Her Mafia Brothers

Trauma

Hazy memories of my very early childhood came back to me as I changed into a t-shirt and shorts, trying so hard to remember. It was funny, but being back with my brothers now, I was starting to remember the tiniest things. Just little snippets of a hazy memory, but it was better than nothing. Better than remembering my life with my mother and him, anyway.

The photos I'd been looking at in the plane had helped, and I picked up my phone again now and brought the photos back up, enlarging the one of me as a little tot, blue inflatable armbands on, swimming with a teenage Jack.

I wasn't a little kid anymore. I didn't need floaties. I didn't have perfect, unblemished skin like I'd had back then. Instead, my exposed legs and arms were scarred and marked with semi-fresh burns. Under my clothes were even more. I looked in the mirror, for the first time in so long, and was horrified by how many scabs were scattered across my skin.

My heart pounded. What would Rocco say when he saw me like this? I tried to tug the hem of my shorts down, to make them longer, so I wouldn't feel so self-conscious, but it didn't work.

"He's already seen it," I said out loud, reminding myself. "Alex showed him. He knows." But still, as I traipsed downstairs, slowly, timidly, I tried to steel myself for the look of disgust I knew I would see on his face.

The stone tiles of the patio were cool beneath my bare feet and I hesitated just outside the threshold, uncertain whether or not I really wanted to do this. Well I wanted to swim, that wasn't the issue. I just wasn't sure if I was brave enough to swim like this, so exposed and vulnerable, my broken-ness and the abuse I'd suffered fully on display.

Rocco must have heard me coming for he looked up from his phone and although he didn't smile, the scowl on his face softened. He didn't react at all to the marks on my body, he didn't turn away in revulsion like I'd expected him to. Instead he waved at the pool.

"Hop in."

I just stood there, doing my best to cover my arms with my hands, crossing my arms in front of my body and spreading my hands out over them, trying to hide. Ashamed.

I shook my head and felt myself start to tremble, uncontrollably. You're a worthless bitch echoed in my head, hissed at me in vile hatred, every time I'd asked to be allowed to do something, anything, that might be fun. You don't deserve to have any fun. You don't deserve to go out. Who do you think you are?

I tried to force the voices away but they remained, getting louder, faster, mingling together so I couldn't separate one word from the other and all I could hear was a barrage of abuse, insults, all directed at me.

"Carrie?" I heard Rocco's rough voice, but it sounded far off in the distance. It didn't sound nearby, and it wasn't strong enough to overpower the voices in my head, telling me how terrible I was, how I deserved to be burnt, to be beaten.

"What's wrong?"

I didn't answer him; I couldn't. How could I explain the horrors I had endured, the voices in my head that haunted me even now, the unshakeable belief that I wasn't worthy of kindness, love, fun? My tongue couldn't form any words and I couldn't silence the voices in my head for long enough to speak anyway. I couldn't stop shaking.

"Carrie!" There was Rocco's rough voice again, louder this time, but still not quite loud enough to drown out the words of him, my abuser.

I didn't hear him come up behind me but when he put a gentle hand on my shoulder I flinched and he ripped his hand away.

"I don't deserve to swim. I'm worthless. I don't deserve to have any fun." I rubbed the burns on my thighs, looked down at the ground and whispered the words that were playing on repeat in my head.