Questions and answers
I looked confused at my hunter. He explained the politics of both our kind. Questions rose in my small child like mind. I wanted to ask about his daughter and his mate. If woman determines inheritance what was his mates?
" Was your mother sinashall like you?" I asked walking on the edge of my true question.
" I am self made. I hold no family that was alive. My entire family was wiped out by your kind when I was young. When I entered the order. I had no former stripes to my name. I earned my rank tooth and foot through war and efforts." He said saddened. I felt a block on his words. It picked at me from the inside his words .
" Self made?" I questioned not understanding.
" I rose from the ashes and paved my own path." He said cryptically.
" What?" I said more confused. As he spoke cryptically and as a child's mind I didn't understand his meaning.
" I worked for my position." He said coldly. He now flashed anger for the cause of his pain. It was so long ago since his mate and daughters demise but it was fresh on his soul. This little one held her eyes and her hair. If he had gotten to know his daughter she would be bright and inquisitive. But no he had no memory of her besides her first cries.
Melina was now understanding this man . She was a means to his end. A constant reminder of the daughter he should have had and order that made his family aspirations disappear with his one act of loyalty to an order that took him in off the street and kept him alive . In the end they also killed him on the inside.
Meanwhile recruiters taking advantage of children that were in the system came around to where Melina started looking for fresh new faces in the campaign to promote all the charities that were made towards the foster care system and their helping children in need. When the recruiter saw Melina she wanted to hand pick her her sister and Scarlett as the three faces of the system .
Melina was very beautiful with her childlike face as she had short hair and olive colored skin with chocolate brown eyes. She was the poster child for the system as her sister Paula looked totally different from her you could hardly tell they were sisters as the differed in looks as Paula had should length hair..pictures were taken and they were invited to charity events where they were to represent the face of the foster kids .
Melina even was invited to take shoots and wear clothes for JC pennies and goodies as a junior advistiser as she did runway shows during the women's show on the hill. Melina and Paula got super busy with shoots and attending charity places and even were made to sell crispy cream donuts to earn money for the group home they were living at the moment.
Things went on like this for a while. She always found time to sit along side of the woods at the all purpose building. She looked as she waited for the man that looked like a large yellow cat at yet she did not know his name. She knew what he was and knew he was only there to hurt her but somehow he was the safest person in her life right now.
Melina grew up in an abusive home and her earliest memories was of her mother separating her from other children because she was different and he young mind was too small and immature to realize it was also to keep her from talking. When Melina sat on the stand at age six and testified against her father about the hanous things she remembered.
Melina mother and father was a love hate relationship. Her father loved to drink and her mother loved to party and even when she was with child the party never stopped. There were nights that it was all fun and games in the home and other nights where it was fear and danger in the house.
Melina mother worked in a Mexican restaurant as she would always come home with her version of an adult sprite as she would call it but in truth it was tequila in a Styrofoam cup with a straw. Her mother often came home from work like this as she was not shy as she allowed Melina to take generous sips of her adult sprite.
Melina remembered one night at he mother's birthday her mother had friends over as they made her a birthday cake that was surrounded by tequila shots and you would have to clear the square to get a peice of cake. It took four shots to clear a cake slice and melina as a child of only two years old wanted some cake and she remembered her mother handing her the first to shot glasses of the tequila as she told her daughter if you want cake drink it up. After two drinks she passed out on the sofa and was denied cake as the party continued around her.
When Melina woke up she was in a bathrobe in her sisters mia room which was in the middle of the house. She remembered mia screaming at her as she woke and she had pooped all over the wall where the bed was facing. Melina would see many nights like this.
Melina father was no different . He was a professional slacker as he and her mom would fight often over his temper and him unable to keep a job for long periods of time. Her father Paul would always follow a pattern to his path of destruction. He was a discharged navy officers but he spinned he was a navy seal and yet he never actually was. She remembered days when he would come home early and decide to pick up all the girls and go for a joy ride.
He would pack his car full on convient store candy he spent most of his last paycheck on from what ever job he quit at the time over some personal injustice done to him in the time he was employed there. Paul was charismatic about getting jobs but temperamental about keeping them. He would get a job and be fired or quit for one reason or another and when he did this he would always check out the girls and load them in his old mustang car that had only two doors and no seatbelts filled with old beer cans on the floor.
He would drive up the hill they called fear hill and it was a steady incline rone with one way up and one way down on a steep mountain side to the top. It was full of dips and sharp curves as he would drive them up to the top like he didn't have anything to lose as he would press the gas and drive as fast as he could as the little girls in the car heads hit the roof as they hit hills and screamed as the windows were rolled down and they had no idea they were mere seconds from death one wrong wheel turn.
He did this activity so frequent that the school called their mother as she was in charge of truancy for the frequent missed days of school. My mother worked two jobs and she had to keep a job to make ends meet. He would come home and a fight would break out and he would leave and disappear for hours to only come back totally drunk as he banged on the house door with a case of beer in his hand. He would beg and plead for my mother to let him in and evertime he would be allowed back in the house .
He would come in in his drunkin state and want to see all his girls as he reaked of beer and booze and would hug and kiss all over them as her mother stood with her arms folded. Then he would sleep it off and stay home from not being employed a few more weeks while my mom had to work to keep up the house.
This was the time when it was the scariest for the girls as he was always temperamental when he was drunk. When he was drunk he was happy and loving but when he didn't have a drink he would throw fits and lose his temper like a grown man child not being able to get his way .
He would fill his days when the girls were at school with attempting to be a mechanic . When I mean attempt at being a mechanic it is exactly what I mean. Any vehicle he put hands on never worked correctly ever again. The yard was littered with junk cars from an old fire bird to an old doom buggy to an old cadalack that sat in the yard wasting away collecting rust . For the future technis shit waiting to happen. My mother's car didn't have floorboards as the bottom had rusted out and you saw the road as you say in the back seat.
When he was angry he found any reason to be mean and unforgiving . Around this time my mother started attending community college for computer science classes on top of all that was going on . She really left her children with him all the time as she rarely came home except to sleep.
My father had three footsteps as we all knew them very well as it was how we determined where he was in the house. The house was in the middle of the projects in Woodlawn and it was a small house as it technically only had one room and a large den that were behind the French doors that opened up. That wrapped around to the kitchen that had a secret room that was used as a pantry . That room had rotting floors that led to a broken back porch that led to the back yard fenced in .
That room was padlocked and was only opened on the weekends for one hour a day. The Nintendo was in that room with a wire spool turned on the side and used as a playing table with chairs. That room was filled with rats in the middle . The room was always too cold or too hot as the deep freezer covered the backdoor preventing us from using the broken porch.
The hallway led to the bathroom with the claw tub bathtub and no shower. The bathroom was to be used by a family of six. Past the hallway was a mud room where the laundry room was and the kitchen table . Then a open den room that wrapped around to my parents room. In the middle of the house was a small storage room used for cleaning supplies wit a small broom closet and a door facing three directions. One door opened to the front foryay .The other door opened to the living room and the other the den. My oldest sister had a partician was placed to half the living room and me and Paula shared the den room. Mia had her bed in the supply room . Mia got an actual room because she was the first born to my father Paul as my oldest sister was fathered by another man.
My mom got pregnant in highschool with her best friends brother and when he wanted to marry her she refused. When she met my father when he was on dock leave . She was a professional hula dancer in Hawaii and she and him were all they wanted. When she became pregnant with Mia he married her trying to make an honest woman of her. To my mother he was her world nothing else mattered to her but him.
The way the house was set up my father had to pass through mine and Paula's room to get to the back mud room door. When my mother forgot her house keys which was most nights . He would have the angry half stomping as he crossed the wooden floors as it echoed across the house . He ran out of his room in his tighty whities and the smell of his old spice smell he always wore. That scent would impact my life for the rest of my life.
The second footsteps of my father as he move gently as the creaking of the floorboards groaned in protest under his heavy overweight body. He would pull the blankets over our heads praying that the blanket was not pulled back and it would not be us tonight. This was the fear we had to deal with as young as I could remember .
This was my normal life . We lived in fear from my father when he was left alone with us. The summers were the worst . When we were home during the day. We would try to stay out of his way and away from him. My favorite broken down car was the doom buggy. I would sit on the back of it as I pulled off honey suckles off the back fence and I would eat them pulling the bud from the flower eating the sweet nectar inside. We stayed outside because we all knew going inside with that monster was like playing roulette with his moods.
His moods were so up and down that we didn't know if we were running into our father who was fun loving and sweet or the monster that was angry and tormenting as we risked tempting the jeckle and Hyde moods he often demonstrated. It was all about survival . If you went inside you had to be quiet so you wouldn't wake him or disturb him from what he did .
If you caught him in a bad mood you had to run and hide to escape him and tried to be quiet . So he wouldn't find you. One day I came in to use the bathroom and make myself to eat at age four since we were pretty much left to our own devices to feet ourselves. Since my mother either was never home or asleep between jobs .
I ran out of the bathroom as I heard him before I saw him and I took off running to hide. I ran into Mia's room as I hid under the bed. I grabbed the wire springs that held the bed. I put my toes in the open slots as I pulled myself up off the floor as I knew under the bed he would swipe under. I saw him enter the room as I heald my breathe and tried my best to stay quiet as I watched him Pat under the bed and open the small closet in the room . I saw him leave the room and I hung there for a minute waiting to hear the footsteps receed to know I was safe. Then the door opened back up as I felt him lay on the bed as the weight of him squeezing my fingers as I freed my feet as I tried to stay quiet no to let him know where I was.
But my fingers were stuck as they turned white the red and then purple before he finally sat up giving me the opportunity to release as I pulled my small hands out as the color slowly returned to its color as I stifled a cry as I knew he was still in the room. A few minutes later I heard him stump out of the room as I listened as I let out a cry.
This small amount of punishment I received was because I was the one he saw in the house knowing I wasn't supposed to come inside if I knew any better. I ran to the broken down doom buggy in the back yard as fast as I could and his in that car until it was dark when my mother came home. This was my life and my first lesson I had to learn.