𝑃𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑛𝑒 (𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒) - Part two - part tree
The apartment on Miller Street had walls the color of old bruises—yellowish-brown where the paint peeled, darker where the water damage spread like infections. You learned early that the pipes groaned warnings before they sputtered rust-colored water, that the radiator hissed but never quite warmed the room, that the thin walls carried every sound from the neighbors' arguments and televisions.
Your mother's name was Margaret, though you rarely heard anyone call her that. The men who stumbled through the door at odd hours called her Maggie, sometimes baby, sometimes nothing at all. You learned not to call her anything when those men were around. You learned to make yourself small, to fold into corners, to become part of the furniture.
The earliest memory you could piece together was sitting on the kitchen floor at three years old, stomach cramping with hunger, while your mother slept off whatever she'd taken the night before. The refrigerator hummed its empty song. You'd pulled yourself up using the counter edge, small fingers barely reaching the handle. Inside: a carton of spoiled milk, something green and unidentifiable in a container, and a half-empty bottle of vodka that caught the weak afternoon light.
You didn't know then that other children didn't live like this. You thought everyone's mother slept until afternoon, that everyone knew the particular silence that meant danger, that everyone learned to read moods like weather patterns—the gathering storm of her irritation, the lightning strike of her hand.
By four, you'd figured out the stove. The first time you tried to cook, you'd dragged a chair across the linoleum, its legs scraping harsh protests. You'd climbed up, turned the knob like you'd seen your mother do on her rare functional days. The flame had leaped up, blue and hungry, and you'd jerked back so fast you'd fallen off the chair. The bruise on your hip lasted two weeks, green-purple-yellow, a sunset of pain.
But you'd tried again. Because hunger was worse than burns.
The scars on your hands told stories you couldn't quite remember anymore. The puckered circle on your left palm from when you'd grabbed the pot handle without realizing it was hot. The constellation of small marks across your knuckles from grease spatters. The long, thin line along your right wrist from when you'd tried to open a can with a knife and it had slipped.
You learned to cook eggs by breaking dozens of them, watching the yolks spread across the pan bottom, sometimes raw, sometimes black. You learned that pasta needed boiling water and that if you waited too long, it became a sticky mass. You learned that bread could be toasted, and toast with butter was a meal, and butter alone when there was no bread was better than nothing.
Bath time was another lesson in trial and error. The first time you'd tried to bathe yourself, you'd turned only the hot water tap. The bathroom had filled with steam, and you'd stepped in before testing the temperature. The scream had torn from your throat before you could stop it, and you'd scrambled out, skin angry red, and your mother had stumbled to the bathroom door.
"Shut the hell up," she'd slurred, squinting at you through her hangover. "Jesus Christ, you're fine. Stop being so dramatic."
She'd slammed the door, and you'd sat on the cold tile floor, skin burning, tears streaming silently down your face. You'd learned then: screaming brought anger, not help.
After that, you'd tested the water with your hand first. Sometimes you got it wrong and bathed in cold water that made your teeth chatter, your small body shaking as you tried to scrub away the dirt. Sometimes it was too hot, and you'd endure it, red-skinned and hurting, because at least you'd be clean.
Your mother moved through the apartment like a ghost, present but not there. She'd lie on the couch for hours, cigarette burning between her fingers, ash growing longer until it fell onto her shirt, the cushions, sometimes smoldering until you patted it out with your small hands. The apartment reeked of stale smoke, spilled alcohol, and something else—something sour and defeated that seemed to seep from the walls themselves.
She didn't work. You didn't understand what that meant at first, only that other children's parents left in the morning and came back at night, and your mother didn't. Money came from somewhere—envelopes that men brought, checks that arrived in the mail that she'd cash at the corner store, emerging with bottles instead of groceries.
When she drank, she transformed. Sometimes she'd become almost animated, laughing too loud at nothing, pulling you close in an embrace that smelled like whiskey and made you stiffen with uncertainty. Those moments never lasted. More often, the drinking made her cruel.
"You're the reason," she'd say, pointing at you with a cigarette between her fingers. "You're the reason my life is shit. Do you know that? Everything was fine before you."
You were five and didn't understand what you were the reason for, only that you were bad, wrong, the cause of something terrible.
The beatings started with slaps. Her hand across your face for being too loud, for crying, for asking if there was food. Then came the belt, the wooden spoon, whatever was closest. You learned to curl up, to protect your head, to make it end faster by not crying out. Tears only made her angrier.
"Toughen up," she'd say afterward, already reaching for her bottle. "World's not gonna baby you."
She was right about that, at least.
When you were six, she started making you clean. Not just your space—everything. The apartment had to be spotless, she'd decided during one of her manic phases, and you were going to make it that way.
"Earn your keep," she'd said, shoving a mop into your hands. "I didn't sign up to take care of a freeloader."
The mop was taller than you. The bucket was heavy even when half-full. Your arms ached after ten minutes, but you learned to push through the pain. You learned to clean the bathroom until your hands cracked from chemicals. You learned to scrub floors on your hands and knees, to dust shelves you could barely reach, to wash dishes in water so hot it left your skin pink.
Your body was small for your age, underfed and overworked. Your clothes hung loose, hand-me-downs from donation bins, often stained or torn. Your hair was a matted mess more often than not—you tried to brush it, but no one had taught you how, and the tangles hurt when you pulled.
At school, the other children noticed. They kept their distance at first, noses wrinkling. Then came the whispers, the pointing, the laughter.
"She smells," they'd say, loud enough for you to hear.
"Why is her hair like that?"
The teachers noticed too, but in a different way. Mrs. Henderson, your second-grade teacher, had called you to her desk once.
"Sweetheart," she'd said, voice gentle in a way that made you uncomfortable because you didn't understand it. "Is everything okay at home?"
You'd nodded automatically. Everything was normal. This was just how things were.
"Are you eating enough? You're very thin."
Another nod. You'd learned to lie by then, understanding instinctively that telling the truth would make things worse somehow.
Mrs. Henderson had looked at you with something in her eyes—was it pity? sadness?—but she'd let you go back to your seat. Nothing changed.
The men started coming more frequently when you were seven. Your mother would primp in front of the mirror, applying makeup with an unsteady hand, squeezing into tight dresses that had seen better days.
"Get out," she'd say when the doorbell rang. "Go to your room. Don't come out no matter what you hear."
But your room was barely a room—more like a large closet with a mattress on the floor, a sheet for a curtain in the doorway. You'd hear everything through the thin walls. Laughing, arguing, sounds you didn't understand but that made your stomach twist.
Sometimes she'd burst in, face flushed with anger. "I said get out. OUT. Leave the apartment."
It didn't matter if it was raining, snowing, or dark. Out meant out.
You'd learned the neighborhood at night, learned which stoops were safe to sit on, which alleys to avoid, which all-night diners would let a small child sit in a corner booth without ordering anything if you were quiet and still. The diner waitress, Linda, with her tired eyes and gray-streaked hair, would sometimes slide you a plate of fries.
"Can't let you sit here with nothing, hon," she'd mutter, not quite looking at you. "Against policy."
You'd eat slowly, making it last, grateful beyond words.
Other times, you'd sit in the stairwell of your building, counting the cigarette butts, the cracks in the concrete, the minutes until you could go back. You learned to tell time by the church bells three blocks away, by the patterns of traffic sounds, by the gradual shift from night to almost-morning.
When your mother finally let you back in, she wouldn't acknowledge you. She'd be asleep or passed out or simply staring at the television, and you'd slip into your closet-room, curl up on your mattress, and try to forget the cold, the fear, the aching emptiness.
The abuse became routine. A slap for speaking at the wrong time. A shove that sent you sprawling for not cleaning well enough. Once, she'd grabbed your hair and dragged you across the apartment, screaming about something you'd done or hadn't done—you couldn't even remember what. The pain had been blinding, and for days afterward, your scalp had been tender, some hair coming out in small clumps.
You learned not to cry. Tears made it worse. You learned to apologize for things that weren't your fault. You learned to move quietly, speak softly, make yourself invisible.
And because this was all you knew, you thought it was normal. You thought all mothers were like this. You thought all children lived like this—hungry, hurt, trying to survive day by day. When other kids talked about their parents, you assumed they were lying or exaggerating. When they showed up to school in clean clothes with packed lunches and smiles, you thought they were just better at pretending than you were.
You didn't know about love. Not the real kind. The word existed in books teachers read aloud, in movies you glimpsed through store windows, but it seemed like fantasy, like dragons and magic—something made up to make stories interesting.
Touch meant pain. Attention meant you'd done something wrong. Kindness was a trick, a setup for disappointment.
This was your normal. This was life.
And then, on a cold Tuesday morning two weeks after your tenth birthday—a birthday your mother had forgotten entirely—everything changed.
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