Recorded by Kana Renée

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Many stories begin with that Chevy muffler, but this night, the pinto bean night, was one no one would forget. Well, except the pathetic piece of drunk shit that I called my stepdad. He was home later than usual which meant he was superbly sauced. We were never allowed to eat until the stepdad got home, even if it was at 9 pm, and I was starving. 

 

As any southerner can firmly attest, one does not simply have pinto beans. It is pinto beans and cornbread, or death.

 

I heard the call of dinner and playfully bounced my way up the stairs, oblivious to the world around me. I was basking in the first day of triumphant BB fort building. Dea’s voice stands out so clearly, even 30 years later, with the wispiness of her playful banter. We had smelled pinto beans all day and it was time for the cornbread that went with it!! “Where’s the cornbread?” She asked as she playfully stomped her foot on the kitchen floor. Her stomp startled me into reality as my brief giggle was choked off by the sound of his angry yelling. With slow-motion quickness, I see the reflection, almost blinding, of something going towards Dea’s head. My legs gave out from underneath me and that was it. I was frozen. Pure fear consumed every fiber of my being. One of his hands grasped tightly around her neck while the other carelessly rested a drunken finger on the trigger of a loaded 9mm pistol.  Smashing it fiercely against the temple of my sister’s head. MY sister, The one who always protected me.

 

Why wasn’t I moving? Why wasn’t I trying to protect her? I planked on those stairs without a single movement, except for my eyes, for what seemed like hours. To this day I couldn’t tell you how long the ordeal lasted or even how it ended. My entire entity shut the fuck down. I could feel my eyes get wider with every scream of “you want cornbread? Here’s your goddamn cornbread, bitch,” yet trying to close them with every flinch of his intoxicated finger on that trigger. I could feel the sweat rolling down my spine and a terror under my skin I had never experienced. I remember realizing how calm Dea was. Mom was screaming in her slurred drunken words, Claude was boisterously yelling profanity right into Dea’s face, splattering his whiskey spit all over her, and she remained calm. Tears poured down her cheeks, but I don’t recall her making any movements, not sure even a sound. 

 

Her silence must have been devastatingly deafening to her soul.... it was to mine when I realized my body wasn’t lunging forward to help her. I suppose that is why I don’t remember the ending....of all the horrid moments of our past, of all the times to give back what had been given to me so many times over again, of all the times to take a stand and protect my sister as she had always done for me, it was right then. But I was stuck in an immature 11-year-old dumb and broken mind. Frozen on those shit brown carpeted stairs, paralyzed. Part of me will always be on those stairs, just as a part of me will always mourn for my sister. She was never the same after that night, for good and obvious reasons.