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TWENTY

For a few years back then, things were pretty good.

At least, by my standards, which were low. I hadn’t known any other life than the one I’d been given. Had never had a life with two parents and warm meals in the evenings and fun excursions on the weekends. I was completely satisfied with having one parent who loved me, a parent who bought dinner off the dollar menu when he could afford it, and let me stay up as long as I wanted.

On the nights Dad didn’t work, he used to take me to the park. Those evening hours made up for anything else my week lacked, it seemed. We’d pass the ball back and forth, usually just the two of us. Occasionally, other neighbors would join in for a game of pick-up. I improved my ball handling skills, perfected my layup. Before long, I was zipping around the other players on the court, some of whom were twice my age.

“That’s my girl,” Dad would say, hooting and hollering with pride. His cheers filled me up inside, replaced whatever else was missing.

Then somehow, slowly, things began to change. Dad stopped catching the ball when I passed it to him, letting out embarrassed laughs instead. After about five minutes, he’d set up camp beneath the goal and remain sitting there the rest of the evening, sipping from a bottle in a brown paper bag. Eventually, he quit taking me to the park altogether.

I’m not sure how old I was when I realized that Dad was a drunk. For a while, naively, I simply thought he was tired. That he needed to sit after long hours on his feet at the factory, or that he needed the extra rest after fitful nights with no sleep. Maybe I wanted to think those things. The image of my father as my hero, my friend, remained in my mind, even when I was confronted with a different person.

His drunkenness didn’t bother me until the meanness set in.

Dad’s voice—once so kind and reassuring—took on a heavy tenor. He’d yell at me, the vibrato in his voice seeming to shake the house, shake my very soul. I can never remember what I did to unleash his anger. Drop a dish. Forget to take out the trash. One time, he shouted at me for breathing too loud.

His verbal anger soon morphed into something more tangible. Little shoves when I was in his way or kicks when he wanted me to leave the room. When he was close to blackout drunk, sometimes he’d hit me. Usually my arms or my chest, never my face. The physical abuse, in a strange way, became a white flag of sorts; he only got physical before he came close to passing out. After he did, I’d cover him with a blanket, hope the same process wouldn’t repeat the next day.

Sometimes my wish came true. Dad didn’t react that way every day, but when he did, that wrath seemed to grow and grow and grow, like the caterpillar in that children’s book he used to read to me when I was younger. When he wasn’t like this.

The problems at home only made me lean more into basketball. Coach Phillips and the girls on the team became my life source, and when I couldn’t be with them, I had Nadia. She was always with me during the in-between moments of Dad and basketball.

That’s why she was able to pick up on the abuse.

“What happened to your arm?” she asked me one day, as we were sitting on a bench outside the mall.

“Nothing,” I said, hurrying to pull down my sleeves.

“No use in hiding it,” she said. “I already saw the bruise.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s August and you’re wearing a hoodie,” she said, my habit of wearing concealing clothes clearly not working.

I stood, as though changing positions would somehow release the tension in my body, end this conversation. “It happened at practice.”

“No, it didn’t,” Nadia said, standing beside me, challenging me to speak. “I can practically see the fingermarks on your arm.”

“Let it go, Nadia,” I warned.

“He’s hurting you again.”

“Again?”

“We both know he’s done it before. I’ve seen other marks,” she said. “This is just the first time I’ve asked you about them.”

“Dad just gets a little worked up before bed,” I said, storming off in the direction of the mall. “He doesn’t mean to do it.”

“But he does it. Over and over again,” she said. “He won’t stop either.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” she said. “I’ve watched my mom’s boyfriends do it to her before.”

Nadia comparing my situation to what was going on with her own family infuriated me even more. She’d told me about some of the things she’d seen, just like I’d vent to her about Dad’s drinking, but talking about this, the abuse, felt worse. It felt wrong.

We walked into a clothing store that specialized in mass-market dupes of higher end brands. Neon-colored shirts and skinny jeans lined the shelves. Tacky accessories dangled from the rotating display at the center of the store.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said, picking up a pair of sunglasses and placing them over my eyes. For a few seconds, I admired my mysterious reflection, then slid the sunglasses into my bag. I didn’t even look around to see if anyone else was watching.

Nadia, never wanting me to feel alone, did the same. She picked up a sequined coin purse and slid it into her own backpack. “I’m not trying to upset you,” she said.

“I’m not upset.”

We didn’t even make it to the dressing rooms before an attendant stopped us.

“Can we take a look in your bags?” the older woman asked.

Nadia and I responded with attitude, which prompted her to call mall security. In all the times we’d dash and go, we’d never been caught. Then again, I’d never been so distracted. I’d always been aware of my surroundings, trying not to get caught. Nadia’s accusation made me reckless.

Security arrived, and things escalated from there. That was the first time Nadia and I got arrested. The first mark on my record. And as I recall the young female cop with dark hair who put handcuffs on me, I realize Detective Fields was there that day, witnessing my first real mistake.

In the mirror, my adult reflection stares back at me, my eyes beginning to well with tears.

“Are you ready?” Connor asks, standing beside our bed. I’d been so lost in thought, his voice startles me.

When I respond to him, it’s with a shaky, “Almost.”

The prayer circle at the school is set to start within an hour. He walks over to my vanity, bending down to kiss me on the cheek. “Everything will be okay,” he says. “They’re going to find her.”

He sees the tears in my eyes and assumes they’re there because of Evie. That’s part of the reason, sure, but not the whole truth. It never is.