Silent Cry Read Online Free Page B

inside and being
around people was just too much for him. I sometimes wondered if he was ashamed of
himself. I hoped he was. More than anything, I wanted him to stop drinking. I knew
he could be a good man — he just refused to give up alcohol.
    There were times when the abuse did stop momentarily. Maybe that meant he had a winning
streak at gambling — I never knew for sure. When things were really, really bad,
my Uncle Sam could actually put him in his place and cause him to back down, even
to express remorse. But this lasted only for a day or two, and then the abuse began
all over again. It was like living inside a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. It
seemed normal. I expected it. I got used to it. That’s just how it was. There wasn’t
anything to do but accept it.
    No matter how we begged him to stop or pleaded for his goodness to return, it never
did. The abuse continued and got steadily worse. My mother began to have frequent
seizures and constant, severe headaches. Several times his blows landed her in the
hospital, and I feared my mother would sooner or later die at his hands.
    Finally we realized there was nothing left to do but escape — and the only way to
do that was to become self-sufficient. I was in the ninth grade by now, and my brother
Gary and I had begun to chip in, working to help support the family. I worked every
weekend cleaning houses or picking bushels of beans. I even worked at a shrimp factory,
plucking the heads off the tiny creatures and filling buckets with them. How I hated
those slimy things! They smelled horrible, and the stench lingered long after I got
home and took a bath. It seemed like I could smell them even in my sleep. The outer
shells of the shrimp scraped my fingers, and I worked until they were raw and bleeding.
I wanted to throw those horrid little creatures back into the Gulf, not painstakingly
fill a bucket with them — but filling a bucket meant earning money, so fill the buckets
I did.
    During the summer, I participated in a jobs program offered by the Gulf Oil Company.
Just two of us from my school were given the opportunity to work for them, painting
tanks and mowing the lawn — all in the blazing Louisiana summer sun. But the job
paid well, and I was happy to have it. I didn’t like the heat, but it was better
than peeling those horrible shrimp! My younger siblings worked too. We all helped
out at the school, waxing and buffing floors or cleaning classrooms. We worked hard,
and we worked together. Everybody gave their money to Mama to buy food or to save.
We all wanted out. We wanted to be free.
    When my mother announced to me that she was planning a shopping trip to New Orleans,
I was really excited. It had been a long time since we’d done this. I knew she had
to work really hard to save any money, and I had great anticipation for the new clothes
and shoes we would come home with. The two of us took the long bus ride into the
city, and my excitement grew with each passing mile. But my mood began to change
when we stopped for lunch and she explained how desperate our situation was. She
was afraid my stepfather was going to kill her — and she’d no longer be able to provide
for us or protect us from him. As she talked, the furrows in her brow deepened. Her
shoulders were hunched from the weight of a burden heavier than any woman was meant
to carry.
    â€œDorothy, I know I promised to buy you some new clothes,” she began, “but, baby,
we need to use that money to buy a car.” She paused, searching my face to see if
I understood. I blinked hard to hold back tears of disappointment. I felt selfish.
I had bragged to my friends about shopping in the big city, and now I would come
home with nothing — again. How tired I was of not having nice things! But I wanted
to escape the abuse — I hated it. Even more than that, I wanted my mother to be free.
I swallowed hard and shoved my disappointment down deep