Mommy's yelling at me again. I don't know what I did but she says it's always my fault. Her face looks like a work of art. But it looks like mean art because it's all shades of green and blue. Sometimes it's purple. She's shaking me again. Her hands are mean hands and they hurt my arms. My arms look like her face but only where she grabs me.

My head hurts and my ears ring. Why won't she stop yelling at me? I feel so useless sometimes. She calls me a mistake. Something in the way. I remember last night she didn't put anything on the table for me. I miss the days when her and daddy and me would all sit down and smile and laugh over a big meal. Now she leaves me some half-frozen chicken and tells me that if I don't like it that I can go to hell and not eat at all.

My tummy growls. She let me go because daddy came in the door. He has that mean bottle in his hand. It's an ugly brown one. Every drink he takes out of it makes him more mad. He's yelling at mommy now. They're fighting again. He's hitting mommy again. I wish someone would stop them. He looks mad. His clothes are dirty and look like he was playing in the mud. He's taking mommy into the living room and throwing her on the couch and hitting her face.

My tears no longer call attention to me anymore. They used to bring them both running but I stand in the hallway of our old creaky house and cry. My tummy growls again and I sniffle. My clothes are dirty and smell funny and so do my sheets. I walk barefoot down the wooden-floored hallway and into my room. I close the door and pick up a dirty little stuffed bunny with an arm missing and a leg tore off. It used to be my mother's.

I crawl onto the single mattress on the floor and try to go to sleep through the screaming. I'm only 6. Why does this happen to me? Every night for two years I've slept through this same screaming. I close my eyes and shiver under the thin single sheet on the dirty mattress. I snuggle my bunny and lay my head where a pillow used to be. Tomorrow will be the same thing. I hope it changes soon, though. I say a little prayer in my head to God and ask Him to forgive mommy and daddy for their sins and I ask Him to help them get along.

Amen.