Stepping

Mama never let me leave. I’m fifteen now. I just want to walk around our neighborhood. I’d tell her. But each time, she’d say something to the effect of, “Do you wanna end up like that girl in the news? She said the same and ended up dead in a ditch.” Except each day, Mama would describe some other horrific thing she’d heard. A car accident down the road, two injured. Stacy, 24, will never be able to walk again due to her spinal cord injury. Her boyfriend Jerry, 30, who drove, only broke his left leg. She emphasized the only part—she always told me men belonged to the devil. A shooting last Wednesday at the St. Claire Mall, 5 shot, one killed. Marsha, who died, just turned 12. She was still holding her mother’s hand when she looked down to see the bright red puddle pouring from her stomach. I wonder how Mama could’ve gotten those kinds of details; the things she described would never make it to the newspaper. Then again, she’d never let me read all of the paper. She’d mark out paragraphs with a sharpie like the government does with classified documents. The number of obituaries and bible verses of the day I’ve read could fill this entire house. She called it schoolwork.

I wonder what it would be like to leave the house. I’ve stared at the walls, challenging myself to find something new about them. One of my first discoveries included how the ceiling in the living room has dark spots all in a cluster above the sofa. I never sit there because sometimes water drops on my head. If this house is so much safer and better than the outside, then why does it always look so warm and inviting out of my window and feel so cold and claustrophobic in my room?

A tall, lanky man walks his Great Pyrenees down our street every morning at 6am. I wake up early just to see them walk by. How could this man be evil when he sprints up and down the sidewalk to make his dog happy? Surely, he has to have compassion…decency? I see him laughing and petting his dog after they wear each other out. From the corner of the window, I see hummingbirds dance around the flowers in the neighbor’s front lawn. How I wish to sit among them and read a novel—a real novel, one Mama would never let me read.

Mama’s gone out today. She’s been acting frantic lately—told me we have to move. She forgot to lock me in my room like she’s done every time she leaves. She left in a hurry, like something serious went wrong. Maybe I could just take a step outside. Am I crazy? If Mama catches me, she’ll make me put my arm over a candle until I smell my own flesh burning. I’ve got rows of burn marks trailing down past my elbow from forgetting to do chores and when I decided to walk to the mailbox. I’ve learned to grow numb to the sharp licks of heat. “There are monsters who look just like us.” Mama would say every night after she kissed my forehead. I’d always imagine them peeling their skin off to reveal some abomination with no eyes and sharp claws. Now all I can imagine is Mama. What’s another burn when all I feel is a draft from wind that I haven’t felt in ages? I can’t live like this. I won’t live like this.

And so, I took my first step outside. I found the sidewalk the man and his Great Pyrenees walked every morning at 6am, and I ran.