Brenda's First Memory

Shell knocked Debbie on the floor with a blow to the side of her head. Then he picked up a running box fan and smashed it over her head. Joan, who was just seven years old, started hitting him with her oversized doll. Brenda, just three years old, tried grabbing his ankles. Joseph, nine years old, threw a glass vase at him. It missed him and crashed on the tv.

Shell pulled Debbie up by her hair and wrapped his hands around her neck. She looked at Joseph and screamed “Get help!” He was just wearing a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, but he ran out into the pitch-black night all alone, his little legs running as fast as they could take him. The nearest farmhouse was a mile away, but his fear made him run so much faster than usual.

Shell often got violent when he drank, but this time was so much worse than the others. Debbie had never feared for her life so much as to send her young son out in the middle of the night to get help.

Shell seemed like a nice guy in the beginning. Not many men would be interested in a woman that had three kids. But he loved them all. Brenda would always sit on his big work boots and wrap her arms around his legs and go for rides. At first, she called him “Daddy.” But both Joseph and Joan both called him Shell, and she wanted to be like her big brother and sister, so she started calling him by his name too.

Back at the trailer, Joan continued to hit him with her big plastic doll. Brenda just stood there crying. Debbie kneed Shell in the groin and then he dropped her. She fell on the floor and then immediately jumped up and ran across the room to get away from him. She grabbed a hammer from his toolbox that was sitting on the floor.

“What are you going to do with that?” he laughed. Then he calmly walked past her, into the kitchen, and got another beer out of the refrigerator. He sat at the kitchen table and took a few drinks while smiling.

“Shell, I want out!” Debbie screamed hysterically.

“Well too bad. You aint got nowhere to go,” he said coldly.

“I’ve got family,” she said while shaking.

“They don’t care about you, dumb bitch,” he said and then threw the half full beer bottle at her head. She ducked and it barely missed her, smashing against a picture on the wall. Then he stood up. “I think it’s time you and I go to bed.”

“Not tonight Shell.,” she said boldly.

“Don’t you talk back to me you bitch!” he said as he started to take off his belt. Debbie moved further away from him and motioned for Joan and Brenda to get behind her. Shell walked towards them taking one small step at a time. “I could kill you and burry you on my family’s land and they would never find you,” he said slowly.

Debbie held her breath and closed her eyes as he got closer and closer. She could smell the beer and anger on him. He grabbed her by her faded grey flannel shirt and finished taking off his belt. She thought that this was going to be the end. -Then there was banging on the front door as it flew open: it was the police. They ran in and grabbed shell. He tried to fight them, but he was too drunk and there were four of them, so instead he just hollered and cussed.

The lady from the farmhouse came in with Joseph. She was his friend’s mother. There was instant relief as it was going to be ok tonight, but just for tonight.