Two Pieces (Anonymous)
Anonymous
My Baby Girl
When I was small and people would ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I’d say, “A mommy.” That was my goal ever after – even after I had a rewarding career.
When the time came, I couldn’t conceive. So we adopted. The day my baby arrived was the happiest of my life.
My baby girl was beautiful with reddish hair and blue eyes. As she grew, she showed herself to be caring, intelligent and beloved by all who met her.
The sad part of the story is that she died at age six, a victim of her father’s violence, and part of me died with her.
A Human Tragedy
Hearing a ruckus and then a door slam from the apartment below mine, I looked out the window. The woman who lived there ran into the street in her robe and stood alone, huddling from the cold. She held her hand over her eye. I could see her body heaving as she cried. From another window her husband screamed curses. I watched and waited. Soon the police arrived. They led her inside and then out again with a small bag. Her husband was not removed.
I knew he was a drinker, and I’d often heard them brawling. But this development shook me to the core. I had a restless night worrying about my neighbor. Would she be okay?
Morning came. As I left the house for work, I saw her. She was on her way back into the building - wearing a black eye. She was still there the next day. And the next.
I thought, “When I’m married, if my husband ever hit me, I’d be out in a flash, never to return.”
Ha! That’s what I thought back then in 1976. I didn’t know better. That was before my own man charmed me, sweet-talked and married me - before he ever hit me. Then he hit me again – and again. He screamed, “If you leave me, I’ll find you. I’ll kill you.” I didn’t leave. I was scared – and I still loved him.
When they found his body, shot through the head by his own hand, it lay next to my own brutalized corpse. The newspapers called it a crime of passion.
Copyright Credit: Anonymous, “My Baby Girl" and "A Human Tragedy" from Survival & Beyond, Issue 1 / Spring 2024 (Safe Passage, 2024). Copyright © 2024 by Safe Passage. Reprinted with the permission of the author.