Residue

Tuesday morning I stopped by the Battered Women's Shelter to drop off a few incidentals: toothpaste, some shoes, a box of Oreo cookies. I try to do what I can in order to tip the balance for someone in need.

Perhaps the Adult Stella is still trying to help heal the Child Stella. Staring down the barrel of forty years old, I wonder when the memories will fade...the angst when, at some weird and indefinable moment, something unbidden makes it way into my mind and I am back there again, drenched in anger. I wonder still why there was no one there to rescue me. The woman who was supposed to protect me unable to protect herself; the nature of the game unfair from the outset, the rules of the game demanding strict silence.

Sometimes the cops came.

It was good, and then it was worse. I can still vividly remember the time when I was thirteen years old and I called the cops because my mother was screaming for me to do so; I did as I was told and ended up grounded after the fact. No phone, no fun, and no explanation. How many years have to go by before the slate has been wiped clean? Will there ever be a time that I am not swishing through the residue?