Chapter 10- The Belt

Not one moment. Several.

I’d say something—maybe not even anything that bad for an eight-year-old. Laugh at dinner. Make a joke when he was already in the wrong mood. Then I’d see the look cross his face, and my stomach would drop.

He’d start taking off his belt.

I’d look at my sisters as if they could save me. Sometimes we went to their room willingly. Sometimes I was dragged there. Either way, I knew what came next.

I lay there crying, screaming, No, please, no.

But it didn’t matter.

One after another. The blows hurt, but not in the way people might expect. The worst pain wasn’t physical. It was knowing he wanted to hurt me. Knowing that the person who was supposed to keep me safe had chosen to make me afraid.

After a while, I stopped knowing when it was safe to speak. When it was safe to laugh. I learned that even a harmless joke could turn into pain—and that I could never be sure which version of him would be waiting at the dinner table.

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