Not Yet Yours

Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Harriet

A s I lay awake, my mind tormenting me with thoughts of being abandoned by Liam and then the inevitable moment when he tells Max the truth about me and she too turns her back on me leaving me with no one, I can’t help but go back in my mind to a time and place I promised myself I had left behind. Usually, I can avoid letting my mind go back there, but right now, I’m feeling particularly vulnerable and when I feel that way, that’s when the memories come flooding back in and take me unaware.

It’s funny though, because when this happens, my memories don’t feel like memories. I don’t feel like I’m in the memory as such. It feels more like a movie in which I’m the star, but I’m also the audience watching it all play out rather than living it. I know that makes no sense, but I’m sure a therapist would have a field day with it. They’d call it something fancy like dissociative remembering and say it was a defense mechanism. Maybe it is, but if so, it’s not a very good one because even though I am watching the memory rather than reliving it, all those old feelings still come flooding back, harder and stronger than ever before.

I try to fall asleep but that isn’t happening. I try counting, not to lull me to sleep because I know that won’t work, but to try and keep my mind focused on something so that it can’t slip back in time. It doesn’t work though, and I soon find myself watching myself, as a little girl, as my life begins to fall apart around me.

Tiny Harriet stood on the landing, clutching a banister spindle tightly in each fist, her face peering through the gap between them, her green eyes wide and bright in the moonlight that came in from the window opposite her. She was supposed to be in bed, asleep. She had been until a few minutes ago when she had been woken up by the sound of shouting.

Even at her age – a mere five years old – Harriet knew that the sound of shouting after bedtime wasn’t good. It always seemed to be that on the nights when there was shouting, her mom had one of her accidents, banging her face off a cupboard door, or falling down the stairs. Harriet thought the shouting must distract her and make her clumsy.

The living room door slammed open, and Harriet quickly took a step back into the shadows. She had never eavesdropped like this before, but she instinctively knew she wasn’t meant to be seeing or hearing this, and that if she was caught, she would be in big trouble. She wondered if being yelled at would make her clumsy too. She hoped not, but she wasn’t going to risk it.

“Just fuck off Selena, ok,” Thomas, Harriet’s dad shouted.

Her mom was named Selena and Harriet knew fuck was a bad word, not a word someone should be saying to her mom. She wanted to go down there and yell at her dad, to tell him that word wasn’t allowed, but she was too afraid to move, and she stood there in the shadows, out of sight of her yelling parents, and took it all in.

“That’s real nice,” Selena shouted back. “I turn you down once and that’s it, I’m to fuck off!”

Thomas turned quickly back around to face Selena and the argument continued at the bottom of the stairs. Thomas’s voice was loud enough now to bring tears of fear to Harriet’s eyes, but still, she stayed and listened. She wanted so badly to run back to her bedroom, dive into her bed, and pull the blankets up over her head. She could pretend this had never happened, that it had just been a snippet of a bad dream. But she couldn’t move. It was as though her feet were glued to the carpet beneath them and she was forced to stay in place, a silent and unwilling witness to the fight going on below her.

“It’s not just once though, is it?” Thomas demanded. “Do you know how many times we have fucked since Harriet was born? No? Well, I do. Twice. Twice in five fucking years.”

“I’m very sorry that me squeezing a watermelon through something the size of a tangerine and tearing myself open was an inconvenience to you,” Selena threw back.

“It’s not that and you know it. When that happened, I was sympathetic, and I gave you as long as you needed to heal. I promised to be gentle with you, to stop whenever you wanted me to, but you wouldn’t let me near you. It was like Harriet ruined you on her way into the world and you were determined to take me down with you,” Thomas snapped.

“For God’s sake Thomas, don’t you understand how hard it is to have a newborn baby? To be up and down doing night feeds and changing diapers and soothing cries? No, of course, you don’t because you sat back and let me do all of that, didn’t you?” Selena said.

“You were the one who wanted a baby,” Thomas shouted. “I warned you I wanted no part in sleepless nights and dirty diapers.”

“And not once did I ask you for help. All I asked was that you not put anything extra on me,” Selena said.

“You can dress it up any way you want to, but Harriet coming along ruined everything,” Thomas yelled.

Harriet stepped out from the protective shadows, tears in her eyes, “Daddy?”

Thomas and Selena both turned sheepishly toward Harriet. Selena’s mouth opens and closes but she doesn’t say anything.

Thomas glares at Harriet but instead of yelling as did to Selena, he says, “You have ruined everything. Our life, our marriage, and the peace in this house. No one will ever love you. No one will ever want to be around you. You are like a black cloud hovering over everyone around you. You need to learn to mind your business and shut up like one of your precious little dolls or mark my words little girl you will always be miserable and lonely just like you have made your mother and me.”

Thomas turned then to look at Selena. “I'm done with this shit. You wanted her, now you can be stuck with her.”

The front door opened and then slammed shut and then Harriet heard her mother starting to cry as she opened the door to go after Thomas.

Harriet turned and ran back to her bed, pulled the blanket up over her face, and cried too.

Harriet waited for Selena to come and tell her everything was okay, that Daddy was just upset.

Selena never came and Harriet whispered a vow to never get close enough to ruin anyone's life ever again. She fell asleep that night with her cheeks wet from tears and the idea in her head that her being here had ruined everything her parents had together.

I shake my head hard and I manage to pull myself back out of the movie in my mind. The warm wetness on my cheeks tells me that the tears are real though. My movement must jostle Liam because he shifts slightly and mumbles something. I hold my breath, not wanting to make a sound, and risk waking him up. I don’t know how I would explain to him why I was crying without either telling him the truth and ruining everything or making something up and having him think I was crazy. I finally dare to breathe again when Liam’s breathing once more evens out.

I’m reminded I have been right to keep Liam at arm’s length. My only mistake is sometimes letting him get a bit closer than that. It has to stop. I have already ruined my parents’ lives. I don’t want to ruin Liam’s life as well.

I will stay for the party tomorrow because I said I would and I don’t want to go back on my word, but nothing can happen between Liam and me anymore. I need to make sure that I keep him from getting too close to me and that means no sex, no flirting, no giggling unless it’s part of the ruse of me being his girlfriend. I have to think of this as a business arrangement, do my job, and get out of here before one or both of us ends up getting hurt.