When you’re ten years old, half the time you don’t understand why your family is arguing. However, when nice words turn into filthy words, you know something’s wrong. One thing leads to another and instead of just yelling, the argument turns into a physical fight, and not just punches and kicks, but a fight for one’s life. Keep in mind, you’re only ten years old, you don’t know why this is happening, but you know it’s bad. You want your mom, dad, brother, sister, neighbor, just someone to hold you and tell you everything is okay. I had no one.

It was dinner time at our household and a loud argument had just ended between my brother, Brian, and my college sister, Marie. He called her a foul word he had learned during his first year of high school and she did not take it pleasantly. I was told to leave the scene and watch TV. Unfortunately, I could still hear the battle.

Dad cooked dinner which was uncommon at the time. I loved it when he made our meals; he filled the house with delicious smells as if it were Thanksgiving. We sat down one by one at the kitchen table. Rarely would we eat there as a family. When we did, I was the only one who enjoyed it; it felt like we were the Brady bunch.

We engaged in small talk as a family about school and what not. Brian chomped on his chips when I noticed something different about Marie’s hair. It wasn’t the beautiful, long, blonde hair I admired; it was chopped off as if the scissors were bent and it looked like it was colored with a black sharpie. My sister, my idol, had turned her luscious hair into a disgusting mess. Was that why Brian and she were fighting?







My attention had shifted to my mom who had asked me to fetch the milk. Being the lazy little girl I was, I sighed and meandered into the kitchen. Opening the black refrigerator door, screams came from back where I sat. I left the refrigerator door open and ran back to the dining room. Marie was leaning over the table pointing a butter knife at my brother like an animal about to kill its prey. Mom screamed at me to call 911, but I stood there, motionless.

What was happening? You’re not supposed to point knifes at people. You’re family, fighting like this is absolutely terrible.

It happened as if it were in slow motion; my mother grabbed my other sister, Rachel, and tried to reach for myself. I didn’t reach out to her nor turn to run in the foyer with her. Because I did nothing, I fell to the ground when she grabbed my arm. Then I saw it. My sister fully launched herself like a wild animal across the table into my brother who sat in the chair next to mine. What if I had been sitting there? Would I be attacked too?





She put her dirty butter knife to my brother’s throat as he tried to turn away. Something grabbed me and pulled me up from the floor. My mom, my protector, dragged me and Rachel out of the room as I watched my father fly towards my brother and knock him to the ground away from the wild animal my sister had become.

“Stay in here!” My mother warned us as she slammed the door to her bedroom shut.

Rachel, flew open the door and ran after my mother. I was frozen. I stood there. I did nothing.

Clashes of dishes and shouting were coming from below me. Clenching my eyes shut to keep the rapids of tears from falling didn’t work the slightest bit. “Oh my God!” I heard from my mother.

Opening my eyes and wiping away my tears, I headed back out into the war. Reaching the foyer, I noticed the fight had moved to the basement. Running to the top of the wooded steps a loud bang filled the house. My father, my nice, caring, loving father, had punched a giant hole into my sister’s bedroom door. I remember screaming and crying my eyes out when my mom, holding my brother close to him, turned and looked at me in horror.

Was her expression because of what was happening? Was she scared about my dad or Marie? Or was it because she saw me there, watching the horrible event? These are a couple of many questions I will never have an answer to.

My mother, leaving my brother where she stood, ran up the few steps, pushed me through the kitchen, and shoved me into my father’s office. She slammed the door shut, grabbed the phone, called the police, and panicked about what was happening. Crashing the receiver down onto its base, she looked down to me. “You stay in here.” After opening the door, she walked out, gave me one last horrifying look, and closed the door shut.

I stood there in my father’s office, alone. No one there to comfort me, I sat in my dad’s black leather chair in the fetal position and wailed myself to sleep as screams and sirens filled the background. Why was I left alone? Why couldn’t someone hold me to sleep? I had no one, again.

Waking up, silence filled the house. I walked out of the office and into the kitchen. The shattered plates were gone. The food was gone. The chaos was gone. I walked to the entrance of the living room where my mother spent most of her time, and saw both of my parents there, silent. My mother was reading and my father was typing on his laptop. “What happened?” I whispered to them.

Both my parents stopped what they were doing and looked up at me as if I asked where babies came from. “She’s, uh, sick, Molly. She had to go to the hospital to get better,” my mother thought up.

My father shot a glance at her while I asked, “Why did she want to hurt Brian? Is he in the hospital too?”

“No, Brian’s upstairs in his room and Marie didn’t want to hurt Brian,” she lied to me.

“Then why did she do that?”

“Uh, she, um…” She looked up at the ceiling.

“She has a problem, sweetheart; she has a mental problem and the doctors are going to help fix her,” my dad interrupted.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Lately she’s been doing mean things to nice people.”

I nodded as my mother shot him questioning looks. “She says she’s been hearing people in her head that tell her to do bad things. That’s a sickness called Schizophrenia and we think she has it.”

I hung my head and walked to my bedroom. Being a fifth grader, I imagined my sister in a straightjacket in a white padded room. A horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach began to form. My sister, my idol, had turned from an amazingly, wonderful person, into a mentally sick patient.

Reaching my bedroom, I shut my door and started to wail once more. Once again, I had no one there to hold me as I cried. I had no one there to tell me everything would be okay. I had no one.