believe

I woke up on Christmas morning when I was 6 years old
catching my parents leaving wrapped things under the tree
and I stopped believing in Santa.
My sister lost her tooth
when I was 8
my great grandmother was too weak
so she asked me to place a quarter beneath my sister's pillow and take the fallen fang.
I stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy.
When I was 9, I helped hide eggs for the hunt on Easter
and I stopped believing in the Easter Bunny.
Even though THAT was the one I didn't really believe to begin with.
In the 6th grade
I woke up to blood coating my sheets
and cleaned my wounds and hid my sharp paraphernalia
and I stopped believing things would get better.
I always put the Bible somewhere in my room
in case anything evil lurked around
so I could ward it off.
I believed in something that would save me.
The nights I heard my mother's head make solid contact with the floor or with the walls
and heard her choke out her own forgiveness hymns to someone
she worshiped like God
in hopes that she could be a disciple worthy enough of his blessings
though if she spoke out
he would purge the evil from her soul
with his bare hands
or a book
and deafen her left ear
so she could learn to listen to his holy word more closely.
I read scripture and still believed something would save me.
"You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day"
The day my mother is hospitalized
I run fast.
Faster than I had ever run before
trying to reach my sister and my cousins
trying to reach the other side
trying to reach whatever it was that was supposed to save me
but I wasn't allowed to go to the hospital,
I wasn't allowed to venture behind closed white walls and see the carnage
the wreckage
a corrupt God had left in his wake.
Days later
I wasn't supposed to end up back in his church
but there we were
bags in hand
because we always returned.
And I was so close
to tasting the sunshine
that seemed gone to me in this familiar complex of doors lined up four on each side
the closet he locked my friend and I in
and she went home because she didn't want to sleep over anymore
she didn't want to be there anymore
she didn't want to come over to dinner anymore
and the similarity of this place
to the places next door is indescribable
because the neighbors let us hide there the night the cops were called
for the 3rd time that month because God had cast his only follower to Earth again.
YEARS later and I am not supposed to be here
God is supposed to be in jail
while my mother gathers our things
but forgets all of mine
We are still there.
And if I cared enough to look closely at the off white walls
I would see her sheepish blood wiped over each frame in the house
and I stopped believing that something would save me.