Chapter 7 Delilah
DELILAH
Iremain slumped on the floor, blankly staring at the wall as a hum vibrates around my skull, bouncing off the bone, then the stone floors and walls. I don’t try to wipe the feeling of hands off me or focus on the liquids on my skin. I just keep humming while my ankle throbs.
The same hums I would do to perfect a piece of music so I would be allowed to get up from the spiked piano bench. But there aren’t spikes digging into my skin this time, just my blood coating my thighs. No spikes though.
Like those days from my childhood, it’s Kane keeping me sane, who stops me screaming and crying. Because Kane will come back. He’ll hold my hand, tell me I’m special, that he loves me without needing to hurt me. His love is the only one that doesn’t come with pain.
It’s not easy to breathe with my chest flat against the floor, but I don’t want to breathe anymore so I don’t move.
Breathing is needed for life and life only hurts.
It hurt at six years old, at ten, at fifteen, seventeen, twenty, thirty.
The only constant in life is pain, proving everything is true.
The hurt can be good too, because it comes when I remember my baby.
My eyes close as I try to remember the weight of them in my arms, how they smelt, if they opened their eyes.
So much hair. It was all soft, tickling my cheek when I kissed the top of their head, with lighter fluffy bits, blonde like mine.
I’m fucked up, but I made something good. Innocent.
I gave birth when I was eighteen, so my baby isn’t a baby anymore. They’re a teenager. Fifteen years old, living with their own thoughts, opinions, feelings. Fifteen years old is a big age, close to the age my life changed, and they’ll think they’re an adult who knows everything already.
The questions start, muting my humming.
Do they have a family?
Do they go to school?
What’s their favorite subject?
Do they know what they want to be when they’re older?
Do they know I exist?
Do they think I abandoned them?
Do they know I’m sorry?
I hope they know the last one more than anything else. I hope they’re happy, flourishing in my absence.
Yeah, they had to. I wouldn’t be a good parent; I’d be terrible.
I never even remembered them, so they’ll have a nice, normal family.
One who celebrates their achievements, puts their certificates on the fridge with different magnets they’ve collected on their travels.
They’ll have supportive parents, the type of parents who would sit up with them when they’re sick, check their homework, and let them be who they want.
I smile to myself, imagining all the things they’ll have with a kind family. They might even have siblings who don’t abandon them—parents they’d never run from.
A good family for the best baby.
I hope they look like Kane and inherited all the good he had instead of anything else Asher or I could’ve given them. Kane’s DNA is the same as Asher’s, so his goodness could’ve been there too.
The small amount of peace I’ve found in a make-believe world is shattered as the steel door unclicks and my mother walks into the room. Her heels click against the stone as she steps around my prone body to stand in my line of sight, disgust etched on her features—all of it directed at me.
But I smile up at her as I ask, “Are you happy now?”
She grimaces, turning her nose up as she throws a bag beside my head. “Clean yourself.”
“Why?” I smile wider. “Is the reminder of what your husband did offending you?” Then drop my voice. “It shouldn’t. Daddies look after their princesses, remember?”
Those are her fucking words. Words she said to me when I asked why Ruby was crying and this horrible fucking bitch told me it was because my sister was being silly. A stupid girl who wouldn’t let her daddy look after her.
There’s so many little things my mind buried—in an effort to save me or save them. Now they’re all coming back, I don’t know which ones to bring up or if they’re worth the effort at all when they clearly don’t see an issue with any of their behavior.
I keep spewing my disgust for her and her revolting relationship.
“You should’ve aborted us, threw yourself down the stairs, or fucking drank bleach. Any of those things would have made you a caring mother, but giving birth to us in this only proves you’re wicked.”
The prim and proper Lizbeth Leroux who would never deign to show emotion, especially not something as lowly as care, is still alive and well as she lifts her foot, placing the point of her heel on the back of my hand.
I laugh.
It hurts but I laugh.
“Are you trying to hurt me?” My laugh gets louder, forcing my eyes to close as they water. “You’re so fucking pathetic,” I wheeze as her heel punctures my skin. “I’m on the floor, naked and broken, but you can’t even handle the truth.”
Fuck tears. They’re no use; laughter is better when it hurts her. I can see it on her timeless features as she picks her heel out of my hand while I continue laughing.
“I am not pathetic,” she seethes, making me laugh harder.
“Yeah, okay.” I snort. “Keep lying to yourself. Trust me, it won’t last long.”
She lowers to her haunches, crossing her arms on her thighs, a sinister smile framing her venomous words as she whispers, “Do you know what is pathetic, Delilah? Watching you chase that boy, how easy it was for me to put Asher in his place.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Did you ever think about why no one ever cared about you? Not me, not your father, not your boyfriend who tricked you, not even your beloved Kane.”
I abruptly sit up, smacking her in the face as I do. She stares at me wide-eyed, a drop of blood sitting on the corner of her lips before she slowly brushes it with her thumb.
“Never say his name,” I grit, my breathing ragged.
“You are pathetic,” she snarls. “That love you’ve convinced yourself of is too.
It’s not real when you are unlovable. Even as a child, you were so desperate for someone to want you, to really want you, you allowed Asher to convince you he did.
Only in the end, he would sit at our table and regale us with how easy it was for him to control you. ”
“Because of you!” I throw my arm out. “You never helped me. All you had to do was get out of my way, stop him coming into the house. You didn’t even need to take my side. All you had to do was let me do it on my own.”
“Why would I do that?” she asks with a small crease between her brows, like stopping her child being hurt is absurd. “We moved for you to meet Asher, so why would we undo all our work by allowing you to believe you had control over anything?”
“Why? Why did you do all of this? Why did you sacrifice your children? Didn’t it hurt you to know Ruby and Scarlet wanted nothing to do with you? Didn’t that make you pause, reflect that you have one child left, so maybe, if you changed, you could keep me in your life?”
“Children are a means for power,” she answers coolly as she stands, wiping down the skirt of her dress. “Ruby isn’t the savior you think she is. She left our family to form another for power. She’s more like us than you think she is.”
“And what about Scarlet?”
“Scarlet?” she scoffs. “If you want to see the definition of pathetic, it is her. You may not believe I care about my children, but I have watched over all of you. You working in a diner,” her face contorts, the snobby bitch, “and Scarlet living the life of a socialite. Ruby was different. She’s like me.
She knew to keep herself hidden until your wedding. ”
“That wasn’t a wedding.” I stare at her, meeting her eyes. “It was rape—like what your husband did in this very room.”
“Don’t be dramatic.” She rolls her eyes, walking out of the room, locking the door behind her.
Some stupid, hopeful part of me expects there to be something useful inside the bag. A weapon or a note, anything to prove there is at least a miniscule amount of care in my mother’s warped mind. When I unzip it, only clothes and a toiletry bag stare back at me.
I’m not given running water to wash their filth off me but at least she gave me wet wipes. Fuck. I laugh again as I pull a wad of wipes out of the plastic opening.
“Here you go, my lovely daughter. Don’t let anyone know your daddy raped you. That wouldn’t be very ladylike, would it?”
I’m broken. So fucking broken. Yet I keep laughing as I wipe every inch of my skin, starting with my hands.
“Oh, Delilah, you silly girl. You missed a spot.”
I scrub up my arms.
“You should be grateful he didn’t whip you this time.”
I move to my chest.
“Why are you making this a big deal?”
Red marks are left behind in the wake of my nails ripping through the cotton, so I grab a stack of wipes to prevent touching my own body before cleaning my face.
“You always have to be dramatic.”
I close my eyes to prevent seeing what’s on the wipe as I move back down my body with a clean one.
“If you weren’t such an insolent girl.”
A sob gets trapped in my throat as I sit up on my knees to wipe between my thighs. My hand trembles and I quickly grab as many wipes as I can reach.
“All daddies have to take care of their princesses.”
Tears drip down my cheeks onto my chest, making me flinch as I stretch my head back in an attempt to evade what I’m doing.
But it’s no use.
Nothing is when the reward of remembering my baby is punished by remembering what both of my parents have done.
I’ve spent so long with a visceral hatred for my mother while refusing any memories about my father.
I want to go back to that state. It’s fucked up, and I don’t know why my mind works the way it does, but I blame her more than him. I hate her more than him.
I hate her for not protecting me.
I hate her for protecting him.
I hate her for choosing to have children with a monster.
I hate her for not killing me when I was born.
I hate her for giving birth to me.
I hate her for not leaving me on a random doorstep instead of taking me home.
But most of all, I hate her for never caring about me beyond what I could do for her.
The hate I feel for my mother eclipses the hate I have for my father.
With him, I want to make him hurt so he knows what it’s like to be overpowered.
With my mother…I want to know why. Which is more dangerous than inflicting pain on her husband, because I know he’s a monster.
I don’t want to understand him. With her, I do.
I want to make sense of why she has only ever continuously hurt me, betrayed me, chosen a monster over her own children.
Only, if I understand evil, callousness, and abuse, then it means I’m the same as them.
My tears fall faster.
“If I’m like them…”
Then my baby is better off without me.
Maybe that’s how I’ll become a good parent.
I’ll stay out of their life, allow them to live free from my shit, my mental issues, and my defective parents.
By not being their mother, I’ll be a better mother.
I’m doing the one thing my parents are incapable of: accepting my child does not belong to me.
I quickly pull the soft chiffon dress over my head. The thin straps slip off my shoulders due to the back dipping low as I stand, kicking the disgusting wipes away like my ankle isn’t on fire. Then, once I’m covered, I close my eyes, saying the first prayer in my life.
Hi, baby. You’ll never meet me, but I care about you so much.
I don’t know your name so I’m going to call you baby.
I hope that’s okay. I hope you have someone to call Mom, who reads you bedtime stories and checks your temperature by kissing your forehead.
I don’t know if I’d be any good at that stuff.
Well, not the stories, because I think I’d do a decent job of nailing the voices.
But the care might not be something I’d know how to do.
I hope you have a dad too. One who will protect you while you act all grumpy because you’re a teenager so you obviously don’t need protecting.
Lastly, baby, I hope you have everything I never had and never would’ve been able to give you.
To you, all I’ll ever be is the person who gave birth to you—a means of finding your real family—but to me you were everything I had. I tried so hard to keep you safe. I promise I fought for you—
The door clicks, hissing as it opens. Helene stands at the threshold, looking me up and down as she says, “You may leave.”