, staring up at her. My tummy began to grow knots and horrible moth-like fluttery movements. I was beginning to think that something was about to go very wrong.

Her stern looks were so intimidating that I felt paralyzed. With her dark eyes, pale skin and dark dripping wet hair she seemed even more intimidating than normal.

Ingrid flopped down right next to me and put one arm around my neck. I braced myself while my heart raced and a helpless feeling came over me. I think if I'd been standing, my knees would've buckled.

Ingrid then brushed and played with my long hair for a few minutes.

"Your blonde hair is so beautiful. Beautiful hair for a beautiful girl."

I didn't respond. What was I supposed to say? _Thank you, Mommy_?

Her intense mannerism and tone had me frozen to my seat. Her words were laced with venom, sickly sweet with poison. I tensed up as she slowly began to rub my back with her hand before she eased it down to my bathing suit bottoms between my legs.

"Do you like that?" she purred in my ear. I could feel her breath hot near the back of my neck. "Does it feel good?"

I sat, stiff, scared, and confused, feeling as though I would throw up. Tears were docked and brimming in my eyes, but I was too scared to move. I tried to squirm away but she bit my arm.

"Stop moving! I'm trying to make you feel good."

She stopped for a second, grabbed my face roughly and said, "Or I could get the belt and spank you instead. Is that what you want?"

I swallowed hard so I wouldn't throw up, but I could feel the sting in the back of my throat. I didn't know what to say or what to do.

After she'd finished, she pushed me off the couch roughly. "Go take a shower you dirty girl."

I fell on my side. My hands flew to my head as I flinched. I thought she was going to hit me.

"And if you say anything to your daddy about this" she snarled, "I will beat you so bad, you won't walk for days. Your daddy wouldn't believe you anyways, since you're such a bad girl. Don't say things to make him unhappy. I might leave him. Then he will hate you. _Or_ we might just get rid of you instead. Then you'll never see your daddy again." She laughed.

How could this be happening to me? I'd trusted Ingrid to come into my world, love me and take care of me. I instinctively knew what she was doing was very wrong, and I was sickened by it. But she was the adult, and who was I to question what she did? I certainly didn't want the belt again.

One of the first things I learned about Ingrid is that she insisted on being right and I was not to question what she said. I know, now, that it was important to Ingrid to be able to intimidate and have full control and power over my emotions. I don't know why she did what she did, but I do know that she enjoyed, and maybe even needed that level of control over me.

This horrible scene was repeated many times during the summer and fall before Ingrid gave birth to my brother, but she didn't do it every time we went to the pool. I never knew when it would happen. I braced myself. Ingrid was in control. _She_ was the one who decided how I would be treated.

I never did tell my dad. I didn't know how to tell him.

## "Courage isn't having the strength to go on—it is going on when you don't have the strength."

## Napoleon Bonaparte

6: THE DARKNESS

Misery slowly began wrapping itself around me like a soft and tattered blanket. It became the feeling, emotion, and constant for the rest of my childhood.

Stories of my mom wanting to abort me replaced the songs on the radio I used to play and dance to. Spankings, hair pulling, and the unspeakable became my normal. My once brightly painted world full of magical flying ponies and bears with hearts on their tummies was blacked out by the evil that Ingrid was and brought into my young life.

I was afraid of what Ingrid would do to me if I told my father about what was happening. Plus I felt so dirty. Maybe she was right. I was a bad girl and telling my dad would only make him hate me. I was ashamed.

I can't to this day fathom how oblivious to it all my dad was back then. It's as though he had some filtered eyeglasses on that couldn't see the evil around him. My once happy persona was quieted by the invisible lock and chains of Ingrid's constant threats.

It was during this time that I started spending a little time with my mom. After her phone call, she came to see me, I was so overjoyed by her presence that I didn't mention what Ingrid had done to me. I had no idea how to even begin to understand it. I just knew that it was very wrong, and pretended it was a nightmare.

From the very first time Ingrid met my mom, she hated her.

"You want me to get the fake breasts like Mattice, Martin? Will I be better then?" she screamed at my dad one time after mom had stopped by to see me.

"What, Ingrid?"

"I saw you staring at that whore. You still love her? You miss her? Huh?"

"Of course not baby. What's the matter?"

My dad looked seriously confused.

"You gave her a hug and a kiss. I think you grabbed her ass too."

"What? I gave her a hug and kiss goodbye. She's the mother of my daughter. We have a parent relationship. That's all Ingrid."

She hated that my dad had once loved my mom very much and had been married to her and that they shared me as a child. Ingrid wanted me to hate my mom as well, and would eventually force me to shun my mother away against my will, but I loved her dearly.

I suspect that my dad wanted to please Ingrid, and she probably insisted that they have time alone without me. My dad would drop me off at my mom's house, a tiny little cottage with only one bedroom that was built in the back of someone else's very large house. It must have been a guest house. It was small, but cozy. Back then my mom actually kept the small place tidy and we did have food.

Mom would make me smooshed bologna and cheese sandwiches (we literally took two pieces of White Iron bread, a piece of cheese, a slice of bologna, and smooshed it all together until the bread was no longer fluffy, but thin and completely stuck together) and _lots_ of cereal.

There was a tiny playground area near the cottage which housed a yellow peeling slide, a teeter totter, and, my favorite, a very old rusted merry-go-round. There was something different about my once very skinny mother. I realized that Mom was pregnant.

The first time I realized the resemblance between her stomach and Ingrid's was a few weeks after I had been dropped off at her cottage for a short while. She was changing shirts and I saw her growing belly.

I ran over to her and touched her protruding stomach and said " _Beb_ é, _"_ just the way Ingrid had taught me.

"It's 'baby', Amber. I'm having a baby. Not a Mexican bebé." My mother shook her blonde curly hair in disgust, covering her stomach with a fuzzy heather grey sweater that said "Columbus" on it. Mom told me not to speak that "hideously disgusting language" in front of her. My poor young mind was already desperately trying to grasp the language at home and was further confused by my mother's lack of support. I fled the small bedroom that we shared and ran out to the rickety rusting merry-go-round and wept until it was dark.

I seemed to be at odds with everyone in my life. My daddy was beginning to spend less time with me and more time with Ingrid in anticipation of my brother being born.

During the spring I started attending kindergarten. I was only four, but back then it was not an issue. Nowadays kids have to be at least five years old or they have to wait till the next year to start.

The closer my mother and Ingrid were to giving birth, the more neglected I was. I became an afterthought, a nuisance, something "to deal with". Even my mom began rejecting me.

"Can't I sleep with you tonight, Mommy?" I asked as I climbed onto her bed in the tiny bedroom.

"Bam bam, Mommy's tired, and pregnant. Go be a good girl and get Mommy some iced tea then go watch TV on the couch."

The plus side to the final stages of Ingrid's pregnancy was that she was put on bed rest for a few weeks.

My dad still had me living back and forth from his house to my mom's. The closer my mom gave to giving birth to my sister Larissa, the lazier she became, and the shorter her patience and interest grew with me. Gone were our late night bologna and smooshed cheese sandwiches, gone was the tidy house. Instead I was forced to play alone outside, watch TV and stay out of Mom's way.

The house was no longer organized; it seemed cluttered and didn't smell good anymore. I remember it used to smell so clean—like Pinesol and Downy; now it smelled like spoiled milk, mildew, and wet clothes left in the washer for too long. The dishes were always piled in the sink in our tiny kitchen and cockroaches roamed the bathrooms and kitchen cupboards. It was disgusting.

The food in our cottage became scarcer as Mom never wanted to get out of bed for anything, let alone grocery shopping. I don't think my mom really ever cooked; she never did anything more than heating up canned soup. I mostly ate cereal or peanut butter sandwiches that I now had to prepare for myself.

My mom wasn't trying to withhold food from me, she just wasn't Susie Homemaker. It was at this time that Mom began screaming a lot, for no reason and at no one really. She would fall asleep for hours, so deeply asleep that I couldn't wake her if I tried, then when she finally awoke on her own she would whine and cry.

"Amber." Loud sobbing. "Amber, come here, peanut." Her voice was strained and sounded pained.

"What the matter, Mommy?" I peeked around the bedroom door.

"Owie, I hate my life. I'm thirsty." She sat up, hair wild, eyes unfocused, still half closed, her arms out in front of her as if she were feeling for something.

"Water. I'm thirsty. Help your mommy, bam bam. Please." And she went back into her crying fit as if she were being beaten.

I rushed to the dirty kitchen, found a clean looking cup, filled it with the last of the ice tea and ran it to her.

"Here, Mommy, here"

She grabbed it, drinking it down, fast, as if it were the last thing she would ever drink.

"It's OK, Mommy. I love you." My voice was uncertain. Was my mom OK?

"Mhhmm." She muttered some indistinguishable words and then was fast asleep again.

I tiptoed to the side of her bed and pulled the sheet over her.

"I love you, Mommy," I repeated, kissing her hand that was hanging off the side of the bed. Then I shut the door.

When I stayed over, I no longer snuggled in the bed with her, but slept on the itchy blue love sofa in the living room near the front door and window. I was now completely alone in a world full of people who I wanted nothing but love from and who seemed unwilling and incapable of giving it. I have hundreds of memories of lying alone in the darkness. Either in my twin bed at Daddy's house, crying myself to sleep, sliding as far under the covers as I could in fear of Ingrid dragging me out of bed or at Mom's, counting the shadows on the wall, willing her to snap out of her misery and come snuggle with me.

My mom seemed to be in her own world, as though I wasn't there at all, even when I stood right in front of her. Her eyes and her heart looked beyond me to something else.

"Mommy, you scared me yesterday. I thought you were sick."

She was watching TV.

"Uh huh."

"Mommy, did you hear me?" I pulled on the bottom of her shirt trying to get her attention.

"What is it? What do you want?" She was looking at me but I felt invisible.

I frowned. "Never mind."

I couldn't understand how I could be standing there and my mom couldn't see me.

## "No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to preserve to the end their nature and education."

## Plato

7: MY NEW BROTHER

Dad and Ingrid were both so consumed with the prospect of having a new child that they completely forgot my fourth birthday.

"Daddy, when's my birthday?" I asked during Thanksgiving.

"December 6, munchkin. You're going to be four years old."

He smiled, still able to see me for his little girl then. That night I went into my secret room in the kitchen. It was a room originally made to house a large trashcan and maybe a broom and such, but Daddy had turned it into a playroom just for me. It happened to be below the stairs so the ceiling of the small room formed a triangle shape and was shorter in some spots.

Within that room I had lots of toys, a tiny desk and chair, and a bright lamp. It was by far my favorite play place. I would pretend I was in another world, full of fairies and elves, and of course my flying ponies.

After Thanksgiving dinner, Ingrid was upstairs lying in bed. I snuck into my play house, pulled down my calendar that Daddy had tacked on one of the walls for me and found the square that read _Thanksgiving_. I crossed it off and then began counting down the days to my birthday.

It came and went. The day before my birthday Daddy had to work, and I was stuck at home waiting hand and foot on Ingrid who was on bed rest.

"Get me water, go get me saltines, go get me some ice. Turn up the TV, turn off the TV, go to your room, go to the corner."

That was my day with her. By the time Daddy came home from work, he was tired and irritable.

"Daddy!" I screamed and jumped to him as I usually did when he walked through the sliding door.

"Not today, kiddo. Daddy's tired." He pushed me away, not violently, just in a sort of shooing manner.

"How's Ingrid? Have you been helpful?" He put his keys, wallet and sunglasses down on the yellow linoleum counter, reaching for a Mountain Dew from the fridge.

I stood on my tippy toes looking over at him from the other side of the counter where the two bar stools sat. My feelings were hurt.

"Tomorrow's my birthday," I whispered.

I watched him take a long sip, wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and then set the can down.

"What's that?" He looked so tired, his usual bright blue eyes were dull and they looked grey now.

"Tomorrow's my birthday." I repeated a little bit louder growing antsy and climbing on one of the stools.

"Oh." He looked at me as if he'd just realized I was there. "We'll do something, kiddo. Even if it's not tomorrow, maybe we can celebrate this weekend?"

His eyes were pleading with me to just say "OK". He looked tired; he wasn't standing straight, but was slumped over a bit. He seemed thinner too, his tight black jeans now loose. What had happened to my daddy?

I never got that birthday party. Instead time seemed to stand still. My life remained a constant; I was still going back and forth between my mom's and dad's, but nothing good ever happened.

Then a few weeks later in December, right before the Christmas holidays, I got home from my mom's house to find out that Ingrid had given birth to my brother. She'd had a difficult labor because Jayson was born at only five and a half months old, a tiny preemie with many medical problems present at birth and some he would develop later in life. He developed problems with his eyesight and the way he walked he was incredibly bowlegged, which the doctors tried to fix with knee braces.

I stayed with my dad at the house and then was babysat by an older neighbor girl who lived in a condo near us when he had to leave to go visit Ingrid and the baby. The hospital deemed me too young to be hanging around as my brother was in the NICU and they didn't want me accidently getting the babies sick. I was told that he was tiny and that he had to stay in the hospital until his lungs were developed enough to breathe on his own and he was stable enough for him to leave.

My babysitter, Stacey, was in high school. She had blunt bangs, brunette hair and wore thick glasses. She wasn't very nice to me either, often calling me a spoiled brat and a slob, but she usually left me alone to play upstairs while she sat on the brown couch and watched VHS tapes and ate whatever food was in our lime green colored square fridge. She was Alicia's mother's niece so my daddy trusted her around me.

Stacey wore an obnoxious overwhelming scented perfume —White Diamonds it may have been—that would linger all over the couch and in the kitchen even after she was gone.

I had grown very distrusting of people, especially strangers, and hid in my room or under the stairs whenever possible. I flinched if anyone touched me and refused to take a bath or go swimming. I couldn't even stand for my hair to be brushed.

"You're such a little weird one. Why won't you just let me brush your hair?"

My babysitter sat on the brown couch with my pink hairbrush in her hand. Daddy and Ingrid were on their way home from the hospital with the new baby and she wanted to brush the knots from my hair.

"No!" I screamed and locked myself in my room until my dad eventually knocked down the door shaking my small shoulders

"What is _wrong_ with you, munchkin? You _will not_ behave this way. You are about to get your first spanking." With that he flipped me over and swatted me hard, three times. I wet myself, crying out hysterically and hiding behind one of my long Strawberry Shortcake curtains by my window.

"It's your brand new baby brother's first day home and you act like _this_?"

I peered at him from my hiding place. I could see him shaking his head in disgust.

"You know, maybe Ingrid's right. You're a little bitch like your mother." I was stunned, hot tears streaming down my already tear stained face. My bottom hurt from being spanked because it was still welted from one of Ingrid's spankings.

I crawled further into the corner of the wall underneath the window sill amongst the curtains, put my thumb in my mouth and fell asleep.

My dad took a short leave of absence from work and stayed home to help Ingrid with the baby since she was now suffering from post-partum depression. Like my mother all Ingrid wanted to do was sleep and sleep meant not breastfeeding the baby, changing, him or being anywhere near him.

The first time I actually saw him was the day after my spanking. My dad was in the living room with a white bundle in his arms. Ingrid was nowhere in sight.

I climbed down the stairs slowly, counting each step that I took; _one, two, three, four, five._ Holding the railing cautiously until I reached the bottom, I stood with uncertainty until Daddy looked up from the couch and beckoned me over.

"It's OK, Amber. Come and meet your new brother."

I sat on the couch very carefully next to my dad and peeked at the tiny baby in his arms. He was so small; he was hardly any bigger than my baby dolls and had a ton of dark hair.

I touched his little arm, then his hand that was carefully mitted with baby gloves to protect him from scratches.

"He's small."

I was never allowed to hold him until he grew a little bit bigger, then they allowed me to sit on the couch and feed him a bottle. I used to feel so proud feeding him; I was his big sister and I loved him so much. When I wasn't around him, I was told to stay very quiet so I wouldn't wake the baby. I sat in a corner of the living room or my bedroom and played with Lego by myself for hours.

I longed for my daddy to play with me, I desperately missed our Sunday trips to Encanto park, but he was simply too busy. He was back working at Keyboard City, but also was in the process of running his own computer consultation business. Between work and caring for Jayson, Ingrid barked one order after another to him. When he wasn't fetching things for Ingrid, doing laundry, or cleaning the house, he was holding the baby so Ingrid could sleep. Somehow, in my young heart, I sensed that what was happening was not a good thing. I could see that my daddy was tired. He didn't joke and laugh as much as he used to. Of course, my dad didn't want to break up yet another family. I can't say that I completely blame him either.

After a few weeks, my dad went back to his computer business and Ingrid started coming out of her bedroom more frequently. Sometimes she seemed sweet and motherly, holding my baby brother and saying sweet things to him. Even though she talked to him in Spanish, I could tell by her voice that she was being sweet. Other times, she came out of the room a disheveled mess and yelled at my dad and me, even though I had no idea what she was yelling about. Sometimes, she muttered in Spanish, shooting me dirty looks if I chanced a look her way.

I still didn't know what she said, but her cold, dark eyes let me know it was best to back away and find another path to where I was going. At that point, I didn't really know where I stood with Ingrid. I didn't know if she loved me or hated me, wanted to take care of me or despised me being there. I didn't know if I should believe her when she said I was a good girl, or believe her when she said I was bad.

I started kindergarten in the spring of 1992 when I was four. School became a thing I looked forward to on a daily basis; no one hurt me there. My teachers were so kind and giving that I would make up stories in my head and pretend that they were actually my family, and the one I had at home had kidnapped me.

Since Ingrid had married daddy he no longer took me shopping for new clothes and neither did she. I began kindergarten with clothes that were too small and with a haircut that Ingrid had given me herself. I looked ridiculous. I was forced to wear long sleeves and shirts even in the heat to conceal any bruises I donned. The school didn't notice my disheveled unkempt appearance as anything more than showing a child who liked to play on the playground and get dirty.

By the time first grade came around, we had moved out of the condo that I had grown up in and into a bigger house in a lower middle class neighborhood of Phoenix Arizona. The house we moved into was an older brick home, with a yellow wallpapered kitchen, a large living room, three bedrooms, and one and a half bathrooms. Even though we had enough rooms for me to have my own, I was forced to share the room across from Dad and Ingrid's with Jayson. Ingrid wanted the spare room for her sewing materials and that was that.

Jayson, who was three at the time, was a terror in the worst way. It was though he knew somehow that his mother hated me and would do "bad" things that would get me into further trouble. He would spill his cereal on the floor on purpose and then point at me, screaming as if I had done it. He liked to pull my hair, spit on me and even kick me.

Of course, he was only a toddler, and couldn't have possibly known better, but I suffered for every accident he had, every toy he broke and every time he upset her.

"You stupid evil girl" Ingrid growled pulling me up by the hair as I was on my hands and knees near his high chair cleaning up the spilled cereal and milk.

"Ouch, I didn't—" I started to defend myself.

Then she slapped my face, hard and let go of my hair.

"I hope that will make you think twice before messing with your innocent little brother's food. _Migrosa_!"

It was all my fault. If he didn't fall asleep on time, it was my fault, if he didn't eat his dinner, my fault, if he made a mess that too was my fault and therefore my punishment. Day after day Ingrid spanked me and her spankings grew worse and more creative. One day she would spank me with a shoe, the next day it was a hard cover book, the next a belt.

Every day I hoped that things would go back to normal, the normal I knew before Ingrid came into the picture, but my life would never again be normal. Ingrid had turned to be as sweet as the evil stepmother was in any fairy tale. She'd shown her wickedness shortly after marrying my daddy, just like the fairy tale stepmothers.

Only for me this was not a fairy tale. It was real life and the prince I hoped would rescue me would turn out to be another monster. One that lured you in with fake promises and false pretenses. But that would come later.

## "Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily."

## Napoleon Bonaparte

# 8: HUNGRY AND ANGRY

August 1994

By the time I was in second grade, I had become aware that my life was different from the other kids' lives. I knew the way I was treated at home affected how I was viewed and treated by the other kids at school. Even though they didn't understand _what_ was different at my house, they could see the results of what was different, for I wore them every day. It brought me no less shame than the big red scarlet _A_ must have brought Hester Prynne in _The Scarlet Letter_.

When I was a child, and now, children are expected to look and be "normal" at school, even when they are not treated normally at home. A wounded, weary child who has been kept awake all night due to dysfunction in their home is expected to perform the same on a test as a well-rested child who is well taken care of. If the weary child doesn't perform just as well, they are further wearied with the shame and ridicule of poor performance. Trying to achieve normalcy, when nothing in their world is normal, is a huge burden for neglected and abused children to bear.

I didn't show up on Monday mornings with freshly washed, shiny hair, rosy cheeks gifted by adequate sunshine and nutrition, and wearing weather and age appropriate clean clothes. I didn't wear a smile that stemmed from happy family times over the weekend. When I walked into the classroom, best friends who missed me over the weekend didn't greet me. I didn't have anything new to show or tell to strike a chord of jealousy in classmates.

My life was different. I went to school reeking of onions. The stench of onions wafted from the pores of my skin and my mouth to the kids that sat or stood close to me. The kids did what kids naturally do. They noticed. They took advantage of what was different about me and used it as the perfect opportunity for making fun of me.

If you're thinking that most kids don't like the strong taste and smell of onions, you're right. If you're wondering why in the world I would eat enough onions to smell like one, it's because I had no choice. Most kids, in a normal home, would have a choice of whether they would eat pungent onions or not. I didn't live in a normal home, and I didn't have a choice. Ingrid made all of my choices for me, and she decided, for some unknown reason, that I would be forced to eat onions as a punishment. It wasn't that I was forced to eat a few minced onions in food that she served to me. She forced me to eat an entire raw onion at any random time that she chose. She often chose for me to eat the onion before leaving for school in the morning.

I've tried to figure out why a grown woman would get pleasure out of watching a little girl chew bite after bite of onion, gagging and crying, and pleading for mercy. In the same way that I can't even imagine beating a child, I can't imagine having the stomach to torture a child by making them eat a whole onion. Yet this and so many other hideous demands seemed to bring a great sense of satisfaction to Ingrid. She smiled and laughed with sick pleasure the entire time she watched me chew and gag on the onion.

The first time she did this to me was on a Monday morning after a long weekend of chores and spankings. It must have been about four-thirty in the morning when she woke me up, since I could see darkness outside through the bedroom window.

"Get up. Now."

A loud whisper awoke me from a deep slumber. I sat straight up, my stomach immediately turning in fear as I saw her dark eyes glimmering in the street light shining in from outside.

"What?"

I rubbed my eyes quickly. Then put my arms around my body protectively. Was I having a nightmare?

"Get up girl. Time to get up."

She pulled the thin comforter off my legs till it was on the bottom of my twin sized bed. My pulse quickened and I could feel my heart pounding in my throat. I hated not knowing what to expect next. I felt helpless. I scooted to the edge of my mattress and pushed my feet off. I stood uncertainly by my bed for further instruction.

Jayson, whose bed was about five feet away from mine was sleeping soundly, I could see his sleeping form breathing, in and out.

"Don't wake him up," she warned in a hissed whisper, her finger dangerously close to my nose.

"OK," I said quietly.

" _Vente con migo_."

I followed her out of the dark room, longing to be back in bed, asleep. Sleeping was now my favorite thing since it was the only time I had away from the reality of my life.

"I have a something for you. Sit."

She led me into the dark kitchen, flipped on the light switch near the stove and pointed at one of the wooden chairs at the kitchen table. My eyes winced as the bright fluorescent light illuminated the yellow colored kitchen. I walked numbly over to the dining area and took a seat. The wooden chair felt cold against my skin through my nightgown.

"Is everything OK?" I ventured asking.

" _C_ _állate_! Didn't I tell you to be quiet? You want to wake up the whole house?"

God, please let this be a bad dream. I let out a low whimper. I could hear her first rustling in the fridge, pushing the fruit drawer in and then chopping. I looked at her towards the kitchen counter to see what she was doing, but her back was to me. She was wearing a bright magenta colored robe and a pair of my dad's fluffy grey slippers, and her hair hung long and coarse down her back. Pieces of it twisted out in unruly tangles. She turned around and made her way towards me, a curious look on her face. She didn't look angry, she almost seemed excited, bright eyed and fully awake.

"Here you go. Just for you." She set down a small blue and white plate with a bright red onion on it in thick slices. The smell hit my eyes and nose before I could even respond. I coughed, chocking on the pungent onion smell. My eyes watered from the freshly cut skin. She had to be joking. My stomach churned loudly in anticipation.

"Eat it. All. You have twenty minutes. Every bite better be gone by then. Or else."

A glimmer of anger flickered in her eyes as she pulled out the chair in front of me and sat down.

"Well, what are you waiting for?"

I reached out shakily for the smallest slice I could see. I brought it slowly to my mouth as my eyes went to the Coca Cola clock on the wall. It was 4:47; I had twenty minutes to eat the whole plate. I held my breath as the cold offensive vegetable touched my lips. I opened my mouth slightly and took a bite.

"Uh! Please no, Mommy, I can't eat it. It's too strong. Please."

I pleaded with her, begging God with all my might to change her mind. _I will do anything, please God_.

"Eat it," she repeated in a much deeper, direct tone. She wasn't playing around. Her mind was made up and that was that. Salty tears ran from my eyes into the corners of my mouth, I gagged as I forced the small piece down my throat. I swallowed really hard trying to get as much air in as well, thinking that would help lessen the flavor and sting.

"You're wasting time." Her eyes flicked up to the ticking clock. "Fifteen minutes." She tapped her skinny long fingernails on top of the clear plastic wrapped table top.

Bite number two wasn't any better than number one, but since my mouth was already burning it was less shocking to my taste buds. Once again I held my breath and gulped in as much air as I could at the same time.

"See, it's good, right? Why you tell your teachers I don't feed you? Eh?" She smiled and made a gesture with her hand in front of the plate. "A special meal just for you. Maybe you can start having special meals every day?" Ingrid raised a skinny overly plucked eyebrow and cocked her head to the side in an exaggerated manner.

"I didn't tell—" I started.

"Shut up! Eat!"

She slammed her palm down hard on the table making a loud slapping sound once it made contact.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I started shaking, crying hysterically. I was so tired. I hated onions. I began shoving full slices into my mouth, willing myself to swallow it with as little chewing into the bitterness as possible. I gagged once more feeling the bile from my stomach come up dangerously close to my mouth. I swallowed even harder knowing better than to vomit. I coughed letting out a cry. Snot was coming pouring down my nose as well as tears now. I wiped it with the back of my head, grimacing as the smell from my fingers wafted into my nose even closer.

_Why?_ My mouth formed the word silently as I stuffed another piece into my burning mouth. I had four minutes and a little less than half of the onion left.

"Guess I will go pick out the belt. I gave you plenty of time." Ingrid moved as if to get up.

"No Mommy. I'm sorry. I'm almost done, see." I shoved two big slices in my mouth chewing as fast as I could, shoving more in my mouth as I got it down my throat. She paused as I managed to get the last piece in.

"I'm done," I said, my mouth full of the pungent food, my heart racing as my time came up. "See." I stuck my tongue out to show her it was all gone. I had managed to eat the entire onion.

"Good." A satisfied smile appeared on her face. "Good. Now give Mommy a hug and say thank you."

I stood up so fast my hip bone hit the underneath part of the table and caused me to cry out. She got up and made her way towards me, reaching out for a hug and then pulled back.

"You stink! Get away from me. _Aye_!" She laughed as she picked up the empty plate. "Go get ready for school."

That day at least five different kids told me I smelled like a nasty old man.

"You smell like my grandpa!" Seth joked in class during reading time. "Do you eat liver and onions too?"

The rest of the class joined him in his giggles.

"Gross!" I pushed myself as far away from the reading group circle on the floor as possible and wept in my book.

I was confused about why an adult would want to hurt me so much. I never heard of anyone from school going through what I had to go through on a daily basis. No one. Of course, I was not a perfect child. Any chance I got I stole food from the house when she wasn't looking. Doritos, peaches, cereal—anything I could get my hands on without her seeing I would hide quickly under my clothes, run to the bathroom and scarf down as quickly as possible, only allowing myself a few seconds to savor the yummy flavor. I knew if I ever got caught I would surely be spanked and punished, but I was a hungry kid. Other times, I would get myself in trouble at school on purpose—forget to turn in homework I did the night before, disrupt the class—anything to get after school detention just to prolong going home for a bit longer.

On weekends sometimes it was yard work. It could be 110 degrees outside and I would be forced to clean for hours on end, with only hose water to drink.

"I want you to sweep all the leaves." Ingrid would point to both sides of the house, and get all the dirt off the sidewalk. "Then get all the dead leaves and weeds out of the garden."

"But it's so hot. Can I please just do the leaves?" I hated working in the garden as there were always earthworms amongst the decaying leaves and mulch. As soon as the request came out of my mouth I regretted it.

"Are you talking back to me?" She came towards me and wrapped her fingers around my hair pulling my face inches away from hers. "Do you dare talk back to me?" She yanked my hair down my back till my head was straining down towards my shoulder.

"Ow. No! I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I bit my bottom lip, edging my shoulders forward as I closed my eyes, waiting for her to hit me. She gave my hair a final yank and shoved me into the wall near the front door. My bony back made contact with the brick wall roughly, nearly knocking the wind out of me. I stared down at my feet until I knew she'd walked away.

Sometimes, when I felt I could bear no more of Ingrid's constant demands, I spoke rudely to her.

"You're not my mom!"

Or

"The school is going to take me away from here and you will never hurt me again."

I was brave, but stupid. Quickly learning that I'd be getting my mouth washed out with, not soap, but Tapatio salsa. Then I'd be spanked for a good ten minutes. When I was punished for that kind of behavior, I knew I deserved it. I knew I deserved it.

"He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad."  
Voltaire

# 9: INUMANITY & FOOD

Ingrid's treatment of me had a profound effect and warped my understanding of people and their motives. It warped my understanding of how people interact with one another and how relationships are supposed to work. I never had an example of a healthy relationship.

It took me many years to unlearn the lessons that Ingrid worked so hard to engrain within me, and I paid a very high price for not doing so earlier in life. After I was able to leave the confines of my father and Ingrid's home, and even before then, I was so eager for love that I found it in all the wrong places. It has taken me a lot of years, and a lot of therapy, to understand that I deserve a healthy unconditional love and shouldn't have to sacrifice my morals or standards to receive it. I now know the meaning of true love, of healthy love. When I was a child, I had no idea. I was brought up to believe that I was a bad girl and therefore undeserving of love. I was taught that no one was to be trusted and happiness was something only meant for people in fantasy books. The people in my life who I had once thought loved me, my mother and father, had abused and abandoned me. Every person had let me down including my stepmother, my best friend's father, and the adults at school who failed to help me.

When a child trusts an adult and the adult turns out to be untrustworthy, the child passes from a carefree world into a darker world where they are more cautious, insecure, and afraid. It's quite normal to live in constant fear when someone hurts you. After being suddenly thrust into a world where they become aware that all people that they should be able to trust to treat them with kindness and love can't be trusted, they experience anger and frustration. Often, they blame themselves, wondering what they did that caused the adult to turn against them.

I was no different. Countless hours were spent wondering and trying to figure out what Ingrid held against me and why she chose me to hate. Night after night, I lay in the dark praying to God for answers, trying to make sense of my life.

_I will be a good girl God, I promise. Please let my mommy get better and come get me._ I would cry myself to sleep until I couldn't distinguish my racing thoughts with my dreams. Sometimes, I would have a wonderful dream in which my mother rescue med, dreams of laughing with her and my little sister. Dreams of food, new clothes and hugs from my daddy. My wonderful dreams were always abruptly disrupted by my stepmother ripping the sheets off of my sleeping form, yelling at me to wake up.

"What d'you think you are? Some sleeping beauty queen?" She pulled me up roughly by my hair. Startled, I cried out in confusion and terror.

"I'm sorry." My hands flew to my face protectively, waiting for a slap to the face or a blow to the side of my head.

"Get up _mi grosa_! It's the weekend, you have lots of chores!" She stepped away from my bed walking out the door but pausing first, "Of course you have your special breakfast first," she said as a wicked grin appeared on her face along with a familiar glint in her dark eyes.

Onions, again.

As Ingrid had such hatred for me, there must be something very bad about me. If there was something bad about me, who would ever love me? I hadn't seen my mom except for maybe twice a year since she'd had my sister, so I knew she didn't love me. And I saw nothing but shame and embarrassment when my father now looked at me. I was a lost cause.

"Why can't you just keep the peace? You're making my life a living hell," was my dad's response every time he was told that I'd been a bad girl, which was more than every other day. "And take a shower will you, you stink."

He didn't know that I begged to shower, begged not to have to eat onions or wear dirty clothes. I couldn't believe that my daddy, once my best friend, my hero, was disgusted by me. _I made his life hell?_ I was truly a lost child who was beyond broken inside. If I would have known what suicide was back then, I surely would have attempted it much sooner.

When I was in third grade, Ingrid came up with new food punishments to add to those that she already implemented to me on a daily basis. One of her favorite things to prepare for me was a Mexican dish called _menudo._ Not only did it taste awful, but I couldn't eat it without gagging, for the texture of the meat was absolutely disgusting. As it turns out, that the mysterious meat was cow intestine or sometimes cow tongue, sometimes raw, sometimes cooked. The cow stomach/tripe was gritty, rubbery and extremely difficult to chew and keep down. The reddish orange broth and corn kernels or hominy wasn't so bad, but after Ingrid had added her favorite dose of raw red onions, it was a nightmare to experience.

The countless times Ingrid served it to me, she would smirk and remind me that it was cow stomach and she had made it _especial_ , just for me. I quickly learned that protesting, crying, or even refusing was fruitless.

"Please, no more Mommy. I'm full." I smiled at her one night after eating a large bowl of menudo. I was trying to look happy, like I enjoyed it and was simply full. If she knew I hated something, she would only use it against me.

"No, I think you need more food." She grabbed my bowl and walked back over to the black crockpot full of the soup. I watched in dismay as she refilled it to the brim, praying that there was more hominy in it than the rubbery meat. "There." She set it down in front of me and looked at me expectantly. She cleared her throat.

"Thank you, Mommy," I said quietly, my stomach gurgling loudly as I stared at the over-filled ceramic bowl of the fatty intestinal meat. It was glowing orange. The smell wasn't as offensive as the texture of the _tripas_ was. _Why did she love to make me miserable?_ I could feel tears forming in my eyes. I sat there that night full of dread, and scared to my core, prayers to God filling my mind as though they would be useful weapons against this woman who held the fate of my happiness in her hands. My salty tears no longer at bay, dropped loudly into the greasy, orange soup as my stomach filled with sour acid from the stress of having to eat a second bowl. The thought of eating this food was so terrible that I shook. I held my breath and simply swallowed the meat, the hominy, as fast as I could. I took a huge gulp of air for every huge gulp of the sickening soup I was forced to consume. All the while, Ingrid sat across from me, tapping her red acrylic nails on the plastic that was still wrapped around the old table. As if plastic could keep a lifetime of bad food, blood, tears and sweat from being absorbed into the wood. I wished at that moment that my mouth could have a plastic cover as well somehow, to protect my taste buds from this dank meal. I managed to get it all down, in record time—or so I thought.

"Amber, you make me so angry. I make you good food and you take your sweet time eating it. Like some fucking _princessa_. Well, you like it so much? Let me give you more. Here. Eat." She took the bowl I had somehow managed to consume, and refilled it. " _Apurate._ Hurry up."

So I did, only this time after I finished the last bite, I threw it all up. Every bit I had eaten. This angered her to the nth degree. That night was not only the first night I was forced to eat _menudo_ , but also the first time I was forced to eat my own vomit. If she wasn't feeding me some fucked up concoction she'd created, she starved me.

## "No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed."

## Sigmund Freud

# 10: TWO NEW BROTHERS

During the summer after third grade, Ingrid gave birth to my second brother, Christian. Only fourteen months later, she had my youngest brother, Ryan. She popped those two out so closely together that for a while people thought they were twins.

Unlike during her first pregnancy with Jayson, I was not allowed to stay at my mom's for any long period of time. In fact, I hardly ever saw her. So she wasn't there to help end the abuse either. And if I was granted a rare moment in time with her, it was never alone, and Ingrid made life for me seem wonderful to her. In fact, so much so that she would force me to tell my mom that I was better off without her, that I didn't love her as much as my new "mommy" and I didn't want to live with her.

My little sister Larissa was around four at this time and I hardly knew her. All I knew was that I was jealous of her because she was able to live with our mom who I believed to be the best person out there, and I was trapped in this hell hole of a home.

Sometime during third and fourth grade, my mom and Larissa began moving all over the place, everywhere from Texas, Sacramento, and even North Carolina. Mom later told me that she'd been trying to escape the bad friends and the drugs out here in Arizona, but she kept coming back and falling into her old ways.

I loved my mom so much, despite what I was being manipulated into telling her over the phone, that even when I knew she was in another state, I would run away from home every single chance I got to look for her. I was nine years old the first time I ran away.

It was during the summer. I was doing yard work in a light pink nightgown in the backyard. Dad was working. Those days he seemed to stay as far away from home and Ingrid as possible, because she was even crazier than ever with two kids under three and Jayson. She had her hands full, yet seemed to only come out of her room to beat me or assign me some new never ending chore around the house or outside. During the summer it always came down to yard work. Yard work from the moment I woke up to her breakfast of boiled beans and onions, or spaghettios and onions, till dinner time when I had the same, or the dreaded menudo. I could consistently count on laborious yard work. The only relief I ever received from the sweltering 110 degree Arizona weather, was when she would send Jayson to tell me to feed or change Christian and Ryan.

Because of how often I did care for them, when he was two and three years of age, Ryan would sometimes call me "mommy". It was so sad and sweet at the same time. He was the only one who would ever share his food with me, or comfort me after a beating. I remember moments we shared where he comforted me after while I was hurt.

One Saturday afternoon, when my dad was out working and there were no chores to be done, Ingrid sent me outside.

"Here take these bags." She handed me two plastic grocery bags that she had filled with cans.

I took them from her and made my way towards the pantry, misunderstanding where she was pointing.

"No, stupid girl." She pointed to the back door. "Go outside and kneel in the rocks with these held right by your head. One in each arm, like this." And she demonstrated holding the bags at ear level. "Don't think I forgot about the punishment you didn't finish yesterday for breaking one of my favorite dishes. I know you did it on purpose to hurt me. _Andale!_ Go."

That day I kneeled in the blistering heat for over three hours. At the end of the first forty-five minutes I was crying out in pain. My face was sunburnt, my arms weakened already from hunger were sore, and I was no longer able to hold up the bags. I kept lifting my knees up one at a time in an attempt at some relief from the sharp rock bed underneath me. The edges of the rocks had dug into my flesh so deeply that it looked as though I had little jagged holes in them both. My back was facing the back door, so I wasn't able to see if she was watching me through the windows or if she was preoccupied with my brothers. I heard the back door open and flinched, lifting the bags back up with all my might, expecting her to hit me for allowing them to lower.

"Ella, Ella."

I turned as relief washed over me.

"Hi, Ryan," I said, to my youngest brother, embarrassed for him to see me this way.

"Here Ella, want some?"

He had a bottle of red Gatorade in his mouth that he had been drinking and pushed the open bottle to my lips. I allowed myself to take a large gulp of the icy drink. It felt amazing as it flowed down the back of my severely parched throat.

"Thank you," I whispered, giving him a small smile.

"Love you Ella." He walked forward and gave me a tiny kiss on my tear stained cheek.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten to mention that when I was in fourth grade Ingrid had decided that she was repulsed by my name, Amber. She decided, with my father's backing, that everyone was going to call me by the Mexican version of my middle name Danielle, Daniella. She had everyone, even my own mother believing that I hated the name Amber and preferred Daniella. She couldn't have been more wrong. She simply wanted to strip me of everything that made me _me_ and had anything to do with my mother, including my name.

When my dad wasn't around, I wasn't allowed to eat unless I could find some way to sneak food. Even though I knew it was wrong, I was so hungry that I would sometimes grab food off my brothers' plates and run to the bathroom and gobble it down as fast as I could. I felt guilty for taking their food, but I was desperate to survive. Sometimes the few bites of a peanut butter sandwich or handful of macaroni and cheese was all the food I would have for a day or two if it wasn't a school day where I got breakfast and lunch at school.

Looking back, I think that after we moved out of the condo and into the house, the neighbors suspected that I was undernourished since they were always calling me _flacka_ and telling me to eat. The fact that I was abnormally thin was probably a big clue. Even though Ingrid tried hard to give the impression that she was the doting, though unappreciated stepmother, perhaps the neighbors saw through her façade. The difference between my three younger brothers and me in appearance alone had to have been telling. My siblings were truly happy kids; they laughed a lot, played in the front yard, and ate at least three good meals a day. Their clothing was new, their hair washed and their bodies bruise free.

A sweet elderly couple lived across the street from us. I met them when they accidentally locked themselves out of their house and came over to ask Ingrid if I could help them out.

"Your daughter is tiny, and she would fit through our doggy door in the back yard no problem. She could go through the doggie door and open the front door for us," they said. "Our Samuel is a sweet lab, he won't bit, I promise."

Grace, the older lady smiled kindly at me. "I just baked some cupcakes and would love to treat you to some for your help."

I looked at Ingrid, waiting for her to say no.

"Sure, of course my daughter will help you, won't you sweetie?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Really?"

She nodded, smiling at the couple.

"OK."

I followed them across the street and into their backyard. There house was brick also, and had a similar backyard layout to ours only they had a glorious looking pool, BBQ, and a cute dog house.

"Woah."

Samuel greeted us, me, by nearly knocking me over with doggy kisses and jumping on me.

"He's cute."

"Come here Sam, get down, and leave the little girl alone."

Joe, Grace's husband, called to the dog, putting a blue leash on him. "I'll meet you ladies out front." He took the dog and went back out of the yard.

"OK, dear. Here it is." She pointed to a smallish doggy door.

"Samuel fits through this?" I asked, eyeing the opening which appeared to be a little small for him.

"Well, it was perfect up until about five months ago, he just went through a growth spurt." She laughed. "He still manages to squeeze himself through, so we haven't changed it yet."

"Oh. OK."

"So just go through the doggy door, it goes right into the kitchen and around the little corner," she made a hand gesture, "is the front door which you can unlock to let us in."

I got myself down on my hands and knees, pushing the plastic flap thought towards the kitchen and stuck first one arm in, then my head, then my second arm, and pulled the rest of my body through.

"Yay." I heard Grace clap her hands in approval. "See you in out front, dear."

I stood up and looked around their kitchen. Unlike the garish yellow seventies style wallpapering our kitchen had, theirs was decorated with bright blues, crisp whites and a few sailboat knick knacks here and there. The smell that hit me was heavenly; freshly baked cupcakes, and a cinnamon apple candle. The ambience was warm, inviting and light. I made my way to the living room which was decorated in a similar manner. They must have really loved the ocean.

I unlocked the bottom lock and opened the front door.

"Thank you sweetie, would it be OK with your mother if you stayed over for some cupcakes? You saved the day."

Her smile was so kind, so sweet, like nothing I was used to.

"Well..." I looked across the street to see Ingrid standing by the front door, arms crossed. "Thank you, but, I think I need to get back home." My eyes went back to Ingrid. I must have looked a little antsy.

"Is everything OK, dear?" She looked across the street as well. "Are you sure?"

"Mmm." I nodded.

"Well hold on just a second; let me at least give you a few to take home with you."

I watched her run inside. She was back in less than a minute with a dish of the delectable looking pastries. "Thank you again, dear." She waved to Ingrid. "Thank you"

As soon as I got inside, Ingrid snatched the plate from me and sent me to my room. I never got to have one of those cupcakes.

After that, the couple invited me to their house several times to bake cookies or to have a snack, but Ingrid wouldn't let me go. Sometimes they would bring cookies or fruit over for me. When I saw them at the door with a bag, I knew there would be something special in it.

"We brought a little surprise for your daughter," they would say. Usually, they brought homemade cookies or muffins, and apples or oranges. Sometimes, they would bring candy. Each time I closed my eyes and prayed that I would get to have some of whatever was in the bag.

Ingrid would take the bag at the door. In broken English she would say, "That's very kind of you. I will give my daughter this treat after dinner tonight."

Once she'd closed the door, she dropped her motherly act. "You know you don't deserve any of those kind people's gifts."

I looked down, saddened.

"What? Did you think you were actually going to get the treats?" She laughed. "If they knew what a dirty bad girl you really are they would never bring you a thing again! You are such a disappointment."

Afterwards she would either throw the stuff away or eat it with Jayson in front of me. All the while my empty stomach growled and gnawed on itself.

Another family that lived a few houses from us, on the corner, invited our family to dinner several times. They were a large Italian family. I always thought it would be so much fun to be one of their kids. On hot summer days, the kids played in the yard and ate ice cream bars and freezer pops after they played in the sprinklers on the front lawn while I cleaned the house and watched from our windows or from because I was actually out front raking or weeding her garden.

Their relatives came to their house and I could hear them out in the yard eating, laughing, and playing. Their parents didn't send the kids outside to play to get them out of the way, they went outside and all played together.

If there was a breeze, the whole neighborhood breathed in the aroma of food that smelled wonderful and drifted from the open windows and doors of their house. Since I was always hungry, I dreamed of sneaking into their kitchen and eating to my heart's content without anyone telling me that I couldn't eat, without anyone ruining my food with copious amounts of salt, hot sauce, or onions.

Sometimes when I was outside sweeping the driveway, the mom of this seemingly wonderful family would walk down the sidewalk in her brightly colored skirt and sandals, with a sun hat on her head, pushing a baby stroller or holding the hand of a toddler just learning to walk.

She would glance at me, smile, and stop walking. Honey, you need to come to our house to eat," she would say in her thick Italian accent. "You are so thin. You don't eat enough. I'll give you some spaghetti and bread. Pasta and bread is what you need. Go ask your mama if you can come with me. You can play with the kids and then eat dinner with us. I'll make dessert. It will be fun."

My heart ached to take hold of the kind woman's hand and go home with her. I wanted so badly to go, to escape Ingrid and belong in that wonderful family. I wanted so badly to be one of the carefree kids that ran in the sprinklers and sat around the dinner table in the evening, talking and laughing.

But Ingrid wouldn't allow me to ever go to their house to play or for dinner.

"No, Daniella. You're never allowed to leave this house unless it is for school or I say. You're not a good girl, you think you deserve play dates?" she scoffed, as if the request was the most absurd thing I could have asked.

I don't know what her reason was for this. She would tell us no and then go on and on in Spanish, even though I couldn't understand what she was saying.

## "Cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood. And all the people shall say, 'Amen.'"

 Deuteronomy 27:25

# 11: BANANAS

Ingrid was very jealous and always said that nobody else could cook like she did. "You should be very happy to have me in the kitchen making the food you love to eat. Not everybody has a mom to cook so much and put so much love in the cooking. You're a lucky one."

When she brought up her cooking, I wanted to blurt out to my dad that Ingrid didn't let me eat when he wasn't at home, or that when she did it was always ruined with something gross. However, as she spoke, her protruding, evil eyes reminded me that I was not to say a word against her without reaping consequences for it.

I think my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Daniels, must have known that I was always hungry. At the end of the day, after English class, Mrs. Daniels often asked me to stay behind for a few minutes. This made me nervous because Ingrid timed my walk home from school. If I varied by more than a few minutes, she accused me of stopping by other places on the way home. She would ask me if I had stopped to smoke cigarettes with the bad girls on the way home from school. But the wait with Mrs. Daniels was worth the risk of getting into trouble. She waited until the other kids were out of the classroom and she would hand me a bag with a package of peanut butter crackers and an apple in it. Sometimes I think she took things out of her own lunch to save for me. "Here is a little snack for you, for later," she would kindly say. "Now, get on home before Ingrid worries about you."

On the way home, I would eat the snack, knowing that it would probably be the last food I would get before breakfast at school the next morning, _if_ I got to school in time for breakfast. It was Ingrid's habit to hold me up for just long enough that I would miss breakfast and not get to eat again until I opened my lunch bag with a half dried-out sandwich and a piece of rotten fruit in it.

Ingrid would stay in the bathroom working on her hair until she knew it was too late for me to get breakfast at school, and then come out smiling, "Oh, we're running a little late this morning so I guess you will have to wait until lunch to eat."

So many mornings I was tempted to dart out the front door while she was in the bathroom and run to school so I could have breakfast. The only thing that kept me from it was knowing that she would catch up with me once I got to school, and she would spare nothing to embarrass me in front of my classmates. I knew to run would be filling the ammunition chest for those who fired verbal shots at me already.

Even though I tried not to let anyone know that I was not fed at home, as time went on, I felt more desperate for food. I knew it wasn't right for me to always be so hungry to the point that I felt like I was starving; to be denied food at dinner time while Ingrid fed my brothers and ate all she wanted.

When my dad was home, sometimes Ingrid would allow me to eat with the family. I savored those times as I was allowed a rare good meal. But more times than not I was forced to my room while the rest of them ate.

"What, she ate before everyone again?" I heard my dad ask Ingrid while I was in the hallway.

"You know how she likes to be alone Martin. She's always pushing herself away from the family. It's sad."

Lies. Pure lies.

If it was during the school week I simply busied myself with homework, even if I had none. I had discovered that homework was the one thing I was enforced to do that I actually liked, because while I did homework I was able to sit down, not clean the house like a maid. It gave me less of an opportunity to somehow get myself into trouble. I started adding at least an hour of extra homework to my load just so I had a little more quiet time.

By this time, the honeymoon period was definitely over with Dad and Ingrid. There were times when I knew they were watching television and a commercial with a pretty model or actress must have been on because one minute I could hear them laughing at the show the next minute it was screams.

"You fucking asshole, I see how you want all those girls on the television! How dare you look at other women like that in front of me?"

"Ingrid, what?" My dad's voice was strained. "Come on, not this again please." His voice rose a bit at the word "please".

"No. Fuck you. Don't talk to me, you sick man."

I heard her go to the bedroom and slam their door.

I was in the kitchen doing dishes at the time. My dad walked in and I turned from the sink to look at him, I was going to ask him if he was OK, but instead he yelled at me.

"What the fuck are you looking at?"

Ouch. The words stung. I turned back to the soapy water and stared at the bubbles in my hands until I heard him slam the back door as he went fuming mad outside. They had been slamming doors a lot lately. And my dad seemed to be losing his temper more frequently as well.

I felt sorry for him. He had become a shell of the man he had been before marrying Ingrid. The sparkle in his eyes was gone, and his great sense of humor had evaporated. His Star Trek books or movies didn't cheer him up. He didn't get excited about anything anymore. His face was without expression most of the time. Even his music had changed and didn't have the lively feel that it had before. His heart was no longer in his music. He had also shifted his sweet adorning fatherly role to that of more of a stranger with me. I felt nothing but anger from him now, a perfect example of that was his reaction to me in the kitchen. Gone were the sweet pet names he used to call me; kiddo and munchkin. Instead, if he called me anything it was either "Daniella" or some curse word.

He seemed to hate me by the time I was in fourth and fifth grade, like I was simply something to put up with and that I was the reason his marriage was failing, again. Every time they fought he would scream at the top of his lungs at me, especially after they fought over anything that had to do with me.

"Why shouldn't I kill you right now?" he towered over me one night in the dark of our back yard. "You've fucking ruined my life and my happiness. Again."

Then he acted as if he was going to punch the daylights out of me, but the blow didn't connect with my face. Instead he made a strange loud grunting noise and pulled his fist away. He did it to terrify me. After several more incidents like that, along with his own versions of spankings with one of his leather belts, I knew he was lost to me as my daddy.

One day I was walking outside to the area out back where my father would sit and read the paper or drink coffee.

"Daddy?"

I was sick to my stomach, but I hoped that what I was about to tell him would make him do something to stop the abuse I endured from Ingrid on a daily basis.

"Yes, what's going on? Don't you have some chore you need to be doing?"

He looked up at me, absolutely no emotion on his face, the sparkle in his once brilliant blue eyes now long gone.

"Daddy." I repeated, whimpering, until I was full on sobbing hysterically. "Daddy, Ingrid got mad at me the other day for not cleaning my room right—and she pushed me into the small bathroom and made me eat—" I was crying so loudly at this point my words were distorted.

"What is it?" He seemed annoyed.

"Ingrid is being so mean to me lately, I'm scared of her," I whispered.

My father set his newspaper down, folded it on his lap and shifted himself in the fading baby blue La-Z-Boy chair. He ran his hand through the top of his thinning dirty blond hair that was held back with Aqua Net.

"I know. I know, poor little Daniella. Always the victim, right?"

He looked up at me, smug and indifferent. This man was not the father I knew. He was a ghost of his old self. The happiness, and once loving warm eyes, a thing of the past. A man long gone. Not only had he gained a considerable amount of weight, but he wore his unhappiness in the same manner I wore my abuse. His misery was obvious, yet no one dared speak of it. He wouldn't admit it, then, and probably still won't now.

"You really have no clue of what an abusive childhood is. Do you know what your drunken grandmother would put my sister and me through when we were kids?"

He slammed his paper down on his lap.

I looked down at the cracks in the sidewalk, a family of ants was marching some crumbs home to their unseen anthill somewhere.

"I'm sorry, Daddy."

"I want you to get your shit together. Stop complaining, do the few chores we ask of you and quit exaggerating to people about what goes on in this house."

I realized, at that very moment that a part of me had died. Part of my already wounded heart was dying. Lethargy had set in for my father, and he always seemed tired and stressed. I think he felt he had to choose his battles with Ingrid very carefully, and he chose not to argue with her about feeding me. He _must_ have known that she wasn't feeding me. If he knew about the other abuse, he surely knew about the rest, but he looked the other way and pretended not to. He did give me one piece of advice once though regarding the onions.

"Before Ingrid wakes up to feed you breakfast or any meal with raw onions in it, sneak into the hallway bathroom and coat your mouth with the baking soda and peroxide toothpaste. That will act as a small barrier for your taste buds."

He shrugged after that finishing with, "You know, onions are actually really good for you. Just learn to like them."

The next morning I did exactly as he said and a good thing I did, because awaiting me on the yellowing kitchen counter on one of the flower burner covers was a half of a red onion.

"Eat this, and then you can have a banana too since you've been good."

Wow, she was giving me a banana? This had been completely out of character for her. She never did anything nice for me. I mulled over that thought as I swallowed the bites of onions, till the half was all gone.

Daddy had been right; the sting of the sharp raw onion taste was masked by the toothpaste. My tummy was gurgling more than usual because of the onion-toothpaste combo I had consumed, but my mouth wasn't nearly on fire as much. I stood by the counter after the final bite.

" _Gracias_ ," I told her. I had to always say thank you for anything she gave me, no matter how disgusting it was. I was to always be gracious.

" _De nada_ ," she said, and smiled at me with her freakish grin. All four of her incisor teeth were incredibly sharp and pointy; very vampire like in a devilish sort of way. She also had some yellow stains on the front of some of them.

"Here you go, sliced bananas." She pushed a small blue and white plate towards me with a pre-sliced banana on it.

" _Gracias_ , Mommy." There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the banana in fact she had added some powdered sugar to it.

"The sugar makes it taste almost like dessert."

It was delicious, it tasted a bit different with the sugar on it, but it sure beat onions or hot sauce so I gobbled it down.

"You're welcome, Daniella. Good girl."

Two hours later I was vomiting like crazy in the nurse's office at school. It became clear to me that the banana Ingrid had so kindly given me was powdered in more than just sugar. Ajax, a toilet bowl cleaning powder was cleverly disguised within the powdered sugar.

"There is poison in the fang of the serpent, in the mouth of the fly and in the sting of a scorpion; but the wicked man is saturated with it."  
Chanakya

#  12: CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES

After more than four times of my having a sick episode at school, the nurse sent me to speak to Mrs. Marjorie, the school counselor, again.

"Honey, this is not normal." The school nurse sighed as she handed me a washcloth.

"I'm sorry." I looked down, fully ashamed that I was in here again for puking everywhere in my classroom.

"Are you sick sweetie? "Is there something going on at home that is upsetting you?"

If she only knew. I wanted to tell her, I really did, but I'd been here before, I complained to the school before about my stepmother, CPS was called, and the only thing that came out of that was even more abuse.

"I'm OK," I lied bravely. "Just a stomach bug, I think."

I must not have been too convincing because she sent me to the counselors office, "Just talk to her for a little bit; you're safe there honey. If anything, anything is happening at home that's hurting you, please tell her." She smiled at me sadly.

"OK."

Twenty minutes later I was in the Mrs. Marjorie's office sitting on the black couch fumbling nervously with my thumbs.

"So now your stepmother is poisoning you?" She looked at me skeptically. "You know this is a serious accusation. Are you sure you're not just unhappy with her meal choices again? You know, feeding your child onions is not against the law."

Resistance. She was on my stepmother's side and I knew it.

"I promise. The last time she gave me the powdered banana slices I smelled it! She didn't mix it right or something. I just know she is doing it. Please call CPS again, please." I was begging her, despite her strong disbelief.

"You know, Daniella, you cry wolf too many times, people are going to stop believing you entirely. You don't want that to happen, do you?" She started scribbling something down on a pad of paper.

"No. I'm sorry." I gave up.

"Here, get back to class. Try to be happy, Daniella, you have a lot of people rooting for you, including your parents. You are lucky to have two people at home who love you. Give Ingrid a chance. She is truly concerned for your well-being."

My stepmother had most of the school fooled. Whenever she volunteered to keep an even better eye on me, she was sweet and helpful with the teachers, and even with other students.

"Your mom is pretty cool," Daniel, a boy in my fifth grade class told me once after she had volunteered during reading time. We were at the drinking fountains during recess.

"Really" I looked up at him from the stream of water going into my mouth.

"Heck yeah. And she has huge boobs! Unlike you, _Daniella_." He sneered, laughing at me as he joined his buddies playing four square nearby.

I'd had a crush on this boy since second grade, this tall, tan, blond-haired boy. All he ever did was make fun of me, my clothes that Ingrid would make me wear an entire week in a row, my soggy socks, my hair, and even my love of reading. And now he thought my evil stepmother was hot. This wasn't fair.

How Ingrid could be so evil at home and be so liked here at school was mystifying. Usually when a person possess that much ugliness inside, people can sniff it out, and simply get a "bad feeling" about them. But not with Ingrid. She was the queen of deception.

When CPS first started making house calls, somehow Ingrid seemed to know the timing of their visits. I am still not sure if it was protocol for Child Protective Services to notify her and my dad that they were coming or if my doubtful school counselor, who believed I was self-inflicting the bruises I wore all over my body, shot them a courtesy, heads-up call.

After the third visit, even I could usually tell when they were going to be stopping by, because Ingrid would start feeding me "normal" food. Gone were the onions, the menudo, and any other disgusting meal she normally fed me. Instead I was given thick peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Ramen noodles with Doritos tortilla chips (Jayson's favorite meal) and bananas. If she was really nervous about them coming, she would even feed me those little Lean Cuisine kids' meals that came with what I thought was a delicious chocolate pudding.

There were times Ingrid would be so prepared that she would buy me a brand new outfit from Sears, brush my hair, and place Barbie dolls (that I had never seen before) in my bedroom. Her tone would change from stern and quite frightening to sickly sweet, the same tone she'd used when molesting me when I was younger. She let me play the Super Nintendo in the living room while we waited for CPS to arrive.

It was quite the charade she put up and my father just went along with it, playing the Nintendo game with me, as my younger brothers crowded around us on the couch.

Ingrid would take to the kitchen. "I am going to make some tea, would you care for some Martin?" she'd say as she poked her head round to the living room.

"Sure, baby, thanks."

Even though these moments in my childhood were fake, nothing more than an attempt to fool the system (which she successfully did time and time again), they were still my favorite times. My stomach didn't grumble and I was able to do something at home other than clean. I also loved the bonding with my dad and brothers.

When CPS arrived they always took me aside first to talk

"Do you mind if we speak to Amber—Daniella, in private for a moment? Perhaps in her bedroom?" the social worker asked my stepmother and father as she took a sip of the hot tea.

"Of course, you know we don't mind." Ingrid smiled warmly at the red headed middle aged woman.

"Great."

She followed me into Ingrid's old sewing room which they had recently furnished with a twin sized day bed for me to sleep on. The boys all shared a room now, so I got my own.

"Have a seat" she sat on one end of the bed, I on the other. "So what's going on? How are you?"

"Please help me, it's awful here." The tears I had been hoping to contain burst as I began confiding in this stranger who just had to help me. "She hardly feeds me." I wrapped my arms around my body. "And when she does feed me, it's awful. It's either raw onions, spaghettios covered in raw onions, rotten sandwiches or bananas covered in Ajax."

"In Ajax?" She raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's no good."

"I have bruises from her hitting me, and she pulls my hair out all the time."

"Can I see your bruises?"

I nodded shakily standing up from my bed and lifting my shirt to show her my back, then I pulled my pants down just a bit to reveal a black and blue bottom.

"OK, I see. Well I am going to have a talk with your parents, and see if we can't find a solution." She gave me an artificial smile.

"OK."

Fifteen minutes later I was called to the living room. I walked out gingerly, praying that they were going to remove me from home and take me anywhere—I didn't care if it was a foster home, group home, whatever. Anywhere but here.

"Have a seat sweetie." Ingrid pat the spot on the sofa next to her.

What? I looked at the social worker questioningly.

"Go on."

I sat down reluctantly, fear setting in.

"So your parents just got done telling me of your fall off your bike two days ago. They said you landed pretty hard—backwards actually."

I looked up from my hands. What bike?

"And they also told me that you are lactose intolerant. All that cereal and milk you're having can cause a very upsetting stomach reaction. Depending on how allergic to dairy you are, violent vomiting is not uncommon."

I had no food or dairy allergies. I was screwed. Saying anything to contradict them at this time would only worsen the punishments that were surely coming.

"We told her how picky you are too, that is why you're so skinny. I need to start cooking special meals for you, Daniella. I want you to be healthy." Ingrid smiled at me kindly, except for that familiar glint in her dark eyes.

Crap. I could see that the social worker was buying everything they had just told her. If she had bothered to check with the teachers at school, she may have found out that I ate my rotten sack lunch every day and anything that was given to me at school. I wasn't a fussy eater. I was underweight because I wasn't fed at home.

"She is simply having a hard time adjusting, huh, munchkin?" My dad touched my head fondly.

"We love her so much." Ingrid would say in her best English. "I just hope she someday loves me as much as I love her, like my own daughter."

Cue the fake tears and the dramatic exit to the bathroom to go blow her nose. And just like that they convinced the social workers that I was simply a disturbed child suffering from what they called the "Cinderella" syndrome. A syndrome in which children with step parents lie and lash out because they're unhappy with their parent's remarriage. No one believed me. I was helpless.

The last time I ran away from home even further convinced me that I would be a prisoner in this house for a long time. I had managed to escape from the backyard for a few hours, running to an old apartment complex I thought my mom might be at.

"Young lady, you are aware that you are getting too old to be running away whenever you feel like it." I had been sitting on the steps by the apartment office, waiting for the lady to finish talking to the potential new tenants in her office. I wanted to see if my mom had left a forwarding address after she moved out.

_What the?_ Two uniformed officers had stepped out of their police cruiser and where walking towards me. _Should I try running from them?_ I glanced around; it didn't seem like a great idea. They would surely corner me.

"Hi" I stared back to my bare feet—I hadn't had a chance to grab shoes when I left.

"Hi young lady, you know you are not supposed to be here. Let's go."

They didn't even ask me any questions. They knew my sob story, and just like CPS, they didn't believe me. They were silent mostly on the way home as I sat stiff and crying in the back seat, I felt like a criminal sitting behind the barred window.

"You know, we really have better things to be doing than looking for a runaway every month. You are taking time away from us that could be used to look for criminals."

"I'm sorry" I looked wistfully out the window, avoiding the angry stare reflected from the officer driving.

"You will be sorry if you keep it up. Girls like you turn into teenagers who end up in juvy. Is that what you want?"

The second officer in the passenger seat turned to me.

"No sir."

The police were pissed every time I ran away from home and had to spend time looking for me instead of criminals. CPS thought I was making it all up, my mother was useless since she was a drug addict and didn't make my well-being a priority, and my daddy sometimes wished I were dead.

Although I loved being fed normal food during these visits, I suspect that Ingrid was poisoning me even then. I noticed a pattern that emerged every time she would feed me dinner for a few days before CPS would knock on the door for a "surprise" visit. After eating the food that Ingrid gave me, I would become very ill and start throwing up, very much like the time she'd started giving me bananas in the morning. My stomach hurt so bad that I cried, and I couldn't eat anything more or even keep water down.

The strange thing was, when I would get sick, Ingrid would baby me and treat me kindly. She would let me stay home from school, and let me rest on the couch and watch TV. She would rub my forehead

"Poor Daniella, I'm sorry you're sick, again. Poor girl," she'd say to me in her sickly sweet voice.

She never showed me such consideration and kindness except when I was sick after a CPS visit, so I would lie on the sofa, trying to enjoy the moment of care, and wondering when it would end. I would try to figure out what Ingrid's game was. I knew this wasn't Ingrid's true nature and I wondered what she was up to. One day, a possible motive occurred to me when some of Ingrid's female relatives came to visit right after I had been sick for a few days. She welcomed the three colorful, loud, busty women into the house. They stood at the door giving demonstrative hugs and greetings, and one of the women asked Ingrid what she had been up to lately. Ingrid put on a sad face and said in broken English, "Oh, my _preciosa_ Daniela has been so very sick. I've done nothing but care for her around the clock for the past four days."

As though on cue, the other women also put on concerned, sad, caring faces while patting Ingrid on her shoulders and back.

You are a dear saint to take such good care of that child who is not even your own flesh and blood.

What a good woman you are. You are so kind and good. God will bless you for your dedication to that child.

You'll get special blessings for taking her under your wing and giving her a good mother and a home.

She should really appreciate everything that you have done for her.

When I heard Ingrid's friends and family talk like this, I wanted to run out of my room and tell them that they didn't understand what Ingrid was really like, and that she didn't take good care of me at all; that she hated me and wanted me dead. I knew that she had convinced everyone that she was a doting stepmother and I was an ungrateful, rebellious stepchild. I knew she would quickly send me back to my room, and then I would be severely punished after everyone left, so I sat in my room and felt sick at my stomach through all the praise for Ingrid's care of me.

When Ingrid called the school office to let them know that I was sick and would be out of school, I could tell by Ingrid's responses that they were also praising her for being a good parent and keeping me home from school, instead of sending me to school sick.

"Yes, it's very important to me to take good care of Daniella. I would never send her to school sick just so I could go to work or something, even if the other mothers do send their children to school sick. I don't even work because it is my full-time job to be a good mama to Daniella and her brothers," Ingrid would proudly say into the phone.

After the three or four days of being sick, life went back to normal. My stomach once again felt empty and I was once again on the lookout for any scrap of food that I could get my hands on. I started stealing food out of lunch boxes at school whenever I could. If any of my classmates left a package of chips or a piece of fruit out on their desk at recess, I would take it and consume it as fast as I could. I tried to manipulate situations where other kids would give me snacks, even trading homework papers for food.

Sometimes at night, I dreamed of going into a restaurant and eating until I could eat no more. There was a place near our house called IHOP, and I had heard they had chocolate ship pancakes and any flavor syrup you could think of. I wanted to go there more than anywhere else. If I wasn't fantasizing about food from there, I often thought of going into a store, a 7/11 perhaps, and stealing food, but I never went that far.

After I stole food from my classmates, I felt incredibly guilty. I got very angry that I had to steal to eat. It didn't seem fair to me that other kids were _given_ food by adults who cared about them and wanted them to feel good and be healthy. It didn't seem fair that I had to steal if I wanted to rid my stomach of the constant torture of being empty.

One day, I was sitting at the cafeteria table, across the table from a girl named Summer. Summer was a preppy, petite girl with big blue eyes and blonde hair. Everyone at school liked her because she was kind and always cheerful. She was one of the few kids in the class who never teased me; she seemed to treat everyone equally. She had never said or done anything unkind to me, and had, in fact smiled at me and she talked to me from time to time when others didn't. She had chosen me to be on her team a few times in gym class when we divided into teams for games.

On this particular day, Summer had on a brand new, crisp, light pink shimmery top paired with white jeans and brand new Keds. As I admired the new top, I thought about how perfect her life must be. I thought her life must be just like the pink top she wore—happy, nice, clean, and bright. I imagined her and her mother strolling through the mall stores, pulling cute clothes from the racks and holding them in front of a mirror, giggling and shaking their head yes at finding just the right thing, or scowling and saying, "No way!"

As Summer chatted with the girl sitting next to her, she opened her chocolate milk and inserted the straw into the carton, then proceeded to unwrap a delicious looking hoagie sandwich. As she unwrapped the sandwich, I looked down at my sack lunch. (Ingrid always insisted that I take a sack lunch and never gave me money to purchase a school lunch.) The half sandwich and rotten apple that comprised my lunch looked pathetic. The sandwich bread was dry and crumbly, and there was nothing more than a thin smear of peanut butter on it. The apple was bruised and the skin on it was wrinkled. I knew it had sat on the counter in our kitchen for several weeks.

It was that moment that my sorrow turned to anger. Thoughts ran wildly through my mind: _Is she better than me? Why should she get to eat good food every day, when I have to steal food and eat rotten food? Why can't someone care enough about me to give me a decent lunch? Why don't I have crisp new clothes and shiny, washed hair? I'll bet people would like me, too, if I had all of those things. It's not fair!!!_

Suddenly, before I realized what I was doing, I stood up, reached across the cafeteria table, and purposely pushed Summer's carton of chocolate milk into her lap. I saw the chocolate milk splash all over Summer's pink blouse and white jeans. I sat in momentary awe as a shocked look overcame her pretty face as she raised her hands in front of her to try to avoid milk reaching her face. Without thinking, I grabbed the orange that was next to Summer's pink lunch box and ran from the cafeteria to hide in a hall bathroom.

I planned on eating the bright orange fruit, but instead I flushed it down the toilet causing a major flood in the girls' restroom. "Uh oh." I said as the fruit bobbled at the top of the porcelain toilet bowl as water began pouring out on all sides with until the entire bathroom floor was flooded.

I leaned my frail body against the wall near the hand dryers. I could see my ghastly reflection in the mirror across from me at the sinks. I looked like I was dead. I felt such intense self-loathing at that moment because I began thinking that maybe I was an evil child and deserved this life.

Unable to stand my own reflection any longer, I slid my body down the wall till I was sitting on the bathroom floor, knees hugged to my chest, face buried in arms. A skinny, sobbing pale mess. The water from the flooded toilet came close to getting on my bottoms—I didn't care though. Nothing mattered anymore.

Eventually the lunch time teacher found me in the bathroom and scolded me, roughly grabbing my arm till I stood up. She marched me straight to the principal's office who was already on the phone with my parents.

When confronted with my misbehavior, I denied that I had pushed the chocolate milk onto Summer's lap, even though several students sitting at the table had witnessed me doing it. I didn't want it to be true that I would do such a thing. I kind of blacked out. I was so dizzy from being hungry all the time and weak from being beat.

So I just lied.

"I didn't do anything wrong. I never took her food." I stared blankly at the principal's desk. She had about ten different photos of her and a baby.

"Well" she sighed and placed her pen in front of her on a stack of papers, "According to five students, and two teachers, you did do it. They all saw you do it."

"I didn't though." What did it matter if I lied or told the truth, I would get punished severely at home either way.

"I am forced to take action. You will be getting a week of detention for your behavior." She picked up the stack of papers and straightened them. "I would like you think about your unkind behavior and apologize to your peers. They are pretty upset."

Why I thought these people would believe me, when they didn't believe the apparent abuse I told them about at home, is beyond me. I was simply in shock. Ingrid was slowly destroying every bit of child left within me. I wanted to scream at the teacher and tell her the reason I had thrown chocolate milk on Summer was because I felt so wounded that no one cared about me, and everyone, especially her parents, seemed to care about Summer. I couldn't find the words to say that I was so very weary of eating dried out bread and rotten fruit for lunch every day and having a nightly beating as my lullaby to bed.

I felt bad enough, but I didn't mind the detention. I would rather stay late in detention after school than be at home with Ingrid. I would rather have done almost anything than to face Ingrid and her long list of chores after school every day.

Because of the stunt I pulled on Summer, Ingrid spanked me with a belt until I had welts and bruises on my behind, lower back, and the back of my legs.

"You are an evil child," she yelled with each whack of the belt against my body. "You're making me look so bad to your teachers. They must think I know nothing about raising a good child. _Te odio_!"

_I hate you, I hate you, I fucking hate you._ Just another "loving" chant that would echo in my head for days.

"You are disgusting, Mattice! I told you to be a good girl, didn't I ? You don't care that your daddy s going to hate you even more now?"

"You are sick, just like your mother. There is no saving you."

Repeatedly, her words confirmed the feelings of worthlessness that she had so artfully instilled in my young mind. She made the burden of my existence clear. I began to understand that to Ingrid, and possibly to the rest of the world, I was nothing more than my mother's unwanted spawn.

Ingrid took markers and paper from a desk drawer and grabbed me by the shoulders and marched me to the dining room table. "Sit down and make an apology card for that sweet little girl that you hurt!" she yelled. "Tomorrow, I will go with you to school and make sure you read the card to the girl in front of your class. You will not get by with this. I won't have people at your school thinking that we teach you to act this way."

My dad didn't punish me for the chocolate milk incident. I think for once he realized that Ingrid's punishment was severe enough and that I was hurt and angry way beyond the incident at hand. He lived in the house with Ingrid, too. He must have understood that Ingrid's behavior and treatment made my anger run deep. Yet he was clueless as how to handle it, and he wasn't about to intentionally do anything to make Ingrid mad at him. He would fight his own battles with her, if necessary, but he had come to the point where he would no longer fight mine. He had long ago thrown in the towel when it came to arguing my case or protecting me. I was on my own against the monster that he had brought into our lives. Knowing this scared me more than Ingrid herself.

I was alone.

I knew, at that point, that I would have to find some new ways to survive. In despair, I went to my room and spent the night wide awake, trying to figure out how I could either survive or escape Ingrid's prison of a home. I knew that if Ingrid refused to give me food, she was refusing to give life.

### "If you knew your potential to feel good, you would ask no one to be different so that you can feel good. You would free yourself of all of that cumbersome impossibility of needing to control the world, or control your mate, or control your child. You are the only one who creates your reality. For no one else can think for you, no one else can do it. It is only you, every bit of it you."

Esther Hicks

# 13: DECISIONS

August 1996

Ingrid controlled every aspect of my life. I wasn't gifted the opportunity to learn how to make good choices and manage my own life. I was not guided with words of wisdom or taught to use logic and reason to make quality long-term decisions. The only way I knew to make decisions was to base them on how I could survive for another day. As I got older, this would prove to be a powerful part of the destruction of my childhood.

Every single day, Ingrid made my decisions for me so that she could retain full control over me. I often wondered what it was that she thought I would do if she _didn't_ retain full control over my life. What drove her to examine everything I did and find it lacking? Why did it matter to her what I did, as long as I wasn't doing anything bad?

She seemed to have no consideration or care for how her decisions affected me. My well-being and sanity seemed to be secondary to her need for absolute control over my life. I hated that, even though she liked controlling anyone that she could, including my dad, I was the main victim of her freakish controlling ways.

With Ingrid, there was only _one_ right way to do anything— _her way_. Early on in her marriage to my dad, Ingrid determined that I needed to embrace her Mexican culture. She immediately began teaching me Spanish words and insisted that I take the time to learn them. She repeated the words in her Spanish accent, rolling the _"r"_ off her tongue naturally. I had a difficult time with the Spanish accent and resented being forced to learn a new language just because it was the one that _she_ spoke. It was her language, not mine. _Was she even aware that my dad and I had a mind of our own to decide what language we wanted to speak?_ Nonetheless, once she taught me a Spanish word, I was no longer allowed to use the English word for it in her presence. If I did speak English to her, she would punish me, I made that mistake one too many times.

"May I go to the bathroom?" I asked her one Saturday afternoon after I finished putting all the laundry away.

" _Que dises? En Engles?"_

"Oh. I'm sorry. _Perd_ _ó_ _na me por favor._ I forgot." I couldn't believe I'd forgotten to say it in Spanish; I just had to pee so badly and I'd forgotten.

She came over to me and poked my groin area hard.

"Oh, you have to pee?" she laughed, "Well because you didn't ask in _Espa_ _ñ_ _ol_ , you will have to wait. You need to learn a lesson and stop disobeying me!"

She slapped the side of my head hard, nearly knocking me off my feet. She then grabbed me by the hair pulling my face in close to hers. "You will learn someday, or the devil is going to take your evil soul."

I could feel her hot garlic breath on my face as she spoke.

While Ingrid demanded respect from me, she stripped me of every bit of my identity that she could. She refused to let me exist. In my own home, I felt like a ghost of a person, slipping around, trying to live what someone else had chosen for me to live, being called the name that someone else chose for me.

The only person who still called me _Amber_ was my secret best friend, Cassandra Preston. Cassie and I had met and become inseparable in the third grade. Cassie came from an extremely privileged family and was spoiled beyond imagination, yet she had a heart of gold and we were soul sisters. I still don't know what drew this beautiful, popular brunette girl to me, but she spoke to me one day and never stopped.

"Are things any better at home?"

It was lunchtime and Cassie and I had finally got to spend some time together. We walked to our favorite table in the cafeteria and sat down with our lunches. I stared at my wrinkled brown paper bag.

"No."

"Give me that."

She snatched my sack lunch, already knowing the contents of it, stood up and threw it into a nearby trash can. I looked up at her. "What did you do that for?" My lunch was pretty gross, but it was still edible. My stomach growled loudly.

"Here." She pushed her sparkly purple lunch box in front of me. "Eat, I'm not hungry, been snacking all day."

I put my hands on the shiny box. "You sure?"

"Yes, I can't stand watching you eat that garbage Ingrid packs you another day." She ran her bubblegum pink painted nails through her long brunette hair. "Actually I told Mom about, you know," she gestured at me "and I asked her if I can bring you lunch from now on."

"What? You don't have to—"

"Shhh. She said fine." She smiled. "It's not like she packs my lunches anyway." She rolled her eyes. "You know Rosie, our housekeeper does that. Eat."

Cassie gave me just one more thing to look forward to by going to school—her friendship. She often shared her lunch with me and even snuck me clothes of hers to wear that I changed out of right before the school day was over.

I felt ridiculous in her designer Lucky brand bell bottomed jeans, or her brightly colored printed dresses from Macys. I know I looked absolutely ridiculous in some of her outfits because I was so damn skinny the fabric would simply hang on my bones. Or I would look silly because I had to wear my beat up tennis shoes with her cute dresses. Cassie and I wore pretty much the same size, except when it came to shoes, so she was unable to assist me in the shoe department.

All of the girls at school, including my beloved Cassandra, had been wearing a popular, thick-soled tennis shoe. They basically resembled traditional standard Ked shoes, but had thick rubber soles that made you look a couple of inches taller than you really were. _Spice Girl_ _shoes_ some would call them. They were the new and improved Keds for a new generation of kids, and I wanted a pair so badly that I had begged Ingrid for them only to be told no. But finally she came across a really worn pair of white ones at a garage sale and actually bought them for me, much to my surprise.

The shoes had been washed so many times that the white rubber sole had turned yellow from so much bleaching. I was so happy to have shoes that were in style that I didn't complain.

Instead, I went into survival mode and stole bottles of White Out from my teachers' desks, and used the correction fluid to paint the rubber white again. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I was truly desperate to look normal.

In fourth grade, my borrowing of Cassie's cool clothes came abruptly to an end. We were sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch and talking about the new puppy Cassandra's father had just bought for her. Cassie was dressed impeccably in a purple and black stylish plaid skirt and crisp white ruffled blouse paired with crisp brand new white knee socks and the coveted Keds shoes. She had kindly brought an adorable black and white polka dotted Guess dress that I wore also with white knee socks and Keds, only my socks were not so crisp.

Knee socks worn with shorts or short dresses were the style when I was in fourth and fifth grade. I wanted so badly to look like the other girls in my class, but I didn't own any knee socks and Ingrid wouldn't get any for me. As always, she thought _she_ should decide what I wore. Instead of the crisp white knee socks I begged for, she gave me white socks that just came up to my calves.

I think they must have been socks for elderly men. They had strings of thin elastic that ran through them from just above the ankle to the top of them. After I'd worn them a few times, the elastic in the socks would break and the socks wouldn't stay up. They puddled around my ankles like melted snowmen and emphasized my skinny pale legs.

In an attempt to make them look more like knee socks, I would pull the socks up as far as I could, and tape them to my legs with double sticky tape. This worked pretty well—for about twenty minutes. Then the tape would lose its stickiness, especially after I perspired when walking to school on hot mornings and my socks would droop around my ankles. So there at the bottom of whatever I would be wearing were two feet clad with dirty, cheap, holey canvas shoes and droopy socks. Ingrid's choice!

The day Cassie lent me her polka dotted dress was also the day that had Ingrid decided to pick me up from school early, leaving me no time to run back to my desk and change in to my normal long black skirt that went almost to my ankles and a slouchy, big, dark colored t-shirt that swallowed my small frame. I watched in horror as I saw her enter the cafeteria door looking for me. The look that came over her face once she spotted me and saw what I was wearing was of pure anger. She quickly masked it, smiled, said hello to Cassie and hissed under her breath that it was time to go.

"I thought I would pick you up early, Daniella and take you shopping, but I see that you already have new clothes of your own that you've been hiding?"

She grabbed my arm tightly and escorted me to my belongings leaving Cassie's trendy dress on her desk. The wrath I faced at home was absolutely terrifying. That night my dinner was nothing but onions and I was made to kneel outside on the rocks for three hours as punishment.

"You will never wear anything like that again, you understand?" Ingrid hissed at my face after the three hours were up. "Next time, I won't be so nice with your punishment. You haven't even seen me angry."

So I never wore Cassie's clothes ever again until sixth grade. I stuck to whatever Ingrid gave me to wear, usually all black and usually much too large. Ingrid's outfits earned me the name of _Witchy Woman_ at school. In my mind, I can still see the pointing fingers and hear the playground chatter: _Daniella, where's your broom? What's stewing in your witch's pot today? Ohhhhhh Witchy Woman, stay away from me!_

Sure, it's common for kids to tease each other a bit, and many kids are mildly teased at school for all sorts of reasons, but I was teased mercilessly on a daily basis until seventh grade. I could do nothing to stop the teasing. It wasn't as though I could go home after school and find solace in my mom's arms and hear her comforting words. No, Ingrid didn't comfort me. She had her own brand of teasing. So I wasn't just an outcast at school, but also at home. There was no escaping the feeling that I didn't belong anywhere. There was no one that accepted me.

When it came to her own clothing, Ingrid was hardly ever modest. When she volunteered for different things at my school, so she could spy on me while I wasn't at home, she would show up dressed in low cut tops and short skirts and dresses. She wore perfume, high heels and gaudy costume jewelry, and always wore big hoop earrings. She loved the attention that her flamboyant way of dressing got her. I thought she looked like a hooker, and judging by the way men stared at her exposed breasts, I was probably right. Her friends and relatives always commented on how Ingrid knew how to turn heads.

As I got a little older, Ingrid gave me her version of womanly issues. I wasn't allowed to use tampons, because, according to her, inserting them was considered the same thing as having sex. Nor was I allowed to shave under my arms or wear deodorant, though I'm not sure why. Another thing that I didn't understand is that I wasn't allowed to shower daily. I had oily hair that needed a daily shampoo, but I wasn't allowed to. I often went to school with greasy looking hair; yet another joke magnet.

Many of the decisions that Ingrid made for me were based on her culture and religion. When her female cousins, aunts, and sisters visited, I realized that their behavior was very similar. They discussed what was evil or good, and judged those who stepped outside of their circle of what was holy and God-like. They acted as though they had been set up as the decision makers and the guardians of what was good in their mind.

Evidently, it was quite evil for a girl or woman not to achieve perfection in her household responsibilities. I guess Ingrid had decided that she had already reached the point of perfection and didn't need any more practice. She made the decision that _I_ would do all of the housework. After school, I was greeted with a long list of the things that needed to be done—perfectly, of course.

When my dad was gone for the day, Ingrid would cook and pile all of the dishes in the sink, on the counter, and on the stove for me to wash when I got home from school. She didn't bother rinsing the big pans that she used for cooking tamales or stews. By the time I got home from school, food would be dried on the pans, which I would then have to vigorously scrub to get them clean. I spent hours scrubbing pans, to the point that my fingers often bled, while other children played outside in the sunshine. I had to wash each pan very carefully because if I missed even a tiny spot, Ingrid would come unglued.

"What is wrong with you Daniella? Come here!" She grabbed a fistful of my hair, dragging me back over to the dish strainer. She pulled a frying pan from the rack and pointed at the smallest piece of egg that was still stuck on it near the handle.

_Uh oh. How could I have been so careless_? I flinched.

She threw the pan on the linoleum floor. It made a loud banging noise as it hit the ground. I jumped back and she tightened her grip on my hair. "Owie."

"I don't like when you are a lazy girl! Can't you do anything right?"

She went to the cupboard where the rest of the pots and pans were put away. "You will wash every pan in this house until you learn how to do it right!" With that she began throwing them all on the kitchen floor. I watched her in dismay as irrationality took over.

If I accidentally left a milk ring in the bottom of a glass, Ingrid filled the glass with hot water so that the milk ring dissolved, and made me drink the glass of water with curdled milk in it. She would stand over me, and make sure I drank the entire glass. This usually ended with me running to the bathroom to throw up. When I could hold in the vomit, and started running toward the bathroom, Ingrid would chuckle and say something mean. "Run little scared rabbit!"

Another terrifying moment was the time when everyone had finished dinner, except for me because I didn't get to eat that night, and Ingrid called me out of my room after my dad had left to go play a show with his band. "Get your ass into that kitchen and get it cleaned up until it shines, Daniella," she yelled.

By around ten that night, I had washed all of the dishes and was about to go finish my homework when I spotted some food wrapped in foil on the counter. I was so tired and hungry that I grabbed the foil wrapped package, with the intention of taking it in the bathroom and eating it. I thought I could flush the foil down the toilet when I was done. Little did I know that Ingrid was just around the corner spying on me. I didn't see her as I whizzed out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. I quickly, but quietly shut the bathroom door, and started unwrapping the foil. I could see that the food was enchilada, something that Ingrid made that actually tasted good before it was adulterated with salt or whatever else she put into mine. Just as I was about to take my first bite of the enchilada, I heard a loud banging on the door. My heart sank and I tried to eat the enchilada as fast as I could. I assumed Ingrid had inspected the dishes and found a dirty one.

"Stop eating that enchilada right now and open the door!" she yelled while she pounded the door with her fist. "I saw you grab the wrapper and run. I was watching you!"

I thought about trying to get out of the bathroom window, but I knew Ingrid would hear the window open and meet me in the back yard before I could get away. I swallowed the last bite of food. If I was going to get a beating for stealing food, I was damned sure going to eat the food!

When I turned the knob that released the lock on the door, Ingrid slammed the door into the wall so hard that the door knob made a hole in the sheetrock. She stomped toward me, reminding me of a gorilla. I tried to get that thought out of my head, but I couldn't. My bizarre reaction to the thought was to laugh. Perhaps it was to suppress my natural inclination to try to destroy the big gorilla that marched toward me with death in her eyes, I don't know. Whatever caused the laughter to bubble up inside of me and come out of my mouth, Ingrid did not like it one bit.

"So, you think this is funny! You think stealing food when you have been forbidden to have it is funny?" She grabbed a wad of hair from the back of my head and shoved my head into the bath stall, underneath the shower. While she held on to my hair with a death grip with one hand and tilted it upward toward the shower faucet, she turned the shower knob with the other hand. I felt the scalding hot water hit and burn my face, while I felt her knee banging into my lower back. After a few minutes, she turned off the shower. She took me by the shoulders and sat me on the toilet seat. "You sit there and do not move! I am going to teach you not to ever steal food again."

Ingrid left the room. I cried from the pain that I felt on my face and in my back. My body shook uncontrollably. "Daddy, please come home. "Daddy, please help me. Please save me from her," I sobbed hysterically.

When Ingrid came back into the bathroom, she was wearing thick rubber gloves, and had the plastic cat litter box scooper that I had used earlier that day to clean out the litter box. And there was something on it. "No, please no, Mommy," I yelled and cried. I knew there was no one to help me. This had happened once before and I knew what to expect. I knew that, anything short of a miracle, my daddy would not be home for hours and I was completely at the mercy of Ingrid and her evil abuse. I was all alone with her. My brothers were either oblivious to the things that Ingrid did to me or they just didn't care what was happening. Or, perhaps they were just too young to put two and two together and form conclusions about what was going on.

As she marched closer to me, holding the scooper out in front of her and being careful not to drop the cat poop off the scooper, I started to gag. I wanted to jump off the toilet seat and run, never to see Ingrid again, but my legs were frozen. They would not move.

Ingrid put the scooper and its contents on the top of the toilet tank, and with lightning speed, she tied my hands and feet with thick twine that she had brought with her. With the super strength of someone demon possessed, she pried open my mouth. I tried to bite her fingers, but all I could do was gag at the thought of what she was about to do. Ingrid grabbed a tissue from the box on the counter behind her and used it to pick up the cat feces. Without hesitation, she forced it into my mouth and covered my mouth with her gloved hand. While I squirmed and spat and cried, Ingrid tilted her head back and laughed.

# "Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime."

# Herbert Ward

#

# 14: NOBODY LISTENED

August 1997

After the cat poop incident, Ingrid was more subdued for a little while. I think she even crossed her own boundaries on that night, and that incident made her think about how far she would actually go to humiliate, control, and hurt me. Maybe the answer to that question scared her because she knew if she went too far _she_ could end up getting into trouble. In classic form, Ingrid made sure she took care of and protected herself. The fact that she didn't want to get into trouble was probably my saving grace.

That horrible incident in the bathroom scared me so badly that I was never the same after it happened. Ingrid was clearly insane and could not be stopped once she'd decided that she was going to torture me. Every moment of every day, the question of what she might do, how low she would stoop, how far she would go to destroy me, weighed heavily on my young mind.

I did my best to focus on schoolwork, but it was hard when I wondered what I would face when I got home. My grades slipped a bit, as it was difficult for me to focus since I was always in so much pain and misery.

I became consumed with reading books and used them as an escape from my life whenever I was given the opportunity. Most kids were eager to get out of school at the end of the day or for the weekend, and go home to their moms and dads, siblings, toys, and dinner with their family. I would have lived at school if I could have. In spite of the fact that the kids teased me mercilessly for the way Ingrid made me dress, and for the way I smelled like onions and dirty hair, school was the only place where I felt fairly sure that no one was going to grab a handful of my hair and drag me from one room to the next. At school, adults didn't yell at me, and I knew what to expect from them. I wasn't constantly looking over my shoulder to see if they were swooping in like vultures to hurt me.

After a short lull, Ingrid's beatings became more severe than before, and my dad's support went from barely there to non-existent. Ingrid had successfully convinced him that her beatings were justified by my "horrible and disrespectful" behavior.

She accused me of doing things that I could not have possibly done. Ridiculous accusations

"Martin, I just know that Mattice here has been stealing makeup and money from my purse!"

Of course I hadn't, but denying anything only made my life worse. Silence was my new best friend and I learned how to keep quiet.

Dad often contributed in Ingrid's abusive ways dragging me by my hair or shirt into my bedroom and giving me his own rendition of a beating. He would turn bright red, a combination of high blood pressure and anger, and beat me without thought. His beatings were usually with his hands or a belt, and he hit me hard. "Daniella, if you don't stop making Ingrid angry, I'm going to kill you! I can't take any more of this crap. Every time I walk into the house, she tells me what a pain in the ass you've been. I'm not going to put up with it. Your mother didn't want you, and you're making my life miserable! Can't you just do what you're told so we can have some peace in this place?"

My dad's harsh words were spoken more frequently and with more anger behind them. He then threw my hysterical sobbing body into the nearest wall—knocking me out cold.

"Wake up" I never knew if it was moments, minutes, or hours that went by, but Ingrid would shake me awake. "Put this on your face now. We don't want a bruise showing."

She handed me a zip lock baggie filled with ice cubes. I would place the cold cubes to my face, wincing as they made my face smart. I used to beg God to not let me wake up the next time—every time. I begged for death so much during my younger years that I'm shocked I was never granted it.

By the time I was in third grade, I had run away three or four times. I started running away after Ingrid beat me with the belt for whatever insignificant thing that I had done that angered her. Without my dad to intervene, Ingrid didn't hold back. The thick leather belt she used to beat me whizzed through the air at an alarming pace. Ingrid was like a full-ahead steam ship, powered by anger. I could see the veins protruding from her forehead. To me, she made the scariest of horror movie freaks look gentle and kind.

I had no place to go when I ran, but that didn't keep me from running. Like any little girl, I was afraid of the dark, but I had become even more afraid of Ingrid and what she might eventually do to me if I didn't escape. I told myself that there could possibly be bad things out in the dark, but I knew for certain that there was a monster in the house where I lived and that the monster was after me. I felt my chances of survival were better out there than at home with Ingrid.

Somehow I understood that if I was dead, I could escape Ingrid, but I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of being the one to end my life. If something was going to take my life, let it be something out there.

At night, I walked up and down alleys, tears streaming down my face, trying to gain a sense of where my biological mother could possibly be. Sometimes hungry stray dogs would charge at me, thinking that I had something to feed them. I would quickly climb over a fence into the back yard of an unsuspecting homeowner, and run like crazy when I saw porch lights come on. In some instances, when the home occupants didn't hear me jump the fence, I would quietly sneak through the back yard and into the driveway. I had learned that I could sometimes find food in cars. People left snack bars, candy, chips, and other packaged snacks in their car.

Once, I caught a car at exactly the right time when someone had gone grocery shopping and hadn't yet taken all their bags into the house. I quietly reached inside the bags and dug around for fruit, snacks, and anything else that would provide an instant meal. I stashed the food in my backpack and ran as soon as I heard the front door of the house open.

I had very little to go on as I walked the dark alleys. Ingrid and my dad wouldn't provide me with information about my mom's whereabouts. They simply told me that my mom didn't want me around and I should be content to stay there with them and stop the foolishness of looking for her.

But I was determined. She had been absent from my life for a few years. I was sure that if I could find her, she would allow me to live with her. I figured if she could just see the state I was in, and the pain in my eyes, she would save me. She would take me in her arms, kiss my face all over, hold me and tell me that everything was going to be OK. I was sure my mom was my ticket to escape the wrath and wicked ways of Ingrid.

At first, when I ran away, Ingrid called the police and acted as though she was concerned that I was missing. One day after I'd run away and been retrieved by the police, I heard Ingrid telling the social worker that she didn't understand why I kept running away. Ingrid pointed toward my bedroom, which had, once again, been magically restored with clean bedding, toys, books, and the look of comfort, and she said, "She has parents and a family who love her and a beautiful room. She has everything a girl could want. Why does she insist on running away like a wild animal down the alleys at night?"

On hearing these words, I ran into the living room and stood next to the social worker. Ingrid stood up and hovered over me, giving me the evil look that she used to try to control me. I didn't care. I pulled up the back of my shirt and pointed to my back.

"Look!" I yelled. "Look at what she does to me! This is why I run away. I can't take her beatings. Nobody will stop her. My dad won't. Nobody will!"

As the social worker leaned toward me to look at my back, Ingrid quickly pulled my shirt down. "She's lying about being beaten. She wants to wear those stupid skates and skate all over the place and she always falls. She is not coordinated. I tried to put the skates away, but her daddy gives them back to her. A couple of days ago, she fell on her back. She has bruises on her back from that fall."

The lady smiled and wrote something on the clipboard that she held in her lap. "I see."

I stomped my foot. "No! Listen to me, please. I promise, I'm telling the truth. I DID NOT fall! Ingrid beat me with a leather belt. I'll get the belt and show you."

Ingrid sat on the sofa while I ran from the living room and into her bedroom. I swung open the closet door where the belt was usually kept on a hook. But the belt wasn't there. I opened every dresser drawer and looked everywhere in the room for the belt, but didn't find it. Then I understood why Ingrid was so calm about me saying that I was going to get the belt. When I got back into the living room, the social worker smiled at me.

"Did you get the belt?"

She and Ingrid exchanged glances and I knew I wasn't going to get any help from the lady. I knew I had just set myself up for a major beating. The lady packed her clipboard and papers into her maroon leather brief case and thanked Ingrid for chatting with her. She stood up and walked toward the door. "I'll do a follow up report soon. In the meantime keep us posted of any changes."

My heart sank. I had risked a sure beating or worse for the chance of someone believing me and helping me. "Don't go! Please, please don't go!" I yelled. "She'll kill me when you leave."

The lady smiled and left. Ingrid watched the social worker walk round the corner of the house and then she turned and smiled her evil smile. She locked the door, walked calmly to the couch, and lifted the cushion. She pulled the long leather belt out and held it up in the air. Tilting her head back and looking up at the belt she laughed so hard she could barely speak. "Is _this_ the belt you were looking for, Daniella, my little child? Since you want the belt so badly, I'll give it to you!"

Without a moment's hesitation, I willed my shaking legs to run. When I got into the kitchen, I slid on the slick floor and ended up on my back, with Ingrid standing over me.

"See, I was right. You do fall all the time. That _is_ how you get bruises. And you must remember that, Daniella." Ingrid kicked me with her high-heeled foot. "Turn over, you wicked girl. I have a special treat for you today, because you've been extra bad."

I heard Ingrid's high heels click on the floor. I heard the metal cat food bowl clink as she slammed it down on the tile countertop. I raised my head and watched as she poured habanera sauce over the wet cat food. She pulled open the drawer where she kept the big butcher knives. _Oh, God, no, please!_ I knew that Ingrid was angrier than I had ever seen her. She was practically steaming. Ingrid's heels clicked back across the linoleum floor toward me. She stood over me and waved the long butcher knife as she talked.

"I should use this knife on you. You would deserve every single slice I made on your body. Everyone in this house would be better off if I sliced you to pieces right now. Your father and mother wouldn't have to see the slut you are becoming and bear the burden of your sins. You would go to wait for your time of torture and your father could finally have some peace."

I felt urine soaking my thin cotton underwear. I tried to control it, but my body was so afraid that I had no bodily control. I panicked further over the thought of the rage that would come over Ingrid when she saw the puddle on the floor.

"But I'm not going to slice you to pieces today." She shot me an evil smile, the glint in her dark eyes ever so present. Ingrid turned quickly on her heels, stomped over to the counter, and grabbed the bowl of cat food that had been seasoned with habanera sauce. "Today, I'll let you eat. Fatten you up for when my nice friend comes back to check on you." She dropped the bowl onto the floor, in front of my face. "Eat it now!" she yelled. "Eat every damn bite of it!"

As I scooped the soggy cat food into my hand, Ingrid bent down and shoved my hand into my mouth. Then, she pulled down the back of my pants. When she realized I'd wet my pants she started yelling in Spanish. She grabbed the belt off the counter, and whirled it through the air a couple of times, as though she were lassoing a calf, and then she came down on my bare back as hard as she could. "Don't," whack, "ever," whack, "talk," whack, "to the," whack, "lady," whack, "again," whack. "Now get to your room and don't come out!"

## "The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it."

## John Burroughs

#  15: MY ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY

December 6, 1998

I rubbed my sleepy eyes, and pulled the thin pale blue sheet up around my neck and shivering body. Today was my eleventh birthday. I closed my eyes and readjusted my body on the blanket on the floor that served as my bed. The mornings were cool in December, even in Arizona.

I tried not to move around as I didn't want Ingrid to know I was awake just yet. It was Sunday, so I was hoping that she would sleep in a little longer than usual. The longer we slept in, the fewer chores and punishments could be given to me—at least that was my logic then, since Ingrid made sure she kept me busy from the time I opened my eyes in the morning until I closed them at night, especially on the weekends when there was no school. Most mornings, she didn't wait for me to voluntarily open my eyes, but kicked me to make sure that I opened them.

"Get your brothers ready for school." She would order me, or if it was the weekend she would ramble off some extensive to do list.

On this morning, my birthday morning, I wanted to have just a few quiet minutes to myself to think about birthdays. The second year since Ingrid had become a part of our family; she had made a big deal about my birthday, since the year before they had been so preoccupied with her pregnancy with Jayson that they forgot to celebrate my fourth birthday.

For my fifth birthday, which happened to take place during my Kindergarten school year, she had actually baked me a strawberry _tres leches_ Mexican birthday cake and adorned it with pink frosting, white and yellow candied daisies, and five pink candles atop it. I had thought it was the perfect cake, even if the bottom was a bit soggy. Even though only a few came, she had invited some kids from the complex to come over and eat cake and strawberry ice cream, along with a few of her Mexican relatives, my new _primos_ and _primas_. My new cousins.

Daddy had five presents waiting for me on the couch wrapped in glittering pink, white and silver paper. The gifts were from both of them, he'd said, and they were two brand new Barbie Dolls, a yellow Care Bear with a daisy embroidered on her tummy and two sparkling My Little Ponies.

But that birthday, six years ago, was the last birthday celebration I had enjoyed. The year after, Ingrid was "sick" on my birthday and did not prepare any kind of celebration, but I still received two gifts, a brand new heather grey sweater and a red and blue back pack that was made for a four year old. I knew better than to complain.

The year after that, my birthday wasn't even mentioned, and it hadn't been since, even though there were celebrations and presents for my brothers' birthdays. As other birthdays were celebrated, I wondered how my dad could just ignore celebrating the birth of his daughter, as though she had never been born, as though she didn't exist.

A tear trickled down my cheek as I realized how much I missed the prettiness of pink and all things little girlish, the joy of gifts, the fun of celebrations—celebration and acknowledgment of _me_. Ever since I had read _Cinderella,_ I could relate to how she felt as she watched her ugly stepsisters go off to the ball to dance with the prince, while she stayed behind, alone. I felt that deep in her heart Cinderella knew that she deserved to be at the ball. Deep in my heart, I knew that I deserved to participate in life; a real life, not the tragedy I'd been handed for a life. But with each day of Ingrid's anger and hatred hanging over my head, a little chunk of my dream to participate in life, especially a fairy tale life, diminished. Each day, it got a little harder to hang on, to believe, to keep trying.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and knew that if I could have one single birthday wish granted, the wish would be for me and my dad to get into a time machine, like the one in the story we had read in school, and go back to the time before he met Ingrid. I had to believe that if he had never met Ingrid, my life would still be full of pink and pretty, happy and fun, and I would have been looking forward to this day.

I heard my brother whimpering in the hallway. Robert was just a toddler, but he could crawl his way over the top of his crib. I knew he was probably hungry and his diaper most certainly soiled.

I guessed that the reason Ingrid hadn't yelled at me to get out of bed yet was because she was still in bed. Ingrid was usually up early every morning. _How could she control everybody and everything in the house if she was still in bed?_

However, there were rare times that she stayed in bed longer than usual. I knew that on those mornings, I had to take care of my brothers, Christopher and Robert. I didn't mind so much, except that it gave me no time to get ready for school, so I always got to school late on those days. Since it was Sunday, I didn't mind at all. I thought that if I was careful, I might be able to sneak a few bites of cereal, which I was forbidden from ever eating unless my dad was home and gave it to me.

"The cereal is for the kids. They are growing and need lots of milk." Ingrid had told me, completely ignoring the fact that _I_ was a kid and needed milk too. I sometimes wondered if she thought I was an alien of some sort, completely unlike all other kids who needed proper nourishment and love in order to live.

Not taking my eyes off the entrance to the kitchen, I opened a box of Cheerios and stuck my hand down into the box, grabbing as much of the cereal as I could while trying not to wrinkle the waxed paper bag that lined the box. The wrinkled bag was just the kind of detail that Ingrid would notice as a clue that I'd gotten into the cereal. It's the kind of detail that could get me hours of grilling and ultimately a beating. I could hear her voice in my mind.

I know you ate the cereal. If you were putting cereal in a bowl for your brothers, you would have poured it from the box and the paper wouldn't be wrinkled. You are lying, Daniella, and you will pay for your sin of lying. You are already on your road to hell. You don't follow any of the commandments. You don't honor your parents. You are a wicked little girl and you lie. You are going to burn in hell, Daniella. It's my job to try to keep you from that, but you don't listen to me.

As I stuffed the cereal into my mouth, I could hear Ingrid making her way to the kitchen. I chewed as fast as I could, and grabbed the plastic bowl from the counter, thinking that I would drop it on the floor as an excuse to duck behind the counter to pick it up while I finished swallowing the dry cereal.

I dropped the bowl and ducked behind the counter just as Ingrid entered the kitchen. She saw me, but I didn't think she'd seen me for long enough to see my puffed cheeks.

Oh God, please don't let her ask me a question that I have to answer!

I heard her steps quicken as she moved toward the counter, and I swallowed the rest of the cereal without completely chewing it. Even if she didn't see my puffed cheeks, she would be suspicious. Ingrid was suspicious of every move I made. She made it clear that she thought I was always up to no good. "What are you doing back there, Daniella?"

"I was getting some cereal for the boys, and I accidentally dropped the bowl."

"You are a klutz. Can't you do anything right?"

_She's not yelling._ I stood up so I could see Ingrid's face. I had learned to read her eyes and facial expressions. "I'm sorry Mommy." I continued pouring a bowl of cereal for Robert.

"It's your birthday, Daniella. I hope you're starting it off good. I give you permission to have a bowl of cereal because it's a special day."

I stood still in disbelief of Ingrid's words, my heart quickening. I didn't know what to think, this had to be some sort of trick, just another way of her tricking me into doing something "bad." This wasn't Ingrid's normal reaction when she thought I was doing something wrong or not doing things the way she thought were proper.

_Did she really just call it a "special" day?_ _Was she trying to trick me into doing something that she could punish me for? Was this a cruel joke where once I started eating the cereal she would take it away from me, tilt her head back, and laugh hysterically?_

"Go ahead, Daniella. Have a bowl of cereal with your brothers."

As I sat and ate the cereal, I waited. I knew that with Ingrid it usually wasn't _if_ the other boot would hit the floor, but _when._ She seemed to get a sick pleasure out of lulling me into a false sense of security and then bringing the boot down hard—sometimes literally. She enjoyed watching me squirm and wait. Impending doom was my daily grind.

The doorbell rang, and after Ingrid answered it, two of her friends followed her back into the kitchen.

"Oh, there's the birthday girl!" one of the women said in broken English. I looked around the room, not sure who she was talking about.

"Okay, Daniella, you go play. We have work to do in here to get ready for a surprise."

I looked up from my cereal bowl and tried to make my face ask the question that I dare not ask out loud. _You want me to play? I'm allowed to play? What about the long Sunday chores list?_

Ingrid waved her arms in front of her. "Shoo now! Go play with your toys."

When I went to my room, my dad was there. He had removed all the junk that Ingrid had stored in my room, put my twin bed back and had it made up with my strawberry shortcake comforter. He'd put out the toys and stuffed animals that Ingrid usually kept in a plastic bag in the spare bedroom and had even hung a few sets of colorful clothes in my closet. I ran to him and hugged him, tears streaming down my face. He hugged me tight, as if to say, _I know it's always supposed to be this way. I'm sorry that it's not._

As far as I can remember, that was the last real hug my daddy ever gave me. As he released me from the hug, I somehow knew that, at the age of eleven, I was being sent out on my own.

For several hours, I played in my room. I hugged the few stuffed animals that I still owned; the ones that Ingrid saved to put out when Child Protective Services visited. They were childhood friends that reminded me of the short, happy life that I'd lived before Ingrid. I took out the Barbie dolls that I had been forbidden to play with because Ingrid thought playing with them would encourage me to be bad. She had cut the feet off all of them so they couldn't wear high heel shoes.

"Hookers wear those shoes," Ingrid had said, ignoring the fact that she frequently wore high heels. She had also warned me not to ever take the swimsuit off the dolls. I was forbidden from owning a Ken doll, because heaven forbid I do something dirty with him and a Barbie.

Daddy left the house that morning, and I assumed he would be gone for the remainder of the day, as usual, but he returned only after a few hours with his arms laden with balloons and a wrapped package. "Let's go skate around the block, munchkin," he said in a suspiciously overly kind tone. I put on my old skates that were way too small for even my tiny feet, but smiled nonetheless, eager for some time with my daddy. Even though I could tell something was completely awry, I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps God had finally answered my prayers and the nightmare of my previous life had ended.

After we returned, some of the kids in our neighborhood had come over and brought small birthday gifts to me: soap bubbles with special bubble blowers, a beaded bracelet, hair barrettes and headbands and My Little Pony figures. They sang _Happy Birthday_ to me and we ate the German chocolate cake that Ingrid and her friend had made that morning. I don't know what got into Ingrid that day and I'd be lying if I said I didn't worry all day about what she was up, but for the first time in a very long time, I felt a moment of what I thought "normal" would be.

My normal time was limited to the day of my birthday. Everything went back to Ingrid's normal the very next morning.

#

"For the poison of hatred seated near the heart doubles the burden for the one who suffers the disease; he is burdened with his own sorrow, and groans on seeing another's happiness."  
Aeschylus

#

# 16: IN THE SHOWER

January 1999

One morning, not long after my eleventh birthday, I accidentally left a drop of toothpaste on the bathroom counter because I'd failed to notice that it had dripped from my toothbrush.

When Ingrid went into the bathroom and saw it, she yelled at me to get my ass in the bathroom and scrub the whole bathroom so I'd remember not to drop toothpaste on the counter. "And when you are done cleaning the whole bathroom, take a shower."

I was shocked because I usually had to beg Ingrid to allow me to take a shower. She would deny me usage of it sometimes for days at a time. I couldn't stand going to school without showering. I did my best to wash my body, but Ingrid would hide all of the soap. Sometimes I was so desperate to wash my body that I would take a washcloth into the kitchen, put a drop or two of dish soap on it, and run back to the bathroom and wash with the dish soap that burned.

"There is no need for a girl your age to shower so often unless you have something in mind that is naughty. Keep your hands and face clean. That is what is important for a girl your age," she would usually say when I asked to take a shower.

After I'd scrubbed the bathroom to Ingrid's specifications, I undressed and got in the shower. I hadn't locked the bathroom door because I wasn't allowed to do so. I quickly washed my hair first in case Ingrid changed her mind and ordered me out of the shower, which she had done a couple of times, making me go to school with shampoo still in my hair.

When I rinsed my hair and opened my eyes, Ingrid was standing in front of the shower door with a strange smile on her face. I didn't know what message she was trying to get to me.

"Why didn't you tell me that you were getting breasts?" she yelled over the running water.

I looked down at my chest. _Breasts?_ I didn't see anything different about my chest, except that I could see my tiny nipples were no longer completely flat against my chest. _Did this mean that I had breasts?_

"I didn't know," I said, immediately ashamed and sick to my stomach. The familiar feeling of panic crept over my body, reminding me of the itchy couch.

Ingrid opened the sliding shower door and stuck her arm in the shower and turned off the water. Her quick, punctuated movements let me know that she was agitated. I wanted to jump out of the shower and get my pants on so she couldn't beat my bare bottom. "You didn't know? Are you kidding me? This is a big deal. You are not going to keep any secrets from me, young lady! You are supposed to tell me everything! Your mother didn't want you, so I have to fill in for her. This is the kind of thing a girl tells her mother, you know. _Aiiiyiiiyiiii!_ You had better tell me when you start getting hair down there. Do you hear me?"

I shook my head for yes, even though I had no idea what Ingrid was talking about. She grabbed me by my shoulders and slowly turned me around, full circle. When I was facing her again, she moved her open hands, palms down, from my neck down my chest. Then she grabbed the skin around my tiny nipples and pinched. Caught off guard, I yelled. "Ouch!"

Ingrid laughed and slapped her jean clad thigh, like she had just heard a joke or was watching a late night comedy show. Then she was suddenly somber again. "You are becoming a woman, Daniella. There's a lot of things you don't know yet. You need to listen to me so I can teach you. We need to have a lot of talks so you can do things the right way."

I stood still and stiff, wishing Ingrid would leave me alone so I could get dressed. _Teach me the right way? Pinching my nipples so hard that I couldn't keep from yelling from the pain is the right way?_

After that, Ingrid allowed me the privilege of showering more frequently, but she often came into the bathroom when I showered, particularly if she had beaten me that day or the day before. After I wet my hair, she would gently, and somewhat sensually, massage the shampoo into my hair and rub my back. It freaked me out so much that my body shook when she touched my head. As horrible as it was, and as much as I hated it, I now know that it could have been much worse if Ingrid's bizarre behavior in the bathroom had progressed.

Nonetheless, her actions caused me to try even harder to find my mother. I felt like Ingrid was becoming crazier and more evil all the time. I knew the only way I could survive was to get out of that house.

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."  
Albert Einstein

# 17: A LIFELINE...?

February-August 1998

During my sixth grade year I ran away from our home on Mackenzie Street so many times that Ingrid and my dad stopped calling the police and Child Protective Services must have either given up or were not contacted, because they stopped coming around too.

By then, I had found my mom, or should I say she had found me. Up until the month before, my mother had been flitting back and forth from Arizona to her sister Rochelle's house in Houston. Then she had showed up at my final school choir concert of the year.

This had taken me completely by surprise. I had been making my way toward Cassie after our recital, eager to speak to her for a few moments before Ingrid would pull me away. As I made my way towards her, I was surprised to hear someone call my name.

"Ambe—I mean Daniella."

I turned to see my mom making her way through the throngs of people and coming towards me. Her arms were laden with the familiar plastic baggies from Savers along with some wilted daises.

"Mom, what are you doing here?" I glanced around quickly in fear of Ingrid or my dad seeing her.

"I came to see you; you did so good up there. I'm proud of you, peanut." I cringed at her odd attempt to mother me and the use of my old nickname.

What was she up to? She didn't seem like she was here to rescue me. She was here to lessen her own guilt perhaps. Every single one of her scattered visits had been pretty much the same. Unexpected and always armed with large see through baggies of used Barbie dolls from the toy section at Savers, a sob story to excuse her absence, and a postcard with yet another new phone number and address. I threw the Barbies away in the girls' bathroom at school and carefully folded up the postcard. I carefully concealed it underneath my shirt and later hid it in my bedroom. Little did I know just how useful that information was about to become.

A few weeks later Ingrid physically abused me so horrifically that it is still a vision vividly engrained within my mind. It happened on a Friday night after school, my least favorite day of the week. Fridays meant I had no escape to wake up to the next morning. No safe harbor to go to for a few hours. No school. My stepmother and my brothers had just finished having dinner; Daddy was out of town on business. After dinner I began doing my usual nightly chores. I washed the dishes, dusted the living room and vacuumed. I was sweeping the outside patio when I heard her call me.

" _Vente aqui_ , Daniella!" her voice commanded me to her in a sickly menacing tone.

My heart began to tumble deeply into the pit of my stomach as my dinner began to creep its way back up. I swallowed hard, tears already forming behind my eyes. "Yes, Mommy?" The next couple of hours from that night—yes, hours—are painfully blurry. That night, unlike most of my childhood beatings, during which I was unable to shut reality out of my mind, I did manage to disassociate myself from the harrowing ordeal. At least parts of it. Either that or I was truly in and out of consciousness. I do remember her grabbing me violently by the hair and by my t-shirt, fingernails digging into my flesh.

"Owie! That hurts." I cried out in pain as her nails dug even deeper into my skin.

"Shut up! You have done it again! How dare you not wash the dishes right _again_?" She stopped at the kitchen sink and shook me violently pushing my back into the cold metal sink. " _Te odio!"_ she continued to scream.

Couldn't I do anything right? Of course not, I was stupid. No wonder my mom had left me. Ingrid broke glass after glass, throwing them on the floor near my feet where they shattered into glittering pieces all about me like tiny pieces of ice chips. To say that I was shaking is a complete understatement. My body was convulsing; I was utterly petrified.

Then I saw it.

The belt.

Her favorite one.

The thick piece of some poor cow's hide was about to become her weapon of choice for the spanking I was about to receive. That night she took no care in where she hit me. No calculated blows to be certain the bruises were hidden. That night every inch of my body was fair game. The belt made contact with my neck, my back, arms, face, even my stomach. By the time she was through with me, I was crumpled on the yellow and green kitchen tile floor unable to move and hardly able to breathe.

I simply lay there in excruciating unfathomable pain, praying to God, pleading for both salvation and death. I wanted to die. I recall begging God in my thoughts —or maybe out loud, I'm not certain —J _ust let me die._ There was no way I would survive this; no way I even wanted to.

The following night I was unable to do anything besides decide to run away to my mom's for good. After filling my school bag with enough clothes for a week and a few personal items, I grabbed the emergency cash I had been saving between my mattresses since I was about six. I had been stockpiling anything I could get my hands on, from times I had change left over with Cassie and from any annual five dollar checks I received from my grandparents for birthdays and Christmas.

My dad was away for work, of course, so I left him a hurriedly written note, shoved it in his La-Z-Boy chair outside, then jumped over the five-foot brick wall in our backyard and into the alley.

It was nighttime when I left. It always was. Because of the dangers my neighborhood held, I found comfort in running away from home in the blanket of darkness that nighttime offered. After all, I was an eleven-year-old, blonde-haired, green-eyed little girl all alone in a part of town filled with hookers, druggies, and Mexican gangs.

Fortunately, I knew the exact area my mother was currently living in, and knew it was within walking distance, on Dunlap and 43rd Avenue.

It was eleven o'clock at night in the middle of the summer. There was a slight breeze, but it was warm and soothing to my wounded body.

Although it was only a few miles away at most, due to my recent encounter with my stepmother, my entire backside began to ache as soon as I hopped over the alley wall to freedom. I didn't care. I was accustomed to pushing through any physical pain until it became numb. It was simply another burden to carry tonight, along with my backpack of belongings and my sadness about my family.

I could hear people talking loudly, children screaming, and the drunken wallowing in different front yards. The filth and deterioration of the passing neighborhoods was temporarily concealed in the cloak of darkness. The true destitute state revealed only in the light of the few scattered lamp posts the city had been obliged to finally install. I could smell the combination of motor oil and food in the warm air. Motor oil because almost every yard had at least one broken down vehicle that _someone_ was always "repairing", and food, as poor as these people were, some overcrowded kitchen was always cooking some grease filled dish of tamales or refried beans.

I sighed. I absolutely detested living in this part of town and couldn't wait until I was an adult and would be in charge of my own life and where I would be living. I swore to myself then that I would do whatever it took to make certain I never lived in that sort of dump again.

I hurried past dark alleys and a busy highway. I was almost there. At that point, nothing was more important than getting to my mom's house safely. I was praying she would be there. I would simply wait for her at the door if not. I knew she was an unfit mother, because what kind of mother abandons her child and knowingly leaves her exposed to abuse and pretends it isn't happening? In fact, what kind of father does that too? They both did it. Yet I knew my mother would never turn me away, and that she herself would never lay a hand on me, and thankfully, she was home. When she came to the door, she didn't seem terribly shocked to see me.

She greeted me with, "Bam bam, is that you? What are you doing here? What time is it?" She stared at me glassy-eyed for a moment. Her reddish brown hair was scattered on top of her head in a messy bun of large curls. Her pale blue eyes looked pink and tired. She was wearing an oversized Batman logo t-shirt and magenta pajama pants.

I shrugged. Where could I begin? "I'm tired, Mom. Ingrid hurt me again—really bad. I'm scared."

"Your dad? Where's he at?" Her eyes were glassy, empty as usual.

"Out of town." I was fidgeting with my backpack straps. Was I wrong? _Was_ she going to turn me away? I began to panic, the beating of my heart quickened and my palms became moist with sweat.

"Huh." She looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. _Was I seriously going to have to spell it out for her? I just wanted to get some sleep._

"Can I come in, Mom? I'm tired," I pleaded. "And hurt."

She stared at me for a split second and then, more like an obedient child, went inside and grabbed me a blanket and a pillow and led me to the couch. For some reason, we didn't discuss why I was there or how long I would be staying. It was as though she simply went through the motions in life and floated along. As much as I didn't want to discuss the abuse at home with my mother, it still hurt the eleven-year-old little girl in me that she didn't seem to even care. That night I snuggled into the navy and green quilted blanket and curled myself deep into the brown sleeper sofa. It smelled of mildew and clothes that had been left in the wash for too long. Yet I didn't care. I was safe, at least for the night, and I thanked God for that over and over again that night until my wounded and wearied mind drifted into a deep slumber.

I couldn't face Ingrid's wrath another day. The physical and mental abuse was doing more damage to my self-esteem, body, and mental health than I cared to endure. This abuse, my father's betrayal, along with my mom's abandonment, is relevant to my story because of how it inevitably _did_ affect my esteem and my mental health, and my need for love and protection. It was only a matter of time before my life did a complete one eighty and I met the **only** one who finally _did_ intervene, who did put a stop to this madness of abuse that was my life.

This person, this man, who I would later look upon as my savior, my protector, and ultimately my lover, was no one other than my best friend Cassandra Preston's father—Senator Damian Preston.

#  AFTERWORD

The process of getting Ingrid's Prison down on paper has not been an easy one, in fact it has proved far more emotionally difficult than I had prepared myself for.

Reliving some of these memories has been trying since I have suppressed them for quite a long time, some of the worst memories I had never even addressed until now.

To say that it's been therapeutic and healing in a sense though, would be absolutely correct.

Having been able to talk freely about my past, and my childhood years has given me a sense of closure. I know that what I went through was a tragedy in my life but I can now fully put it behind me, Ingrid's Prison has sort of been my way of purging the past up, getting it out of my body, and my mind, and allowing me to see it through the eyes of not only my child self, but my adult self, reliving those moments has given me the permission I have needed to understand that none of it was ever truly my fault.

Blame is something that I have struggled with my entire life, as a child, all the way until now. It has been easy to blame myself for the abuse I was subjected to, I've wondered many a night what I had done that was so deserving of the pain I have experienced.

Was I a terrible person in my past life? Was I born with more original sin, than most? Questions like these have troubled my mind all my life. They are of course ridiculous questions, but I have always felt a need for a reason, an explanation of why the things, the terrible unspeakable things happened, to me.

I may not have the correct answer, however I know for a fact now, that no matter what circumstance, no child, not even me, deserves that kind of abuse. There was nothing I did or didn't do, said, or didn't say, that made any of it excusable. Nothing I could have done to rewrite my childhood. That shame and guilt I have grown up feeling, is not mine to bear..no, it is instead belongs to my parents, my stepmother, and the people who simply looked the other way.

It was never in my control and knowing that now, has allowed me to take that blame off of my shoulders.

I am happy to once again say that I am in in a place of complete gratitude in my life. I am surrounded by people who love and support me, unconditionally. Something I never experienced as little girl.

I have to believe that the tragedies in my childhood have made me better in the sense that my parents through their mistakes, have taught me everything **not** to do when raising kids. The rest is easy. To be the first Walter in the family to break the cycle of abuse is a role that I am more than willing to take and accept. It is incredibly easy to be kind and loving to children, to nurture and protect them. I feel nothing but love and adoration for Jason's children, and am looking forward to the day I have a little one of my own.

I am no longer afraid of the future. I am blessed and feel lucky that I get a second chance to lead a happy, safe and loving life. There is no doubt in my mind that God, has looked over me this entire time and has kept me alive so that I can finally share my love and experience the unconditional love of others. For this I am eternally grateful.

Acknowledgements

Here is a page, probably the only page in this entire book that I am actually excited to write.

I am grateful to so many amazing people, for many different reasons.

I have to thank you Jason, once again-you have been amazing throughout this entire experience. Since day one you have inspired and motivated me like no one before. The sense of safety and trust that I feel when I am with you is priceless.

I actually thought we had seen the worst of my lows when writing my first book, The Three Year Lie, but nothing could have prepared us for the events that took place because of how deep I had to delve back into the heartbreaking memories of my childhood. The challenges and repercussions of revisiting those moments in time were far from ideal, yet, you stuck with me, holding my hand through every heartbreaking word, and every waking nightmare.

You wiped away my tears, understanding my moments of deep depression and despair and you were simply put- there for me. I can't say for certain whether I would have had the strength to pull some of the worse memories back up from the dark place I had hidden them a long time ago, without your unconditional love and support.

Between night sweats and terrors, to reawakened depression, you were there, if not simply to comfort me, be my shoulder to cry on, but also remind me of the strength that I have always had within me.

The same strength that allowed me to survive my childhood. You were my voice of reason, a reminder of all that is good within me, never allowing me to fall back completely into the dark fog of my wounded psyche. There are no words in existence that I could conjure up together to define the amount of love that I have for you.

You have also given me the opportunity to see that love can be pure, true and without consequence. You have shared the love of your two beautiful children as well, and I feel blessed to be able to love them and cherish them in a way that I have only dreamt of my parents loving me.

I am happy to say that the relationship between my little sister, Larissa and I is growing stronger everyday. I am so proud of you Riss, you continue being an incredible little mommy to my adorable nephew Gabe, and my perfect brand new niece, Izabel Danielle, whom I am so honored you gave my middle name to. We have been though an incredible amount of pain in our lives and I am so grateful that we have survived it all and are at a place of happiness and finally have a sense of family. I love you a great deal Rissa Roni.

To my little brothers, I love you, very much and I still hope to one day have a healthy relationship with all three of you. I am saddened that because of the circumstances between our father, we have not seen each other for several years. I cannot stress to you how important it is that you all know how much I love you though, and please know that none of this was ever your fault. I know that your mothers parenting skills has nothing to do with the men you are growing up to be and bears absolutely no similarity to who you all are.

I am beyond thankful to the people who contributed to this book as well. Wendy, I am so grateful and lucky to have someone like you on my side, who I consider a friend, even though you live on the other side of the country. Your writing skills are superb and I am excited to begin my third and final book of this series, A Precocious Life, with you.

Kim, your editing skills are beyond anything I could have hoped for. You are awesome and a Godsend! I also am looking forward to working on my third book with you.

Rosie, once again, you have brought my idea to life in the form of my amazing book cover/back cover. I am in love with what we came up with this time and am so happy you always understand what I am looking for. You are a talented artist.

Arturo, your website skills are awesome, thank you for helping me create an amazing site that show cases my writing and personal style.

I would like to extend my thanks to anyone else who has contributed to the completion of my second novel (so cool to say!)-the people in my life that I love and hold dear- Paula and family, Sharon, Victoria, Andy, Ike and Tiffany, Judy Garipoli and great Uncle Billy, Dawn (Snyder-you are a doll), and Bryan from Chicago. All of you- no matter how far or close you are, have been supportive in some form or another and I appreciate that more than I can ever express!

To my pint sized, blonde, adorable puppy-Hunny Bunny, I love you so much I put you on the back cover with me! There is something to that whole "a mans(or womans) best friend" thing. You are five pounds of pure adoration, love, and companionship.

To you, the reader, thank you again for picking up my book and sharing more of my life with me. Until next time.

God Bless

About the Author

A native Arizonian, Amber Walter was born in Phoenix, educated in Arizona and continues to call the city home.

Fascinated with the written word from early childhood, Amber was the kid that got scolded by her teachers for 'always having her nose in a book' rather than paying attention, doing assignments, standing quietly in line and even playing during recess.

In her words "I was addicted to the fantasy genre and authors like Tolkien, CS Lewis and Terry Brooks. I also loved authors like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Sartre, Camus, Steinbeck, Hemingway and others. The entire process of bringing a story to life had me totally enthralled. Not to mention that reading has always been an escape from my abusive childhood. Books took me away from my present-allowing me to experience a better time and place at that moment."

Her future as an author seems to be not necessarily one of choice but of an avocation that merged into a concentrated and sustained effort as she matured.

Walter studied abnormal and behavioral psychology during college while taking every available writing class offered. She wrote for the college newspaper, submitted and had published occasional articles for local magazines and always wrote simply for own happiness.

After college she modeled for a short time then began ghost writing for private individuals along with writing for various local and national companies. Walter wrote everything from corporate communications to How To manuals. "Not very stimulating but it paid the bills" is how she describes this time while openly acknowledging it was the utter boredom of technical writing that set her on a fully committed path to where she is today.

As Amber describes this transitional period in her life, "Technical writing is a bit like taking the creative out of creative writing" and so began her midnight scribbling's of the first of many rough drafts of her debut novel, The Three Year Lie\- a "fictional" graphic memoir of her childhood from the tender preteen ages of 11 to 15.

Just a little over a year later Walter, who has since admitted in television and radio interviews to being the main character Brooklynne Crown, in her first novel, decided to follow it up with a non- fictional prequel, Ingrid's Prison.

She is currently in the process of completing the final novel of the trilogy, to be titled, A Precocious Life, which will become the sequel to The Three Year Lie.

In addition to her full time writing career, Amber is a dedicated advocate for children and against any and all forms of child abuse and she volunteers with a myriad of organizations that work to protect children.

