Etched in Sand by Regina Calcaterra

Cherie and Camille yell, “She was in the woods, we found her!” Susan carries me back toward the street where I see Papa’s car is parked . . . oh, I knew they’d come back for me! But she doesn’t stop at the car to put me inside. Instead she walks past it, carrying me toward the glue factory. “No!” I scream.
    She carries me into the hallway up the steps, stopping at the platform where Mom is standing. “I’m so happy you’re okay!” Mom says, smiling at Susan. “After a nice bath I’ll give her some oatmeal and put her to bed.” She looks at me adoringly and says, “You could have gotten attacked by a wild dog—or even worse, hit by a car, you silly girl. You scared all of us!” Susan kisses me good-bye, again, and walks downstairs. I sob as she closes the outside door behind her.
    Mom stands there with the phony smile on her face. Then it turns mean. “Cherie, are they gone?”
    Cherie stands by the window and nods. I beg her, “No!” Doesn’t my big sister know what will happen now?
    In an instant Mom turns her energy toward me, grabbing me by my hair and slamming me to the ground. It feels like my hair is being pulled all the way out of my head, and the skin on the top of my head is being ripped open. I try to put my arms in front of my face, but she punches them down and grabs me around my waist. Then she picks me up and throws me into the wall, denting it. As I slide down to the floor and land on my back, she grabs my right arm and leg and flips me over on my stomach. Then she kicks my legs, back, and stomach until I’m all weak and my head turns heavy. There’s a loud buzzing sound ringing from my brain. All I can see is white, and I can’t fight back or move my body anymore.
    When I awake, I’m naked. I try to sit up, but my arms can’t cooperate. I raise my head to see why I can’t move, and I notice my arms are clasped together on my side and tied to the radiator. My legs are bound together above my ankles and tied to the rails underneath my bed. When I see this, I have to rest my neck. My brain feels like it’s swollen. I close my eyes.
    I feel something cold. When I open my eyes again, Camille is holding a rag that feels like it has ice inside. “Where’s Susan?”
    “Gi, Susan is only our foster sister. We don’t live with her anymore.”
    “Can we go back?”
    “No.” Then she whispers, “Not unless the police find out that Mom hurts us.” Camille tells me, still in a whisper, that while Mom was tying me up, she made my sisters take all my clothes out of the room so I couldn’t run away again. “This is what happens when you don’t listen to Mom,” she says. Now I want to spit in Camille’s face, but I can’t lift my head.
    After that, Big Norman tells Mom that having a baby was enough, he didn’t bargain for three little girls and their crazy business, too. He starts spending more time away from the house, and one morning Mom’s crying at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, saying Big Norman left her for good.
    She says she needs more time to herself and I’ll start kindergarten in a few days, even though I’m only four. My birthday falls in November, a few days before the cutoff, so she says I’ll probably be the youngest in my class. She also tells me that I have to use her last name when I go to school because I don’t have a daddy like Norman does. “Because you’re a bastard, remember?” she says. “Your daddy didn’t want you. And I can’t blame him. You’re a smug little snot, just like him.” Cherie overhears Mom saying this, and later she tells me not to worry about having the same last name as Mom—Cherie has the same one, too, and that makes me feel better. I like sharing a name with Cherie. “Cherie, where’s my daddy?” I ask her.
    Her only answer is this: “I think he’s at the Happy House.”
    Where is the Happy House? “Can we go there?”
    “Well, maybe someday when you’re bigger we can find it again.”
    I want to find