princesa

a past

Short blonde hair flew with the wind, hastily tucked behind her ear as trembling fingers attempted to light the cigarette between her pale pink lips. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Beatrice cursed in frustrating and checked the lighter to the ground, hearing it skid across the asphalt as she hastily searched her purse for another one.

"Bea- Bea! Don't leave-"

His words were rushed and pleading, but the moment they reached her ears, Beatrice let the cigarette fall to the ground and began to walk rapidly away, crushing the stick of cancer under her boot. She pulled her sweater tighter around her small frame.

He followed. "Bea! Listen to me- Please!" His strong fingers wrapped around her bicep, strong enough to halt her momentum and make her stumble. "Please.." His voice cracked and eyes watered, the sadness dripping off every word bringing tears to her eyes.

"Let me go, Jack," she said, voice weak and strangled as she tried to pull herself away from her brother. "I can't stay here anymore." She didn't want to turn around and see his face, green eyes and blonde head, puffy cheeks from the crying they had all done. The last thing they had all done as a family.

He was about her height despite being three years younger, fourteen to her seventeen, and with a sturdy build, broad shoulders and thick limbs. The only thing that gave away his youth was his round face, innocent eyes, and high voice. He was the one it would hurt to leave the most.

When she had walked out, she told her slut of a mother to rot in hell, kissed baby Dorothy goodbye, and smashed her dad's liquor bottles to pieces on the kitchen floor. But Jack...he had been too busy holding their mother to catch her. One moment she was standing at the doorway, tear-streaked cheeks and panting breaths as she looked back at the spectacle she had created, and the next she was gone with the wind, headed to the one place she knew she was safe.

Jack found her.

As she lay on the stained sheets of the cheap motel that night, gazing up at the smoke-stained cracked ceiling, Beatrice realized she wouldn't be going back at all. Not then, not ever. That wasn't her home anymore, it hadn't been her home in a long time. She wasn't going back to her mom and her monthly abortions, she wasn't going back to her dad and his drunken abuse, she wasn't going back to the sweetheart of a brother and the baby. Jack would take care of Dorothy, he didn't need her for that.

Week after week after that, she caught rides, made up stories to keep moving as she went from town to town, zig-zagging and straight-shooting, it didn't make a difference. As long as she was out of the county, out of the state, she knew one day she would get out of the country.

Only once did the homesickness break her down, and as she held the payphone to her ear, the anxiety wouldn't leave. Jack picked up. He said he loved her and missed her, she laughed and cried, saying she missed them both so much too. Jack said nothing. There was no both. Mom had left Dorothy in the car in June for three hours, windows up and doors locked. There was no way she would have survived that.

Beatrice cried genuine, heartfelt tears that night, tears that she has yet to cry again. Hearing that had broken what was left of her withered heart. She never knew love, never knew heartbreak the way so many teenagers had at her age, but what she had known was true love and true heartbreak, the kind that you can't get over in two weeks or months or years. It didn't hurt her anymore, but it hardened her soul and her core. There was no point to her life at that point except sleep and wake up and work, and fill up the time in between with distractions.

And that's exactly what men (and at times, women) were: distractions. Little lies, sweet whispers, anything to keep them happy was what she fed them. She made them happy, they satisfied her desires; in a situation like that, how could anyone lose?