A Better Tragedy

By Sharon Iggulden

There are times when Sarah Moore wonders if she spent the first twelve years of her life living inside a continuous episode of Cops. White trash from the moment of conception, neglected and abused, Sarah was born into that infamous outpost of civilization known as a trailer park outside of Buffalo. Often mesmerized by the twirling blue lights of the police cars that were frequent visitors to her doorstep, Sarah would fantasize about being safe, understanding early that normalcy is a nebulous concept and salvation exists for only a carefully selected few.



Sarah's life is changed forever the day her brother, Billy, and her mother's live in boyfriend, George, stab each other to death at the foot of her bed and she becomes the foster child of one of her former teachers. Knowing that Billy's death created the possibility of escape, Sarah realizes that good and evil have an incestuously symbiotic relationship.



Brilliant, beautiful and driven Sarah graduates as valedictorian of her high school class and enters the local university. Despite everything, she carefully nurtures seeds of hope that life can still hold magic for her. Desperate for a home and family of her own, she marries campus heartthrob Paul Hunter, only to discover that the normalcy she craves has an inexplicable dark side, while magic sometimes hums a nonsense tune.



A Better Tragedy reveals secrets, deceptions and ugly truths all with a biting and edgy humor.



A Better Tragedy is the companion book to Wire Mother in the Christian Scott - Sarah Hunter series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sharon Iggulden
• Release date: Sep 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301294053

Sharon Iggulden

Sharon has written several novella/short stories including: Dashboard Jesus, The French Tour Guide, Run Hard, Tick-Tock, Time Changes Everything, Symmetry and A Lucky Day. Sharon has also written several novels including the Christian Scott-Sarah Hunter series: Wire Mother, A Better Tragedy and The Lyrics Will Make You Cry, as well as the stand alone novel A Pale Horse. Sharon lives in Elma, New York and may be reached at [e-mail]

Book preview

Prologue

A human being will do unspeakable things to survive.

Sometimes the unspeakable is the only chance we get.

Surviving doesn’t mean we come out intact on the other side. The fear, cold and calculating, that numbs with surgical precision, cauterizes the vulnerable center of us.

Freezes our souls.

Some things should never be remembered.

The great truths come to us slowly, often as the feathery tingle of an almost imperceptible inner vibration rather than an actual sound. Easily dismissed. Then a silent brush from the stirring of a hushed breath, like unseen cobwebs, then silent grazes of lost thought, the uncomfortable nagging discomfort of having forgotten something important. A movement of air around arms and neck, pinprick shivers, barely discernable murmurs, linger just on the edge. The disembodied voices in our heads, mumbling a litany of old fears and memories, which seem to return so effortlessly.

Scenes from an asylum.

Little specks of cosmic madness.

There is no beginning or end, just a constant stream of cellular nonsense on a mental loop. The images tip toe slowly in our peripheral vision, but even turning slightly they’re impossible to capture, always just out of reach of even tightly grasping fingers.

There is nothing.

The whispers return to cycle around and around in little sensations of sound.

Nebulous.

Like trying to touch atoms.

Then slowly, a knowledge so breathtaking that to come closer than even its outermost perimeter is to illicit scalding terror or even insanity. Then the numbing revelation of an immutable truth.

Good and evil have a symbiotic relationship.

Incestuously symbiotic.

***

Sarah often felt as if she was living on the fine line of the horizon, balanced precariously like one of the Wallendas, no net, just deathly, deathly silence. The fact that several of the Wallendas all plunged to their deaths, one by one, was an irony not lost on her. She could see herself, teetering between darkness and light, framed against the cold white sky, a small figure battered by the forces of the universe threatening to shred her into some cosmic black hole spinning farther and farther, faster and faster into oblivion.

Loneliness.

That’s all there is, out there in the darkness, trapped between a molten sun and a freeze dried moon.

A stark loneliness.

Living in limbo

Cornered between hell and something.

It’s the unexpected that changes our lives. It’s what breaks our hearts. We understand expected. We know what it means. How it feels.

It’s the inevitable sameness of days. The familiar pattern of our lives with small tonal variations. An intimate comfort, often tinged with bouts of boredom in the meager unnoticed existence most of us live. Minor players leading insignificant lives.

But the unexpected.

The unexpected changes things forever.

The goal is to keep the unexpected from being fatal.

Fatal being a word with more nuance than we give it credit for.

Sarah understood the level of rage that roiled inside of her was cancerous. A malignancy devouring her internal organs that could consume everything.

It could kill.

So she reached inside and smothered it, paralyzing everything it touched. The good and the bad, all atrophied slowly together.

Everything has a price.

Sometimes there are no solutions.

Only a better tragedy.

***

Sarah was an organizer. She organized things because she couldn’t organize her life, a benign way of coping, all things considered. Chaos frightened her. Odd considering where her life had started. She sometimes felt as if her existence was circular, a never ending exercise with only slightly varying themes. She understood that obsession is what we use to control the empty spaces between fear and remembrance. The trick is to turn it into something of value.

She was making progress.

Some things left, only to return again. Some journeys were made over and over, just like the carefully organized trip she was on now.

Sarah lived inside her head. It was the safest place she knew.

She also knew safe was a relative term.

Sarah drove slowly, looking for the turn off. It was easy to miss now. She was certain she could physically feel the impatience of the drivers behind her as some transferred their frustration at her slow pace to loud honking and hand gestures as they passed. She understood exactly how they felt, knowing she usually considered the speed limit to be just a loose guideline.

Finally, she found it and turned onto the overgrown dirt driveway, more of a memory than an actual road. She slowly crossed the neglected and abandoned broken down railroad tracks and felt her heartbeat tick up a notch…or two…felt it beat in her throat, which was suddenly parched and constricted. It always happened in exactly the same place, in exactly the same way. The simple act of crossing the tracks, of driving from one side to the other, from one world to the other, transported her into the past, like a time traveler.

The road she had just left was the same road which a little further on, led directly to the Falls at Niagara, honeymoon capital of the world and one of the most mis-managed pieces of property on the plant, a victim of greed and lack of vision, it alternately dabbled in carney acts and the Mafia, until the Seneca Indians came along and gave it a new vision and billions of dollars in casino funds, until the state took it away again in a war for tax revenues and race track gambling. It was a city caught in its own whirlpool.

In one of the more infamous Mafia restaurants in the heart of downtown Niagara Falls, one or two mobsters can still be seen walking on the sidewalk in their three piece suits and watch fobs. Sarah shook her head. There was no comfort in knowing that all of the real estate was tainted, not just her little corner.

She stopped her car in the middle of what had once been a parking lot and wondered if she would actually get out of the car this time. Considering that it took her years just to cross the tracks she was making progress. She stared at the littered and abandoned trailer park, leaves blowing on what was left of the concrete pads, making little skittering noises in their wake, running with the wind. She carefully watched the stunning emptiness all around as if it could suddenly spring to life, hearing remembered voices echoing in her head, like strobe lights blinking into empty loneliness.

Billy get your ass over here now.

If I want your shit I’ll squeeze your neck.

Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about.

Get your fucking nose out of that book and go outside Goddammit.

I’ll beat the shit out of you, you so much as ever look at me cross wise again.

I’ll kick your ass ‘till your nose bleeds.

Stop crying. Your tears have no power.

No, no, officer. No trouble here. Just some nosy neighbors…again.

Sarah stared the broken beer bottles, discarded cans and papers scattering in front of the wind, like tumbleweed. She smiled slightly at the incongruity of the comparison considering she was in an old blue collar trailer park outside of Buffalo. Well, desolate loneliness was the metaphor she was going for. The windows of the trailers were black with layers of grime. The skin of the trailers that were left sprouted rust splotches that looked like leprosy.

Years of neglect.

Not that they were ever really clean. Windows weren’t exactly a priority out here on the edge of the frontier. It was like living on scrub land.

Living in hell’s septic tank.

Sarah opened the car door. It smelled sour and moldy, like old neglect and abandonment, an accumulation of years and years of too much alcohol and vomit. The detritus of hopelessness. She listened to the incessant humming, buzzing and droning of insects, like the background music in some demented movie.

The sounds of home.

No.

Not home.

This hell should never be thought of as anyone’s home. The lost dreams and futile lives of all who lived here gave the air a palpable thickness, as if despair were a breathing thing.

Maybe it was.

It would be hard to find another group of people more inept at life.

Mediocre would have been several rungs up.

It wasn’t that easy, growing up with one psychotic, one dependant and one very pissed off brother. Then again, it had only lasted twelve years. Not so long a time, given the scheme of the cosmos.

Sarah wondered why she kept coming back, year after year, summer after summer, torturing herself with the ghosts of a lost life…dead dreams. She wondered most of all why she never got out of the car. Why the fear was still so alive for her, as if the place itself had a being, a presence that could swallow her, like a huge vortex, into some other dimension to twirl forever in the eddy of never ending blackness.

Taking a ride on the hell train to adulthood.

Sarah was half expecting to hear music from the Ride of the Valkyries in the background.

Six trailers on the deserted edge of nowhere.

Living on the jaundiced edge of life.

Six trailers.

That’s all there had been. The logical assumption was that the inhabitants of these trailers would be friends…family…partners in futility…and five of them were.

Sarah’s family was excluded from the dance. Lower than low, looked down upon by white trash. It don’t get any finer than that, her brother Billy would laugh sarcastically. Sarah could still hear his voice. Pitch perfect in her head.

There was always the scent of desperation in the air and neglect. They have subtle odors of their own. The faded look of deprivation was more than visible as colorless eyes looked out at the world without hope or future. A world that just spawned more need and a constant underlying hum of anger and discontent.

The cycle of fatalism steeped into generations of lore and experience lived in the heart like a separate entity, a living thing. Sarah could see all their vacant eyes staring numbly at the landscape, dimly aware that it had all gone horribly wrong somehow, possessing only a vague awareness that there was more than pizza and a nightly half stupor to dull the yearning for something…something unknown, unnamed. People only minimally aware of being losers, but never really understanding why.

A persistent generational waiting for Godot.

None of them knew how to get out.

The smell of violence emanated from the earth in subtle waves, like heat from a lamp. Sarah was always convinced that blood collected in pools under the ground. She was surprised it didn’t bubble up between the cracks.

Or maybe it did.

And she didn’t recognize it for what it was.

In Sarah’s memories it was always raining or winter. The persistent mud and snow, mixed with the monotonous silver of the trailers made the world feel as if it were permanently black and white despite the surrounding woods. Sarah was never really sure when she realized the world had color. Probably not until after George died.

Life has only one way in and one way out, he would sagely intone.

The asshole.

Their lives were a sort of odd surrealistic ballet.

The intimate, unforgettable adagio of home.

Of family.

Most of the time they were just trying to stay out of each other’s way. They were connected by only the most superficial thread, having no real emotional commitment. Strangers that had somehow found each other and decided to stay together for some unknown reason.

A sort of choreographed solitude.

A synchronized loneliness.

Sarah smirked at the movies playing in her head. She had no emotional ties to this world and no need to be recognized or remembered in it. Attention never carried anything good. Except for Billy. She had loved Billy. One hundred forty pounds of attitude in a fifteen year old body when she had seen him last.

George, her mother’s boyfriend, lived with them. A man who spent his life pissed off about phantom wrongs, imagined slights, and perpetual contests of whose was bigger, using his futile life as an acceptable excuse to get drunk almost every night.

Never admitting the failure in his life was himself. A man committed to a breathtaking ignorant arrogance. The schizophrenic ringleader of a demented circus possessing a smile gleaming with barbed wire.

Sarah stared straight ahead at their old trailer, closing her eyes against the memories of beer bottles, dirty dishes and scattered clothes. The couch made of some cheap, rough, scratchy material with little balls on it, the fabric of indeterminate color, maybe gray, maybe blue, definitely filthy. Sarah never liked it to touch her skin.

The kitchen table was made of faded Formica and chrome. Very retro and chic.

Unless you grew up with it.

The TV, of course, was state of the art.

Housekeeping had never been a high priority to mommy dearest. Cooking either for that matter.

Alcohol was the only real priority.

Alcohol and drunken make out sex wherever and whenever the spirit seized.

Sarah wondered why her mother’s voice still lived in her head, too. Unlike Billy’s, it had no magical allure. It was not a talisman against horror.

Sometimes, lately, she would catch herself.

A word.

A gesture.

A mannerism that would remind her of Janet.

She would cringe at the similarity.

What had Dylan said?

Don’t look back?

Not so easy.

Sarah wondered if the rocks that were embedded in the dirt and led to her magic thinking rock in the woods were still there. She used to pretend they were part of the yellow brick road leading her to paradise. Sunlight would dance on the tree tops and in the morning the mist would rise from the river across the street and cover everything with an eerie mysterious cloak. Later on, the sun would close in and burn the mist away leaving only barren ugliness in its wake. She would sit, huddled on her rock and wonder if the future was going to be prettier than the past.

Or present.

The sun beat down mercilessly on the roof of the car, the heat creeping into the interior like tentacles, reminding Sarah of summers in the trailer. Stewing in one’s own fluids every summer has a sort of timeless appeal. There’s nothing quite like an un-air- conditioned trailer in July to make you understand you’re at the bottom of a very deep and insurmountable personal cesspool.

Everyone pretty much moved on after…after the…incident with Billy, like Okies fleeing the dust bowl. They packed everything into their cars and trucks and got as far away from Dodge as they could. No one wanted to be associated with the place any more. It was as if they all suddenly raised their heads and caught a whiff of the stench of their own futility.

Unlike Anne Frank, Sarah didn’t believe in the essential goodness of people. She believed in their hidden evil.

Sarah sighed deeply and closed the car door, knowing there was no way to shape it, or mold it or turn it into anything other than what it was. She had given up too much power over herself and for that she would be eternally ashamed. Turning the air on high, knowing that once again she would drive away without getting out of the car, Sarah slowly crossed the decrepit tracks and headed for home, knowing exactly what she would do when she got there. She would stand under the steaming water for a long time, in a vain attempt to wash the stench of too many years of raw primal fear from her skin.

Chapter 1

Sarah lay very, very still, staring into the night, into the dark room trying to find the familiar shapes. She took inventory of her dolls and stuffed animals, surrounding her tiny five year old body with them, like a moat, as if they were sentries with magical powers.

Her breathing was shallow yet rapid, as she listened intently for the sound that brought terror into her soul. Listening for the creak in the hall, knowing he was coming again, like the angel of death. She had to concentrate hard.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

She was always afraid she would forget to breathe.

The shades were up on her windows. Sarah insisted they not be lowered until dawn, finding solace in the faint light from the outside, certain it connected her to the world in some vague and mystical way. Even the eerie shadows and movements of the trees on the other side of the panes gave more comfort than anything inside this horror mistakenly called home.

It was about the night, of course, that was the problem. Nothing good ever happened to her once the sun went down. Sarah didn’t have to read the Grimm Brothers to know monsters existed. They lived down the hall.

Sarah turned her head slowly to look at the clock, afraid that any movement might be felt by him and he would mistakenly think she were beckoning.

One o’clock.

She knew that if he didn’t come by two then she was safe, she could step over the invisible line to temporary salvation.

Until tomorrow.

When the vigil would begin all over again.

Sarah stayed awake listening, waiting, because she hated to be surprised, hated to feel his hands all over her waking her from a sound sleep. Sleep was sacred to Sarah, it was where she willed herself to dream of flowers and spring and sunshine.

Sometimes.

Sometimes when he was doing things to her she forced herself into a sort of trance, a fugue like state where it was summer all the time and she could almost smell the flowers.

Sometimes, she could swear she was skipping along the sidewalk, carefree, maybe running even, in the beautiful warmth of the rays.

Understanding in her tiny five-year-old body that it was important not to break.

She heard the steps and a kind of feral terror seized her, like a hunted animal with one leg caught in a trap. If she had the option to gnaw off a limb to save herself she would have gladly made the sacrifice.

She could feel him standing next to her bed, looking down at her as he removed his clothes. She stared straight ahead into the night…silently talking to her dolls, reassuring them it would be over soon, consoling them not to be afraid…to be brave.

He reached down and undressed her as she flopped on the bed like a rag doll, making her body limp, refusing to give him any impression that she was complicit, that she gave her consent. He roughly pushed her dolls to one side as she gripped Mr. Teddy tightly in her small fist. His hands roamed her waif like body touching and stroking, murmuring words of appreciation, groping and prodding, spreading her legs with mechanical precision, thrusting his fingers into her as he stroked himself, preparing for the grand entry, sticking his tongue in her mouth. She tasted his beer soaked breath.

A French kiss.

The ultimate violation.

Crude and diabolical in its intimacy.

You’re going to love this when you get older, he whispered conspiratorially. You’ll love the danger and the tightness, just like I do.

Sarah had ceased hearing. She had slipped easily and effortlessly into a meadow of beautiful fragrant flowers. She rolled over and over again as she tumbled down the hill, giggling with her face to the sun.

Like fucking God damn Sybil, she would one day think.

Later, Sarah would think that we invest sex with too much meaning. We are conditioned to believe that it’s about love and that it somehow completes us, but it’s really just about power most of the time.

Who has it.

Who doesn’t.

Who knows how to use it best.

How to manipulate the odds like a game of Russian roulette and survive a gunshot to the temple.

Power and submission.

A fragile predatory tightrope.

For some people, it’s mostly just about the fear.

Sarah would one day understand that men want sex for itself. Women use it to get something else.

It’s horrible.

What human beings are capable of.

How easily we corrupt each other with the superficial trappings of civility.

Sometimes men think that if they can just have enough sex, make enough money and drink enough alcohol it will all make sense. No amount of wailing or incantations to Jesus can change the inevitable outcome. We will all rot in the cold, cold ground.

We spend such brief moments of eternal time together, it’s inconceivable why some choose to use those moments to sow evil. It’s hard to understand that some people can’t be saved. That some souls are black and diseased from the start. That no matter how hard we try, or how deeply we want to believe, salvation exists for only a carefully chosen few.

Chapter 2

Billy and Sarah were alone most of the time. Janet worked at the convenient store down the road and George worked in a butcher shop somewhere, both on the other side of the tracks. That was the world where the people Sarah saw on TV lived lives with real houses and pools and nice clothes they got from stores and not the Salvation Army or Goodwill. The other side of the tracks was where people were pretty and smart. Sarah understood that she was on one of the outer planets, looking at the world through beveled glass.

Crossing the tracks was like entering another dimension. She always walked quietly, afraid an invisible force shield would descend to keep her out if she were noticed.

Sarah pictured herself as living in a kind of bubble inside a larger bubble and crossing the tracks was the secret passage from one moon to the next.

The world Sarah lived in was colorless, painted in stark black and white and removed, like living inside a doll house, life in miniature. All sound was muted, except for George when he yelled. The other world was noisy and filled with color and movement. It frightened and excited her at the same time.

Sarah tried hard not to let too much of her body touch the rug. It was thread bare, the metal floor showing through in more than one spot. It wasn’t the poverty of the rug that bothered her. It was the smell. The not so gentle wafting of decaying crumbs mixed with the less than subtle nasal assault of animal waste made her skin feel creepy, as if things were crawling around on her, which in all honesty they probably were, especially in the summer when the odors were particularly pronounced.

It wasn’t really a place to live.

More like an enclosed landfill.

It’s true that the sense of smell triggers the most memories. Any hint of decay sent her into cataclysms of cleaning.

George was a butcher and smelled of blood and dead meat. His shoes always trailed various animal bits into the trailer to add to the rest of the stench and debris, especially in summer when the heat did nothing to cook the remains, but instead only succeeded in hastening their decay and spreading stench in the fetid, humidity fueled air. The mere thought of raw red meat was usually enough to cause Sarah to feel the vomit and bile start to rise.

George never picked up anything he dropped, brushing various food remnants onto the floor, letting the dog get it. So the wet slobber of animal saliva was mixed in for good measure. Then again, Janet, as mommy dearest liked to be called, wasn’t exactly a cleanliness dervish herself, usually smelling of cigarette smoke and old sex.

Janet had early on insisted on being called by her first name, trying to vanish into pretend, hoping people would think she was Billy and Sarah’s older sister, fooling no one but herself.

It was sad really, thinking she could be someone later in life she had never been in the beginning, or maybe ultimately brave to think the world still looked at her.

And Billy.

Well, Billy.

Billy smelled like cheap cologne when he got a little older, trying to hide the fact that he wasn’t allowed to shower every day. Before the cologne he smelled like desperation.

Hate and desperation.

Sarah had no real memory of anything before age five, as if she had been suddenly hatched. She and Billy, who was three years older, would play any number of original games while they whiled away the hours alone. Outside of George’s visits, Sarah’s first memory was of sitting on the living room carpet with a crown on her head Billy had cut out of old newspaper. Billy liked to make up the rules for their games as they went along...the names, too. His creativity astounded her.

Billy could barely read. He always said the words jumped around on the page, but his ability to create something out of nothing, especially on a rainy day, could not be surpassed.

Sarah liked the medieval games best. She liked being a princess, pretending she was pretty and worthy of salvation. Billy made the crowns and they used blankets for their golden robes. Billy would then slay the evil Cyclops. The fact that it was George lay like an unspoken knowledge between them. Once the Cyclops was dispatched they could live in peace and harmony for thousands of years.

If only.

It would be Billy who would hold her hand and lead her across the magic tracks the first time, talking softly to her the entire time, stilling her fears. Billy waited with her for the school bus. Later when he himself went to school on the random days plan, he always stayed with her until she got on.

It was Billy who took her to school on her first day and made sure she was in the right room. Sarah was both terrified and thrilled to be able to leave the trailer park and go to school with Billy. It beat sitting in the trailer alone, as she had done for three years, waiting for someone to come home.

Lonely.

Listening to the silence.

A house of silences

She would become an expert.

Sarah learned early to read the different nuances. To sniff the air like an animal and feel their meaning. To try and know if screaming would soon break the quiet.

Sometimes she was certain she could reach out and touch the heaviness of the silence, see it hanging in the air, know it for what it was.

The lull before the storm.

It always created a frightening stillness deep inside her, like dead air.

The mystery silences that had no discernible texture were the worst. The most frightening. They could be the most deadly because there was no warning.

Sometimes the silence was so profound Sarah wondered if she had gone deaf.

It created a perceptive life.

Sarah and Billy spent most of their time trying to stay out of George’s way. There was no way to know what would piss him off. No way to know ahead of time whose turn it would be, or what would cause it, or how it would all play out. Most of the time it was Billy’s turn, but it could have been any of them really. Sarah thought of it as some private perverted version of whack a mole.

It could be a word or a look, an accidental noise or even upon one occasion the sound of the toilet flushing that had inadvertently drowned out some TV dialogue. The drinking had usually been going on for a couple of hours, but sometimes the inexplicable rage was so shallow that the normal pattern was broken and the first slap or in Billy’s case, first punch came as a relative surprise. George always made an exception for Billy and used a closed fist, though upon occasion Janet had also been the lucky recipient. George liked to be an equal opportunity bully.

Sarah usually just got slapped. It’s best not to make light of that fact, George’s hands were like hams and rock hard from work. Sarah got special treatment because she was George’s special friend and because she choked back the screams that would bring the police.

Billy liked to scream. He liked the power of summing help and at the same time exposing George for the cruel bastard he was. The only thing wrong with the scenario was that George didn’t really care. He was usually so wasted that shame passed him by.

Janet.

Well.

When she wasn’t the recipient of George’s rage, she was a participant. Sort of like a sidekick, smaller and weaker than the main character, but anxious to get in the fray just the same.

Sarah and Billy agreed.

Her slaps hurt the most.

They were the greatest betrayal.

George was a huge man, six feet two at least, with a growing paunch and hands the size of boxing gloves.

Perfect, considering what he used them for.

His head was massive with thinning brown hair and deep, cruel, vacant coal black eyes. He had a mashed nose and several missing teeth from years of fighting at local bars. His voice never seemed able to be quiet or tender. It always resonated with a booming authority bordering on cruelty and danger. A violent sound, like the deep throated growl of an angry dog.

There was no question of trying to please him. It wasn’t possible, logical or predictable. Better to keep a distance.

Meals were the worst times. Sarah understood this from a very early age. Too much togetherness for people who didn’t really like each other. It could be anyone who caused the problem…or anything: a spilled drink, a dropped utensil, a stray word or question. It was impossible to predict.

Mostly, meals were silent. Janet jumping up and down like some nutty jack-in –the-box trying to satisfy George’s every desire before he even knew what it was. George, morosely shoveling in every mouthful as if it would be the last, trying to top the loudness and duration of his belches from the day before, sitting there bare chested in the summer as if he were some six-pack abs Adonis. His hairy chest, back and arms exposed to the world, he would often take perverted delight in playing a grotesque game of pull my finger with Sarah, who was desperately trying not to gag at the sight of his partially clad body. These were the times Sarah hoped that keeping her eyes on her plate would be enough to forestall his antics. It never worked. She knew it wouldn’t. The futility of her prayers didn’t stop her from having hope.

Sometime during the meal, after the belching had satiated some primal part of his need for display, George would turn to Sarah and demand. Pull my finger. Sarah would stare at her plate, knowing to delay the inevitable was futile. George would laugh loudly. Come on, bitch, pull my finger. Sarah would try to reach his finger without looking, but he would wave it around, forcing her to make eye contact. Once the deed was done, and she pulled the appropriate appendage, George would lean grandiosely over on one cheek, toward Sarah, and fart loudly. I got you with that one, he would roar. Shot you right in the head. Sometimes there would be a variation on the theme and George would announce. Shot you in the heart.

It didn’t matter really where the fatal blow was struck. Sarah understood the symbolism of it.

Dead was dead.

It was a ritual that repeated itself night after night after night with sickening regularity. Sarah wondered why men were so enamored with their own bodily gasses.

George and Janet always had the real meals, while Sarah and Billy subsisted on spaghetti, with sauce from a jar on special occasions, but mostly just with margarine...or not. Water from the tap to drink. The only meal to change the landscape was

Thanksgiving when Sarah and Billy were allowed to share the meal and they had better understand it was a privilege kindly bestowed by the not so benevolent despot.

Sarah especially hated it when Janet and George had hard boiled eggs. George liked to crack them on Sarah’s head to open the shell and then laugh as Sarah rubbed the spot trying to soften the pain. That’s all that head of yours is good for, he would smirk. It wasn’t about the pain so much as it was about the mindless cruelty.

The intended insult.

Why can’t Sarah and I have something besides spaghetti? How come we can’t have the same food you do? hissed Billy defiantly at Janet one day.

Sarah felt herself grow cold as she tried to make herself smaller, trying to sink into the chair. She didn’t realize she was moaning quietly until George roared at her.

Shut up, you stupid bitch.

For a while there, Sarah would think stupid bitch was her first name.

Looking to her mother for help was futile. Janet was flitting around like a humming bird trying to wipe up the water Sarah had spilled when she had instinctively jumped with fear at George’s voice.

Sarah could feel the air snap around her and gain substance as if it were becoming a solid. If she had enough courage to look up, she knew she would see Billy and George glaring at each other.

Well, ma, how come, huh? We’re your kids. You’re supposed to take care of us. Sarah could feel Billy pointing from himself to her, moving the dead air in the stifling room, giving it a kind of life. Sarah felt the sweat bead up and run down her back and face.

Be quiet, Billy, hissed Janet. You don’t go to work every day like we do.

Enough, growled George. We don’t have to explain nothin to you. You got it? You’re lucky you get anything at all.

Sarah looked up and her seven year old eyes met Billy’s. She silently pleaded with him to keep quiet.

Billy turned back to Janet. It was his goal to look at George as little as possible.

To symbolically erase him from their lives

Can’t you answer me, ma? Don’t you care about us enough to give us a decent meal? I mean look at Sarah, for God’s sake. She’s so skinny the cars almost blow her over when we’re waiting for the bus.

Sarah was afraid she would begin hyperventilating. Fear lay in her stomach like a cold hard mass. Billy, no, don’t, she pleaded. I’m fine. She heard George make the sound. It was like no sound she had ever heard another human make. It was a cross between a growl and a hiss.

Like an animal in the wild warning trespassers.

Protecting Billy was impossible. He was much too angry. Much too unhappy and much too defiant. Her attempts were all in vain.

George was drilling Sarah with his eyes. His gaze so powerful she felt as if she had turned into a butterfly about to be pinned to a board, wings spread, helplessly displayed.

Sarah would carry George inside her the rest of her life, an old terror she couldn’t let go. He would be the ghost at every table where she ate, waiting for the hand to strike out, quick and deadly, like a serpents tongue, slapping her face or driving the fork into the back of her hand. Ducking or running would just make it worse later, better to just sit and take it. It would be better in the long run.

Sarah put her hand to her cheek, hoping her own touch could lesson the pain, a sort of retroactive protection, but the history of her short life taught her it was futile. The pain would play itself out and there was nothing she could do to hasten it. Sarah was afraid that one of these days the bruises would be permanent. They would never fade. They would be part of her permanent landscape for all to see, forever. Everyone would know she wasn’t worthy of love.

Don’t hit her, you ass hole, yelled Billy. Big brave man like you hitting a little girl. It must make you real proud. You must smile about it to yourself in the mirror later. It must give you a real rush to use your power over something weaker and more defenseless than you. You sick fuck.

Another round of the Moore family chronicles would begin. George would catch Billy. It was inevitable, he always did, the trailer wasn’t that big. The fighting, yelling and beating would go on until the police came…again. Each time they came the shame was less and less until Sarah understood that soon it would be as habitual as breathing, and just as upsetting.

Later, when Sarah was much older, she would be watching an episode of COPS. The skinny disheveled woman, with half heartedly pinned fly away hair, wearing a too small shirt and too short shorts, smoking a cigarette as if it were an oxygen hose, would be explaining why everything had gone so wrong…again. In the background, they would be stuffing an oversized bully into the squad car as he cursed, kicked and struggled at his hand cuffs. A young boy and girl, with dead lifeless eyes, stood on the side, desperately holding hands, looking at their lives play out in true comic form on national television. Sarah stared at the scene and thought, that was my life.

There I am.

Billy and I.

That’s what I am.

It won’t wash off.

Damaged children may look normal, but that just means the crack is well hidden.

If it’s true, that every life has its own music.

Than Sarah’s was the theme from Psycho.

Chapter 3

Sarah sat on the front steps of the trailer. The metal risers cool through her too thin summer nightgown. She was mesmerized by the red and blue police car lights, flashing around and around, turning everyone’s face blue and red, lighting up the night sky like some surrealistic forth of July.

She tried to pull the too small nightgown over her knees and snuck a look at her hands to see if they were blue like everyone else’s seemed to be. She heard snippets of familiar conversation. It wasn’t, after all, her first rodeo. She was familiar with the contents of the show.

Poor little thing. Wonder where her brother is? That mother should be ashamed.

No officer, he didn’t hit me. I swear it, lied Janet…again.

Sarah brushed a tear away and tried to look bored so everyone would understand it was no big deal.

Just life, really.

Hello, said the policeman putting his hand out for Sarah to shake. "I’m officer

Phil. Who are you?"

Sarah stared up at him a minute, watching the blue reflect off his face and careen into the night as if it were bouncing on a trampoline. She tried to make herself small by pulling in her arms and shoulders, but he wouldn’t take his hand away. Finally, Sarah put her tiny hand in his and was amazed at its size and how warm it was. Hello, she replied shyly.

Do you have a name? His tone was so gentle and soothing she wondered idly for a split second what it would be like to have a father with such a kind voice.

Sarah.

May I sit down next to you?

Sarah shrugged and slowly moved over on the step.

Some excitement here tonight, huh?

Sarah looked down at her lap, pulling at her nightgown again, trying desperately to make it longer. She shrugged again, rolling her shoulders up to her ears. I guess, she whispered.

Did any one hit you, honey?

The kindness of his voice was so reassuring. Sarah shook her head.

Are you sure?

Sarah turned, in slow motion, to look at the kind face and eyes that she knew could not save her and did not answer. Even at the tender age of eight, Sarah understood the tragedy of it all. Her huge blue eyes wide in her slender almost emaciated face, told the story she could not.

Officer Phil hugged her to him and gave her his card. You call me if you need anything, ok honey? Sarah?

Sarah nodded slowly, knowing she would never call, but finding a strange comfort in just holding the card, a lifeline to sanity, as she stared at the blue lights spinning and spinning and spinning in the night.

For a moment, she almost trembled as she watched him walk away, thinking about how alone she was.

She wouldn’t know until later that officer Phil was thinking about the almost guaranteed possibility of her being a drug or alcohol abuser. A pregnant, drug abusing prostitute by the age of sixteen. An almost guaranteed school drop out, living life on the lowest rung, at the bottom of possibility. He would tell her later how the thought broke his heart.

Chapter 4

They were drunk again, of course, screaming and hollering and cursing each other, slapping and punching and pushing, throwing what was left of the glasses.

Sarah knew Janet would be making another pilgrimage to the dollar store tomorrow, to replace the never ending supply of missiles. It was a toss up if the police would come, again. Sarah rated it a 50-50, depending on just how angry and tired of it all the neighbors were this time.

It was the drama Sarah hated.

The constant never ending drama.

Maybe officer Phil would come. He was a regular. Sarah liked him. He was kind and talked to her like she mattered.

There was a time Sarah would have willed them to stop or pleaded with them, but that was well before she found her summer place. Her refuge of sunshine and flowers deep in the recesses of her psyche where she could slip into at will and watch the beautiful world in her own head, as she desperately wished she could be somewhere else.

***

Sarah, what the hell are you doing in the house on a beautiful day like this with your nose stuck into another book? Get outside, try and find some friends. Someone who will play with you. It’s summer for shit’s sake.

Sarah looked up cautiously from her book, a timid frightened child, afraid to speak most of the time. She was amazed at her own courage when she asked in a soft whisper, Can I plant some flowers? You know, around the trailer. Try and make it look nice.

Janet stared at her daughter as if she were speaking in tongues. You wanna do what?

Sarah fidgeted uncomfortably. Plant some flowers, she replied almost breathlessly.

Now where in the hell we gonna get flowers? I ain’t got money for such foolishness.

What kind of foolishness we talking about now? asked George as he entered the trailer as always with a loud slamming of the door, anxious for everyone to acknowledge his arrival.

She wants to plant flowers, replied Janet lifting her eyebrows toward Sarah, openly mocking her.

Flowers? he asked turning toward her. Flowers? What the hell do you know about flowers?

Sarah breathed deeply, trying to make herself smaller. She shrugged deeply, lifting her shoulders almost to her ears. Nothing, she whispered.

Exactly, he boomed, glaring at her. You know nothing. Stand up straight when you talk to me, he ordered.

Sarah stood up straighter, still as death, terrified of breathing. Her face was cold .with fear, despite the heat in the trailer. The sleeves of her sweater were pulled down over her hands and her arms were crossed in front of