VIOLATED

I remember back when life was good. Picnics at the park, dancing with dad until the sun set, mom sitting on the sides, clapping her hands happily. It seemed like too long ago that was happening. When happiness was a never changing element in my life.
I remember the day my happiness vanished. I was in the living room, crying silently at one of mom and dad's blow out arguments. Vases flew, curses cut, and hands hit. Dad said he was through, that mom wasn't worth enough to end up with a heart attack. He stormed past me, not seeing me curled in a ball in front of the sofa. He came back only once to get his things.
Mom forgot about me then. She didn't fed me, I found and cooked my own food. She didn't help me celebrate my sixth birthday, the neighbors next door did. She slowly forgot I existed-and even more so when she met Calvin.
At first, I didn't see anything wrong with Calvin. He was a nice, caring guy, it seemed, with a smile I was happy to see mom grin at. It had been four years since dad left. For years since mom had smiled. Calvin took us places, he wined her and dined her. He showed her how a man "is supposed to treat a lady". He purposed to her on the night of New Years, the day of my birthday. I remember being so happy, I jumped up and down and laughed and screamed and danced.
Everything went well for a while. The night of my eleventh birthday, dad called. I picked up the phone and thanked him for wishing me a happy birthday. All the memories came flooding back to me, the nights we sat as a family under a tent in the back yard, cooking marshmallows over a candle or the night we raced to see who could get to the car fastest from the beach. Those were the days long forgotten until that moment.
The phone was taken from my hands. "Who is this?" Calvin barked into the phone. I could hear dad's evenly minacing tone on the other end.
"Don't call 'ere again," Calvin said as he slammed the phone down. I shrank in fear.
"Honey, who was calling?" Mom said, wrapped in her knee length bathrobe. She still had sleep in her eyes.
That was gone in two seconds when Calvin smacked her across the face. The sound struck silence in the room, even the clock stopped ticking. Mom fell to the floor from the force and stayed down there. I couldn't move. Not until I saw him standing over her, looking down.
Soon enough, a beer bottle was in my hand, and, even sooner, it was upside his head. He fell to the floor, a gash on the back of his head. Mom screamed, rising up and tackling me. She punched me in the face after straddling me and slammed my head into the floor.
It wasn't until then that I remembered she forgot she had a daughter.