What do you do, when your afraid? Knowing that he could come home any minute, drunk, ready to beat you. What do you do when he kills your mother and you cant do anything about it? What do you do when he gets arrested 3 times and each time he say’s he’ll change, but instead comes home and beats you? I’ll tell you what I do. Hide in the closet and wait for him to look for you and beat you.

It started when I was just a little girl. I saw my father beating my mother and I saw her crying and telling me to go away and hide. Then, my father saw me and ran over to me. I started to run. Up the stairs and into the closet. Him chasing me the whole way. I locked the door and prayed to God to help me.

My mother ran after him. Yelling at him, telling him to stop. I heard a noise. I didn’t know what it was back then, but I know now that he pulled out a gun.

“Now, you leave me alone! That girl there done wrong.”

“What did she do?”, my mother said crying.

“She tried to kill me”

“She’s only 5. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”,my mother was sobbing at this point.

“FLY!? SHE TRIED TO KILL ME!”

He shoved my mother out of the way.
“NOW GET OUT OF MY WAY!”

My mother landed on her shoulder. It was broken. She stood up. My father kicked the closet door in. He pointed the gun at me. I started to cry. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew he was going to try to hurt me. My mother pushed him just before he pulled the trigger. He fell down the stairs and laid there on the floor for a minute.

My mother picked me up and gave me a hug.
“Come on!”

She ran with me in her arms. She and I hid in the bathroom.
We heard my father smashing vases, pictures, china, and my mothers jewelry box. She started crying again. That jewelry box was the only thing she had to remember her mother by. I knew my mother was scared. Not because he was going to hurt her, but because she didn’t want him to hurt me. My mom didn’t want him to lay as much as a finger on me. And she would do anything to make sure he didn’t. And I mean anything.

We heard him coming closer and closer. I kept seeing my mom turning her head towards the door, then the window, then back to the door. She did this
for a minute. Then she decided that my safety was way more important than hers. She took me in her arms and opened the window. My mother jumped out the window with me in her arms from the second story of our house. Lucky for her it was winter and she had some snow to cushion her fall. But it wasn’t enough to keep her from being completely unharmed. Although I was. Not even a scratch on me. But she broke her legs from the fall.

I got out of her arms.

“Mommy? Mommy? Mommy, are you okay? Mommy?”

“Honey, I need you to run. Run as fast as your little legs can carry you. And I need you to run somewhere safe. Somewhere where Daddy can never find you. Okay?”

“But Mommy, what’s gonna happen to you? Is Daddy going to hurt you?”

“Baby, Daddy is going to hurt me very badly. And if you don’t run, he will hurt you. And I cant stand to see you hurt. Because it hurts Mommy deep inside”

“Mommy, I want to stay here with you!”

“I know you do but you cant. But here”, she handed me a necklace with a heart design.

“I’ll always be in your heart as long as you wear this. Now run!”

I gave her a hug and a kiss and I ran. I ran about four miles down the road before somebody found me and brought me inside. Her name was Kathy. When she asked me where I lived so she could take me home, I screamed.

“I can’t go back! Mommy said! Daddy will hurt me! Don’t let me go! Mommy will be sad! I can’t go back! I can’t!”, I ran into Kathy’s arms. She cried. She knew what was happening. She knew he was abusing me. And that if I went back, he would kill me. She asked me what he looked like.

“He has brown hair. And it’s short. And he wears a red plaid shirt and ripped pants. And he has brown boots. And he has brown eyes. And he carries a bottle around with him a lot. And tonight he has a long brown and black stink thingy that makes loud noises and hurts people”, she was surprised at how well I could describe him with how young I looked.

I heard yelling. It sounded like....it was. It was my dad, coming to beat me. He went down the street looking in the windows for me. Our street had houses that were about fifty meters from each other. So it was easy to find someone you were looking for if they’re at another house. When I saw him on the other side of the street, looking in their windows, I started crying and I told Kathy that was my dad looking for me. Then, he spotted me and ran over to the house.