I can’t remember ever feeling happy when I see my mom. I can only remember the dread, the fear, and whatever this curling, seething thing inside of me is tonight.
“What happened to you?” Mom’s whisper jerks my attention away from the TV, and when I look at her face, I see that she’s looking straight at me. “Why did you take my daughter away?”
The words hurt like a knife through scar tissue. She’s inflicted this particular wound before. Sometimes with blows, or while her fingers dug bruises into my shoulders and she shook me like a rag doll.
“I am your daughter,” I whisper, not for the first time. It feels like a rehearsed play we’ve performed a thousand times before.
Mom gets to her feet, the wineglass still in her hand as she comes toward me. The liquid trembles, ripples forming along the top. “No, you took her from me. You’re not her,” she disagrees quietly, with cold disdain in her voice. “You know that, you wretched thing.”
“Sierra.” My name slips out of my mouth before I can think about it, and she pauses, confused. But so am I. This isn’t how the play goes. These aren’t my rehearsed lines. This is where I’m supposed to apologize, where I usually promise I am her daughter. But the hot, sharp thing in my chest won’t let me.
My fingers tighten on the flashlight in my hand until my bones creak.“Sierra,”I say again. “That’s my name. That’s?—”
She suddenly hits me with the hand holding the wineglass. It shatters, the fine glass breaking against my cheekbone and leaving a numbness in its wake while wine and glass pieces rain to the floor.
“You aren’t my Sierra,” my mother snarls suddenly. “Don’t you dare use her name! Don’t youever—” She reaches for me, getting the play back on script as blood trickles from my split cheek. But yet again I deviate from how this is supposed to go. As she leans closer, looking garish in the light from the TV, I don’t stand there and let her do it. My hand comes up fast and sharp; I hit her with the flashlight as she leans forward, our combined momentum making the blow hurt.
Mom cries out, and when she stumbles backward, the glass on the floor does her bare feet no favors. She yells again, and the pain combined with her drunkenness sends her collapsing to the floor. I step forward, standing over her, the glass crunching under my boots as she wails and cries andyellsfor Dad.
But I doubt Dad will come. He went deaf to her madness a long time ago, not that it meant he was on my side through any of this. Not in any way that mattered, at least.
“Sierra,” I whisper again. “I’mSierra.”
“You’re not my child!” my mother wails. “You aren’t my daughter! I know you’re some awful, evil thing that took her! I’ll kill you, I’ll?—”
“You threw me in the well!” My cold anger shatters into something closer to her hysteria, and tears roll down my cheeks. “If Dad hadn’t helped me, you would’ve killed me! You hit me over the head and?—”
I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what could make this better. An apology? Maybe. Maybe not.
My mom stops her trembling and her wailing. She rocks back and forth and stares up at me, her gaze glazed over fromtoo much wine and madness. “I should’ve hit you harder,” she whispers, her voice filled with nothing but hate.
Something in me simply snaps.
Whatever she didn’t break a week ago finishes shredding into pieces now. I move without thinking, without feeling. Finding it easy to pin her down when she’s this drunk. The flashlight feels satisfyingly heavy in my hand as I lift it and let it fall.
Thud.
She gasps, her mouth open like a fish. One hand reaches for me, but I lift the flashlight again and bring it down, bypassing her hand to hit her face.
Thud.
Blood flies this time, spraying my face as her mouth still gapes like a fish. Her hand falls, but her eyes remain wide, pinning me with their accusation.
You aren’t my daughter,I can practically hear her say.
The flashlight comes down again.
What did you do to Sierra?The words echo in my head, along with memories of her shaking me, of her hitting me, of her dragging me to the barn and telling me I can live with the horses.
My eyes blur with tears as the sharpness inside me spreads, becoming all-encompassing. I can hear her pleas and begging, but they’re distant and muffled, along with the sound of the home videos playing on the television.
I stop only once the tape ends. When the laughter and love from the older TV stops, it’s no longer a soundtrack to my retribution, and I finally stare down at what used to be my mother.
Though now she looks like just a bunch of bloody, pulverized meat. Not fit for the dogs or the pigs.
Not fit for anything but this.
“I told you that you’d regret it,” I whisper, though my mom is far from hearing, even if her fingers are still twitching. Her bloodis sticky and warm on my face, and I feel bits of thicker things running down my chin. When I try to turn the flashlight on, I realize the lens is cracked. The blood fascinates me, and I wipe it off with my fingers to look at the battered, shattered plastic.
