We’d sleep and kick and cry and scream. Some nights you'd sleep in my bed which she thought was weird. Mostly it never got all that bad but plenty of times you came after me. It was hard for us. We spent a lot of time together down in the basement. 

The stairs to go upstairs were in my room. 

When I write “Mom,” I mean our biological Mom. When I write “she,” it’s about our stepmom.

There’s a lot of things I still think about that place. Things I wonder between me and you. 

After hitting you I would stare at the ceiling, listening to you sob. My chest still fluttering, dad’s words still echoing just as much, and yet still strung on the slap from you that was different from the rest. The slap that made me strike back.

It always started like that for us. 

You hit harder than I hit you and that was the problem. You’d leave bruises, scratches, and especially bite marks. God. You’d love to bite. And it hurt so fucking bad.

Real mom washed my mouth out with soap before she’d spent her day driving to work in tears. Reminding me to wake up for school three or four times before actually getting me up for school. She wondered what was wrong with her son, how'd he’d cave and make one feel fragile and small, minuscule and insignificant. 

Then of course there was the time you were eating your cereal. And she was in the room. The one you knew how much I’d hate. Dad’s coffee was brewing and we’d heard the smooch of their kiss. I’d looked deeper into the milk, and this was just how most of our mornings would go. But this morning you were dressed and ready to go most like how you always had when she called you the word Narcissist. 

I don’t remember how it happened. It’s not like you were verbally abusive. You didn’t even know what the word meant. But I did. I knew what it meant. 

Later in the car when you’d turned to my shoulder and whispered, softly, Should I have told you? 

As you looked out at the trees with the new word ringing in your ears. 

Should I have told you? 

As dad sipped his perfectly cold diet mtn dew taking us through the Mcdonalds drive thru. Should I have told you? 

Did this change how you looked at the fries? 

Windows. We both loved windows. Especially looking out from car windows. 

Remember when the passenger window got shattered by a paintball gun on our drive across Subway. How it felt like something light years away, something that could never happen or exist. 

It scared all of us. 

When the windows weren't getting shot out, how I’d look at your window and it’d irritate you. You’d kick Mom’s seat and bitch to her saying, “Jackson is looking out my window and he won’t stop!” 

It irritated me, but only cause I knew it irritated you. 

I've always bugged you and Mom. I've always known how to get underneath y'all's skin. For you I knew all it took was a simple glance out your window, or me taking a seat on the opposite side of the car because that was your side and your blanket and your headrest.

Eighty–twenty. This is how we connected. 

But why did it have to be this way?

We were all we had in the basement.

My fault. It was me all along. I'm the problem and I’m the issue. I’m the pellet shot out from the BB gun from the hidden teenager hidden in between bushes in a yard that's hidden from our site. 
Mom’s words: “Your sister adores you.”

After our worst fights she’d tell me you wanted to be just like me. And I could see it. When we’d sung on the karaoke machine years prior I could see the way you looked at me as I murmured the same lyrics as you. 

I knew her words had to be true. 

At one point, things got so bad we would fall asleep together each night. You remember that? We’d talk. 

Can’t remember about what. 

I’d probably talk about stepmother and you’d probably talk about Dad. 

Those nights were special, but I didn’t know it at the time. What makes those nights special to me is nobody else but me and you cared about it. Nobody came to check on us besides our stepmother who questioned us in front of Dad. 

Why are you two sleeping together? 

We know how she made it sound.

But it didn’t matter to anyone else but us. 

This is where we found comfort. 

This is how we made it through.

The things we’d talk about we’d never tell Dad, stepmother or mom. Even now, we can only kind’ve remember those moments. Our words and the bondages we shared feel compartmentalized, lost and fleeting like a dangling wrecking ball. Like a time that chimes, with every passing tick it has gotten further and further away from us. 

But it’s still who we are. 

Most Christmases we've looked together with real mom, we laugh, and giggle and my mind is blown each solitary time as you record me swishing shot after shot into the mini basket hoop.

When I’m watching you watch that video, watching our Mom watch it from over your shoulder, my mind goes somewhere else. 

I look deeper into the pixels, and into the brown colored wall that matters. In that video, for a moment everything feels perfect. The timing, the energy, your camera movements, and me falling on the bed and looking away from the camera as the last shot hits off the side of the wall and still finds its way into the basket. 

I still watch that video, you recording me with one arm out from the bed, because it reminds me I wasn’t meant to be perfect for you. Through repetitive nights, just the two of us, what mattered is that I was there only a few feet away.

I love you, Abby Tomczak. 

I’m twenty years old in the back of an unfamiliar church slapping my thigh with a pencil. 

I'm a broke, single, and pregnant college student who’s just been assigned to attend a Mormon Church 45 minutes away from home. In my lap is a stapled black and white packet; I’m describing the walls around me. I sit in the back because I don’t want anything to do with people. I just want to get this assignment done. 

Crossing my legs, I glance across the dim, brown colored walls. Noticing on my right to the left of the door is where the pastor spoke to me. His grey tuxedo, his white mustache, and his white frazzled hair were all I could focus on as he weaved between dozens and dozens of people. Greeting them with a smile, politely guiding them to their seats, and returning to a broad, hairy man showing little to no facial expression. The broad man wore a vibrant blue tie, a wellfitted tuxedo, and… 

A woman passes in my peripheral vision. 

“Well hello!” “I don’t think I’ve seen your face before, are you new?” 

Before I can look up, she continues. 

“My name is Denice. I own a farm a little over fifteen minutes away. We raise chickens, pigs, cows and even some sheep.” 

Leaning close, she whispers near my ear, 

“It’s how I got this sweet looking jacket.” 

We share a warm smile as she sits next to me. 

I did not know what to say because she genuinely seemed interested in me. As time passes I see Denice walking further up the aisle. Her mouth is opening and closing, but I can’t hear the words forming. I wrap my arms around my six month old baby, who’s kicking my belly, and maneuver to the front of the facility. After I’m seated it doesn’t take long for me to notice we are the only ones occupying the row, pushed all the way to the right, closest to the aisle. In front of us, there are three leaders all wearing separate colored ties. All three of them are seated and looking out into the charade of people. I’ll finally speak. 

“This is just a paper I’m doing for a religion class, I said.”

Denice glances my way, before saying,“Oh, it is? Well, where do you go to school?” 

“I go to the University in Eau Claire,” I swiftly responded. 

Her eyebrows raised, “I went there as well.”

“What did you study, and how long since you’ve attended?” I couldn’t believe it. 

She looks across the room as if anybody is listening, “I don’t know. It's been twenty years.” 

“I'm twenty years old.” I insisted.

When she lightly pinches my waist, and whispers aloud, “And you're pregnant.” 

“Excuse me?” I said. Listening to the strangers beside me whisper and gossip despite the pastor approaching the microphone stand. He adjusts his tie, aligning it before speaking. 

“I would first like to start by thanking you all for taking the time out of your busy lives to come here, and spend it with us today. Today is especially special not only because we have three Sister Mormons returning from their journeys across the United States, but also because we have a special guest here today that Denice shared with me is a first time visitor who’d like to open today’s congregation by sharing some words. Isn’t that right Kinlee?” 

Denice's arm grips my left hand, yanking my arm to get up before I even have time to think or make a choice. I’m not, would not, speak, at no cost. And all it took, was a couple seconds of me looking lifelessly into the crowd, and a few more seconds of silence before he swaddled back the microphone. Acknowledged the crowd with a smile, and brought me and her back to our seat in the aisle.

 The woman, Denice, who’d yanked my arm, whispered to herself and twiddled amongst her wrinkled fingers. While I sat there the pastor highlighted how much my visit meant to Denice, who stayed standing, and explained the impact it'd have on her moving forward since she’d been young and pregnant once too. I sat there, despite feeling violated, and nodded as people from the crowd interchangeably gazed over at me, rubbing my belly to make myself more comfortable. I could see the worry in their eyes and in their faces. It’s the same look I wore while busying myself with the paper and the pencil. I bent down to grab my assignment, continuing to fill in the blanks. 

One leader in particular looked annoyed and frustrated by a member in the crowd. I watched him for minutes at a time stare menacingly into the ground. Occasionally glaring at the nuisance kicking their seat. Right now, I’m supposed to be focused on getting this done, not seeing through the lines or going any deeper than what’s being asked of me. I tap the woman on the shoulder and point to what I’d just written on the page.

Fixating between me and the paper, she takes her glasses off and afterwards never looks away from the pastor, continuing to act as though my being twenty, and pregnant, is something to be dwelled upon. I’m starting to read between the lines. They brought me up on the stage because of what it means being twenty and pregnant. My story was like Denice’s. But I’m not afraid. I get up from my seat and walk forward until I’m just below the stage pretending that my water is about to break. Shouting a word that garnered my attention on my drive over today while being dragged away, “Kamikaze! Kamikaze! Kamikaze!” 

In my peripheral vision, I see Denice watching me fall. As they drag me from the room, my eyes stay on hers. She nods. Behind me, the room applauds as the doors slam shut. From outside the painted brown walls, as I’m fighting my way up, I see the pastor re-swaddle the microphone stand with a Book of Mormon in his opposite hand. 

He begins humming to them a lullaby.