...Edge has recently posted on a certain topic that I think everyone has seen at some point in their life. He and a few of his fellow bloggers are trying to reach out and help, which I think is the neatest thing. Some people don't give a shit. I decided to tell you this, then....

...when I was about fifteen, my mom had a boyfriend that she broke up with. Well, she tried to, anyway. He just wouldn't get the message. I remember she went out one night, and before she left she told me about the gun on top of the refridgerator...that the safety was on and it was easy to use and oh by the way I doubt there will be any trouble but just in case...I never slept a wink that night...on the couch and worried someone was coming...but no one did.

...not soon after, my mom was in the hospital for some overnight thing. My dad brought us back to feed our collie, Daisy. But she was dead in the back yard. Being a young dog and with no visible signs of injury, we thought he'd poisoned her.

...a few weeks later, my mother left the house to go to the store, then bring back dinner. It was about four or five when she left. Several hours go by, and around ten thirty or so she calls, telling me we should have gone ahead and eaten. She was out (you could hear music, so I knew she was in a bar somewhere) and would be home soon. I couldn't believe she'd just forgotten about us. I stayed up a few more hours, then went to bed.

...I wake up...and my mom is bent over me. I see that she seems to have put on her make-up wrong...the whole side of her face is black and blue. She's whispering..."get up, Kim...we're leaving.." and as I reluctantly get out of bed, she tells me to hurry. I start to grab some clothes, but she tells me no...

"this way..." I follow her across the hallway to my brother's room, where my little sister is waiting with him. "what's on your face?" I ask. She just tells us to hurry and climb out his window. I ask why and she tells me in her don't-ask-stupid-questions-just-do-it voice to "climb out that window now..."

...we hurry out through the first (and only story, thank God) window, my mom looking back every few seconds. After we all get out of the house we are rushed to the car. Now I'm getting scared because my mother doesn't get scared...and she's obviously very frightened. By now we're all looking behind us, and as she starts the car and backs out of the driveway, I almost expect to see someone coming out of one of the doors to the house. But there's no one.

...a few streets over is a friend of hers, and soon my brother and sister and I are in the living room asleep while they talk in the kitchen. Of course, I couldn't sleep at all...so I listened.

...my mother did intend to get groceries and she did intend to bring back dinner...but her ex found her...grabbed her and for some reason, took her to that bar. I don't know when he hit her, but apparently it wasn't before the bar...or else no one cared about a woman with a blackened face. While she was there, she was allowed to go to the bathroom. When she did, another woman who had been drinking at the bar was in there. My mom gave her a note asking for help with the police...she asked this woman for help. The woman took the note, went back into the bar, and gave the piece of paper to my mother's ex boyfriend. I'm pretty sure this set him off. I think he may have hit her once when she came out of the bathroom. Maybe it was more. All I know is, before he brought her back home, he hit her so hard she was black and blue on one whole side of her face, and he'd broken her cheekbone.

...after he brought her back, while we were sleeping, he raped my mom on the livng room floor, then fell asleep. When she was sure he was out, she went back and woke all three of us, and that's when we went out the back bedroom window.

...when the cops showed up, he was still passed out on the floor...

...he got a year and a half...served a year...and that was it. He never came around again (at least that I know of), but I think our justice system truely sucks. Rapes and beatings and murders...a year or two or maybe more. But if you sell drugs...wow...

...now if my mom had taken a bat to him before she left with us...I'd be willing to bet she would've gotten in more trouble than he did.

...I guess if he was selling drugs he would've really been punished.... Maybe Blade can explain how that works?
posted by Wanting at 7:45 PM