Spilled Milk: Based on a true story (15 page)

“Pick any seat
you want. Except the black one, I sit there because my knees won’t let me sit
in the bean bags. But they are the most comfortable seats in the room!”

 I chose a
chair not too close but not too far away from the black chair she mentioned she
would be in.

“Whew, all
right then. I’m Midge.” Sweat glistened off her forehead and she patted it with
a tissue. “I’m so glad you’re here, Brooke. It’s not every day we get a brave
girl like you to come in here by yourself. You know what kind of counseling
center this is?”

“I think so.”

Midge shook her
head. “We work with all kinds of people here. Children, adults, teenagers.” She
pointed at me. “A lot of people come here looking for answers because something
in their heart is telling them they’ve been wronged or that they deserve
better.” She leaned forward in her chair. “That sound about right sweetheart?”

I nodded.

“What brings
you here all alone?”

“Well, I knew
what insurance my parents had, so I looked up counselors in the area. There
were a few but they had co-pays my mom didn’t want to pay. But I needed to talk
to someone. So my boyfriend’s mom found this place.”

“You looked up
counselors based on your parents insurance?”

 “Yea.”

“How old are
you?” A smile spread across her face, like she was laughing inside.

“Fifteen.”

“MmmHmm. All
right well before we get too deep, just a few things I need to tell you first
so you know what to expect. We can meet for an hour today, and any other day
you want to come back and talk to me. There’s never any charge, and everything
we say in this room, stays in this room, under the law, you understand?”

I nodded. It
was good to know.

“Now, there are
a few exceptions.” She held up her hand. “By law, I have to report the three
following situations. If you tell me you’re going to hurt yourself.” She
flipped up her index finger. “If you tell me you’re going to hurt someone else,
and if I suspect or you tell me about any child abuse. Reason being is you’s
only fifteen, you still a minor.” She wiggled all three exceptions. “That’s the
only three times I can ever tell anyone about what we talk about in here.
Understand?”

“Yea.” My heart
dropped when she told me about having to report child abuse. I didn’t know how
I could talk to her without her needing to report something. I suddenly felt
like I made the wrong choice. What if someone found out I was here? What if
Gina told?

“Now look, I
want you to know this is a safe place.” She opened her arms and looked around
the room. “There ain’t one thing you can tell me that I haven’t heard already
and I’ve heard
a lot
of things. But no need to rush, I feel like we gon’
be good friends you and me. I don’t want to push you to tell me anything you
ain’t ready to tell. Sound good?”

I sighed and
relaxed a little. Her accent made me feel like I was in a movie somewhere in
the south.

“So, Brooke,
tell me about yourself. Anything and everything you want to tell me, go ahead.
If you got a question, go ahead and ask it.” She rested her arms into the crest
of her stomach and let me have the floor.

“I want to know
what domestic and sexual violence is. How do you know if you’re being abused,
like, what would it look like?” I tried to make my question hypothetical.

Midge nodded
and pulled something out of a folder on her desk. “That’s a great place to
start. A great question.”

She handed me a
paper with a pie chart. In the center were the words
Power and Control
and
each pie piece represented a different category of physical abuse.

“This is the
best way to explain it, so you can see how domestic violence is a whole bunch
of things put together and not everyone’s situation is the same.” She pointed
to each section of the chart to explain them.

“This one is
called emotional abuse. Not everyone gets abused by getting hit or slapped
around, no child. Some people get put down by being called names or the abuser
makes them feel like they crazy and that the abuse ain’t happening.”

She slid her
finger across the pie chart. “This here is economic abuse. Sometimes abusers
like to keep all the money or control when and where a person can work.
Sometimes abusers don’t let they family have jobs at all because it lets them
have outside relationships.”

“Domestic
Violence can mean isolation or threats too. The abuser will control who the
other person sees or where they go or where they live. They make threats to
hurt you. Or they’d say no one would believe you.”

She moved her
hand over to the last section of the pie chart. I leaned over in my chair in
anticipation, hanging on every word.

“This here is
sexual abuse. That’s anytime someone make you do something with any private
parts of your body that you don’t want. Sometimes abusers make people do things
to
their
private parts too. It’s all sexual abuse. Big thing to know is
that if you don’t want to do it, and they make you, it’s sexual abuse.”

I shook as I
tried to absorb everything Midge said. She laid my entire life in a pie chart
before me and everything started to come together. The move to Pennsylvania, Dad’s
control of the money and food in the house, making it seem like nothing
happened between us so much that I felt like I was going crazy. It was all
there. My trembling fingers reached out to take the chart from Midge.

“Okay.” How
could I word my next question without outing myself? I thought carefully before
speaking.

“What
happens…if someone didn’t know that this stuff was wrong? Like, what happens if
they didn’t know they could say no? What if they thought this happened to
everyone so they never knew they didn’t have to do it?”

Midge narrowed
her eyes and brought her body closer to mine. Her voice was smooth and
reassuring. “Child, let me make one thing very clear. In the state of
Pennsylvania, no child, not one, can ever consent to any type of sexual things
if they under the age of sixteen and there’s a four year or more age difference.
Never. You understand?”

My head bobbled
around as she continued. “It don’t matter if you didn’t know, it don’t matter
if you never said no. What matters is they was breaking the law, that it’s not
your fault. You ain’t the adult, child, you done no wrong.”

I blinked away
tears and focused on the paper sized window on the far wall of the room. I
nodded at Midge and I think she could sense that we had an understanding. “Tell
me more about you, tell me about your family and where you from.” The hour flew
by and Midge had to hold up her hand to tell me we had to end our session for
the day.

“Already?” I
looked at the clock.

“Now look at
you, already coming out of your shell. Let’s go downstairs and schedule another
appointment and you can come back here and tell me more about Long Island and
your school and your big family.” She meant it; her eyes told me she wanted to
see me again, even if all we did was talk about friends and teenage things. I
asked her if I could keep the power wheel.

“I’d prefer if
you did.”

I scheduled my
next appointment and rushed outside. As I flung open the door Gina didn’t even
have to ask how it went. “I’m coming back next week. I made the appointment.
You sure you can still take me? Maybe I can give you some gas money.”

Gina held up
her hand and told me to buckle up. “Nonsense. I’ll take you as long as you need
to.”

I slept with
the power wheel under my pillow. Serving as a constant reminder, I would check
it every now and then to make sure that what Midge had said was still there in
black and white. A rush of empowerment surged through my head over the next
couple of weeks. Rage flooded my veins when I would hear dad downstairs beating
on Thomas or Adam. Mom would beg for more money for food. The signs were all
there, every piece of the pie chart.

Midge and I met
at the same time, once a week until the end of tenth grade. I gave her Gina’s
cell phone number so if there was ever a cancellation or issue she could call
her so she didn’t have to call my house. She was right, we became good friends.

I told her all
about Paul and my job, my siblings and the role I had with them and school. She
knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, and she was impressed with the passion
I had for writing.

What I liked
best about Midge is she never asked me to talk about my Mom or Dad unless I
brought it up. For weeks we would talk about superficial things like football
games and grades. Sometimes I would tell her about how my dad yelled or the way
he shoved my brothers around, but the second I thought she was getting too
interested, I reverted back to talk about my boyfriend and anatomy homework.
She would never mind though. She’d rest her arms on her soft stomach and nod
and probe me, but she never pushed me.

So I kept going
back for more.

I remember the night
Dad found the power wheel under my pillow. I don’t know why he was in my room,
or what he was looking for, but he found it.

He gripped the
edges of the paper so hard they crumbled in his hand. I probably could have
cooked an egg on his face from the steam that appeared to surround him. There
was little time to come up with an excuse, and even less time to react when he
started to trash my room. Trembling, I stood my ground and watched my dresser
get overturned, my vanity crash to pieces and my belongings thrown in every
direction.

When he
finished, and after he tore the power wheel into snowflake specks, he charged
at me. My body braced itself and I closed my eyes, but the impact never came. A
rush of wind past my face and the smell of his aftershave following told me he
was targeting someone else, anyone else. At this stage of the game, he finally
understood where to get me where it hurt.

He couldn’t
touch me. I felt no pain for him. But when he laid a finger on one of my
siblings, a wrath of fury simmered up inside me. I desperately tried to recall
who was home that he could hurt. Mom was at CVS filling a prescription. My heart
leaped into my throat as I turned to run after him.

“Dad, NO!” My
legs were useless, they wouldn’t move fast enough. By the time I reached the
bottom of the stairs and turned the corner, tears burned my eyes when I caught
sight of Ethan.

Just learning
to walk, stumbling across the living room with a Lego’s block in his hand, he
smiled when he saw me. His doll-like arms stretched out for me, his focus
locked into my eyes, he never saw Dad behind him. “Leave him alone!” I
screamed, and charged at Ethan.

I scooped him
up against my chest like a football just as Dad’s steel toed boot made contact
with my stomach. I doubled over, the baby in my arms, and lost consciousness
before I knew if Ethan was okay.

I don’t know
how long I was on the floor. Soft hands pulled at my face. Bits of sound became
clearer and I focused on Dad’s voice, telling me it was my fault, I shouldn’t
have got in the way.

Ethan was
crying above me when I finally opened my eyes. He didn’t look hurt, but I
struggled to get up. Snot ran down his face as he cried out “Da! Da!” pointing
at Dad from across the room. I used my sleeve to wipe his face and I cradled
him against me, making my way towards my room.

If I ran away
when I turned eighteen, Ethan would be alone. Kat and Thomas were home, but
were undoubtedly hiding from the second they heard the commotion coming from my
room. Just like I taught them to do. Ethan was the only one who couldn’t fend
for himself. He couldn’t hide; he could barely talk to tell me if something
happened to him. I shook my head as I sat Ethan on my disheveled bed with a
book so I could pick up the remnants of the tornado that had ripped through my
room.

By the time all
of us would be old enough to move out, Ethan would have no one to diffuse Dad’s
wrath. He would be the only target, the only one left who Dad could still hurt,
and in turn, hurt me.

I remembered
when we lived on Long Island. Adam and I usually wore Dad’s old t-shirts to bed
because we didn’t have pajamas of our own. One night we stumbled upon a stash
of magazines with naked women in them at the bottom of one of Dad’s drawers. We
giggled and pointed at our unusual find until we decided that Dad just
had
to see what we found. I must have been around six years old at the time.

Adam held the
magazine as we entered the garage just off the kitchen. Dad was tinkering with
something and looked up as we came out. “Daddy, look what we found! This
magazine is so funny.” Adam pushed the magazine under his nose.

A wheelbarrow
is what stopped Dad from grabbing Adam as we both screamed and ran from him.
His voice bellowed behind us, and as we turned the corner to the living room
Adam pushed me behind the grand piano to hide.

I’ll never
forget the look in his eyes as he realized there was nowhere else for him to go.
He had given me the only hiding spot in the room. Lowering to the floor he sat
in a cross-legged position and put his finger to his lips to motion for me to
be quiet.

I watched in
horror as Dad turned the corner and I realized what Adam had done. He had
sacrificed himself; he put himself in the dead center of his path, for me. Dad
kicked him like a linebacker and I covered my mouth as Adam’s body soared
through the air, ending with his limp body crashing into the front door behind
him. Dad never found me.

I wanted to
believe, for years, that Adam didn’t remember that night because of how hard he
hit his head. The truth was, I think that night Adam’s spirit was broken,
because it was the first and last time he ever put himself in Dad’s path.
Unknowingly, Adam took one blow, and passed the torch on to me. Adam’s years of
ignoring and denying what happened in our home wasn’t ignorance, it was self
defeat.