I knew it was Mama’s doing the moment they kicked in the door. Two of them, stinking of whiskey and weed, one in a Cataula High football jersey like my cousin. They pinned me to the wall and stomped on my phone before going through my house breaking and wrecking all they saw. They shattered the TV, knocked over tables, and tore the bed to ribbons. I screamed, hit, and clawed, but they shoved me back. If the neighbors on our isolated street heard anything, no one called 911.
+++++They must’ve known Becca was away, deployed, or she would’ve put them down with her Beretta. They didn’t know I was pregnant when they punched me in the belly and threw me on the floor, kicking me all over. I’d just learned the news that day and hadn’t had time to tell Bec or anyone. Now the blood and hot-poker pain let me know the baby was gone. The child I promised God I would love and cherish the way Mama never did since the day I was born.
+++++She told me all the time I was unwanted. Called me runt because I was small and often sick. Beat me worse than my sisters. When I moved out, all she said was good riddance, but after word got around about Bec and me, she went crazy mad. She came to the house spouting Jesus and yelling about how no daughter of hers was going to shame her with a dyke-bitch-whore. Promised we’d be sorry if we stayed there. Wouldn’t get a second chance.
+++++I couldn’t bear the thought of facing Bec after what Mama did to our dreams. As soon as the doctors had patched me up, I bolted and didn’t stop until I was three states from home. I hid in a cabin at the foot of a mountain, near a town where not a soul knew me and I could waitress. But even if I ran to the ends of the earth, Mama’s spite would hunt me down like a panther and feast on my spirit. I had to turn myself into someone new, the person I could already see if I stared hard enough in the mirror.
+++++So I began to call myself Peyton, not Penny and took my great-grandma’s maiden name for a last name instead of my cursed own. I cut my silky blonde hair short, dyed it dark, and streaked it red. Red for all I’d lost. Red like the waves that washed over me at night when I’d wake up hoarse from screaming.
+++++On one of those mornings, I rushed outside and started up the slope, trying to burn out the blight inside me. Everything was spooky quiet as I climbed through oaks and loblolly pines, pushing ahead until my legs were as heavy as stone. Resting in a clearing, trying to catch my breath, I thought about lying down right there and never getting up. Then a whirring of wings startled me, and a dove fluttered down onto a low branch.
+++++He was pure blazing white from his beak to his tail feathers. I trembled when he grew bigger and bigger before my eyes, first the size of a hawk, then an eagle. His call rang across hills and valleys, not the soft coo of the mourning dove but full of love and evil, terror and renewal, heartbreak and life. The sun painted the mountain in gold, my tears a raging torrent as the bird sang my story.
+++++Penny would have lain low for the rest of her days. Peyton flew south on the highway, snaking around the big cities before stopping in Columbus on the Georgia side of the Chattahoochee. I’d touched up my hair and added fake glasses to my new face in case anybody remembered the old one. But Mama would never see me.
+++++I grew up in a run-down single-story house a few long blocks from the main road with a dollar store and the bus station. Like me, my sisters had fled, and no man except our absent father had ever slept under Mama’s roof. Her rusted Ford sat in the carport. She would be alone.
+++++It was muggy, black, and moonless when I crept across the field behind the house and scaled the chain-link fence. I crouched under the big magnolia, watching to be sure nothing was stirring, seeing only the faces of the men my mother hired to destroy me. From somewhere close by came the screech of an owl. I waited a few more minutes. It was time.
+++++Slowly, carefully, I circled the house, splashing the walls with gas from a can. Every few steps, I stopped, breathing hard, listening for noise from inside and hearing nothing. I poured the last of the fuel in a trail through the yard, settled my shaky hands, and struck a match. Fire raced over the grass like a rabbit, scrambling up the old dry wood, the cry of the owl drowned out by Mama’s agonized wails. The flames were already crackling along the eaves when I heard sirens, jumped the fence, and never looked back.
+++++The red waves no longer roll ashore when I sleep. I dream in rainbows, wake up with Bec, and walk the mountain together in the morning light. I was afraid she’d think me insane when I told her about the dove, but she held me close, not saying a word. Someday I’ll tell the story to the little girl inside me, how I was raised in hatred, found and lost love, and found myself in a song.

[Image Credit : Photo by Olivier Guillard on Unsplash ]

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Dave Swan

Dave Swan's story Actual Events appeared in Close To The Bone in December 2021. His work has also been published in the Fictional Cafe, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and elsewhere. He's a member of the Atlanta Writers Club and helps manage their social media.

Latest posts by Dave Swan (see all)

• Come Sing It Plain - February 19, 2023
• Actual Events - December 20, 2021