MOTHBALL MEMORIES

She had dreams she once had family. She'd had a mother that loved her, a father that provided and hugged like a bear, and a sister with missing front teeth that teased her eternally. She missed them, yet never knew them, not really.

What she does remember so very well, from the reality she endured, was a father that would rage in violent acts within the domicile. He beat the shit out of them all,  until finally splitting open mother’s head with a hot frying pan…she burned his sausages…because she was sick…from a flu 
the child had given her…she sat down at the table while getting dizzy at the stove…she lay her head to rest and may have passed out. We can only pray. She did not hear his rage storm over head before crushing hers.

From under her bed she saw him approach. The room filled with the smell of burnt sausage. His feet now inches from where she huddled, He dropped the pan to the floor with a dull clang. Seeing the blood, she attempted in vain to stifle the scream.

“I won’t hurt you again…” he said. To his promise, he walked the eight blocks and turned himself in at the station. He had the blood on his hands. They locked him in a cell, then cops and Marta, came for the girls. Marta was her martyr, she’d say, and for good reason. She missed her sister who went to live with ‘Aunt Ri’ out of state.

The smell of fried meat haunts and nauseates her. The vegan, ever since, she’d cover her nose when driving by burger joints, less she lurch her lunch …again, and often took routes to avoid them. She learned to adjust, and enjoyed a stuffy sinus and her persistent allergies. But…

Moth balls…moth balls will trigger these memories. Mothballs in her sweater box tucked under her bed, and the round ones that hung in her closet – places they’d huddle.

The dreams? That family? She lives with them, not so much welcoming them, …oh, enjoying them in their moment, but simply being in that space with them was reassuring. Like walking in the front door of a house she grew up in. As if, she belonged.