The Last Attack - Praying To Mother Nature

The Last Attack - Praying To Mother Nature

Artwork by Dorian Cleavenger

1981
I laid there on that cold concrete floor of that apartment building’s basement. It was so creepy & dark down there. And I thought about the fact that this was the second time that day I found myself laying on a cold, cold floor. Five hours earlier it had been the bathroom floor with my soaking wet body wobbling to try to steady myself & my face hovering inches from the floor, trying to either stay conscious or regain consciousness. I don’t remember how I got from the bathtub to the floor directly under the sink. And I don’t remember him leaving the bathroom. And I still don’t know whose drops of blood those were under my face on the cold tile.

What I do know is that no matter how often or how loud I screamed that silent scream, no one ever heard. Or cared. I’d been screaming it for 2 years. But an hour after I’d left the bathroom & was laying in my bed with my 3 year old sister, listening to my mother, who’d just gotten home from the bar she worked at yet seemed to go to work on her days off a lot. She was complaining about the dinner mess I’d left in the kitchen. But I knew that she’ll bitch about the kitchen mess while not saying anything about the macaroni noodle laying in the bathtub from shoving my little brother’s macaroni & cheese down my pants because I’m only thirteen & my cooking sucks but I could see the fear in my little brother’s eyes from the voice in the living room telling him he better eat. I knew that fear so well & I knew how intense it was. I couldn’t imagine how that must feel in a four and a half year old boy. So I tried to take his fear away by shoving his macaroni somewhere it wouldn’t be seen. Ha Ha! Gee, stupid me.

Yea, mom will ignore the macaroni in the bathtub. Just like she completely ignored the two holes that suddenly appeared in the bathroom door of the old house a couple years ago. As I lay there in bed with my little sister, screaming that silent scream, she looked up at me & said, "I’m only thirteen, too!" I realized my silent scream reached the surface & I whispered part of it out loud. So, after everyone in the house fell asleep, I grabbed the ugly tote bag I made in Home Ec. I filled it with some clothes & a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, which I was in the middle of reading. I hated that tote bag. I hated Home Ec. And I hated every time I went to register for school the stupid counselors would push Home Ec on me just because I’m a girl. Give me typing. Give me foreign language. Give me something Psychology or Mythological. Don’t give me cooking & sewing. Do I look like I come from a Betty Crocker kind of family?

As soon as I though everyone in the house had fallen asleep, I climbed out my bedroom window and walked several blocks to that apartment complex at the edge of my subdivision. And here I lay, on the cold, concrete floor in the basement of one of the buildings. Between the clothes in my tote bag & a few clothes I felt I needed more than the tenant who had them in the dryer drying, I’d made myself a make-shift bed alongside of one of the tenants cages where no one would see me if they came down to do laundry. Hopefully the lady whose clothes I was laying on wasn’t washing them for work tomorrow because I needed them more than she did right now. I was so cold. And I wished I had thought to bring a flashlight. I could really use some Catcher in the Rye right about now. I found myself thinking about a quote from the book that I had just read that morning. "If you was a fish, Mother Nature’d take care of you, wouldn’t she? Right? You don’t think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?

I felt like I was a fish & this was my winter. So I started to pray. To Mother Nature. I didn’t really think she could hear me with me being in a concrete basement. She’s Mother Nature. She’d be outside …..with nature. But I kept praying to her. As loud as my silent screams had been. I was now screaming silent prayers to Mother Nature.

Liquideve
January 2013