“Dotty, baby, it’s gonna be alright.” I say, cradling her 40 pound frame in my arms. Her baby-blue eyes gleam with tears and innocence, an innocence I, too, had at the age of five.  Glass shatters in the hallway outside my bedroom door, our muscles tense in harmony as silence overcomes the house. Mama and Dad’s screams and hollers break the nothingness, She is okay.

From the outside, neighbors and passersby see a nice three-story house. It was once nice; it might once have been the home of an actual family. Years ago, the label “Daddy’s little angel” marked everything I was. Dad had been an alcoholic; when he was in a bad mood, I’d point through the windows, down at the goofy woman next door, which never failed to make him laugh. It gave me a sense of purpose and security. I never questioned what he did, I thought he wanted the best for me. Back then, when a few words and a smile were all that he needed to transform from melancholy, I felt like I had all the power in the world. But vines now cover those same windows, which clearly hadn’t been opened in years. A picket fence borders the property, keeping visitors far away. I’ve lived here all my life, but five years ago the house in Belmont stopped being a home once I became a teenager.
    7 years ago, before Dot came about, I asked Ma why Dad drinks.
She replied with a short, “Why do you brush your teeth every morning?”
“I guess it’s just my morning routine, Ma.” I replied.
“Well, drinking is just his routine.” she said, folding mounds of laundry.
Baby Dot was born a few years later. Mama was happier than I’ve ever seen her, but bruises stamped her arms and chest.
“Mama? Why are you all black and blue?”
“Sometimes I fall Ali, I’ve always been a klutz, I’ve been marked up since I was a kid.” Mama said with a smile, but I could see the hurt in her eyes. That’s one thing a smile can’t cover up
“I see Daddy get angry with you.” I paused looking up at her with baby-blues, “Should I be scared?”
“Never, baby. He would never hurt you, I promise.”
    Another 2 years after that, Daddy hit me for the first time, but I didn’t blame Mama. Her kind soul is blind to the aggression within people. The physical pain didn’t compare to the pain caused as I watched my mother cry out for me, as she got smacked around more. I remember him trashing the china from their wedding, spewing it across the floor in a drunken mess, though I can’t seem to remember why he hit me that first time. It now seems too much like my morning routine.

“It’s gonna be alright.” I say to Dot, as I cradle her in my arms.
    “Why is he doing this, Ali?” Dot says, looking up at me with a sadness filling her eyes.
    “Sometimes Daddy gets irrational and angry at Mama. Think happy thoughts. It will be okay, I promise.”
    “Does he sometimes get angry at you?” She asks. I look away so she can’t see my hurt.
    “Ali?” Dot says, “Will you sing to me? Singing makes you happy. It will help my thinking stop.”
I start to lull her away from her own thoughts, a smile graces her porcelain face and her eyelids flutter closed. The sounds dance through the air, filling the room. Dot’s chest waves up and down to the music, minutes pass and Dot lies in my arms peacefully for the first time in a long while.
My voice drops. Dad barges through the door into my room, spewing splinters of wood from the door frame across the floor. In his hand, a faint shape I can’t make out.
    I unhurriedly stand up, putting Dot behind me, trying to keep her innocence alive. 
    “Where’s Ma?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. “Where is she?”  My father's hands run through his sweat-filled haired and he starts to shake his head.
    “You think you have the right to talk to me that way? It doesn’t matter where she is, it never did.” He mumbles. He lunges at me, hitting me above the eye with metal, hard. My hand traces the split across my brow bone, crimson leaks down my face. I blink hard, trying to clear the blood from my eyes. Dot manages to slip out from behind me as my blackness clouds my vision.
“I heard you hurting Mama for too long and now you hurt Ali. I learned in school Daddy’s are supposed to be loving and nice to his family, you’re just a jerk.” Dot runs at him, kicking him square in the shin, a blow that wouldn’t hurt a fly. He cackles in her face.
“You think you can hurt me?” he scoffs, spitting the words out like acid. “You are nothing to me, just like your mother.” He whips his arm straight into my Dot’s skull. A crack ruptures through the walls and she falls to the ground, barely breathing.
    My stomach meets my throat and I heave my last three meals. Adrenaline charges through my body and for the first time in a decade my mind is blank. I barrel into the man who has dedicated his last 10 years making my life a living hell. Our bodies collide, my momentum knocking him off of his feet. The bloody gun slides across the cherry wood flooring right by Dot’s static body. I strain every muscle in my body to reach a little further until my fingers curl around the coldness of the metal, the same metal that knocked Dot unconscious. The shakiness of my hand doesn’t stop me from pointing the gun right into my father's face.
“Don’t you dare move, or I will put a bullet into your head faster than you can blink.” I shriek. I run over to my sister, keeping the gun aimed at him. My heart constricts and my chest tightens as I skim my baby sister’s pale skin and still body. I reach to her neck, nothing, not a beat, not even a slight pulse.
“Why did you kill her, Dad?” my head aches from the blow of his gun and I almost faint. “How could revenge be worth your own child’s life?”
Before he could answer me I aimed right between his eyes, paused, then lowered the gun to his torso. “You have taken everything that means anything to me. You don't even deserve to die. You deserve to suffer and hold all the pain you have caused us” I turn my head away and glue my eyelids shut. A crack erupts as the round rockets out of the barrel, a lead ripper looking for flesh.