Twenty Years Ago...

“Your mother’s a whore, Billie.”

Bill buries his face into the plaid sofa right between the old coffee stain and new cigarette burn. Whore this, whore that. Bill heard this statement at least once a day from Frank. He doesn’t know much about evil stepmothers, those princess stories are for girls, but he knows a thing or two about evil stepfathers. The kind that use their fists instead of words.

“Your mother’s a whore,” Frank bellows again.

Bill says nothing. He wants to be watching television. It is summer vacation after all. A short reprieve before he starts middle school in fall. But T.V. is off limits. Frank does not allow it while he is fighting with Bill’s mother, who has now locked herself in the downstairs bathroom. God forbid the T.V. drown out the sounds of yelling, crying and the sickening sound of fists against flesh.

It is now 4:15 p.m. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is on and he is officially missing it. This is the third episode in a row he had to miss. What would he even talk about when school starts back up? The kids would call him a loser. He is tempted to press the power button on the remote. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Frank directs his rage towards him instead of his mother. He wiggles to a seated position. The remote is on the coffee table. His finger hovers above the red button, but the memory of past bruises keeps him from pushing it.

Frank pounds on the bathroom door. The cheap plywood bounces with each hit, threatening to cave in. There are already holes, indicative of past assaults like notches on a bedpost. “Come out of there, Eve.”

“Just leave me alone.”

His mother’s response comes in a shrilled sob. It is his mother’s first words since retreating into the bathroom more than fifteen minutes ago. She had barreled down the stairs, Frank hot on her trail, and locked herself behind the safety of the door. It was a scene that was played out often. When she hid in there, Bill feared she would never come out.

He pushes himself off the sofa. “Mom?” he asks.

“Pipe down, Billie.” Frank shouts, resuming his incessant banging. “Open this door, Eve, or I swear to God I’ll break it down.”

“You aren’t the God-fearing type,” she calls back.

Frank snorts. “You’re testing me, woman. Open this door.”

“Mom, are you okay?” Bill squeaks.

“Get out here and tell me what you did. I want to hear the words straight from your slut mouth,” Frank demands, drowning out Bill’s meek call.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“You’re gonna tell me you don’t have a thing going with Freddy, that peon at the Post Office? Huh?”

“No, I—”

“Really? Then how come he keeps calling here and leaving messages on the machine asking for you?”

“I don’t know. I… I… must have a package.” She is crying again.

“He says he needs you to come down there. I bet I can guess what he wants you down there for.”

“It’s just a package, Frank. I probably need to sign for it in person.”

“I want him to stop calling here.”

““That’s his job. His job is to call me when I have a package ready. This is ridiculous.”

“It is ridiculous, I know. Ridiculous that I married a good for nothing whore!”

“MOM,” Bill wails.

Frank spins towards him, his face a bright angry red. “I told you to keep quiet, boy. No one in this house respects me. Did you hear that, Eve? Now I’m gonna have to teach this son of yours some damn respect.”

Bill shrinks back as Frank advances. His stepfather is fast for his size. He seizes Bill by the collar nearly hoisting him in the air.

“I’m sorry, Frank” Bill stutters. “I didn’t mean to—"

The bathroom door swings open. It collides with the back wall puncturing the plaster. “Get your hands off of him,” Eve challenges.

Suddenly Bill is flying through the air. He cries out as his back connects with the wall. It takes him a moment to clear the stars flashing before his eyes. His vision is still hazy, but he can make out his mother’s slender frame. She is standing her ground, hands clenched by her sides, facing the man she chose to marry after her first husband walked out leaving her with two kids.

“Rose petals,” she says to Billie.

Bill tries to nod. Rose petals is their secret code. A couple of years ago, when Bill was still young, his mother sat with him in his room after a particularly nasty altercation with Frank had left her with a black eye. Bill told her he was scared, that he didn’t like it when his stepdad hollered and grabbed her. His mother held him until he stopped crying. Then, she asked if he thought roses were pretty. Bill had nodded. “Well, from now on whenever I say rose petals that means I’m okay,” she said. “And I want you to think of nice, pretty things like roses because, I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a more beautiful flower than a rose.” Bill had agreed. And from that moment on rose petals had been their word. No one else in the whole world knew what it meant, certainly not Frank.

“Rose petals,” his mother mouths again as Frank seizes her by the wrists and drags her into the kitchen.

Bill squeezes his eyes shut and clamps his hands over his ears. There is no point in listening to the screams he cannot stop. All he can do is try to think of nice, pretty things like his mother had told him to do.

Next Chapter: Chapter 4