Character Sketch

Chapter 1 - Sweetie

The big blue couch welcomed him as he sank down into the cushions.  His mother put her arm around him and pulled him close. This was his favorite spot; safe, warm in his mother’s embrace and feeling loved.


“Sweetie.”


She always called him that. ‘How was your day, sweetie?’ ‘Pick up those socks please, sweetie’. ‘Sweetie, could you take out the trash?’


“Sweetie, I want you to promise me something.”


“Yes, mama.”


“Sometimes your daddy has a bad day at work or he’ll have a little too much to drink.”


He looked up at her face. The sadness in her eyes made his heart ache. The bruises on her cheek or eye would fade from deep purple to yellow.


“He has a hard time controlling his temper. When he gets mad and starts yelling I want you to find a safe place, curl up small as a mouse. Don’t you come out until I come and get you, okay?”


“What if he hurts you, mama?”


“I’ll be okay, sweetie, but I need to know you’ll be safe. You have to promise.”


“I promise, mama.”


He felt sick to his stomach when ever she came to find him and her eye was swollen or her lip bleeding.








Then the night came when she didn’t come to get him; He waited, huddled in the dark, while his father stumbled through the house softly calling his name. The deadly quiet that followed filled his tiny space with his own heart beat and shallow breathes. The sirens and the flashing lights made him squeeze tighter into a ball.


“I’m tiny as a mouse, mama,” he whispered. “So only you can find me.”


A flashlight shone in his face and a hand touched his shoulder.


“Are you okay, son?” a deep voice, warmer, richer than his father asked.


“I’m waiting for my mama.”


Arms in dark sleeves wrapped a blanket around him and shiny black shoes led him out of the house. His eyes darted to the kitchen door. As they passed he saw the blood pooled on the floor. Mama wasn’t coming to find him anymore. A tear rolled down his cheek.





Aunt Grace was his father’s sister. He had only seen her once before.  She came for his mama’s funeral his daddy’s trial and to take him home with her.


‘Worthless pile of crap,” she said everyday when she came home from the trial, then mumbled curses on all men the rest of each day.


“How old are you, boy?”


“Eight.”


“What grade you in?”


“Second.”


“Ten years! Your useless pile of crap father got life in prison and now I’m stuck with you, for ten years; a parasite sucking the life out of me.”


Tears flooded his eyes.


“Are those tears I see? Are you a baby, boy? Must be a baby couldn’t even help your mother against a pant- waist like my brother.”





            She glared down at him as she grabbed his chin and turned his head left and right.


“You have the look of your mother but you are your father’s son all right.”


He pulled his face out of her grasp.           


“Useless. Worthless. Have to beat up on women to make you feel like a man.”


Those were the dark years, daily verbal abuse from the moment he woke until he pulled his pillow over his head at night to drown out the drone of the wheezing slurred insults. He had learned early to keep his distance to avoid the fists and feet that flew without provocation. When he wasn’t fast enough he had learned the tricks of hiding the bruises from teachers and friends. Weekends handcuffed to his bed hiding chafed wrists with long sleeves.  But the memory that made him shudder were days in a dark closet she called solitary.


When Aunt Grace got drunk, he remembered his mother’s words and he would try to find a safe place to hide, make himself small as a mouse. The punishment was always worse when she found him. Finally, the day came when she became too weak or he became too strong for her to abuse physically and then only her poison words found their mark.


The day he graduated high school he packed his bags and never looked back. Now he had a nice job in a nice town and some college coed busybody was not going to screw that up for him.


The shadow of the tree and the darkness of the night cloaked him. The parking lot lamp light cast a pink tint that gave the area around the bicycle rack a rosy glow. The girl wrapped a cable through her bike tires and the bars of the rack before securing the lock. She shifted her backpack up on her shoulders, climbed the stairs, and entered the university library through the main doors. The notebook was in the backpack he was sure of it. He had watched her write in it, seen her watch him. He longed to get it, read it, and destroy it.