Useful

My sister and I were the only children in the shelter. A shelter for battered women that from the outside looked just like any other home.

The night was spent surrounded by the sound of women crying, their voices all terrible and injured. Pitiful and painful. Some asking "why" or declaring that they wanted to die. Others begging to go home, as if under some imaginary arrest, or just wailing incomprehensible gibberish. None of them sounded angry. Not one steadfast word of defiance or a single bitter word. Just traumatized hysteria sobbing through the plaster.

In the morning we got up while our mom continued to lay staring at the ceiling from her roll-away cot. We ate Malt-O-Meal with the little packet of syrup you could mix in or swirl on top. We watched local television through the fuzz of bad reception. My mom came from one of the rooms into the main room, saying nothing to us. The bottom of her eye was black and there was a purple swelling protruding from just above her eyebrow.

I don't remember what he hit her with or against because I wasn't looking.

I never looked. I never panicked and I never cried. I just sat very still and very quiet and waited for someone to tell me what to do with myself. And now here I was in a private boarding home full of broken women, eating oatmeal, trying to make sure my little sister didn't cry, while waiting for my mom to point us in a direction. Any direction. We would go.

We went out into the parking lot, certain of our destination despite it's being unspoken. It had apparently rained at some point during the night, but I hadn't heard it over the wailing choir. It was still overcast and everything was gray.

In the car, my mom's hands were shaking violently because she had not yet had a drink that morning. She held one hand still with the other well enough to get her keys from her coat pocket, but dropped them on the car's floor when trying to place the key in the ignition. She tried again. The more she concentrated on keeping her hands steady, the more they shook. She dropped them again, so I reached over from the passenger's side and picked them up for her.

Finding the right key, guided by her silent nodding, I placed it in the ignition and started the car for her. She placed her hands on the steering wheel, which steadied her hands enough that she could probably steer as long as she didn't fully remove them while turning. She placed her foot on the brake and reached over to the gearshift, but her hand was trembling too badly to clasp on the little knob at the tip. I gestured, she nodded, I reached over, pulled the stick backward, moved it until the little red bar was aligned with the "R." She backed out, pressed the brake. I moved the stick, aligning the red bar with the "D."

We drove home. We missed school. She cried. He cried. They hugged. It went on. And I helped get us there. I turned the key. I shifted the gears.