I was the oldest of four, I'd had friends, a happy family, a warm house to come home to after a long day at school. That was before my parents had started to disagree on things.
Before our home became cold, just a house full of tension, no longer a place I wanted to be. The disagreements, became arguments, that became fights.
My parents became paper tigers, clawing at each other, but never hurting themselves just those around them.
Paper cuts so deep they bled.
I'd patch up my siblings with colorful band aids, the Blue’s Clues ones from the top shelf of the medicine cabinet, I could only reach with the step stool.
I stopped playing with my friends in favor of entertaining my siblings so they didn't have to hear the yelling, so they didn't have to grow up as I had: in a matter of days.
I made up games for them to play in our basement bedroom, catching cave crickets, like dreams, we'd lose sight of more often than not. And some nights, after everyone was supposed to be asleep, I'd creep up the stairs, to the second floor feeling as though I was ascending into hell instead of heaven, to check if my parents were asleep.
They never were, pale light seeping from under the door along with whispered roars, words I wasn't allowed to say. Sometimes I'd sit for hours at the top of the stairs, watching the tiger shadows fight on the carpet.
Time passed, the days filled with Blue’s Clues covered paper cuts, the nights with tiger silhouettes. Nothing really changed except the way my mother smelled. I noticed it when she hugged me before sending me off to school in the mornings. She no longer smelled like home cooked meals and bright smiles, but tears and hollow hate. We left soon after that, my mother, my siblings, and I. She packed only what was necessary and forbade us to tell anyone what we were really doing: Disappearing. Our cousin, helped us get our few things to the bus station, where we waited for what seemed to be just short of eternity.
The big Greyhound bus inched over the hill in slow motion, a giant silver slug, coming to take us away. I helped load our bags into the bottom of the bus, and as I turned back toward the platform, I saw my mother hoist my youngest sister up on her hip, my brother and other sister falling in line behind her, the way she's taught us. I smiled because what I was really seeing was a tiger, no longer made of paper, gathering her cubs and preparing them for the long journey ahead.
Late that night on the bus, my sisters and brother already fast asleep, I asked my mother where we were going. She asked if I trusted her, a thing she did if she couldn't tell us something. I nodded yes and sat back in my seat, soon falling asleep to the breathing of my sister seated beside me.
I dreamed of paper tigers.