31 Dec 2013 Leave a comment
by shannonsymonds in Family, Mother, new years resolutions, resolution, resolved, runner, Seaside Oregon, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, Uncategorized, Writer Tags: beach, day by day, family, goals, have a good day, hilary weeks, new years resolutions, resolved, say love, Seaside, the church of jesus christ of latterday saints, writer
http://www.billionclicks.org/blog/2013-12-31/resolve-to-have-a-good-day-day-by-day/
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Symonds by the sea, a book and me...
This is an excerpt from a book I have written and would like to publish.
Save Me Grace
Chapter One: September
Amber lay in her bed monitoring the voices. They were dark, raging, a familiar background music in the night. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she knew that her Stepfather Berk and her Mother Emily were in their bedroom; and her mother was in trouble. The voices rose and fell; one voice was angry, growling louder, then lower, a menacing rumble. The other voice was soft, soothing, trying to make peace. The peacemaker was losing.
Amber sat up. She had been here before. Even though she couldn’t see Berk, she knew his putrid smell. She knew what was happening; he was large, drunk, spitting mad, spewing alcohol soaked air into her mother’s face. She quietly pushed back the covers. She needed to check on her brother and sister. The voices got louder. Her mother couldn’t stop him when he got like this.
Fear and anger mixed into a poison that ate her heart. No matter how many times this happened, she was still afraid; she was still angry, angry with Berk and mad at herself for being a coward. She opened her door and slipped out into the hall. She stood between Greta and Bjorn’s bedroom doors and decided to look in on Bjorn first.
She opened Bjorn’s door and saw his sweet small body, head up, hands on the rail of his crib, silhouetted in the streetlight. He let go with one little hand and reached though the bars for her, falling on his side, out of control. He whined in frustration as he tried to roll onto his stomach to see her. She quickly crossed to the crib and picked him up, shushing him, franticly rocking and holding him close.
She quietly went back to Bjorn’s open door and listened to the argument, making sure her parents were still in their room. She hastily crossed the hall and opened Greta’s door. The hinges squeaked loudly. Amber stopped breathing, afraid to look down the hall. The argument stopped. He had heard her. She pushed the door the rest of the way open and ran into Greta’s room.
Streetlight shone through the bedroom window, silhouetting Greta’s tiny seven-year old body. She stood back against the window, silent and shaking. When she saw Amber, she ran to her big sister like a child to its mother. “Shush....” Amber said as she pulled Greta towards the door. Amber froze. Her parents were coming.
“Berk,” her mother whispered urgently, “Berk, please…don’t wake the children.”
“Shut it! My house! That little brat should hear this!” he roared. “Greta!”
Amber looked around the door and saw him coming toward them. He was lurching down the long hall. Instinctively she pushed Greta into the bedroom closet. She didn’t have time to shut the closet door before her mother backed in the room, her hands on Berk’s chest, pushing back at him, begging him to stop.
“This is my house! Get out of my way!” He growled and shoved her. Amber watched her mother’s forehead hit the doorjamb, it sounded like a melon smashing on the wood. Her mother’s body fell hard, arms at her side and lay still. Amber gasped loudly. Dark liquid ran down the white doorjamb in the gray light.
Berk’s drunken body swung around to see his wife’s motionless body. He staggered backwards and fell against Greta’s pink bed. Greta’s large eyes reflected moonlight from the closet door. Before Berk could get up, Amber took Greta by the hand and yanked her out of the closet. Carrying Bjorn and dragging Greta, she ran for the stairs.
Behind her, she heard Berk coming. Amber glanced over her shoulder and saw she had a small lead. Berk growled, “Come back here you little …” he swore and swayed from one side of the hallway to the other.
Amber pulled Greta with her free hand, held Bjorn like a football and took the stairs so fast Greta slipped and was being drug. Bjorn started to scream. Berk was calling her foul names. She didn’t take them in. She was planning her next move.
On the ground floor she pulled Greta to her feet and ran into the kitchen. Amber heard Berk yelling as he made his way down the stairs. She let go of Greta long enough to pick up the remote telephone and dial nine one one while running for the door to the garage with Greta on her heels clutching the back of her nightgown. She pulled Greta into the garage, locked the door behind them and turned on the light.
“What’s you emergency?” She heard the operator say.
“Berk’s hitting my mom again,” Amber screamed into the phone as she went down the wooden stairs into the large garage and began looking for a place to hide. Berk was on the other side of the door pounding and yelling.
“Miss, Miss, are you all right?” the operator asked.
What a stupid question, Amber thought as she dropped the phone to free her hand. It shattered on the cement. She tried the car door, it was locked. Frantically she tried the other car. Both cars were locked. The keys were in the kitchen with him. Bjorn wiggled crying in breathless jagged screams. Greta stood frozen looking at the door to the kitchen; sure it would splinter as it threatened to give way to his violence. Amber adjusted Bjorn on her hip.
Suddenly he stopped pounding on the door and the only noise was Bjorn’s cries. The silence frightened her more. He must be going for keys, she thought, or the garage door remote. She took Greta by the hand, pulled her along the back of the garage, past his refrigerator full of beer, and headed for the door that led to the back yard.
Amber had her hand on the doorknob and was turning it when she felt it twist hard in her grasp. She jerked back and Berk pushed the door open, she turned to run and he grabbed a fist full of her hair. Bjorn screamed slipping helplessly from her grasp, clawing at her nightgown. Berk yanked her around, leaned down and pulled her face close to his, blowing fetid breath into her eyes, while Bjorn screamed in terror at her side. He began lifting her by her hair slowly. She rose to her tiptoes, feeling her scalp pulling free from her skull. She clawed at his hands trying to get him to let go, her mind spinning. She realized no matter what she did it would be like pouring oil on an inferno.
Sirens sounding in the distance broke through his rage. He dropped her, pulling his rough hands away with strands of long dark hair hanging between his fingers. Wild eyed, he backed out the door into the dark. Staggering, he turned and ran in an erratic line into the woods behind the house.
Chapter 2: Finding Grace
In the shadowy night, a cool ocean breeze blew white curtains in the open bedroom window of the weathered Victorian. The house was silent except for the ticking of a cuckoo clock and the rhythm of the ocean washing in and out of the window.
One thirty in the morning the phone rang loudly shattering the silence at the James home. Eyes closed, Grace rolled towards the edge of her creaky old bed and reached for her cell. Her eyes opened when she realized she was falling in the darkness off the side of the bed. She managed to snatch the cell from the table and as she hit the hardwood floor. She rolled onto her back and raised it to her ear. It rang again and she realized she hadn’t answered it. She answered and said, “This is Grace.” She sat up against her night stand and knocked her water bottle onto the floor where it began to leak.
“Crap!” She jumped up.
The voice on the phone said, “Grace? It’s Gladys. I have a call for you.”
“Put them through.” Grace couldn’t help but laugh as she wiped up the water with her robe and tossed it in a laundry basket. She crawled back onto the bed. She opened the nightstand drawer and began searching for a pen and paper more by feel than sight.
“Hello, Grace?” said a familiar gravely female voice. It made Grace smile. Necanicum was such a small town on the edge of nowhere in Oregon, Grace knew all the dispatchers. This sexy voice belonged to sixty-year old chain-smoking Roxanne from the Necanicum Police Department Dispatch. “This is Necanicum Dispatch,” Roxanne said officially.
“Hey Roxanne, it’s me. Morning.” Grace laughed her easy laugh. “Well, sort of morning, almost.” Roxanne continued, “I have officers out at 1239 Skyline Drive requesting a response from D.S.A.T.,”
Grace turned on a lamp and scribbled the house number on a post it note. She supervised the D.S.A.T. team, which stood for the Domestic Sexual Assault Team. It was her eight-year old baby. It was a project that paired advocates with law enforcement to provide care for victims of violent crimes. The team responded with law enforcement to the scene, or went to the hospital. They responded whenever there was a domestic or sexual assault.
“Do we know who the victim is?” Grace asked.
“No, but I can ask.”
“That’s alright, don’t bother, I am sure I’ll find out soon enough,” Grace said sarcastically shaking her head.
“Let the officers know I’ll be there in ten minutes. That’s the new housing development at the top of the hill, Ocean View, right?” Grace wondered out loud.
“I think so,” Roxanne answered.
“I’ll call you if I get lost.”
“Oh don’t I know it,” Gladys laughed.
“Talk to you later, Roxanne.”
Grace said a prayer. It was her ritual, like a baseball players lucky socks. She never went out without what she called her Angel Armor.
When she ended her prayer, she phoned her mother, who lived in a small apartment attached to the back of the house. “Mom, gotta go,” she whispered.
“Ugh,” her Mother groaned. “I’m coming.”
“It’s only a domestic,” she whispered. “I should be back early. If I’m not, will you drive Mary to the dentist?”
“Sure,” her mother mumbled.
Grace dressed and padded down stairs, wordlessly passing her mother coming up the stairs. Her mother went into Grace’s room and crawled into her bed to sleep.
Grace turned on the light in the bathroom and caught a look at herself. She shook her head. “Ouch,” she said aloud, “It’s a good thing you’re beautiful.” Sarcasm was dripping from every word.
Grace was in her thirties. Her hair was a long mess of unmanageable streaky blond ringlets that complimented her naturally tan skin. He eyes were an unusual shade of sky blue. People told her she looked young for her age, but she did not believe them for a minute. She thought she just looked tired. She had perpetual dark circles under her eyes.
Anyone that knew her said her face was an open book. Her mother described her as a strong woman with great intuition and a deep sense of right and wrong. Sometimes her brother called her the, “little General.” Her mother said she was too thin, too pretty, way too smart for her own good and “holy cow” clumsy. No wonder, she thought, I am alone.
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