Broken

CHAPTER THREE: The Rose Trestle

"She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which we appear before the world."

Kate Chopin, The Awakening



Books became my shelter, my paper fortress. They hid me from the ugliness of my life. Every other day, I walked to the public library, checking out as many books as they would allow at one time. I read everything that I came in contact with, even shampoo bottles when I was bored in the bathroom.

My favorite books were romance novels or thrillers. Margaret Mitchell, Jane Austen, and Stephen King were my childhood idols. I fell in love with Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald in grade school. I remember reading Pride and Prejudice when I was about eight years old. I loved Mr. Darcy. I said, "Let me find love that lasts forever." If I had realized what I was asking for I would have kept my big mouth shut.

I made straight A's in school with little effort but had no friends. I was always put in classes with students much older than I was and no one wanted to hang out with a little kid. Books were my friends; they didn't ask questions but instead answered them. Teachers approached my mother about scholarships to private schools. She would thank them and throw the applications away.

One year, on a whim, my mother bought me figure skating lessons. I took to skating as if I had been born on the ice. I took ballet as well to improve my grace. I won gold medals and practiced hard every chance I got. One day, without warning, my mother decided I wasn't ever going to skate again. She sold my skates and costumes. I cried myself to sleep.

My sister, Sarah, was my hero. She never took any s**t from our mother or stepfather. Once, my mother slapped her in the face and Sarah hit her back. Then, in one fast motion, Sarah kicked her rotund belly and knocked her to the floor. Sarah proceeded to give her a beat down until she heard me crying. Sarah stopped but warned my mother never to touch her again, and she never did.

Sarah was breathtakingly beautiful. Her long black hair was thick and fell almost to her waist. She had full breasts and long legs. She smoked cigarettes and wore black eyeliner like Bridget Bardot. Sarah turned the head of every man that saw her, even at fifteen. Her intelligence was almost supernatural. She outsmarted anyone who dared challenge her.

Sarah was brave beyond imagining. For example, one day she noticed my stepfather outside her window, watching her get out of the shower. She calmly walked to the kitchen, still naked, got out a butcher knife, and walked outside to greet him.

I never saw a fat man run so fast in my life. If hate alone could have killed him, he would have been dead. I heard her come in the back door, muttering under her breath, "Sick f*****g bastard." Sarah wasn't afraid of anyone.

I would sneak into her bed at night, knowing my stepfather would never touch me while she was there. We stayed up late watching Three's Company on her tiny black and white TV, even on school nights.

I was five years younger but she didn't care. We were thick as thieves. Sarah let me tag along with her everywhere, telling her friends to "f**k off" if they didn't like it. They learned to accept me and of course, used me for grunt work like fetching things they had forgotten. I didn't care as long as I didn't have to go home. It let me escape for a while and forget about what was awaiting us upon our return.

Sarah would sneak out her window and climb down the rose trellis beneath the edge of our rooftop. She normally went to meet her friends or her boyfriend, Trent. She tried to coerce me into climbing down, too, but I was terrified of falling. Sarah would shake her head and say, "Paige, you're going to need some courage in this life. You may as well start now."

I would look down at the ground from the roof and feel sick. I said, "I'm all for courage. Falling off a roof with thorns stuck in my hands like porcupine quills seems more like stupidity."

Sarah would laugh, climb down, and show me her pristine fingers. "Show off!" I called as loudly as I dared. She would wave and head out our back gate to whatever adventure she had planned. I didn't know what Sarah and her friends did, but she never left me alone all night. She wouldn't go if our stepfather was home.

I stayed behind and if my mother came looking for Sarah, I would cover for her. My mother was usually too drunk to care what I told her. I could have said aliens abducted Sarah and she would have accepted the explanation.

Sarah would come back with food when our mother stopped feeding us. "Where did you get this stuff, Sarah?" I asked with wonder and awe. She gave me a mischievous grin and answered, "I have discovered men are the dumbest creatures on Earth. Michelle and I walk to the Starlight Grocery Store. I talk to that stupid clerk that looks down my shirt all the time. While I keep him busy, Michelle gets us food and smokes. Then I buy a pack of gum or something and we're out of there."

We would watch her tiny TV and gobble her purloined goodies. Sarah took the wrappers and buried them behind the rose bush so that our mother never found out. We climbed out to the roof outside her bedroom to sunbathe and listen to music. Sometimes I would read one of my racy romance novels aloud. She would tell me about her boyfriend, Trent, and their midnight trysts. He was gorgeous and drove a brand new Trans Am. I would listen wide-eyed without interrupting, taking in every detail.

I asked, "Do you love him, Sarah?"

She thought about this and said, "No, but I'm short on time." I asked her what she meant. "Paige, I'm going to die young. I know that but I don't mind. I would like to try to enjoy the time I have." I was silent, but I couldn't stop myself from crying. She hugged me and said, "Don't you worry, Sister Golden Hair. I will never leave you for long. I will come back to you."

My bottom lip trembled and I asked, "How?"

She smiled. "You will bring me back to you. You only have to ask for it." She grabbed my hand and said, "I've seen it. You're going to hold the men that rule this world in the palm of your hand." She filled my mind with images of a beautiful red-haired woman laughing while men in tuxedos waited by her side. She sort of looked like me, but not really. I was kind of chubby and gangly at the same time, something hard to pull off, and yet I managed it. Sarah smiled and said, "You can make the very Earth shake if you want. They'll know it. Some will want to kill you, others will love you. You have to figure out which is which."

Sarah started having headaches a couple of months before her sixteenth birthday. She would close the curtains to her room and lie in the dark with her head pounding in her ears. I had begged my mother to take her to a doctor because I had known something was very wrong but she ignored me.

Sarah had whispered from the darkness in her room, "Paige, it's okay. This is meant to happen. I don't know when, but it's coming soon. You have to get out of here, though. When I'm gone, you won't be safe anymore."

I cried and said, "Please, don't leave me."

She smiled. "I will do everything I can to stay with you."

We were going roller-skating when Sarah paled. "Oh, no, Paige, y-you have to get out!" She threw up on me. I screamed at my mother to take her to the hospital and for once, my mother listened. I remember the doctors hurrying her away, her face still covered in vomit. Her amber eyes were smooth as glass.

I murmured, "Let Sarah live."

That was the first stroke. Her doctors explained that Sarah had been born with a rare birth defect. They referred to it as an AVM. Surgeons could do nothing because the defect was located almost in the center of her brain. Traditional surgery would kill her or leave her a vegetable. The second stroke occurred while she waited on a list for experimental laser surgery. It would make inoperable cases possible. Sarah had lain in a coma for almost a year.

I remembered my request to the universe asking for Sarah to live. The universe had granted my request, but not the way I wanted. I had done this to her. I felt the weight of my guilt. I read books aloud to her and talked to her about life. I was never sure if she could hear me. It didn't matter because she could feel me there. I would put her hand in mine and send her visions of what I had been reading or doing. She never moved but I felt her soul trying to respond to me. It was as if she were lost in some sort of labyrinth she could not escape.

I had to face my mother and stepfather alone. I put a chair under the door handle of my bedroom to keep Earl from coming into my room. I stayed away from home as much as I dared. I climbed the fence in our backyard and walked to a nearby cemetery to hide with a book to read.

Sarah woke up one day without warning. She shocked her physicians by not being the vegetable they had predicted. She flew to Boston to Massachusetts General Hospital for experimental laser surgery. By some miracle, her doctors destroyed the defect. She regained her speech and, with therapy, learned to do simple things. She learned to feed herself and get around in her wheelchair, but she never walked again. Sarah needed help to go to the bathroom, bathe, dress, and reach things on high shelves. Her left hand had curled into a tiny fist; she would never use it again. I continued to read books aloud to her but she could no longer make it upstairs to her old room to come out on the roof.

She developed schizophrenia, which sometimes scared me worse than my mother. I wasn't afraid she would hurt me but the terrors that lived in her mind were petrifying to me. She would whisper about snakes coming into her room at night to f**k her. She told me a ghost she called Becky was in her room. The worst was when she said our stepfather was r****g her. I started sleeping on the floor next to her bed when Earl was home and shoved a chair under the door handle.

I was ten years old when Sarah had her first stroke and I realized I should be grateful that Sarah was alive. I grieved for the fierce girl that protected me. She was gone. I had to become her protector instead, and I didn't feel brave. I didn't feel ready. Sarah was supposed to be the brave one.

I learned to hoard food and money. I would wrap up whatever I didn't eat at lunch in plastic bags and stuff it in my backpack. I took the money that my mother and stepfather left lying around the house when they were drunk. I hid it in my books so that I could buy food for Sarah and me. I wasn't brave enough or pretty enough to get away with stealing the way she had.

Her strokes and groundbreaking surgery were widely reported by news outlets. Donations had poured in from every corner of the country to help pay for her care. Over time, the money dried up and Sarah was no longer of use to my mother. She put Sarah in a nursing home after a few years, claiming she wasn't strong enough to care for her. My mother was lying through her false teeth. She didn't take care of Sarah. I did.

I cried daily for weeks. My sorrow began to turn to anger as the little girl in me died and a furious young woman took her place. Rage burned in my stomach like acid. It ate away the fear that lived in my gut for so many years. I swallowed its bitterness each day and choked down the urge to use my power for revenge.

Instead, I played pranks that I knew would only annoy my mother. She would often pass out on the sofa, her bottle of whiskey on the coffee table in front of her. I would stand at the front door and whisper, "Shatter." The bottle would explode and wake her up to a mess. I would be out the door before she even knew what hit her.

I waited until I heard her in the shower and I would whisper, "Ice water." She would scream as frigid water sprayed down her and yell about getting the water heater fixed. The repairman came out twice. I jumped the fence to the cemetery each time so she wouldn't catch me laughing.

My rage simmered in this manner for months until one day it boiled over. It changed me and my life forever.