Written by: Tickita@aol.com


Tainted Innocence
I tousle my hair and pout my lips, as I look into the mirror across from the bathroom. I'm not so happy at the appearance, but I'm also not as disappointed as some 18-year-olds are. After striking a couple of fashionable poses, I sigh, squint up my nose, and spin around, almost running straight into my brother Andrew. He giggles at my Madonna wannabe moves, grabs playfully at my blonde hair, and heads down the hall to his room. I jokingly stick my tongue and smile, mocking his 8-year old innocence. "How nice it would to be 8 again," I think, "the only worries he has are scraped knees and the fear that some code-ridden girl may kiss his cheek." I sigh, recalling the days when I was that code-ridden girl chasing schoolyard crushes around the playground. "Scraped knees are a whole lot easier to fix than a broken heart" I mumble. "Parents made everything
better, and what you didn't know, you didn't need to worry about. Everyone was oblivious to the world around them, and that's the way it should always have been." But as my family and I know all too well, mommy and daddy aren't always there, and you have to come back to reality from time to time.


I suddenly remember the time and I gasp, realizing that I have now spent 15 minutes perfecting my diva poses, and reminiscing in the stress-free days of my short lived childhood. After another quick look in the wicker-rimmed mirror, I twirl around dramatically, running into the now shut bathroom door. It would figure.


Not hesitating any longer, I open the creaky bathroom door, the kind that always has something rickety about it and reminded me of a dungeon's door when I was little, then shut it behind me. With a graceful stride, I turn on the bathtub faucets and twist the knob to start the shower that I have been waiting for after my hard day at school. As soon as the water gets hot, I
pull back the flower-donned shower curtain and laugh as I realize that my cat is hovering in the end of the tub, trying to claw her way out of the porcelain sides. Why I didn't notice her commotion before is still unknown to me.


I grin and pull the soaked feline out of the bathtub and get a towel to  dry her off, but she has zero patience and is clawing at my arms to get down  in seconds. "I guess you'll just have to go around the house wet, princess,"  I shout to the cat as she bounds out the door, as if the tub was her prison  cell, and she hadn't been free in years. She hesitates before going down the
steps and I can't help but laugh at her newfound walk. Step, shake a leg. Take another step, shake another leg. It kind of reminds me of my dance moves I was practicing in the mirror minutes earlier.


I turn back around and walk back into the already steamy bathroom, and step into the shower. The warmth of the water feels good on my achy muscles and I realize how great a long bath would feel. I check to see the time and disregard the fact that I only have half hour to get ready, as I spin the shiny faucets to make the shower turn off and the bathwater start to run.
All of a sudden, I have an eerie sense of deja-vu, like this situation is familiar or something. I shake my head at my ignorance and plop down into the nearly full bath and let the warm water run over my feet.


When the tub is almost about to overflow with bubbles and the scent of lavender is filling the bathroom; I twist the faucet with my feet, ceasing the flow of water. I lean back into the composure of the bubbles and oils and soak. I lift up an arm and roll my eyes as I peel a clump of cat fur off my left arm and toss it onto the linoleum floor beside me. "It all seems so peaceful," I surmise. I grab a washcloth and suddenly, the sight of the midnight blue bruise on my wrist brings me back to my painful reality.
Holding up my right arm, I examine the cuts and faded pink scars that lay there, evidence mocking the pain of the past 2 years.


I take a deep breath and exhale, trying to stop the tears that have already gathered in my eyes, which are still focused on the scars. I blink as the teardrops start to drip down my cheeks. As if to wash away the memories, I dip my head under the water and re emerge from the darkness. It didn't work, and the recollection of you still remains vividly in my mind. I still can't believe how much our relationship has changed in such a  short time. When I first knew you, it wasn't like this. It started out
normal, as it usually does. You cared about me, looked after me. I was your  pride and joy and it seemed that it would always be that way. However,  things change as they did when a couple months after my 15th birthday, your  best friend molested me. I wince as I remember the memory of the musty basement and the olive green pool table with the rip in the felt-like fabric.


I can picture the uniformed Grey cement walls and the cracks and crevices in each, like they were the walls of my own home, surrounding me, caving me in, like a dungeon. I can still remember feeling out of place as I sat on the faded orange polyester couch picking at the stuffing that was falling out of the arms, and I can still smell the pungent aroma of beer on his breath. But
I think the most painful reminder of what started the fall in our  relationship, was that loss of innocence when he first touched me, and you  looked on like nothing was wrong. Was it some game to you, to see my dignity leave, and be replaced with shame, right in front of your very eyes? Cat and mouse is a game anyone should ever have to play.


I'm a very forgiving person, perhaps too forgiving at times. You  apologized for what your friend did and swore to me that you would never associate with such a person ever again. We hugged and made up, and once  again, I cried on your shoulder and confided in you as you whispered to me  the things you know I needed to hear. You kissed my forehead and smoothed my
hair, promising things that you could never give me, and yet I still  believed. I loved you once again, and everything was a fairy tale. Months passed and things went smoothly for the most part. There was the  occasional argument, but all in all it was a typical relationship. That was  until I turned 16, and my mom forgot my birthday. I cried on your shoulder,
looking to you for an explanation through my teary eyes.

Without hesitation, you made the decision to help me drive so I wouldn't have to worry about my mom. "If you can get your mind away," you said, "then everything else can go  away with it." As I quickly picked up the skills of the road, I suppose I
put on a show for you to get some attention.

This is why I can understand why you get so angry when I so the slightest things wrong, and I'm sorry for that. It was my fault, I know I should be able to shift into 3rd gear smoothly, or break not so suddenly. I just wasn't thinking because I'd had a
lot on my mind. It's the simple things that started to bother you, and to these simple things is when I began to make excuses. Finally, to the excuses  became your verbal assault against me.


At first the comments weren't so bad, you'd say I was stupid, and I never really took it seriously. After all, we do make mistakes, and I can certainly see how I can be an irritant. However, after sometime, the insults started to get personal. You attacked my looks, my grades, my intelligence, I think I remember once you even asked me if I served a purpose on this
earth. I should have seen what I was doing and corrected it, but every time, you came back insulting me for what I did, and sometimes for just being in your presence. It was like a continual circle that started with my stupidity, and ended in a hug, flowers or a card, and an "I love you."

It was 4 months after that first driving lesson that my mother suddenly died of a heart attack. My mom was always my role model, somewhat like a fairy godmother and a queen all at once, so I took her death to heart. I couldn't eat or sleep and my nights because a battle with my own thoughts. I had been thinking, and thinking, and at times I was so deep in thought that I
lost contact with what was going on around me. I pulled away, secluded myself, and didn't pay much attention to you for a month or so. But just as a child goes back to a toy, I went back to you for the comfort and warmth that you once gave me. I needed to find my silver lining, and I knew I could count on you. I needed love; in fact I craved it. I was desperately trying
to cling onto any string of my mother's memory I could grasp. Any figment of my imagination remembering her was now reality. I honestly don't know what happened in that month, but when you took me into your arms to comfort me again, something was missing; it was not just from you, but from both of us.


I didn't notice it at the time, but a part of us was gone, as if leaving with my mom when she passed away. Soon after my mother's death, you're family fell apart too. Even though I was there for you, a part of you died yet again. Though trying to hide your  habit, you started to drink to dull the pain, and we all know what happens when you drink. Things happen that you don't mean for. Alcohol became an excuse, a friend, and a way for you to escape reality. Liquor was present at every meal, and the money earned from the second-rate job you kept went to beer and wine and vodka, not to help your household. I can imagine your poor  family. Nothing mattered to you other than the drinks, not even me. The first time I voiced the lack of attention I was receiving, I couldn't tell what the effects of the booze had done to you. I continued purring out my complaints with a pout on m lips thinking a sweetly toned voice and a cute  smile would effect the way you perceived my words. With your back facing  your kitchen, I couldn't see the shot glasses lined up and I couldn't see the glazed look over your dark green eyes, once welcoming, now frightening. I wasn't able to decipher the incoherent things you said back, and in all reality, I never saw the fist coming towards my cheekbone.

After the first blow the rest were unfelt. I was utterly numb from the experience. The next day you sat and cried at the realization of what had happened. You swore again and again that it should never have occurred, and as your words poured out of your mouth, I had an eerie sense of deja-vu. But I put my feelings aside for you and forgave your anger and loved you again. My fairy-tale life was slowly falling into the hands of the witch I knew as fate. The next couple times the abuse occurred, I forgave and forgot. I was   too caught up in various other activities to notice anything was wrong, as   were my ever-fading friends. I busied myself with hockey, basketball,   softball, photography, and anything else to keep myself occupied so that I
wouldn't have to face reality of abuse. I went into a stage of denial and shame for myself and for you. Ironic, isn't it, that the activities I chose  to protect myself from you also provided the excuses for the bruises and cuts  you provided for me?


By now I was 2 moths away from turning 18, almost a legal adult. Abuse had become a regular occurrence, but I was and still am too in love with you to notice anything bad happening. You have embedded into my mind the concept that I start all the fights, and I believe you. After a relationship that you didn't know about, my self-esteem was at an all-time low. Even the
slightest things I do wrong deserve a blow, and the even bigger things I do wrong end up in broken fingers, and cut arms, with a side of excuses. But nothing destroys my fairy tale. You love me, as you should, and as you  always will. And someday, my prince will come back.


The cat meowing at the bathroom door snaps me out of my daydreams. I throw my hands up and realize I'm pruning, so I drain the water and bubbles, and oils, and my fairy tale life goes down the drain with them all. I step out of the tub carefully and quickly wrap a towel around my hair and bruised body. After doing so, I walk slowly to my room, admiring pictures in the long hallway of my childhood. Everyone smiled in those pictures. I step into my room and shut the door, quickly dressing into a
pair of loose jeans and a tee shirt. I hesitate to put on my watch, as it would directly hit the navy bruise on my wrist, so I pick it up and buckle the clasp to my right hand. I look at the small clock on the wall. It reads 6:30P.M... and it is time for me to make dinner.


I jog down the stairs and I see you lying comfortably in an easy chair, speaking tiredly to my sister, with a bottle of beer sitting on the end table. I run back up stairs to tell Andrew that dinner will be ready so, but when I turn back around, Julie is gone and you are breathing softly. You look so peaceful, I decide not to wake you with the clatter of dishes in the kitchen. Instead I decide I will call for some take-out in a couple minutes. I walk over to you and pick up the empty bottles that surround you like a  barrier to the world. It takes me 2 trips to pick up all the varieties of drinks, and then place them in the recyclable bin out near a tiny Toyota. I  smile and realize you are just trying to create a moat around your castle, like a protective field that just happens to be alcohol. I understand. I kneel beside you and I can still smell the bitter aroma of beer. The scent brings tears to my eyes not only because I do not like the stench of the stale liquor, but because of the memories that whiff of beer brings back.  Andrew is singing upstairs, and a Barney tape is playing in the VCR. They are clues to his innocence, not yet lost. Princess my cat patters across the tiles in the kitchen, batting at the dog's tale. He barks and then is silent, and the two decide to take a nap in the early evening's sunlight.  The grandfather clock in the living room plays it's familiar melody and
chimes 7 times, signaling the arrival of the hour. Right now in the house, everything is at peace.


I look at you one last time before I plant a kiss on your forehead and smile at your sleeping, harmless form. People are bound to find out about what happens between us, and after they do, I am sure we will get the help we both need. The people who already know what goes on may think that I am ignorant to this situation. Perhaps that may be true. But looking at you now, in your state of oblivion, I know in my heart that no matter how tough things get, you will always be my knight in shining armor, completing the fairy tale. In my mind, I know the truth.

I still love you, daddy.

Written by Tickita@aol.com