That day I was in my room with my sister, doing homework. The doorbell rings. I’m going to see who is there. Trying to look in a peephole. Mommy. Mommy with a right hand in gypsum. You will find out later how I remembered which hand. I open her door. See her crying and do not know what to do.

“Is everything okay?”, I asked.

“Don’t ya see?”, she answered as I was drunk and couldn’t notice her.

“Why did you freeze? Bring those bags in the kitchen.”

I take the bags. They are heavy. Sister comes to help me.

“What happened mommy?”

“Try to think logically. There is ice-crusted ground outside.”

I was so naive. I thought she just talked with me. But she just laughed and after that made jokes about me. Jokes about what? About my curiosity?

“You slipped on the ground,” I said and tried to hold back tears.

At that moment she hit me in the head. I was used to it. Nothing special. But this hit showed that she certainly slipped on the ground. I laughed after that. A grown-up woman slipped on the ground. Can’t you look at what you are stepping on? Thought my curious head.

Hitting wasn’t even the worst problem. The worst problem was that I had to take care of her because of her broken arm. Others refused to do it and I had no choice. I had to cook, clean, vacuum, dress her, wash her hair. I hated her and all this stuff. My school and homework did not bother her. How was I supposed to do all this stuff when I was 8 years old? I did not know how to ride a bike. What did you then expect me to cook? Ravioli? If I made a mistake, she would hit me. If I said something wrong, she hit me. She hit me every single day. I wish I had had a tumor because of this. I would have died and no more suffering. I was 8 when I had those thoughts in my head.

That day I had practice at 4:00 AM. I packed my backpack and waited for my friend to call me while my mom was doing something noisy with some man in another room. Did my mommy think that I was not hearing anything? Did she think that I was 2 years old and would not remember it? She was moaning and screaming so hard. It wasn’t my dad. She cheated on him all the time. And beat me each time after cheating so that I don’t tell my dad. It’s her way of coping with the immoral actions she performed. Some people go to psychologists but she chose this option. I was little and had no idea why she was beating me because of what she did.

So practices, in order to escape hell, were my dream as soon as I got home from school.

This time I was even happier to get out of the apartment.

When I reached the spot where my friend and I always meet together, I was thirty-five minutes earlier. So I had to wait. It was winter. Minus fifteen degrees. Extremely cold, considering that I didn’t have a winter coat. I was wearing that spring coat for 3 years. It was a bit small for me and definitely not for that day’s weather. Lucky me, she came ten minutes earlier. But she wasn’t alone. As she told me, she came with an excellent idea. This idea was to skip basketball practice. I, as a kid who had never before even had thoughts about it, was shocked. How dare you skip basketball practice.

“But we wanted to skip school because of basketball! You don’t think clearly!”, I said.

“Yes, I know our plan! I wanted to skip only today's practice. Nobody is going to find out. We’re gonna go to the cafe instead. What do you think?”, she enthusiastically answered.

“I don’t know. It’s too risky. I don’t want my mom to beat me because of this.”

“She won’t beat you because she’s not going to know it. Nobody will tell her!”