Escape from Chesterfield

Just like everybody else

"It's about the rapport of what the boy did!"

"- You get yourself wrapped up with all sorts of things, then you start with the stressing yourself and now you're pissed at the boy!"

A loud crash rang throughout the state house: Billy was slamming the doors open and closed as the smaller children watched on, their clothing and bodies filthy. Mother sucked on a cigarette and yelled over the child at her breast, a baby girl who was also dirty, unbathed.

"He's a good-for-nothin' sac of shit like your father, Macey. He's a stuck up cunt."

Hiding behind the door in the kitchen that lay adjacent to the living room, I listened fearfully and a stream of urine ran down my leg.

"Where is that boy of yours, anyway?" He asked, abandoning his station on the sofa.

"You leave him alone, Billy." Said mother, rocking Sophia back and forth on her lap. I heard his footsteps near, then they stopped suddenly: "The hell is this?" He said. He'd stepped in it.

"You back there, boy? Get the fuck out," He said, pulling me by my arm. I kept quiet, didn't dare to cry. I let him drag me past my siblings who were all half naked and sat watching us intently on the scratchy, faeces-stained carpet. "Oh, for fuck's sake..." Sighed my mother, as I was feet from her, recieving blow after blow from my father. The hollow thuds rang throughout the living room, throughout the house, throughout the neighborhood. My siblings were quiet, my mother left the living room to go and breastfeed Sophia elsewhere.

We had a small farm, and most of us, save for Ma and Sophie, were up before dawn to feed the chickens and the pigs. My father's punishment for late wakers was a day without food.

Those who didn't work, didn't eat. I was the second born, and thirteen at the timpe. My younger siblings Joshua, Anaïs, Michelle and Cindy were aged 11, 9, 6 and 5 but we were all put to work.

Someone didn't check the oil on the old tractor, which I wasn't allowed to drive, and somehow that person was me. I felt a warm liquid escape my left ear and it was blood, but he was viciously dragging me around the living room by my hair.

If tears left my eyes, they were by accident, because I learned early on that crying landed you in even bigger trouble.