She ended up staying with my father for another five years. Until I was old enough to understand his abuse, to get stubborn enough to fight against it.
I got between them many times, something that infuriated my father, but he stormed out, left her alone.
Until one day, he didn't back down. And he didn't care anymore that I was his daughter. Maybe because at that point, I started to look a lot like my mother.
He'd knocked out a tooth and given me a concussion.
It turned out that my mother was willing to endure his torment to give us what she thought of as a better life. But she found even more strength when his hands touched me.
She'd waited until he was asleep that night, lubricated by more beers than she usually kept in the house because alcohol made him mean before it made him finally pass out.
Then she quietly packed a bag, came into my room, instructed me to pack one as well, telling me what to put in it. Then she snuck over to Celenia's room, packing her bag for her, then pulling her out of bed.
We made our escape dressed in flannel pajama sets. I would always remember my sister exactly that way. With pastel mermaid printed pajamas, messy hair, and confused eyes, her school bag slung over her shoulder.
My mother didn't have a car of her own, and I recalled feeling my stomach twisted into painful knots as we walked down the street, eyes watching us as we went by with ducked heads, wanting to avoid trouble, all the while terrified my father would wake up, would come looking for us, drag us home.
We walked for long enough for Celenia to start whining about her aching legs. And I remember being annoyed with her for not understanding how important this was, even though I knew I had spent so much of my time shielding her from the ugly reality of what our father did to our mother, that she couldn't have known how dire it was, how much we needed to get away.
Eventually, we made it to the basement under a local dry cleaner, finding it set up as a makeshift home with about ten people already living there on cots or mattresses on the floor. There was a refrigerator and an old dresser with a hot plate situated on it.
There were two sets of single mothers there, each with two children, two middle-aged ladies, two elderly women, and two older men.
/> With the three of us, we were fifteen.
It wasn't like a family. It sounds like it should have been, all these people cramped together in a small space, all trying to save some money, build a better life for themselves.
But most everyone there worked two or three jobs, only dropping in to sleep, often grumbling about the noises of the younger children who didn't understand the seriousness of all our situations.
My mother had been one of those people working three jobs. A cleaning lady, a babysitter, and a yard worker.
And I finally realized, when I saw all the stacks of money she carefully hid away when no one else was home to see her, why she couldn't leave my father for all those years, why she felt she had nowhere to go.
Because while we had been born in the U.S., while we were legal, she wasn't. And she lived in fear every day of someone finding that out, of sending her back, leaving us to the mercy of our father.
Armed with this new knowledge, any remnants of my childhood slipped away, making me step into the shoes of mother to Celenia who had previously been making me angry with her complaints, with her demands to see our father.
I packed her lunch for school, cutting off the crusts of her sandwiches. I walked her to school. I ran from my school to hers after my classes let out, not wanting her to walk home alone in our neighborhood.
When Mom wasn't around, but the guys we lived with were lurking around, I made her throw on her shoes and go with me to the park, to a nicer neighborhood where we would window shop, to the movies if we scraped together enough money.
My mother taught me how to French braid hair. I taught Celenia. My mother showed me how to make empanadas. I was the one to stand over that hot plate and help Celenia learn. Makeup talks, boy talks, changing body talks, sex talks. Celenia and I had all of those on our long walks when we dreamed of a future where we might be able to go into one of those stores and treat ourselves to something pretty.
Those were our secret wishes, ones that guilt kept us from ever uttering to our overworked mother.
Much to our mother's—and maybe even mine at times—worries and fears, Celenia not only followed in our mother's shoes in terms of beauty, but somehow managed to well surpass her. It didn't seem possible. Until she was fourteen and wearing out mother's old sundresses like they'd been stitched just for her.
It was also that summer, the one where she turned fourteen, when we'd finally managed to move out of that basement, partially because I had been working for years, was legal, could qualify to sign for a lease.
I had been taking classes at the local college after having found the balls to track down my father and demand he pay seeing as he hadn't paid a cent in child support since then. He, being with a new woman who had no idea he'd had any children, had thrown me just enough to get me started.
Things had finally, finally started to get better for the three of us.
And then one of the women my mother had been working for, handling a brat of an eight-year-old who told ugly lies about how he was treated to gain attention from his never-present parents, had accused her of stealing her diamond necklace.
And then reported her.
Sometimes, I could still hear her cries as she was pulled away from us, as Celenia was dragged into foster care until they could go through the process of allowing her to be in my custody.