Tales of Treachery and Tortures Past III

“Hey, Brat. Wanna see if you can fly?”

Those are the only words I remember hearing as my sisters muscled me toward the window of our seventh floor hotel room. There were probably other words—mean words, threatening words, gloating words that whispered how our parents wouldn’t even miss me when they got back from 7-Eleven or how I’d be the first person in the family to put “light as a feather, stiff as a board” to the test—but they were just background music to the melody of my screams.

When the only thing filling your five-year-old view is a hundred foot drop to an ocean of rippling, hot pavement, words don’t really mean much—unless they’re to say, “Stop. Put the screeching girl on the floor and step away, with your hands up.”

So, the words are gone, eaten up in the passage of time like so many other memories. But the sights remain: the sun shining so clear and bright in a cloudless ocean of sky; birds nesting on a maze of telephone wires, balanced on one foot with their heads cocked to the side; a checkerboard of water spots framing the glass of an open window, magnifying with every forced step closer…

I struggled, knowing it was useless. Same dance, different day, and I’d been stupid enough to get caught on the floor without a chaperone. Every time my parents left the hotel to run an errand, my sisters would pirouette from the shadows to twirl me into their latest inspiration for torture. Yesterday, it was a non-stop tickling session until I peed myself; today, it would be threat of a free fall through a grubby window to the blue skies beyond.

Gotta love their dedication to variety.

I should’ve been smarter and hightailed it to the closet the second the door latched behind my parents, but the force of dumb naïveté was too strong. Like Cinderella whistling a jaunty tune to her birds while her stepsisters dumped buckets of ash down her dress, I believed each day in my fairytale world would be different. I guess I’d been lulled into a false sense of security—there hadn’t been any death threats, name-calling sessions, or frame jobs to put me on punishment for the past few days. Time had passed, and I’d forgotten to respect fear. Leave it to my own evil sisters to give me a refresher.

I thrashed against the arms holding me. My feet slid against the hotel floor, refusing to catch a solid grip on the nappy carpet. Of all the days to wear jellies—sure, they were cute with knee socks and a bedazzled jumper, but the smooth soles did nothing for homicide prevention. I tried to wedge the toe of one rubbery shoe into the back of the sofa for leverage, but Cara swung it away. She snatched up my knee and nestled it in a death grip against the arm already held captive, leaving my compressed torso pretzeled between her and Veronica, with one lonely leg still wriggling in desperation behind me.

I worked that leg for all it was worth. Chairs crashed in my wake; spiders snatched up their babies and fled for their lives. My swinging foot even knocked the telephone loose from its cradle and sent it whirling across the room to crash against the wall, the cord trailing limply behind it. But the fight for freedom was pointless. The window was getting closer. And no one was answering my cries.

I stopped screaming. Tears fell.

For all the times I believed things would be different, that my sisters would finally accept me as one of them, I had to accept I would always be on the outside. There was a wall between us that I couldn’t seem to break through. No matter how nice I was or how many times I smiled at them or offered to play barbies with them, it would always be them and me.

And I think they really meant to kill me this time

It was hard to believe I was about to die. I hadn’t even lived. I was only five—I still hadn’t learned what living meant. I just knew there were more flavors of Tangy Taffy to eat. There were more episodes of Alvin and the Chipmunks to watch. I hadn’t even finished coloring in the last page of my Woody Woodpecker coloring book. What was going to happen to it now? Would Woody be condemned to live in a colorless world of black and white circles until eternity? It was so unfair.

A wisp of cool air blew across my face.

Once I hit the window, it would be over. I would be another smudge on the sidewalk by the time my parents got home. There’s no fighting air. As soon as my body hit open sky to make its hasty descent to the concrete, below, the only thing I’d be fighting would be to keep the bugs out of my teeth as I screamed.

They were my sisters. They were supposed to love me…

Then I looked at Veronica, and my eyes caught the gaze she’d been trying to keep from me. And I realized that while I might not yet have an ally in my middle sister, maybe I at least didn’t have an enemy.

“I think Momma and Daddy are coming,” she said. She dropped my arm.

Cara’s eyes slid to the door. “I don’t hear anything.”

“I heard the elevator.” She shifted away. “Anyway, I’m bored. I think Paper Moon is about to come on; I want to watch it.” She closed the window and walked away.

Cara scowled at me. Her gaze swept the room. “You better clean this mess up before Momma and Daddy get here, or you’re gonna be in trouble.”

Wiping the tears from my cheeks, I hurried to pick up the chairs and reconnect the telephone. Like a nightmare washed away with the coming of the sun, the incident began to fade from my mind. Before the last chair was back in place, I’d already begun contemplating which crayon I would use for Woody’s beak. By the time my parents walked through the door, self-preservation had taken precedence over retribution against my siblings, and I was quietly ensconced in a corner of the living room, scribbling thick, yellow lines across the pages of my book.

Could I fly? Would I fly? Not that day. But if I ever opened my mouth and told my parents what happened during their thirty minute trip to 7-Eleven, the next time they left the hotel, I just might.