Wendy Blacke

emotional wayfarer

Category: Memoir

Recollections from my life.

  • The Worst Day of My Life – 15 Years Later

    The Worst Day of My Life – 15 Years Later

    15 years ago today was the worst day of my life. I usually commemorate this day in some way online, and this year I wanted to share the original blog post I made about that day. It was originally published on a blog I had started as a way to document my pregnancy and motherhood. It was called A Girl Named Wendy and I posted to it daily. The following post is difficult to read. It was written on September 12, 2011, and I still hadn’t slept following the trauma detailed here. A lot of people were reaching out wanting to know what happened, and writing this post was a way for me to communicate it while protecting myself from the overwhelm of having to repeat it.

    Writing has been the connective tissue of my life, and it was the writing of this that did help me finally sleep. I have kept it preserved and never edited it. Grief never really goes away. You grow around it and through it. It becomes part of you.

    The Worst Day – Originally published September 12, 2011

    The blog is going to be depressing for the next while. On Saturday, September 10th, at around 4:00PM, I lost the person who meant the most to me. He was the love of my life, the father of our son and one of the kindest and gentlest people you will ever meet.

    It was like any other day, which is what makes it so hard to come to terms with. Everything was normal. Dave went to bed at 1:00AM on the 10th after we watched our regular episode of Dexter. It was normal for him to go to bed earlier than me so I said goodnight, tucked him in and went on with my night reading various things online and watching documentaries on Netflix.

    Dave would regularly have seizures that would occur in his sleep. We were still working to find out the cause, but it seemed to have something to do with his type 1 Diabetes and insulin dosage levels. We were on a waiting list for him to see an Endocrinologist, for which there was a 14 month wait. On this night, Dave had one of these seizures a few hours after he went to bed, at about 5:00AM. Like any other night, I heard him start seizing and went into the room to ensure he was safe and that he was in a safe position (on his side) when he finished seizing.

    At around 7:30AM, I was getting pretty tired and figured I’d try to get Darwin to settle down so I could go to bed as well. Like most nights, Darwin was having a hard time settling down. I’d rock him to sleep or breastfeed him to sleep but as soon as I put him in his crib and went to bed, he would start crying. Eventually I gave up and just brought Darwin to bed with me. It still took him a while to settle down after that. Last time I looked at the clock before we both fell asleep it was around 9:00AM.

    I awoke at around 12:30PM to Darwin crying. Dave wasn’t in bed anymore and his pillow was not there either. It was normal for him to move to the couch in the early morning/afternoon and nap. I thought nothing of it and this was confirmed when I took Darwin out into the main room to change his diaper. I changed his diaper and sat down on the loveseat to breastfeed him. Dave was on the longer couch, asleep, facing out from the couch. He was fine and everything was normal. He stirred when Darwin cried but quickly fell back asleep.

    I finished feeding Darwin and went back to bed with him at around 1:00PM or so. I awoke to him crying again at 4:00PM. When I awoke and looked at the clock, I found it odd that Dave had not woke up yet but reminded myself that he had had a seizure and usually slept longer and was groggy the day after. I carried Darwin out into the main room again.

    I sat on the loveseat and looked over at Dave who was still asleep on the couch, but facing the back of the couch. I called his name, “Dave! Wake up, it’s 4 o’clock!”.

    He didn’t move.

    “DAVE! Wake up!”

    Still nothing. I’m getting worried. Something was weird about the position of his body. I walked closer to him and realized it didn’t look like he was breathing. You know how you can see someone’s torso moving steadily up and down as they breathe? Dave was still. I instantly panicked. This was my biggest fear. I closed the remaining distance between he and I and I grabbed his shoulder to shake him awake. Something was very wrong. His whole body moved. His body was stiff.

    No.

    His face was pushed into the back of the couch (made of leather), and I shook his shoulder again while calling his name. I thought, he can’t breathe, he had another seizure and is unconscious and can’t breathe, and pulled hard on his shoulder to get his face away from the back of the couch. I expected he would start breathing again once his airways were free.

    No. No. No.

    That was when I saw his face. His lips were pulled back from his teeth, which were streaked with blood. He usually bit his lip or tongue when he had a seizure. He appeared to be snarling, and his eyes were rolled back, with just a sliver of white showing between his lids. He did not look like Dave. At this point I lost it.

    He’s dead.

    “DAVE! NO!” I screamed, phone in hand already dialing 9-1-1. I lost all feeling in my legs and fell to the ground, stunned. I couldn’t get up. I had Darwin in one hand, breastfeeding him, and my phone in the other and as it rang through to 9-1-1 I just screamed his name over and over again, hoping he would turn around and tell me he was okay. The line rang once. Twice. A woman answered. “9-1-1, what is the location of your emergency?”

    “I think he’s dead!” I cried into the phone, all the breath rushing out of me. I began to hyperventilate and sob uncontrollably.

    “Ma’am, breathe!” she responded to my panicked state.

    Fuck you. I thought. If Dave could breathe he would still be here. I don’t need to breathe, he does. Right now.

    I called our address into the phone as quickly and as clearly as I could. “Please hurry, I think he’s dead!” I called out. Darwin started to cry.

    She told me that an ambulance was on the way and began asking me a series of questions. She asked if he was breathing. I told her he was not. “He’s cold. He’s stiff.” I cried. She asked if it was cold in the room and I told her that it was not. I kept repeating “I think he’s dead.” as she explained that the ambulance would be there soon and asked if I wanted her to stay on the line. “Yes” I responded, I didn’t want to be alone. No way.

    For the next 8-10 minutes (which felt like hours) she asked me questions about him. How old he was, when the last time I saw him alive was, what had happened. I explained that it appeared as though he had a seizure and must have suffocated in the couch. I sobbed and told her that he just became a father and had his entire life ahead of him. I told her that our son was only 25 days old. Not even a month old and his father was dead. She was sympathetic and told me that everything would be okay. I hoped she was right.

    I kept thinking, “Paramedics are trained to save lives. They can bring him back. They will save him.”, I kept this belief until they arrived a few minutes later. I let them in and they too told me to breathe and to try and calm down.

    They made their way to his body, “Is he dead?” I asked, shrieking. The way she looked at me gave me the answer to the question. “I’m sorry, he’s gone.” she responded.

    “Can you save him? Can you bring him back?” I blurted out, crying. “I’m sorry, it’s too late. He’s been gone a while.”, she responded. I broke down again at this point, sobbing and unable to breathe. Why Dave? Why our family? I thought and began screaming whatever made sense to scream into the air. I told Darwin I was sorry. I screamed the word “no” over and over again until it didn’t make sense anymore. I was hysterical.

    The paramedics asked me to go to the bedroom. They said it would be easier if I didn’t see him. They helped me into the room where I sat on the bed as they asked me questions about what had happened. I choked out as much as I could at the time and answered the various questions they asked me. Two cops came in and questioned me. I explained to everyone that Dave had seizures and that I always heard them start to happen so I could always be there as he seizured, making sure he was safe when it was over because he would go unconscious for 2 hours following a seizure. I didn’t hear this one and itkilled him. When he stopped seizuring, his face ended up pushed into the back of the couch, the leather forming a seal over his mouth and nose. A few inches of leather suffocated and killed him.

    The police asked me if there was anyone I needed to call. I asked if I could call my mother and if she could come be with me. I felt so alone. They brought me my cell phone from the other room and I called her. I explained that Dave was dead and that the police were sending a squad care to pick her up. She was upset and in shock and within 20-30 minutes she had been picked up and arrived. She hugged me and told me how sorry she was. I explained again, to her, what had happened. 

    The paramedics left and a coroner arrived. She asked me many of the same questions and I went over everything again as best I could. She asked about his medications and I explained his insulin and how we thought it was linked to the seizures. She kept commenting on how cute Darwin was and how I had to live on for him and take care of him as well as I could.

    Everyone was so nice.

    The police asked about Dave’s parents and I told them where they lived and what their names were and gave their phone number. I told them I didn’t want to call to inform them. How do you make a phone call like that? How do you tell someone that their child has left this world? He said he wouldn’t want me to make that call anyway and that due to Dave’s age and the suddenness of the situation, they should be told in person. The RCMP would be sent out to notify them.

    The coroner came back in and explained that Dave’s body was going to be picked up soon and that it would be taken for an autopsy to see if there was an underlying cause of death or some sort of other condition that might have been causing it. She explained that she would call me on Monday to let me know more information. The people who were there to pick up Dave arrived. They asked me if I wanted to say goodbye.

    Initially I said no. I didn’t want to see him again. Not like that. I wanted to see him alive and well. Not like that. Not on that couch the way I found him.

    I changed my mind, knowing I would regret not saying goodbye, and wandered out into the main room. I asked if he looked normal or if his face was still screwed up. They told me he looked peaceful. He was still in the same position on the couch and I decided to say my goodbye’s. I didn’t look at his face, but stood behind him and poured my heart out to him with Darwin in my arms.

    I told him how much I loved him, and how much he meant to me. I thanked him for giving me the best year of my life and for providing me with a beautiful son. I told him I was sorry he was gone, and that I was sorry if I ever didn’t make it perfectly clear what an amazing man he was and how perfect he was for me, completing me and making me whole. I told him I loved him more than anything and that I didn’t know how I was going to live on without him. My Mom was by my side rubbing my shoulder and thanked Dave for treating me so well and for giving her a grandson. My Mom told me later that she kept hoping Dave would suddenly turn around and tell us he was okay. I wish more than anything that it would have happened that way. Before walking away, I promised him that I would be the best possible mother I could be for our son and that Darwin would always know what an amazing man and incredible father he was. I said goodbye and walked back to the bedroom.

    15 minutes later it was just me, my Mom and Darwin in the condo. Dave was gone. They took him away. I would never see him again sitting beside me or coming in the front door or laying beside me in bed. His body had been taken away, and he would never take another breath.

    I walked around the condo in shock. At this point it had been two and a half hours since I found his body. It was 6:30PM. I went into the bathroom and saw his razor and realized he would never use it again. I walked into our bedroom and looked at our bed, realizing we would never sleep beside each other or make love there ever again. In the living room his blood tester kit was there on the coffee table. I realized he would never again test his blood or inject insulin for his diabetes. In the kitchen I realized I would never again cook a meal for us to enjoy together. I looked down at Darwin, still in my arms, and realized Dave would never hold this sweet baby, his son, in his warm and protective arms ever again. This final realization hurt more than anything.

    Since that horrible 10th of September I have been at my Mom’s house. I haven’t been back to our condo where we planned to live the first phase of our lives together with the child we created. It’s now the 12th of September at 3:30AM and I still have not slept since finding Dave there on the couch. Every time I close my eyes, I see the way he looked on the couch. The strange position his body was in, the way his face looked, the way it didn’t look like Dave, but somehow was. 

    I don’t know what to do. I will keep the promise I made to Dave and will strive to be the best mother I can be to Darwin.

    It doesn’t feel like he’s really gone. I keep expecting him to phone me telling me he’s okay or to go home and find him there sitting on the couch watching TV. I keep thinking I will see him come through the door, totally healthy and alive. I just want my Dave back. I want my best friend back. I want Darwin to have his father back.

    He was so proud, and over the last few weeks of his too-short life, told me repeatedly that he felt like he finally had a purpose in life. He told me that at work he was more driven and saw a point to going there every day. He told me he loved the feeling of supporting his family and that it made him feel like a real man doing so. He told me that he felt like his life started the day Darwin was born and would do anything for us to be a happy family. He was a beautiful human being who was loving life and was so happy to be alive.

    I will never understand why this happened or exactly how this happened. Right now I feel so helpless. I feel lost. Life is never going to be the same. I will never have Dave in my arms again and he will never look me in the eyes again and tell me how much he loves me. He won’t see his little boy grow up to be a wonderful man like he was. I don’t even think he realized how amazing he was. I am a better person for having known him and I will never forget how he taught me to love. What we had was special and a once in a lifetime connection. The day Dave left, today, is the worst day of my life.

  • 4 Decades

    4 Decades

    Today, I turn 40 years old. More than anything I wanted to make some time today to sit down at my keyboard and write something to commemorate the day and share a little wisdom I’ve learned over the last 40 years.

    Leading up to The Big 4-0 I wasn’t sure how I’d feel. I wondered if I’d wax poetic about my lost youth and dread starting my age with a 4 now instead of a 3. But the truth is, now that I’ve arrived at this milestone, when I reflect on the last 4 decades of my life, I’m just so grateful that I’m still here. I didn’t always believe I would make it this far and I’m thankful for each day. I want to hug that little girl who fought so hard to get here and let her know “we made it”.

    39 was an incredibly difficult year. After 10 years of begging for affection and to be treated right by an individual who I later found out didn’t respect or even like me, thought my writing was stupid and that me sharing my trauma was ‘attention-seeking’, among other things, I felt silenced and trapped. Then, someone came along who saw my worth and made me feel like myself again. Leaving was terrifying and unfortunately while I was seeking peace and happiness and stability again, this individual was hard at work behind the scenes spreading lies in an attempt to separate me from my support system and psychologically harm me further through attacks on my child.

    All this to say I was really battle-tested this year. We are finally okay and healing again, but in the midst of this my little sister passed away in April this year after a brief and courageous battle with breast cancer. For reasons still beyond my understanding, I was left out of her end of life completely. She and I were very close and I miss her every single day. Her death and the confusion surrounding it absolutely destroyed me.

    Despite everything, I’m optimistic. I’m stepping into my 40s with so much light and so many dreams, but I also wanted to reflect a little on the journey that brought me here and share some of the things I’ve learned in my 4 decades of life.

    The First Decade: Unsteady Foundation

    I was born into fire and had to grow up way too fast. My childhood was traumatic and filled with male rage and control. This was where my anxiety started. This was when my PTSD was born. I learned how important books and imagination are for self preservation and my true love of art and writing began. This was the decade I learned creativity was what would lift me out of darkness. It became an obsession and I started collecting and filling up spiral-bound notebooks with poetry once we escaped my dad and were somewhere safe.

    I struggled a lot with self worth, with abandonment. I’ve since learned that’s quite common for children who survive childhood abuse to move through life with a sense of worthlessness. It was a constant little reminder plaguing me: “if your own parent could treat you that way, you’re not worth much” and to be honest that feeling never really went away. I still try to over-perform and over-deliver to prove my worth because deep down I want to prove I can be valued and loved.

    The Second Decade: Growth and Healing

    Adolescence and early adulthood were a messy time, but isn’t that true for everyone? Some of the things I learned in the first ten years of life became more refined in the second. Like art and writing especially. I started to learn that if I wrote about my negative feelings, it made them easier to understand and then they’d get smaller. I have since learned that there is a term for this: “shadow work”. It’s a skill that I refined further as I got older, but I can trace the roots to my early teen years, when I started writing and journaling more seriously. I was able to start healing myself, or as I would call it “figuring out my shit”.

    This was also the decade that I got a lot of external validation for my art, which made me start thinking of it as a dream to do professionally. I started sinking all my free time into practicing portraits and sharing my art and writing with a broader audience, including friends and classmates. I learned about the power to heal through art and writing, not just for myself, but for others who are able to relate. Creative expression became more than just a hobby, it felt like it was necessary for survival.

    The healing was ugly. This was a decade where self-harm was the worst and as much as the writing and art were helpful getting my mind to where it needed to be, I didn’t always have the tools to do that in a graceful or healthy way. I was self destructive and didn’t want to live, and at one time I even wrote a letter and had a plan to end my life. I’m grateful everyday I didn’t follow through.

    The Third Decade: Death & a Reason to Live

    I never grew up wanting to be a mom the same way a lot of little girls do, but when I got that positive pregnancy test, everything changed. My body wasn’t just my own anymore, and I quit self-harming immediately. Being a mom became the most important thing to me, and I invested all my time and energy into projecting love and care onto this tiny little human that depended on me. Dave, the father of my sweet child, passed away suddenly a few weeks after we became parents together. We planned to spend our lives together, were very much in love, and his death shattered the beautiful little life we had planned.

    There I was, standing on the precipice of our future and staring into the abyss, holding this tiny spark of light. I decided to go back to school, which I was able to do 100% distance learning so I could be at home with my child in the process. This period of time taught me the value of ambition and hard work in order to achieve stability. I got special permission to complete two different 2 year programs simultaneously, and I graduated with distinction. More than anything, I wanted my child to have the stability that I lacked growing up. I’m grateful every day that I was able to be the mom I needed to be at that time.

    The Fourth Decade: Dark Night of the Soul and the Dawn that Followed

    The last 10 years have taught me that I should trust my intuition. If something doesn’t feel right, it’s not right, and no amount of begging for scraps of attention and affection will convince someone to treat you the way you deserve if that person doesn’t care about or respect you in the first place. I’ve learned that making myself smaller and shrinking to fit someone’s idea of what I should be will only result in me very slowly losing the core parts of myself. I’ve learned that, like a flower, I need to be nourished in order to bloom and my 40s are going to be spent around more people who nourish my roots as much as I nourish theirs.

    I’ve learned that when you walk through fire, you’ll lose some people before you get to the other side. Mourn them and move on because those who really care will be waiting for you on the other side and cheering you on. I’ve learned to be unapologetically and authentically me, because I am showing my child by example what it means to radically accept and shine in your own light. I’ve learned I don’t need to apologize for who I am anymore.

    I’ve come to believe that some people are on this earth just to live through the dark spots, to experience trauma and rebirth on a cycle, to understand the nature of trauma and fight for your truth. A very wise woman I’ve known most of my life recently told me that my super power is healing with grace from the darkness, coming back stronger, and using my experience as a guiding light to help others. This year, I want to live up to her belief in me and earn those kind words.

    Now that I’m able to write without hiding it, you’ll be hearing more from me very soon. Until next time, be kind to each other and I hope you find a reason to smile today.

    I’m back baby!

  • Hey Dad, It’s Wendy

    Hey Dad, It’s Wendy

    I don’t remember the last time I saw you, but I remember feeling happy when mom picked me up early from school and told me we were leaving you. Up until that point all I remember are sleepless nights in a cold house filled with your anger. I remember your screams and shattered objects and the point press of a knife on the skin covering my starving belly. I remember the gun. I remember the way you would drive into oncoming traffic and punch the roof of your red classic car as you told us how easy it would be to end this family.

    I remember the sickening acid slime of your touch and how it ate away my innocence.

    I remember your rage and my fear. I remember your threat that if I ever told anyone you would kill my sisters and mom in front of me, and then you’d kill me too. Then I remember not sleeping for a long time, feeling like I had to stay awake to protect them.

    I remember feeling like nothing. Like less than nothing.

    And then we got on a train. Frantic in the dark, looking over my shoulder for you, I shook like a leaf as the tracks rumbled beneath us, taking our battered minds and bodies far away.

    And then I remember staying in a home with other broken children, broken women, broken families. It was from within this cathedral of victims that I told what you did. Your evil secret left my lips, then shut them for a long time when I stopped speaking. I watched the truth poison mom and blamed myself. I never wanted to speak again. Like a wounded animal, I just wanted to hide. In the dark. In the quiet.

    With your private investigators, hiding from you was an ever-changing game, but we stayed one step ahead of you. When a bomb threat was called in to the court house on the day mom went to fight for custody of us, we knew it was you. When you showed up at our school with photos of us to intimidate the principal into giving you information, they kept us safe, even after you waited outside and ran them off the road in your car that evening for refusing you.

    I got used to feeling unsafe. It was normal to go through each day filled with adrenaline and hypervigilance. I was constantly exhausted and underweight. Someone would tip us off when you found out our address and we would move under the cover of darkness to a safe location which never stayed safe for long.

    I grew up angry with bouts of rage that reminded me of yours, and I hated myself for it. I would cut myself to spill you out of my blood, to feel the distraction of pain and momentary relief of the psychological anguish that lived in my head. I wrote goodbye letters to my family several times, but a tiny glowing ember at my core provided just enough light to keep me here. I felt lonely surrounded by other people, alone in a crowd, locked up in my tower of memory.

    I was an adult when I heard the news that you died. Rare blood cancer poisoned your body and it felt poetic, like karmic retribution for the way you poisoned mine. The weight of your world was lifted from my shoulders and I felt like I could take a full breath for the first time in my life. I didn’t have to peer through the blinds or consider my safety from you. I could sleep without worrying you’d find us and keep your promise. You were my monster, but now you were just a dead old man. I think the day you died was the day I started healing.

    I fought hard for my life, never hiding from the truth but drinking it in gulps, digesting it and examining it, desperate to find the other side. I took everything you did and filed it away. I started drawing the lines between what you did and and what I became because of it. Cause and effect. If I recognized you as the cause, I could work to minimize the effect. I took all my rage that I recognized as being from you and I turned it into love. I overcame my fear of speaking and can now give public speeches that inspire others. I took all the suffering you left me with and I transformed it into something beautiful. I replaced my hate with compassion. I replaced my fear with curiosity. I replaced self harm with self love. I’m still afraid, but I do it anyway.

    To this day, my first thought in most situations is that I’m as worthless as you made me feel. But now there’s a second voice, a louder voice that is screaming for my life:

    I’m enough. I’m enough. I’m enough.

  • I Lied About My Life

    I Lied About My Life

    I never had an easy time making friends. If you read my last post, “23 Meadow Way” you know that we moved around a lot, often urgently without getting to say goodbye to any friends I did have. When I got to a new school I was the weird kid, the quiet kid, the poor kid in decades-old hand-me-downs who rarely looked up from the floor or desk.

    When I did make friends they never stuck around for long, and in the early days that real life unfriending usually followed me sharing something about my life that highlighted how damaged I was and bummed people out. Over time I learned that the more people knew about my life, the more likely they were to leave it. Certain parts of my story made classmates uncomfortable, and certain parts of my life made their parents hesitant to invite me for sleepovers or allow their kids to come over to my house. It felt like they thought my trauma would rub off on them, like it was contagious.

    When the pattern kept repeating itself I started building defenses against it. I remember telling people I didn’t have a father at all, that I was a test-tube baby. I would make up stories about my past that had no basis in reality, but I thought these narratives might make me easier to be around. I told people my dad died, or that my mom went to a sperm bank in order to have me. I tried to frame myself in a way that was less sad, more easily digestible, more wholesome. It would work for a little while, but the stink of child abuse comes from beneath the skin of our outward mask, where it festers in the dark. Sooner or later, at every stage of my life, everyone left.

    There were friends I’d have for a year or two, maybe more. As I got older, people were more accepting, but I was never anybody’s best friend. When you move around so much, you meet a lot of people who already have best friends from kindergarten. I always wanted that. I never wanted a big friend group, just one best friend or a few close friends to have a deep connection with. I’ve had plenty of coworkers I get along with. I’ve had friends as an adult, but there comes a point where suddenly they don’t have time for my anymore. Plans get cancelled over and over until they never get rescheduled. Messages slow and then grind to a halt. Everyone carries on with their separate lives and I’ve never found a way to reverse that so I let them drift. Deep down I know I can’t really blame them.

    I haven’t lied about my life in many years now. I have embraced my history and who I am. I’ve written a lot about it, and some of that has helped people. I wear my mind on my sleeve, and I’m still not great at making friends. Most of the people I consider friends these days I’ve met through a shared love of books with my Bookstagram account, but even then people tend to drift away after a while and it’s hard not to think it’s because there’s just something about me so deeply broken that I can’t see but others can, that makes me difficult to be around. I feel very grateful to say that I do feel like I finally have a best friend. Taylor, if you’re reading this, thank you for being a real one and sticking around even through all my darkness. It’s a pleasure to do the same for you. 🖤

  • 23 Meadow Way

    23 Meadow Way

    I lived there for grade 3 and part of grade 4. We left suddenly in the middle of the night under a thick cloud of fear.

    He found us.

    That day had been like any other day, except I was home sick from school. This wasn’t unusual for me. Being too young to have developed any tools to cope with my anxiety, it manifested as physical illness. On this particular day, my panic attacks may have saved my life.

    What I learned later was that my dad had showed up at the school that day. We had escaped him on a train that took us from New Brunswick to Saskatchewan a couple years prior. He hired private investigators to find us and on this day he was nearly successful. He went into the school demanding to know where me and my sister were. The principal, aware of our situation, didn’t give him any information. We lived less than a block from the school, and despite his threats to her, she kept us safe.

    He didn’t stop there. He had photos of us, a few years old, but he took them around the playground and started asking children if they knew us or where we lived. Perhaps a little sad, perhaps a little lucky that I hadn’t formed any close friendships and nobody really knew me. We had already moved so much in the few years since arriving in Saskatchewan, and I was traumatized and withdrawn.

    He waited outside the school and ran the principal off the road in his car when she left work that day. I wish I remembered her name, because I would send her a thousand thank you notes for keeping my family out of harm’s way by putting herself into it.

    My mom got a phone call that night. It was only a matter of time before my dad found our address. My mom woke me and my sisters up from our beds and we had very little time to pack our most important belongings into a brown van that belonged to my mom’s friend. There were no seats in the back of the van, so my two sisters and I huddled among boxes, crouched like cargo while we drove through the city streets to what we hoped was safety.

    I don’t remember where we ended up that night. More than likely we either went to stay with my grandmother until we got into our next home, or it may have been the women’s shelter we stayed at for a while. All I remember is the deep sense of fear, and the knowledge that my dad was going to do everything possible to keep his promise: If you ever tell anybody, I’ll kill your sisters and your mom in front of you, and then I’ll kill you.

    I sometimes wonder if any of the kids at that school wondered where I went, and whether the teacher or principal made up a kid-friendly story to ease their curious minds, because no child should have to be aware of that kind of danger.

    Me at the house on 23 Meadow Way, blowing bubbles with my cat Muffin shortly before we left.