Latias Saphira
She's shaking in the car
With the gun in her hands...
A brown bottle smashed against the wall only a few feet from my head, but I did not flinch. I had become so used to it that it was now second nature to let my husband's frequent drunken tantrums run their course. Last year, when this all started, I would have been on my feet, sobbing for him to stop, but I had ceased my pleading long ago. Eboni just watched silently from a safe distance, peering around corners.
It was sad that this night was a typical one.
I didn't even know what he was raging about anymore. Often it was just incoherent slurring, and the only words I could ever make out were nasty oaths. I used to tell him to stop, to think of our daughter, but she'd already learned the words by then. She probably wouldn't even use them until she started school, but that was for the teachers to deal with.
At this sudden, cold thought, I winced. How had it come to this? Eboni was only nine years old, and not only was she being exposed to her drunken father on a nightly basis, but her own mother couldn't wait to get her off to school. Desperately, I turned my thoughts away from this, quickly consoling myself by convincing my mind that I had merely meant it would be for Eboni's own good: she would make friends, learn magic, and not be exposed to the horrors here at home. And that in itself was a depressing thought, that home was no longer a haven for any of them...
I came back to reality just in time to dodge a second empty beer bottle and realized for the first time that he was shouting at me. Instantly, my face became passive, and I nodded slightly in agreement every time he paused. I could smell the booze on his breath but did not dare move, lest he hit me. The bruises I had from last time I had moved were fading, and I had no desire to freshen them. Vaguely, I heard him shouting at me for being a no-good lazy wife, and suppressed the thought that I was the only one working, as he had been laid off last year--hence the drinking.
Unfortunately, right then, at the height of his fury, in the corner of my eye, I saw something move. My eyes flickered towards it instinctively, but the instant I recognized the figure as my daughter, my eyes snapped back to my husband's face, hoping like hell he hadn't seen the movement.
He had.
Cuffing me over the head--hard--Hans turned towards Eboni, advancing on her before either of us could move. "What're ye lookin' at?" he thundered, grabbing a fistful of her long brown hair and lifting her a few centimetres from the ground. She was a strong little girl and was starting to become defiant, but even though she didn't let out even a small whimper, I could see the tears spring into her eyes. Usually he didn't lay a hand on her--it was mostly throwing things.
I would not stand for this. I moved over to Hans and put my hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him. "Hans, honey, please, let her do--"
"Och, honey, am I?" he leered, releasing Eboni's hair so he could strike me with his dominant hand. The stinging seemed to start even before the noise had reached my ears, and I could see my vision starting to blur. Furiously, I blinked my tears away, but before I could do anything, he struck me again.
"Don't ye EVER try te order me around, Vida!" he roared, shoving me backwards with such force that I broke the picture that was hanging on the wall I slammed into. I felt the glass cut into my back, but it was not physical pain that caused me to slide down the wall, sobbing into my hands.
The next day, when I went back to the site to clean up the mess, I saw it was a picture that had been taken on Eboni's sixth birthday. There was dried blood on the broken shards. I felt a lump rise in my throat and tried not to look.
- - -
Even after two years of it, I wasn't entirely sure whether or not I dreaded summers. On the one hand, I was happy to see Eboni again. On the other, though, I knew she would come home to something worse than what had been waiting for her last summer.
It was her first day back. We were all sitting around the dinner table--something that rarely happened--finishing off a turkey dinner. I can't recall how, but I actually managed to coax a smile out of Eboni. I had been hoping to turn it into a laugh when Hans suddenly slammed his beer bottle down onto the table, and our smiles vanished. It was never a good sign when he did that.
"How come ye never write?" he asked her. His tone sounded calm, but it also sounded forced. I started to become apprehensive and tried to communicate this to Eboni through a glance, but she was staring at her father with a steely glare.
"I'm busy," she replied coldly, defiantly. Usually, she would have dropped her gaze by now, but she kept staring at her father--almost challenging him. My stomach knotted, but there was nothing I could do to stop this.
"Too busy te write te yer own parents, ye ungrateful bairn?" Hans growled. His Scottish accent always became thinker whenever he drank, and he'd started long before dinner.
Eboni seemed to recognize the warning signs--I knew she did--but she refused to back down. Starting to get angry, she stood up. "Oh, like how you write to me?" she scoffed. "Please. You would just complain about my grades and anything I've done, and threaten to drag me back home by my ear. You're such an a*****e, Hans." She turned on her heel and started out of the room, and I noted how she didn't call him "Dad".
Hans, however, was having none of it, and he too stood up, banging his fist on the table. "Ye'll no talk t' me like that, lass!"
"I'll talk to you however the ******** I wanna talk to you!" Eboni shouted back, now in the other room. By the time I had stood up as well, Hans had followed our daughter into the other room. When the screaming started, to my horror, I couldn't tell whether they were yelling at each other or whether something worse was happening.
I went into the next room to find Eboni against a wall and Hans just hitting her, again, and again, and again. They were screaming insult at each other, but I could tell some of Eboni's were in pain. I felt tears stream down my face, but I didn't move from the doorway. I didn't want him to turn his wrath upon me. 'Let her take her fair share of it,' I thought. 'I've had to deal with it alone for the past ten months.'
My eyes widened and I doubled over, nearly retching on the floor, but I only cried, my sobs lost in the screaming. What sort of a mother wouldn't jump in to defend her only child because she wanted to escape another beating?
- - -
Eboni was graduated now. I wasn't entirely sure what she wanted to do, really. She never talked to me about it. Not that I blamed her, but I wanted so badly to actually be a part of her life. Yet I had lost that chance long ago. My own daughter would never trust me again.
Still, she had returned, if only for a day or two. Didn't that say something? When I greeted her at the door and hugged her, she hugged me back.
Did that mean something?
"Is Hans around?" she asked quietly, so he wouldn't hear if he was. I replied with a nod, and I felt her stiffen. Confused, I pulled away, looking down at her. She was only a little shorter than me.
"Eboni? Is something wrong?"
Smiling a little--an empty smile--she shook her head. "No, it's fine," was her reply, and I dropped it. We went to the kitchen to have come freshly-baked cookies and talk a little, as her father was in the living room, but no--he had moved since I had last seen him. Rooting around in the fridge for some beer. He looked over the door to see who it was, but his expression didn't change when he laid eyes on her.
"So you came back." Not a question, a statement. Uncaring. Just an observation.
Having found what he was looking for, Hans shut the door and abruptly froze. At the same time, in the corner of my eye, I saw something glint, and heard a click near my ear.
"Don't you dare move," Eboni whispered, loud enough so both of us could hear her. I couldn't properly see what it was and hadn't recognized it, and so had no idea why Hans was doing what she said. What could she be holding that was threatening to him? Wands certainly weren't. He just saw them as wooden sticks.
At least, for a moment, he didn't move. He seemed quite shocked, really. However, he recovered quickly, and he leered at us. "Lass, ye don' even know how te use a gun."
I couldn't remember what a gun was. How could I not remember? I'd been living amongst Muggles for years now...
"I said don't ******** move!" Eboni shouted as Hans started to move over towards the table. She must have done something, as he really did stop in his tracks. What...
Oh! Guns were made of metal and shot little metal things called bullets are a very high velocity, and they could enter a human body and kill people. Right, right...
Oh, Merlin.
I moved my head slightly to get a better look at the gun, but the first thing I saw was that it was shaking badly. This baffled me, as I remembered them being inanimate objects, but I quickly realized it was Eboni who was shaking. As I got a better look at her face, I saw her eyes never left Hans, and yet despite the shaking, she looked simply furious. I saw tears welling up in her eyes, but then her finger a little. I looked at the gun. Her finger was resting on the trigger. Hans still wasn't moving.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I was completely in shock. But should I have been? Probably not.
"All those years..."
I just barely caught this, but there was no need to, for Eboni started to shout again: "All those years you shouted at me! All those years you screamed for no reason! All the drinking, the swearing, the lazing! And Merlin, the beating..."
She was really crying now, and I wanted so badly to hug her, to hold her, to smooth her long brown hair and say it was going to be okay, but something stopped me. A voice in the back of my head that whispered, 'You had your chance. You could have protected her from all that. But you're a coward. You didn't. It's too late.
'You've lost her.'
"WHY CAN'T I ******** SHOOT YOU?!"
The question rang through the apartment, but no answer was forthcoming. I stared at my daughter, and finally, I realized what I should have realized long ago:
I feared her. I feared her as I feared my husband, because she had that same steel core. She could be violent if she wanted to. Her temper was quick and explosive, and she was not afraid to hate people. But the biggest difference between them was that she chose not to. Eboni didn't want to be like her father. She wanted to be the farthest thing from him.
And, through it broke my heart to admit it to myself, she wanted to be the farthest thing from me, too.
The gun clattered to the floor, and for the briefest of moments, Eboni buried her face in her hands. But the moment of self-pity was fleeting, and came and went within a split second. Her wand replaced the gun, and she waved it once. With a final look at Hans and myself, she turned on her heel. The crack from the Disapparation resonated through the room. And with that, she was gone.
I haven't seen my daughter since.
...And I ain't never thought
It could come down to this
It could come down to this
