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  I took the nail polish and looked up at her with a giant question mark on my face. I didn’t want to look stupid, but what in the world was I supposed to do with this? The young lady cocked her head at me, took the nail polish back, and knelt down. She opened up the bottle and applied the polish to the run. “There!” she exclaimed. “At least it won’t get any bigger.

  I felt so dumb; Of course that’s what it was for! But how was I supposed to know? Mom never taught me how to curl my hair, put on makeup, pick out the right outfit to wear to an interview, or how to stop a run in my pantyhose. The young lady stood up, screwed the cap back onto the nail polish, and held out her hand. “Hi! I’m Toni! Are you here for an interview?”

  “Yes,” I replied rather sheepishly as I shook her hand. “I’m here for an interview for an accounts payable data entry clerk position on the sixth floor. My name is Sarah Burleton.” My stomach tingled with anxiety, and I checked my watch again.

  “Oh, you have nothing to worry about! Jeff, the manager of that department, is a teddy bear! Just be yourself and he will love you!”

  Be myself? What is that? I thought. Forcing myself to look Toni directly in the eyes, I put on the biggest smile I could muster and said, “Thanks for the advice!”

  “So where are you from? Are you from this area?” Toni asked me.

  “No, I’m from a little town about two hours south of Chicago,” I replied, still trying my best to maintain eye contact without looking away.

  “Wow!” Toni exclaimed. “You’re a long way from home!”

  You have no idea.

  ***

  I spent many nights as a young child thinking it would be easier to give up and pray for Mom to just kill me and get it over with. I would lie in my bed and hold my breath sometimes, trying to stop myself from breathing in order to end my own life, or steal a knife from Richard’s toolbox and sit on the floor holding the blade to my wrist, rocking back and forth and praying so hard for God to come and save me. As I rocked, I would occasionally recite a prayer I had learned from a very kind and loving nun who taught at the Catholic school I had attended when I was younger.

  Every day I need you Lord

  But this day especially,

  I need some extra strength

  To face whatever is to be.

  This day more than any day

  I need you to feel You near,

  To fortify my courage

  And to overcome my fear.

  By myself, I cannot meet

  The challenge of the hour.

  There are times when humans help,

  But we need a higher power.

  To assist us bear what must be borne,

  And so dear Lord, I pray

  Hold on to my trembling hand

  And be near me today.

  Amen.

  By the time I had uttered, “Amen,” I had calmed down and a feeling of peace had washed over my entire body. During those times, my faith in God was restored and I felt silly for being mad at Him earlier for not flying down out of Heaven and taking me away while Mom was beating me. During those dark moments by myself in my room, I obtained the strength I would need to walk out of Mom and Richard’s house and never go back.

  I still remember the feeling of terror in my stomach as I marched down the street lugging two Hefty bags filled with clothes behind me the night I moved out of the house. I stopped at each block and debated turning around and going back, admitting defeat and accepting whatever punishment Mom deemed appropriate. I’m only sixteen! I’m still in high school! I can’t do this! But then an image of my Mother’s face would enter into my head and I would imagine her sneer of victory as I walked back into the house hanging my head like a dog, admitting defeat. “No way! No more!” I said as I picked up my Hefty bags and continued my march down the street.

  I walked to my best friend’s house that night and her mother was gracious to let me sleep on their couch for a week or so before I moved into my boyfriend Matt’s farmhouse. I had met Matt a day or two prior to walking out of Mom and Richard’s house and had fallen head over heels for him almost instantly. He was the textbook definition of a bad boy: long rap sheet, some prison time, smoked weed, drank a bit too much, and was eight years older than I was. He was the first person in a long time to hold me and tell me I was loved and that I was beautiful; that meant more to me than any age difference or prison record.

  Living with Matt was teenage nirvana. The farmhouse, I soon learned, was not his house, but his parents’ house. Fortunately for Matt and me, although his parents lived in Wisconsin for the majority of the year, for some reason they still paid all of the bills on the farmhouse back in Illinois and kept the refrigerator stocked. I met Matt’s parents once or twice the entire time I lived there, and I don’t know if they knew how serious Matt and I were, or if they even cared. What amazed me while they were there for their visits was their unquestionable love for Matt; I couldn’t believe that parents would still love their child that much even after all of the mistakes he had made.

  So there I was, at sixteen and a half years old, free for the first time in my life, in a house with no parents and no rules with a man who said he loved me and would take care of me. I was able to let my hair down and live life to the fullest. I lost my virginity, I drank, and I smoked weed on more than one occasion. Being Matt’s girlfriend meant that I suddenly gained a group of friends, all of whom seemed to have my best interests at heart. They helped me get back and forth to school, they let me borrow lunch money or clothes, and they never judged me for my past. Days and weeks went by, and before I knew it I wasn’t cringing around doorways anymore, listening for Mom’s footsteps or her voice. I fell asleep every night in Matt’s arms knowing that I wasn’t going to be awoken by a punch to the ribs or my hair being pulled. Matt and his group of friends treated me like a human being, and I finally felt worthy of being alive.

  There still wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t think of Mom. Matt and I would lie in the backyard on spring and summer nights and stare up at the stars and I would wonder if Mom was thinking of me at that moment or if she missed me or worried about me at all. I would think of my sister, Emily, and wonder if she was getting the wrath of Mom now or if Richard was finally stepping up and keeping her safe. I felt selfish for enjoying life so much when Emily could be suffering as I had, and many evenings I broke down into tears in Matt’s arms and sobbed helplessly as he ran his fingers through my hair and told me everything was going to be all right.

  Please, God; please help keep my sister safe. Maybe He would hear me if I prayed for someone other than myself.

  It wasn’t long after I had moved in with Matt when I heard through the small-town grapevine that Richard had filed for divorce from Mom. Richard received custody of Emily and the house, and Mom moved out of town into the home of another man, a man who I knew of through the years of Mom’s adultery. My heart soared when I heard the news, and I felt a surprising rush of victory surge through my veins. Ha! Richard doesn’t love you anymore! No one loves you. I felt so happy for Richard and Emily; they would both be free to live somewhat normal lives free from the tyranny of Mom.

  Once Mom had moved out of the house and I knew that she was gone for good, I started calling my sister while Richard was at work to try to rebuild our relationship. It was wonderful to be able to talk with Emily for hours on the phone and finally get to know her for the wonderful person that she is. I had held such resentment for Emily for years, through no fault of her own. Mom loved beating me up and then walking around the house, holding Emily in her arms, bragging about how wonderful Emily was and how lucky Mom was to have one good daughter. When I had lived with Mom, Emily had become an enemy to me; she was someone who had the only thing in the world I ever wanted: the love of my mom. I wanted to get past the feeling that my own half sister was my enemy and try to get to know her away from Mom and Richard. We usually talked on the phone for about an hour once a week, which wasn’t much, but it was enough for us to de
velop some sort of sisterly bond.

  I was thrilled for Richard that he had finally shown he had a backbone and stood up for himself and Emily by divorcing Mom, but I wanted to keep my distance from him. I had come to the realization before I had moved out of the house that Richard may have been as victimized as I was, just in a different way. I do not and may never understand the control Mom had over him; I don’t know if it was sexual control or she had some sort of dirt on him that kept his mouth shut. However, that did not excuse the fact that he stood by and watched me get beaten over and over again and even participated himself at times. For that reason and that reason alone, I wanted to keep my distance. I spoke to Richard two times while I lived at Matt’s house: once to ask him to register me as a senior in high school and once to tell him my graduation date.

  It never crossed my mind to drop out of high school. Mom had told me numerous times while I was growing up that she had been one of the bottom two graduates in her class and had barely made it out of the all-girls high school she attended. Knowing that Mom almost failed at something made me want to succeed at it even more; I wanted to show Mom that I was smarter than she was and that she was the idiot for being so bad at school. I had always been a fairly good student and brought home As and Bs consistently, but once I moved out, a fire was lit underneath me. I wanted to prove to Mom that I wasn’t going to fail and that I was going to graduate with honors and make something of myself, something she never did. I studied extremely hard while I lived with Matt, enrolling into a vocational school that I attended in the afternoons after my high school classes finished. I ended up doing so well that I received a scholarship transferable to any business college in the area. Schoolwork and studying came much easier to me when I wasn’t worried about Mom breathing down the back of my neck or slapping me as she walked by.

  When graduation day came and I crossed that stage and the principal announced to the auditorium that I, Sarah Burleton, had earned a scholarship to college, my heart swelled with pride and I walked to the principal with my head held higher than I ever had before in my life. I had achieved something Mom never had, and never would. I was already becoming a better person than she was.

  About a month after I graduated high school, Matt began to change. He began to stay out till all hours of the night with our friends without checking in or letting me know when he would be back. I ended up spending massive amounts of time alone at Matt’s farmhouse and began to become paranoid about Matt’s whereabouts, who he was with, and what he was doing. I started to become convinced that Matt was cheating on me and that it was only a matter of time before I was put out on the street. I became low and disgusted with myself, and I started to spend my alone time trying desperately to figure out what was wrong with me and the way I looked that would make Matt want to stay away from me like this. My mind and body went into survival mode and I needed to find something to regain control of myself and my current situation.

  My form of control was reverting back to the anorexia I had succumbed to as a teenager. I had begun to starve myself at a young age in a desperate attempt to control the situation with my mother, to give myself some control over something in my life. Mom was always calling me names and making fun of every aspect of my body, and when I hit puberty and began to develop a more womanly shape, she would laugh at me and point at my legs and say, “Thunder Thighs!” or, “Cow Hocks!” When Mom and I went shopping for new jeans for school and I came out of the dressing room to show her how they fit, she would laugh and point at my “Bubble Butt” in front of customers. More than once I was hunched over crying in a small corner of a dressing room because Mom got a store full of customers to snicker and stare at me with her hateful words and condescending attitude.

  Once I started starving myself, the fat jokes stopped and the anorexic jokes began, jokes that usually included one of Mom’s favorite names to call me, “Anorexic Annie.” I had started to lose so much weight that it became noticeable to everyone around me, including the school nurse. After the nurse voiced her concerns and examined me, my secret was quickly found out and Mom and Richard were forced to put me into inpatient treatment at a psychiatric hospital. I spent two weeks in that hospital, surrounded by girls and boys my age who were somewhat like me: some starved themselves, some tried killing themselves, and some were just bat-shit crazy. Who knows, maybe I was one of the bat-shit crazy ones, but if I was, I never let on. Even though I was surrounded by people who would understand me and who understand how it felt, how it really felt, to be hurt and abused by a parent, I refused to share my abusive past with anyone because I was still scared of going home to Mom, still scared of telling anyone our dark secret. I look back now and wonder, if I had been honest with my caseworkers and my psychiatrists about my abuse, if things maybe would have been different. Would they have forced my family into counseling and given Mom the help that she so desperately needed? Could I have saved our family if I had just been honest?

  I don’t know the answer to those questions, and I never will. At the time, I was young, scared, and just wanted to get away from all of the doctors in white jackets and the kids arriving to the ward late at night, tied down to hospital beds. So I ate my food with a smile on my face, blamed my anorexia on stress from school, and painted a happy home life every time I was in for a therapy session with my assigned psychiatrist. Instead of learning to deal with my anorexia in healthy and safe ways, I learned new ways to hide my disorder from the girls I roomed with.

  I left inpatient treatment exactly two weeks after I was checked in and immediately went back to starving myself to cope with Mom and the abuse. I hid food and used the new techniques to lose weight I had learned from the girls at the hospital, which included diuretics and laxatives. My anorexic behavior hadn’t returned since I moved out of Mom and Richard’s house, but it was still something I thought about doing every day when I looked at myself in the mirror and critiqued every inch of my body.

  It was easier to starve myself this time around because I didn’t have to worry about people finding out. Matt was never home anymore so I was free to skip meals and make myself throw up as much as I wanted. I began to drop weight quickly, and when I saw those numbers on the scale go down more and more, day by day, I began to feel better about myself. Deep down, I knew what I was doing was bad for me, but I couldn’t stop myself because I needed to have control over something in my life. If the number on the scale happened to go up one morning, I would spend the rest of the day frantically running, doing jumping jacks or sit-ups; anything I could to burn off enough calories to lose that one lousy pound. Matt mentioned once or twice that he noticed I was losing weight, but instead of remembering my stories of anorexia and trying to stop my rapid weight loss, he complimented me and told me to “keep up the good work.”

  One Saturday afternoon I was sitting alone at Matt’s house waiting for him to come home when the phone rang. It was Matt; he was going to be late again because he had found some “killer” weed and wanted to score some before it was all gone. I had been alone in that giant farmhouse since seven o’clock that morning and was going absolutely stir crazy. I was stuck with no vehicle, and the friends I thought I had inherited were the ones running around with Matt, taking him on weed runs and to bars. “Matt, I’m so lonely, please come home!” I cried into the phone’s receiver. Matt took a deep breath. “Sarah, you need to grow up. I can’t babysit you all day long.”

  My heart immediately split in half and my stomach fell. I put the receiver into my lap for a moment and covered my face. Please, God, make him love me.

  I picked the phone up and put it back up to my ear. “I’m so sorry,” I started to say, but it was too late: Matt had already hung up. I smashed the receiver back into the cradle, ran to the bathroom, and knelt over the toilet. As if by habit, I stuck my finger down my throat and threw up what little I had allowed myself for breakfast that morning. I gripped the sides of the toilet and sobbed as I kept heaving for what felt like an hour until I could throw u
p no more. I pulled myself up and caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror. My eyes were red and puffy, sweat was pouring down my face, and remnants of my vomit were smeared on my mouth and shirt collar. I squeezed my eyes instinctively to pray to God when suddenly I thought of myself crossing the stage at graduation and the scholarship I had received and how proud I had felt that day.

  The same calmness I used to feel wash over me after uttering “Amen” when I was a child washed over me at that moment. Look what I’ve accomplished already, I thought to myself. I can get through this! I took a deep breath, turned on the cold water tap, and splashed my face. As the water hit my face I laughed and said out loud, “I’m letting a pothead ex-convict do this to me. Jesus Christ!” I was shocked at what I had just spoken aloud. It was the first time since I’d met Matt that I had felt ashamed of him and felt ashamed of what I was doing with him. It made me sick once I started to think about it: I had lost my virginity to him; I had accompanied him on visits to his parole officer and sat there smiling as I listened to his extensive rap sheet and lied for him by saying I was eighteen years old to avoid getting him in trouble for statutory rape.

  What were his intentions? Why would a grown man want a kid, and then tell her that she needed to grow up? Why would I be with a person like this? My mind was racing as I realized what a horrible mistake I had made by allowing this man to take advantage of my most precious gift to another person: my love. A small voice nagged at me. If it wasn’t for him, though, Sarah, you would have been with Mom! So was I the bad person? Did I use Matt and use my situation to tug at his heartstrings in order to escape Mom’s house? Was I using men the same way that Mom had throughout my entire childhood, using them to get what she wanted and then throwing them away?