Sometimes, Believe

She runs through the fields, no care in the world, a band-aid barely hanging onto her grimy kneecap. Those suntanned arms stretch to embrace the sun with all the five year old can manage. Two lungs and a lively free heart pound in the chest of a girl at heart. Dusk and the distance away from the brick house remind her that’s she’s free for once.

A wrinkled hand lies upon my shoulder. Gabriel, he’s a kind soul. “I hope you’re prepared for when my time comes,” Gabriel said evenly, he had the prettiest curly blonde ringlets in a fashionable array. Somehow, they always attracted me to him, magnetized actually. I’d see him again on the other side. There was no reason at all to mourn his going, because I was surely following him soon.

But then, I didn’t want to go. The world’s an evil place and Greta is just the proof of it. A headstrong five year old with a spirit that’s going to be broken over and over again for everyone’s greater good. What if I’m assigned to try to take her down? There’s no evidence of anyone ever succeeding in fighting a destiny. What’s going to happen is set in stone.

That should give me hope, hope that I can find Gabriel, but when I find him that doesn’t mean he’ll be in good condition. “I’ll never be prepared,” I admitted, watching the woman run after the child at an alarming speed. The same honey blonde hair sat on her head in a braid, Greta looked the same as her mother but much happier due to the blood trickling from the matriarch’s disfigured nose.

Greta took one last heaving breath and collapsed at the edge of the sun breaking forest at the edge of the field. Gabriel took my hands into his and whispered, “There’s always a better future, remember that.”

“There’s not for her,” I debated, trying to reprimand Gabriel for his blunt lie. Greta wasn’t going to have a better future. She’d always run around in the circles, trying to piece it all together, and she wouldn’t.

“It’s a circle Sierra, a big circle that comes together at the end, trust me,” Gabriel tried to instill in my shaky perspective.

The father came after them in the field with tears strewn on his face, apologetic and disgusting as ever. What was he like as a guardian? I doubted he even cared, or cared too much. Maybe this vile creature was subconsciously mourning the person he failed to guard. Mourning should’ve moved him to be better though, mourning shouldn’t incite regression.

“You don’t understand Karen!” the man shouted, flailing his arms from his head, “You look exactly like her, and I get like that…”

Karen trembled beneath the girth of the man that stood above her and her daughter, Greta, wrapped protectively in her arms. Greta’s mom understood quite well actually, she understood that this was all an excuse, which nothing meant anything anymore. Her world came down.

Gabriel hid his face, “That’s why you have to be ready to let go,” he refused to watch the scene. It all clicked, Karen had kept him waiting too long, and he got violent towards her.

Unlike Gabriel, I could distance myself; I knew this was going to have a purpose later. Greta huddled in her frail mother’s arms as her father yanked the boney woman upwards to her feet. Pushing her forward, they trailed back into the house, Greta crying.

Eyes watering, I tugged Gabriel up lovingly, unlike Greta’s father, and directed him towards the woman and child. Beginning the hum the intro to the piece the females loved so dearly, Gabriel began, “Hush-a-bye…”

“Don’t you cry,” I let my shrilling high pitched voice erupt from my throat. Even though I was sure they couldn’t hear our overpowering duet, I knew from past experiences it soothed all of them.

“Go to sleep my little baby. When you wake…” Gabriel picked up, speeding the melody to a comfortable pace.

“You shall have,” I played off the lyrics, feeling the salt water sting my irises. Gravity pulled them down my cheek as I caressed the girl’s blotched face.

“All the pretty little ponies,” we both sang, filling the winds rushing past at the autumnal chill gave the tune a dire mood. “Blacks and bays, Dapples and grays,” we continued, plodding across the sodden earth with fair hair sticking up past my knees.

Taking a deep breath to avoid any cracking, I let out my emotions into my last verse, bestowing a brassy effect to the depressing song, “All the pretty little ponies, right before your eyes.”

“All the pretty little ponies,” Gabriel brushed a strand of hair from the wife’s face, “Shall be there, wh-eeee-n you d-dd-i-e-e.”

Stopping at the finalization of the song, my feet planted where they were. It was too much for me in this moment. Gabriel kept moving forward whilst I stayed behind, watching the four embark to the house brimming with sorrows and unconditional fear. How could I manage to believe things got better when things like this happened? Maybe it’s who I am that doesn’t allow me to lighten things to look at the positive, or maybe it’s the majority of me that can’t stand to ignore something so terrible and attempt to make something good of it.

Whatever it is, I’m glad I obtained it, what this girl has to go through is hell and I am not about to strip her of that. I’m not about to tell her there’s someone out there worse. Holy doesn’t translate into inhumane. I never accepted holy either.

Nothing is holy about what everyone is forced to do. Holy and noble would be helping the ones who need protection, it’s not watching over them and singing songs they can’t hear, wiping tears away they can’t feel. There’s no impact.

And for that, I made a clear spot on a neighboring trunk and held my head in my hands. It all gushed out, the water that proved my eyes still functioned, the staggered breathing that reminded me of my heart, pure emotion convulsed through my body and I couldn’t care anymore. I can’t care.

I can’t care. I can’t care. I can’t care.

Greta is temporary. Greta isn’t forever. Greta is disposable.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

The words repetitively strike my skull similar to that of a clock because each statement arrives at a consistent time. Gabriel doesn’t come back after me because he is a good soul that can focus on something much more important at the time. There used to be a saying… It takes a village to raise a child… It takes two to protect one.

With strong hits against the wall, my body recoiling with each strike, shrieks ran out from the confines of that above ground dungeon barely holding onto the foundation. Each hit I hear, I feel, I hope is another gale of wind coming in violently, rather than a fist or a body against the wall. It did not happen rhythmically, but not in tune with the lies bouncing from wall to wall in my head. This is chaos. It’s madness. All of the overstimulation is everything but serendipity.

My tear stained hand reaches for a clump of black curly hair and clutches it tightly. The other hand mirrors its partner. Together, with excruciating ferociousness, they pull at the strands as their partner, Psychotic Yowl, makes an unforgettable appearance. With each decibel I break into, the more liberated I feel. Control is what it comes down to—and apparently the lack thereof.
Wiping the tears away, the grip around my hair lessened and I prepared myself to enter that threshold. Though my throat was raw from the exuding passion it was a manageable discomfort.

The knob twisted under my perspiring palms and I entered the strewn living room. Chairs, overturned. Books once housed on the oak shelves now lay all across the floor, pages ravished, torn beyond any type of repair. The grey couch had attained a new stain with the distinct scent of saltine and the vibrant marking of crimson. The streak proved frightening as it sent chills to the core of my spine. Pillows lay overtops of the papers and hardbacks. Glass was falling from picture frames on the mantle.

It was absolute hell in here. This was just the appearance, the sounds; the sounds were something completely foreign from the throat of the father. Playing with the hem of my white dress, I stood there, taking it all in from the unsafe distance. Planting my feet into the wood floors proved to be an incentive to stay rather than to run back outside and meltdown.

Pacing slowly into the open door way, I nearly jumped when I saw Greta and Karen unharmed. Greta was dabbing blood off of Karen’s cheek gently. Ironically, the roles had been reversed, Karen was the child, full of innocence and sheer wonder, and Greta was the adult, the cynical—but caring—figure comforting the child. Gabriel sat next to Greta on the bed, rubbing her back though she couldn’t feel it.

“Blacks and bays,” the child sang. Gabriel took to looking towards me as the girl continued, “Dapples and grays…”

“All the pretty little ponies,” Greta sang to the best of her ability, sending me into some sort of shock. Karen let down a whole new river of salt water. “When you wake, you shall have, all the pretty little ponies.”

Karen smiled, though I could tell it hurt her. Later, she’d set the nose, she’d probably scream. What had caused that loud noise that startled me outside? Looking around, I couldn’t tell if they had been injured in any way, in fact, evidence stated clearly Karen and Greta weren’t hurt. “Where’d you learn that, sweetheart?” Karen brushed a strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear lovingly.

“I had a dream about it,” Greta whispered softly, leaning into her mother’s chest to accept the comfort. Though, it didn’t seem as if she needed the luxury of the arms holding her, it seemed as if her mother needed something to hold onto. Like Gabriel and I.

We only hold onto this place because we care about what comes next, we’re hoping for a life differing from this, but we know it’s going to be alright once we’re back together. “It’s sung very pretty by you,” her mother teared up, smoothing down the child’s honey blonde mane.

Things were about to change, drastically, and I could feel it through the floorboards. The father had slammed the front door, and the vehicle had revved to life, the red truck dwindled against the swirling dust of the road. He was gone, and I couldn’t feel better for the two women in each other’s arms who had just received the gift of security in the absence of a monster.

Gabriel came over and sat with me on the floorboards, throwing his arm around my shoulders if I needed them to lean on. He acted as if this was a saddening point in their lives. In my eyes, they had just begun; they both were free to do something now without the fear of the impending blowing up. The only way this would be sad is if the man came back. There’s nothing quite like having safety ripped from your clutches. Safety equals happiness, at least in my experience, I felt safe in Gabriel’s grasp and happy at the same time.

Life would continue to go on for Greta and Karen, for me and Gabriel, we’d continue to count down until our lives began.

Something I would never be ready for.