Child Abuse: A Dedication to Charnae Wise and Victims like Her

The four year old lay quietly in the dark listening to the dull thumps and bumps of her brothers and sisters playing upstairs. She could hear her mother's voice, an angry, mean and threatening voice that still somehow brought comfort. A tear ran down her dirty little face. She wanted her mommy.

Slowly, with what strength was left to her, she turned her head toward the stairs, as she had done so many times before and watched the light that seeped in from under the door. Then she heard the water running in the kitchen sink and licked her cracked lips with a dry tongue.

She knew mommy would be in the kitchen now, and she wanted so much to be in her mother's arms. She wanted to be warm, dry and safe. She wanted to have just a sip of that cool running water.

She tried to get up to go to the door but couldn't move from the damp and musky pile of old clothes and newspapers that had been serving as her bed. She reached one scrawny bruised arm to the door. Opening and closing her tiny hand as infants so often do. She opened her mouth to call out to her mother, but the sound that ripped from her raw throat was only a dry and painful whisper.

She didn't know how long she had been there in the darkness of the basement, but she knew why. In her child's mind it had been her fault; she had been a very bad girl. She must have been because mommy had told her so. She had made mommy very angry, that is why she was there.

She had crawled to the door many times and clawed at the wood until her fingers bled. She had cried out in fear, pain, and hunger. She had cried out in her sorrow and had promised to be a good girl. No one had answered her cries and so once again she would crawl back down into the darkness, confused, afraid, and alone.

She had squeezed her eyes shut tight many times against the tears of frustration and fear. They would fall anyway. When her tears would finally fade she would lay and watch the door quietly; listen to the rats rustling through the filth of the basement and she would wait.

As the time passed an odd calmness washed over her and she began to feel a strange kind of numbness. Oh, she still felt the pain and sickness of her empty stomach, the dry burning in her throat, and her head still ached. She was aware of the sores and bruises on her small body which still oozed blood and puss and caused pain with every movement. She felt the throbbing of the splinters under what remained of her bloody and infected fingernails. She knew all this pain, but somehow it didn't matter anymore, she felt detached from it as if it were happening to someone else.

Darkness surrounded her as she heard her mother ushering the other children to bed. She heard their feet, a distant steady thumping as they went up the stairs.

A faint memory of soft pillows and warm blankets fluttered on the edge of her mind. 'Mommy' she whispered softly as one last tear slowly fell. This was her last thought as she slowly slipped from this world into what waited beyond.

No arms had held the little one as she passed. No tears were shed. Life continued on in the shabby house, uncaring of the tiny forgotten frame which lay half buried beneath the garbage and dirt in the basement below.