Early morning sunlight inches its way around the edges of the venetian blinds on our bedroom windows.  I pull my thumb out of my mouth, fold a couple of inches of the pink, satiny edging of the blanket on my bed into a cone shape, and gently stroke my nose with it, then circle my eyes.  It’s soft and comforting, as I worry, worry, worry.  Donna sighs in the twin bed next to mine.  Barb shares Donna’s bed, and Maria shares mine.  They’re fast asleep, exhausted from the war-like explosions in our home last night.  The telephone rings in the kitchen and I hear Mom answer it with a dull “hello.”  I know it’s her mother, my Nanny, giving her a daily morning phone call.

The blanket flies over Maria’s head as I fling it off of me as I get up.  I gently pull it off her face so my little sister won’t suffocate, look for my pink slippers that travelled under the bed, and shove them on my feet.  My hair’s a tangled bird’s nest.  I run my tongue over dry, cracked lips, and pull down the too short, too small sleeves on my hand-me-down, floral flannel nightgown.  Whish, whoosh, whish, goes the nightgown against my bare legs as I shuffle out to the kitchen.  I stand numbly at the table, waiting for Mom’s attention.

“Okay, Ma,” said Mom into the phone that’s cradled between her ear and neck.  She takes a second to drop a spoon on the counter, hangs the phone up on the wall, and turns back to filling a coffeepot with Chock full o’ nuts, the heavenly coffee. 

She barely looks at me.  Coffee grains sloppily spill from the spoon, flicking brown specks on the counter.

“Nanny told me to wash my face and to make sure and put lipstick on today,” said Mom, more to herself, than to me.  She slows down, thinks of her own life.  I imagine Nanny in her warm kitchen, standing at the sink that overlooks Grandpa’s zinnia bed, towel-drying a load of hand-washed dishes, and talking to Mom on a phone that is cradled between her ear and neck. 

Mom’s spoon clatters to the sink as she turns to put the coffeepot on the stovetop.   

“Go wash up and get ready for school, Jeanne.  Tell your sisters to get up.  Then get in here and have breakfast,” said Mom placing a box of Kellogg’s frosted cornflakes on the table.  Tony the Tiger, a cartoon mascot on the cereal box, cheerfully grins at me.  I can’t grin back. 

Mom acts as though nothing happened between her and Daddy after supper last night.  His ugly, aggressive threats of violence and their loud, mean words of swearing and yelling at each other scared me and my sisters to death.

Daddy tried to touch her, but she pulled away and shouted.  

“Get out!  Get out!  Leave us alone!”  Mom hysterically screamed, crying in a verbal assault, her fists tightly clenched at her sides.

Then out Daddy went, banging the front door.

“Yes, Mom,” I said, aching from her lack of awareness to my suffering, yet comforted by Nanny’s words for some reason or another.  I inch my way back to the bedroom.

Get ready for school.  Put on my parochial school uniform.  Go to school, to my third-grade class.  Sit at my desk, with head down, too ashamed, too bashful, too fearful to look up or look at anyone.  Forget looking!  Forget talking!  Try to learn, try to study.  Try to listen to the Catholic nuns who are my teachers.  Everything looks foreign to me, is foreign to me, including Mom and Daddy’s fights, which I can’t understand, and which I hate, hate, hate.  Sit with a painful knot in my stomach, as though a cord is tying me up, as though a cloth is stuffed in my mouth, and shoved down my throat.  Clench my teeth.  Fight back tears.

Dear, Sweet, Jesus.  I can’t breathe, afraid to speak.  Afraid, afraid, afraid.