The dark Secrete

The Dark Secret

My life was so tough. It all started when I was only six years old. I remember sitting in a leather chair and my feet dangling off the end of it. The courtroom looked so huge from the front. I felt scared sitting there watching my parents fight for me. I couldn’t believe it was happening, but it was. It was so crowed in there, I felt like it was hard to breath. I knew they fought all the time but I never thought it’d lead to this. I could feel myself starting to breathe harder and my chest felt kind of heavy.

I wanted my daddy to be the one that got me. I mean I love my mom but she has never been there for me. It was always just daddy and I. She was a lawyer and was always at work, so my dad was the one always there for me. I remembered all the fun times we had had. He taught me to ride my bike, walked me to and from school every day, played games with me and even watched cartoons, that my mom thought were stupid, with me. He was like my best friend. We did everything together. When my mom was home they’d always fight because she was never around. She didn’t ever come to any of my dance recitals, I never saw her before I went to bed at night; she wasn’t even home on Christmas! She always bought me nice toys, but I would rather spend time with her.

I looked up at the judge. He was kind of scary looking. He had big brown eyes with dark circles underneath them, like he hadn’t slept in a couple of days. He had a frown on his face that seemed permanent because I didn’t see it change the whole two hours I’ve been here. He had a very deep voice that reminded me of the bad guys on scary movies. I felt something wet drip down my face and into the corner of my lips. I was crying. I didn’t want my parents to be choosing who got to keep me. I felt like I was a house that was being sold at an auction.

Just as I was about to get lost in my train of thought again, I heard a big ‘Thump! Thump!’ That’s when I knew he was about to say who got to keep me.
“Custody of Cecilia Rose has been given to the mother, Mary Rose.” His voice said cold and hard. I felt the tears pour out of my eyes. My heart started to pound like a hammer beating in a nail when I heard the judge say that I would never see my daddy again.

Everything just went silent. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, everything was hazy, thanks to the tears. I felt like I was slowly suffocating and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get my lungs to breathe again. I was just stuck sitting there. Frozen.

A few minutes went by. Then my mom came up to me and gave me a hug. I wrapped my arms around her looking for some comfort, even though she wasn’t the one I wanted to be hugging. She picked me up into her arms and I felt the warmth of her body as I clung to her with my legs. She tried to get me to stop crying and told me that everything would be okay, but I thought she was lying. How could everything be okay when I’m never going to see my daddy again? She started walking down the aisle to the big white doors. I looked back at my daddy getting ready to leave and I couldn’t believe what I saw.

He didn’t even look a little upset. He was smiling like he didn’t care that he would never see me again. That was the last time I saw my daddy.

After that day my life started to change fast. My mom got an offer to move to a different location and of course, she took it. We had to move from our little apartment in Boston, to a little house in Purdy, Virginia. Everything here looked so different and at first I thought id never get used to it. There were no big buildings like back home. Just houses, small businesses, trees and more trees. I started to go to a new school that I soon began to like more than being home.

Every day I had to get up at 5:30, which is two and a half hours before school even starts, just to get ready. Each morning at 6:05 I had to walk down the half rocky and half red dirt path to wait for the bus. The bus usually came at 6:15 every day and then I’d have an hour and forty-five minute bus ride to school. The kids at school would pick on me because I had an accent, which I soon began to lose. I started to play softball for the school and made a few new friends.

Three years went by and my mom met a new guy. Jeremy Wilkins. At first I thought he was a nice guy and thought he was kind of cute. He started to come over every day and he seemed pretty cool. About six months after they had been dating, they got engaged and two months after that, married. He moved into our four-bedroom house and next thing I know, my mom is pregnant. Not long after that I had a new little brother, Kaleb. And then a year later a little sister named Kaley.

When I was 12, Jeremy started to abuse my mom. I didn’t know about it for a while, but one day I came home from school and walked in on him raising his fist to hit her. I told him that he better not hit my mom or I’d call the cops. I heard him laugh a kind of devilish cackle as he put his fist down and started to walk past me. I figured he was just going to leave. Just as I was about to ask my mama if she was okay, I felt something hit me hard in the back of the head and I hit the floor. He hit me.

“If you ever tell me what to do again you little bitch, I swear to god you will be dead.” I heard Jeremy’s evil voice said as he started to snicker.

My mom just sat there because she was too terrified to even say anything to him about it. I started to cry so hard from the pain and everything looked like it was spinning. My mom just looked at me, started to cry harder and then walked away.

Ever since that day my life has been a living hell. I’d come home and my mom would be at work and Jeremy got into drugs real bad. So I had to take care of Kaleb and Kaley, when they weren’t at the babysitters. Some days it’d just be Jeremy and I at the house. I hated those days. He started to beat me every day for either having an attitude, not doing something he wanted me to or for just simply the joy he got out of hitting me. He told me he loved watching me suffer.

One night my mom was working late and Kaleb and Kaley were over at the babysitter’s house, so it was just Jeremy and I. I was up in my room doing my homework and listening to music and I heard someone knock on the door.

“Yes.” I said knowing that it was him but unsure of what he wanted.

“It’s me. Can I come in?” He said actually sounding nice.

“Sure.” I said not really wanting him to come talk to me, but I couldn’t tell him no.

He came in and sat on my bed right beside me. He felt so close that I could see his broad chest moving up and down as he breathed and if I just moved my arm towards him just an inch it’d touch his. He looked at me and smiled a sinister kind of smile. I could tell he had a plan, but I didn’t know what it was. He started to look me up and down. It was like I could feel his eyes touching every inch of my body. I felt so uncomfortable.

“So what did you want to talk about?”

His eyes were wandering all over my body and then moved quickly back up to meet my eyes. “I want to talk about me and you.” He said as he brushed my long brown curly hair out of my blue eyes.

I pulled away and asked “What about us? What are you talking about Jeremy?”

He leaned in and grabbed me by the hair and started to kiss me. I felt his rough beard rub like sandpaper on my face as I tried to pull away.

“What are you doing? Stop!” I yelled as I tried to push him off of me so I could run away.

“No I want you. And you’re going to let me have you.” He said in a low but wicked voice.

He grasped my arms together tightly in one of his, while pinning me down and using his other hand to unbutton my jeans. I tried to fight him and get him off me but the more I struggled the harder his grip got and the more he hit me. All I could do was cry and try to scream. He would tell me to shut the fuck up and would slap me so hard in the face that I could hear a ringing sound in my head. I could feel him going inside me. It felt like he was tearing me open. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening.

When he finished with me, he told me that he wished my mom felt that good. I couldn’t move because I was in so much pain.

“If you ever tell anyone what I did, I’m going to deny it and people will believe me not you. And if you tell your mama I’m going to kill you and her.”

I started to cry even harder than before. ‘What am I supposed to do’ I thought.

“You wouldn’t want that to happen now would you?” He asked.

“Well no I don’t.” I sobbed.

“Okay well good then. This will be our little secret.” He said as he walked out of the door.

As I laid there thinking of what I should do, I just started to cry even more. I couldn’t tell anyone or do anything about it. I’m not even sure if I told my mom about it that she would even do anything because she didn’t when he hit me.

About a year later my mom and him got a divorce. I still haven’t told my mom about what he did to me. I’m too scared of what she will think of me because I didn’t tell her when it happened. I haven’t told anyone and no one will ever know. This is my deepest darkest secrete.

Cecelia