“I have to,” I whispered, unable to stop my flow of words if I tried.
Levi didn’t question me or argue, he gave me a simple kiss and pulled away. I rested my head back on his shoulder. “It started slowly, but she began to find me at school, in the washrooms or out in the yard. She’d hover near me, never letting me out of her sight. The other girls from the house did anything she said. But it was worse at home. My things started to go missing. She’d destroy my homework in front of my face, smiling as I watched her do it. She’d try to make me talk, try to coerce me into arguments, but I stayed quiet.
“Then we got a new carer, Abbie. She was lovely, but she wanted more from me. I knew she was trying to help, but instead of letting me write down my questions and answers to the others in the house, she wanted me to speak. She had read my file, she knew I could, and she thought she was helping by encouraging me to talk. She thought she was building my confidence—her good intent did the opposite, causing it to be destroyed.”
I swallowed, and my chest burned when I thought to the day I finally spoke. “We were sitting around the dinner table, and Abbie asked me about my day. I pulled out my notepad to reply, when she put her hand over mine and shook her head. “Speak,” she said. I panicked and looked around the table seeing Annabelle smile, triumphant. It was the moment she’d been waiting for, and I knew with just one look, when my voice fell past my lips, that I had given her the ammunition she needed to attack.
“Later that night in my room when I laid down to sleep, I heard her laughing in her bed. I remember freezing, embarrassment surging through my veins, because I knew it was at me. I squeezed my eyes shut, when she started making strange noises. Then I realized what those noises were meant to be—me. My heart raced as I tried to ignore her, then I felt the bed dip. Her arms pressed to the mattress on either side of my body. I was paralyzed with fear. But she didn’t hurt me like I thought she was about to do. I opened my eyes looking up at her and she was watching me. “What’s it like to be dumb?” she asked and my heart fell. “That’s what it is, right? When you speak like a retard? Dumb? Deaf and dumb, because you sound fucking stupid when you speak?” she raised her voice, and clogged her throat to sound like me. “I’m Elsie Hall, and I’m a fucking retard,” she mocked. I turned into the mattress. Her hand was suddenly in my hair and she yanked back my head, gripping my cheeks in her hand. “You don’t turn from me until I tell you to, dumbfuck.” She paused and started laughing. “Dumbfuck, that’s you, dumbfuck.” She jumped off my bed, leaving me terrified, with tears in my eyes.”
“What a fucking bitch,” Levi said, but I felt the panic at reliving that moment.
“It just got worse. In school she’d make ‘deaf’ noises at me whenever I passed and everyone just laughed. At home she would come over to my bed when everyone was asleep and mimic me until I cried. When I cried she’d laugh. I couldn’t sleep. It was all day every day. Eventually I couldn’t cope. But the final straw came when I walked into my room to see Annabelle and the other girls on my bed… with my notepad, the notepad that held all my poetry, and I knew it was going to be bad.”
Tears this time did prick my eyes, then ran down my cheeks when I thought of the poem that had them laughing at me. “It was the poem I’d written for my mom—”
“Heaven’s Door?” Levi guessed, and I nodded my head.
“When Annabelle saw me in the doorway, she got to her feet, and imitating my voice, she read that poem aloud. And every precious word she mocked and polluted with her cruelty. That poem was my tribute to my mom, my little goodbye, my soul poured on a page. And she sullied it, destroyed it in seconds. She then approached me as she finished the poem. I was standing there with tears streaming down my face, feeling she was spitting inside my exposed heart, when she asked, “Tell me, dumbfuck, was your druggie mom a stupid retard too?” And at that point, after a year of incessant bullying and mental torture, I walked away and to the kitchen downstairs. Pretending I was making a snack, I snuck the sharpest knife I could find into my pocket and went into the bathroom.”
Levi stiffened.