The last thing that Helen did before running away from home, was to tell her parents and Charlotte at dinner table:
"It this continues with Charlotte, I'll call the police. I am not going to sleep in my room any more.
I'll be here in the living room on the coach, close to door. If he comes after me, I run outside shouting for help!"
Charlotte began screaming. She ran out of the kitchen. Mom and dad did not know that Helen was leaving them next morning; nevertheless they both said they did not know what she was talking about:
"Stop making up stories! Why don't you become a writer, since you're so good at creating untrue stories?" Mother said with bitter smile, standing up, with both her hands at her waist; a scene that Helen would never forget!
Helen had just turned sixteen , just about a few months ago. She witnessed her friends' normal lives, their happiness, their sorrow. They always asked her why she did not have a boyfriend. She did not know she could. Father told her once that now that she was growing:
"Let's pretend we are boy friend, girlfriend!!"
Her friends' displeasure and sadness were even normal. It should had been that way for her, too. She knew they had boyfriend about their own ages; she knew they go out for a walk, sometimes a movie, sometimes for ice creme. They would talk about the one kiss they had. The kiss had pleasure, had wonderment. Helen had already done all these and beyond not with a boyfriend but with her daddy. She had thought that she was daddy's special girl all these years, right under her mother's supervision and she had done nothing. At this point she had so much hatred for them that she could kill them both, nevertheless, she would never betray them. Sara said:
"How come you kill them but not call the police?'" Helen thought deep and long before answered:
If I kill them, I just relieve them of their sadistic, sick mind, if I call the police, then they're going to defend themselves, Charlotte won't cooperate, and they are going to drag me into the mud to save them; They are going to tell everyone that I'm delusional!!"
These days she smoked. She never had the money to buy her own cigarette, but she stole her parents' cigarettes. They had made her an adult in a hurry. Her dad chewed tobacco at work and smoked cigarette at home; so she always took form theirs. They blamed each other: " I swear I opened this pack this morning, look at it! it is all empty." They would say to each other. Smoking gave her a feel of adulthood. She did it in front of her friends. A lot of girls and boys her age smoked those days anyway.
She remembered the first time that daddy had involved Charlotte in their special thing. It was her tenth birthday! She was angry then! She was in fact was outrageous then!
"I thought I am your special child, daddy!" He answered: "Yes, darling, you're always my special one, but Charlotte is my second special child!" How sick! He raped them both that night for the first time. She said that it hurt; Charlotte said that it hurt. Daddy answered both of them: "You get used to it! It won't hurt when we do it again!"
Helen had hidden a small bag of clothing, mostly a few sweater under her bed. She did not want Charlotte to know she was running away. Her plan was to do it in the middle of the night when everybody was asleep.
Like every girl her age at school, now she had a boyfriend, too. His life was a complete chaos like hers, too. They had bought two bus tickets. They did not know their destination. When Jacob went to buy the ticket the day before he had said:
I want two tickets for early in the morning, I can pay only twenty dollars. There was a long line there for buying tickets, The clerk passed two tickets through the little opening window and got his twenty dollars. The bus was leaving at four in the morning, to where, they did not know. They had no money, no help, no prospect for future, far or close. It was early spring. The weather was still cold in Chicago. She left home at two in the morning with her little black bag. She had stuffed into it a few sweaters. She had no over coat.
She calmly went down the stairs. She could swear that her mother saw her. She was in the kitchen, drinking something and smoking a cigarette. She was crying.
To Be Continued
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