The Journal

By KaSandra Kelly

Follow the tale from a seemingly typical American family as its deep dark secrets are revealed by those who knew the story best. Hear the story told from different points of view from the beginning when a friend of the family steps forward to reveal all that she has seen. Move forward with the mother whose mind is almost as terrifying as the world she lives in. As her story unfolds so does that of the children she is supposed to love and protect. To hear even more of the story follow along as Angel, the middle child of this upper middle class family, begins her tale. Go with her throughout the ups and downs of her daily life and even catch a glimpse inside her own personal journal. The story is taken to its final shocking end when all their tales are pulled together and we then learn the fate of all those involved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257725571

Book preview

3

Part I

The babysitter’s side of the story

Chapter 1

How it all began

I’ve known Sarah and her family for quite a while now. As a matter of fact my daughter Rachel and her daughter Angel are best friends. They’re in the same class at school and before I had met Sarah, her mother, the two didn’t even know one another existed. I met Sarah a few years ago when we worked at a local factory together.

Despite our differences we became instant friends. Sarah was a petite lady with short curly brown hair and her eyes matched perfectly in color. I swear she always seemed to be smiling which was evidenced by the crows’ feet in the corners of her eyes. Her skin had this gorgeous golden color and I could tell that she spent the majority of her time outdoors. She was the type that would garden, raise animals, and spend her days like the women of times past had.

Sarah was always baking something. As for her dinners she was either cranking out pots of stew, making roast, or meat loaf. Her entire life seemed to revolve around being there for her family and doing things for them that I was positive they would remember warmly. Her meals were always home made and her house always spotless. From what I could see she was what I would affectionately call Super Mom.

Sarah was so drastically different from me. She didn’t even have a single tattoo and what piercings she had were only your standard 1 hole in each earlobe type. Sarah seemed like the typical Mom next door. I would also say she was at least foot shorter then me and was only a touch on the rounder side. Our differences were not only in personality but in physical appearance. If you could call any two people in the world opposites it would be the two of us.

Here I was close to 6 feet tall with long black hair and reddish brown eyes. I’ve always been rather large and intimidating. I have tattoos and piercings covering most every exposed part of my body. My skin is so white that I could probably blind someone if I were to wear shorts in the summer time.

I by far, was not your typical Mom next door nor did I claim to be. I never gardened nor had any animals short of a very small aquarium with a few goldfish for my daughter. My meals were very rarely home cooked and if they were it was always something like fish sticks or hotdogs and macaroni. I never dressed like the other Mom’s I knew either. You could always find me wearing something in 1 of 2 shades, black or red. I actually shopped in the juniors section just to get the coolest clothes…It was finding some that fit that was the problem.

No one thought Sarah and I would get along, let alone even speak to each other, but we hit it off instantly. The first time we talked was when I was heading into the cafeteria at work to grab my lunch. I was on my way out the door, lunch bag and cup of coffee in hand, and I was headed straight for the smoking area outside.

When I shoved open the door I damn near laid Sarah out cold. She hit the ground but lucky for us both she had only been knocked off her feet and nothing worse. It was the first time I had really noticed her let alone spoken with her. I had quickly sat all of my things down and was profusely spilling my apologies at her when she looked up at me from the floor. I outstretched my hand to help her up and she took it. First thing she said to me was hi…I hadn’t expected a hello from her because I was still trying to apologize for knocking her down.

I said hey back and then asked if she was ok. Sarah told me she was just fine and that it wasn’t that big of a deal. I helped her up and offered her to come join me for lunch. To my surprise she agreed to join me and we headed outdoors. At the table we started chatting and I swear our lunch break flew by so fast I didn’t even end up eating anything. We were talking about everything, from our families all the way down to our favorite hobbies.

We may not have had the same interests but the conversation came so easy that we exchanged numbers and agreed to meet there again for lunch the next day. We ate lunch; well I suppose I should say we chatted at lunch everyday for the next month before she invited me over for a visit.

Now, let me tell you…We were the talk of the workplace back then. The two of us sitting together everyday at lunch deep in conversation was apparently gossip worthy to say the least. One of the biggest rumors was that we liked each other as more then friends. I assume that this one came about because I was quite a bit larger and everything about me seemed to have a dominating appearance. Sarah had her timid and shy personality and I suppose they couldn’t come up with any other reason for our friendship. This wasn’t the case at all.

We let them gossip and just ignored everyone’s opinions completely. We never acknowledged any questions that were asked about our relationship and with our continued ignorance of their attempts to start rumors things at work went back to normal. People no longer even paid any attention to our relationship. Our co-workers eventually started including us again in their banter and conversation and things were perfectly fine again.

When Sarah started inviting me over for coffee during the day. I would visit her periodically throughout the week while her husband and kids were in school. We always just sat back and chatted over cups of different flavored coffees. We were either complaining about men or the weather or everything in general. Our friendship was so simple. We never had to try to find something to talk about and I don’t believe we ever sat in silence during those visits. You would think after going there almost everyday we would run out of things to talk about but our visits never got old.

Sarah always seemed like she had the perfect life. She would talk constantly about her doting husband and how well her children were doing in their various after school activities. Sarah lavished attention on those kids whenever I saw them all together. Things seemed utterly perfect at her house. I heard endless stories about her home which was a sprawling Victorian. It was loaded with space and had a wealth of old school charm.

The house itself was actually quite beautiful but it could have used some major repair work in a few areas. Most of the plumbing didn’t work and I am sad to say that they didn’t even have a working toilet. I never said a word to Sarah about how uncomfortable it made me to use the restroom at her house but I did refrain from using it unless under extremely urgent circumstances. Sarah had apparently bought a commode at the local health care shop and was using it as the family’s restroom facilities. Depending upon the time of day and time of the year they either used the commode or the outhouse they had built in the backyard.

Sarah’s mother, Ida, would sometimes stay with them for a few months due to financial problems she incurred. What I noticed was that rather then hindering the families overall relationship she seemed to be their rock during hard times. Ida always seemed to come and go due to her financial troubles. I remember once she had stayed close to 8 months when she had told Sarah she only needed something temporary. If that was her idea of temporary I would hate to see what long term meant. Regardless, this arrangement didn’t seem to bother Sarah at all though I could tell that her husband Gene was none to happy about their little arrangement.

Looking back now I think that Ida’s presence was the main reason that I hadn’t seen anything remotely close to out of the ordinary during my previous visits. It was around the time that Ida had moved to South Carolina to live permanently with her other daughter that I began to see signs of abuse. Of course Sarah always explained away the black eyes, busted lips, and bruised arms.

Around the month prior to my boyfriend and I coming over for our 3rd consecutive game night I noticed that Sarah was starting to come to work more and more often with a new bruise or swollen area. Though it wasn’t until that 3rd game night that we saw first hand what it was really like behind closed doors.

I remember the night all too well. We were sitting around the dining room table having a few drinks and playing a couple hands of poker. The game and the friendly banter had kept the evening moving but that’s when the dark side of their lives started to push through the rosy surface of their relationship. Sarah sat next to me looking radiant and she was practically glowing with her win of the previous hand. The two of us were joking around about how the men seemed to lose their ability to play a decent hand the more they continued to drink.

All of the kids, my daughter included, were upstairs asleep. As I look back now I become increasingly grateful for that one small miracle. We were deep in the middle of the next round when Sarah was jokingly patting Gene’s hand as she told him that it must’ve been tough to lose to a woman. Then all of a sudden Gene’s hand flew so fast into the side of Sarah’s head that even I didn’t have a chance to flinch. He’d backhanded her right out of her chair and I watched as she slid across the hardwood floor crashing loudly into the parlor doors behind her.

Gene’s not a small guy by any means and watching him slam his fist into her head was too much. My boyfriend was quicker to react then I and he jumped up grabbing Gene’s outstretched fist. My boyfriend is quite tall and rather large and outweighs Gene by roughly a hundred pounds so his presence alone was intimidating to Gene whom quickly heeded Anthony’s response. I remember him yelling at Gene to knock it off or something like that but honestly I am still at a loss as to what happened between the initial hit and me finally getting up. I know that Anthony made Gene go outside with him but what he planned to do with him out there was beyond me at that moment. I was still in a state of complete shock as I stumbled out of my chair and to Sarah’s side.

I was trying to help her up off the floor and asking her if she was ok. At first she kept pushing me away, but finally I talked her into letting me help and she followed me into the kitchen. Her head remained down and I had to lead her all the way. I got her an ice pack from the freezer and took her to the couch in the living room. I wasn’t sure what to say so I continued to ask if she was alright.

I begged Sarah to let me see how bad she was injured. It took some time before she decided to look up at me and I could see that her right eye was already swelling shut. Sarah kept mumbling that she was ok. I could see that she was choking back the tears and her face was red with shame. I asked her if anything like this had happened before and she said it had but that it had never been in front of anyone. I told her to go get the kids and come stay with my family but she absolutely wouldn’t. Sarah refused every time I offered it to her so at that I gave up and moved onto other options. I tried to call the police but she kept begging me to put my phone down. Sarah said it wouldn’t solve anything.

I knew that she was wrong but I did what she asked of me. I told her that she could start over with the kids somewhere else but again my attempts at helping her were brushed aside.

I am not accustomed to violence and every other attempt at helping her was dismissed so finally I gave up and I asked if she wanted a drink of water. She accepted that offer and I went to the kitchen more so to gather my thoughts than anything else.

Now don’t get me wrong, Gene hitting her was bad... But what I saw when I stepped back into the living room was worse by far. I found that Sarah’s problems were not only with her husband but within herself. When I went back into the living room to deliver her drink she was sitting at the dining room table re-shuffling the cards. I asked her what she was doing and she smiled up at me saying she was getting ready for the next hand. I could have sworn my lower jaw bounced across the floor as I stood there in a state of complete shock. I remained speechless for what felt like hours.

In a normal situation I would have assumed that she was just trying cover up what had happened and pretend nothing was wrong. But the problem was that I could tell that her smile was genuine. Also her desire to restart the game was genuine. When Gene and my boyfriend returned to the room I watched in silence as she continued to laugh and joke with Gene as if nothing had happened. My boyfriend and I shared the same shocked expressions as we tried to make sense of the situation that was unfolding in front of us.

We watched as they both switched from the violent and terrifying