Shadow Box of Scars

By Dawn T. Fawling

She’s the girl you see every day, always smiling with those sweet dimples and big puppy-dog brown eyes. She’s the well-kept girl who seems to have it together on the surface, a display she puts on for good measure. Good grades. Always courteous to others. She’s such a good girl, a fine little lady, helpful and amiable. Those fake, toothy smiles come at a cost—a cost she must pay. Imagine living such a secret life that you can’t trust a soul, including yourself. Imagine having to hide scars visible to the surface but that run so deep your body cries for you while you hide behind a facade of happiness. Imagine the anger that must build while you bottle up trauma; being abused, molested, abandoned; just imagine. And what if, that’s not the worst of it? Those scars—they each have names, faces, reasons—and you hate every one of them. Her name is Anna. Her story—you don’t know it yet, but you will.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662444036

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Shadow Box of Scars

Dawn T. Fawling

Copyright © 2021 Dawn T. Fawling

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-4404-3 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-6624-4403-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Box 1

Box 2

Box 3

Box 4

Box 5

Box 6

Box 7

Box 8

Box 9

Box 10

Box 11

Box 1

She was about six years old when she heard the dogs barking and fighting in the distance. You see, her dad was a gambler. He went from scratch-off tickets to raising greyhound dogs that he raced and bet on at the track. It was late and dark. She knew the barking couldn’t be a good sign. And then she heard the door downstairs close. She stood on her tiptoes at her and her sister’s second-story bedroom window to see if she could see anything going on. She watched him—that short Italian man she called her dad—walk down the hill in his white Fruit of the Loom underwear, carrying a digging shovel like a caveman to a bear fight. It was a long walk from the house to the dog runs, fifty yards or more. He walked so far that she lost sight of him in the darkness. A few loud whacks and some screaming yelps were heard, and the barking stopped. She knew what happened. She knew exactly what happened. Anna—a young girl, wise beyond her years—had been present to see the violent act of the murder of her dogs. Her sister was too short to see out of the window, and their brother slept in another room entirely; she was alone in this moment. She cried herself to sleep that night. Things would never be the same. Some things children just don’t forget.

The next morning, she woke up and ran to the dog run where Apple and Clare, her two 4-H dogs that her dad trained for dog racing, normally greeted her. However, they were not there. They were gone. Last night, he killed them. He would never admit to it, but she knew. All the other dogs were still in the pens, running about as if nothing had happened. Perhaps they were scared for their lives if they were to ever let on to what they witnessed. Anna was convinced that the remaining dogs knew they had to be on their best behavior, or they would get the shovel too. They were racing greyhounds, after all, very smart and attentive to what they were trained for.

* * *

Kindergarten came easy for Anna, but the friendships not so much. It was a classroom on the bottom floor at the back of the building, with its own door to the outside. It was all playtime and naps, but Anna felt like they should be really digging deeper. She had no voice, was shy and quiet, and kept to herself. She rarely raised her hand except to volunteer to help with something. There was a time when recess had been called and Anna had waited too long to raise her hand for bathroom permission. She had on baby blue jean overalls on, cut into shorts. She sat in the chair, covered in her own pee as she waited for all the kids to leave for recess before she could say anything. This was her introduction to the rest of her life—embarrassment.

She joined Brownies, like Girl Scouts but for the little girls. They had meetings all the time in the cafeteria to sell those damn Girl Scout cookies. Back then, they didn’t care if you knocked door-to-door and hit up every pedophile in the neighborhood so long as you were selling your quota. She drank a lot of those cardboard boxed milks, the chocolate kind. Those were her favorite part of these meetings, to chew on the cardboard lip of the cartons when she was drinking. She, her mom, and sister, Marie, would venture out in the back sticks, driving house to house and smiling at little old ladies and hungry families, to sell a box of cookies. They had to sell enough to get their badges, of course. A Brownie did not want to be left out and not get the badge for selling cookies. The sleepovers with Brownies were always fun for her. Her sister was a Brownie, too, kind of, more like a mascot almost. Marie was everyone’s favorite, and she was invited to the sleepovers for the girls, and Anna just tagged along.

Fast-forward some time, and she was in the first grade at the same tiny school where everyone knew everyone. Kindergarten was a bust. She felt like first grade would be her turning page. Her baby sister finally made it to kindergarten where she could watch over her. After school, the girls were to ride the bus to the babysitter’s house, where their baby brother had been all day. It was somewhat of a sunny day when she got on the bus. As the last child got on, she noticed her little sister, Marie, had not made it on the bus yet. She tried to get the driver to stop, but there was no convincing her. As Anna got off the bus at the babysitter’s house, she ran in and explained that Marie never made it on the yellow twinkie. The babysitter, a friend of her mother’s, must have called their mom, Sharon, because she showed up in a hurry. You see, Anna’s mom was not allowed to work. But she did so secretly, to make cash to buy fabric to make clothes for the three youngsters.

Sharon toted Anna and young Erick to the school where Marie sat on the stoop with the school secretary, crying. She ran to her mom in tears. She clearly felt forgotten. The next stop was one to take special note of. Their mom took them to the neighborhood tavern. It was a small dive tavern that Anna knew all too well. Her dad, Randy, practically lived there. With all three kids in tow, their mom walked in. Their mom asked the kids to stay by the door. When the school couldn’t reach the dad, they had no one else to call as a backup. Sharon knew he could only be in one place, and she took her kids to get him. Randy was at the bar, as usual.

There he was sitting at the bar, facing the bartender, with a chunky blonde lady. Her legs were wrapped around him as she played with her hair like a giddy schoolgirl. When Sharon called for Randy, he turned, startled, and the blonde lady’s legs dropped to the floor in a hurry. He stood up and walked toward Sharon, grabbed Anna, and pushed the family back to the front door. The music was deafening, the feeling unrelatable. Marie and Erick wanted to stay at the bar because they saw the stuffed animals inside the claw machine, but Anna knew it wasn’t time for playing. He pushed them to the door, and screaming ensued. Sharon took the kids, and they left. Randy stayed at the bar.

Hours went by, and the sky turned dark. Bad things always happened in the dark; Anna knew this. Sharon grabbed the kids, and they went for a ride. She had tears in her eyes as they drove down those back gravel roads, no words being spoken. Sharon was going slow, peering out the car windows, turning each curve at snail’s pace. Anna was old enough to know that the tears in her mom’s eyes were anger, not sadness. They came upon a curve where police lights lit the sky like fireworks. Sharon jumped from the car, demanding the kids to stay put, and ran to the hill where a wrecker was pulling Randy’s tan Suburban from the side of a hill. She overheard the officer telling Sharon that the brush bar on the front of the Suburban likely saved Randy’s life as it hit a tree on the way down. There he was, in the back of a police car, laughing. The officer let him out to talk to Sharon. The officer said that he would take him to the station to get checked out or something, but he would be free to go, and the Suburban was still drivable. Anna couldn’t hear all the words, but she got the idea. He always seemed to just get a simple slap on the wrist! That man got away with everything because he had money lining his rich pockets. He had zero cares about anything but his alcohol, gambling, and money. Randy made it home that night.

He had a bad habit of being destructive when he was driving. Randy and Sharon would often fight, and then Randy would leave. It was inevitable that he would head to the tavern. It was only a few miles away and back roads the whole way. He knew everyone in town. The two got into their regular spat another night, and Randy left, again. When Anna woke up the next morning, the Suburban’s wheels were stuck deep in mud at the bottom of the hill of their property. Apparently, Randy made it home last night but was too drunk to make it up the driveway; so he parked in the middle of the muddy yard instead.

Nights and weeks passed, and nothing improved. Her dad had put a hole in the side of the tavern where he frequented because he put his vehicle in drive instead of reverse when he pulled out. He came home drunker and drunker, and weird things started happening. Anna’s dad had always wanted a boy. Anna, being the oldest, had stopped being relevant when her tomboy sister was born. But when Erick was born, the story changed, and he was the new favorite. Randy did not want his kids to be dumb, so he constantly tested them, more so Anna. It was like having a drunk teacher.

Randy would come home drunk, no surprise, after a night of drinking and playing with the stuffed animal claw machine at the bar. One night, he came home and woke Marie and Anna up, letting Erick sleep. Anna, still only about six or seven was the only one who knew math, and Randy knew this. He made the girls sit on stools in the kitchen while he taunted them with cute, fuzzy stuffed animals that he had just won. He said if they got their math problems right, he would give them bears. The caveat was, they had to do the math in the middle of the night, right then and there, even if they had school the next day. One by one, he asked Anna questions, and I don’t know was never allowed, and taking guesses could land her a spanking. She kept trying her hardest to get them right because Marie did not know the answers obviously. The girls had to do this until all the stuffed animals were given out for correct answers. All the bears were accounted for, and it was time for bed. But bed was not where she found herself one notable night.

On her way to her room, she heard her dad yelling for her to come downstairs. Knowing he was an angry drunk, she hurried down. He told her to get a bucket as he sat with the bathroom door open, pooping and puking at the same time. The smell was so nauseating that she held back every urge to puke and laugh at the same time. She ran to the garage and grabbed a bucket, emptied it on the ground, and took it to him to finish his deed from his throne. She thought it was over, but it wasn’t. On his way to his bed, where her mom could be heard crying, he puked again. He demanded Anna to clean it up. As she cried and scrubbed the floor, you must keep in mind that this was a young girl in grade school doing what no child should have to do. She just simply could not get the stain out, and the chunks were never ending. She tried to walk out of the room to hide but didn’t make it far. When he called for her from the room, she went in crying because she knew she was in trouble. He made her take her pants down, panties too. She had cute panties that had the days of the week on them, but that night, they were irrelevant. With her eyes filled with tears, she knew she couldn’t cry out loud, or it would be worse. He took off his belt as he fell into the wall. As he got his balance, he told her to bend over the bed. He began to beat her, whack by whack. Some of the cracks of the belt missed her butt completely and would hit her arm, legs, and back. Her brother and sister, at that point, were both asleep. Her mom was in another room dealing with her own issues. Anna became numb. She took a beating that night, although Anna wasn’t sure what hurt worse—the emotions of her dad hating her or the pain from the belt of her drunk dad.

She hated him; she hated everything about him. He was an arrogant prick with alcohol-abuse issues, a womanizer, with zero tolerance for anything outside of his norm, and expected the most of every situation, every time—no exceptions. His Italian anger issues compounded everything within his addictive personality. Anna felt that he resented her for being the oldest. Perhaps he hated her just as much for being smart and aware of his issues. She was not a dumb kid at all. She knew everything going on in the house most days. She would eavesdrop on phone calls when she would see her mom cry. She knew everything, maybe not every detail, but this grade schooler had grown up overnight.

* * *

First grade began to be a challenge with the abuse she faced at home. She couldn’t sleep many nights. Anna became an angry girl. She went from being part of the lollipop gang in the school’s Wizard of Oz play to hurting people.

One day, at recess, she was hanging out with a girl, Kelly, and they were chasing boys around. A group of boys was on the spider playground. Anna took out a rubber band from her hair and added a buckeye from the school playground’s tree. She flung that self-made slingshot