In the beginning, there was the fighting and the arguing. The little girl saw it, and she heard it and she felt it and she knew it was wrong. just like she knew it was wrong for her to feel so creepy around her weird grandfather. Just like she knew it was wrong what her cousin, Jana, did to her while Jana's brother watched from around the corner when he thought he was hidden. But she felt so small and helpless, she didn't know how to make any of it stop. She sometimes felt so small, she wasn't sure that anyone else even knew she was there. She was only six years old, and nobody listened to kids anyway. At least not anyone she knew.

She hated going to school. Every time she thought about it, her stomach started hurting. It felt like the feeling she would get when she was homesick, but she had it even when she was at home. It was like the big knot she got in her stomach when her parents started fighting, because she never knew if they were going to start throwing things, or if one of them would just up and leave. There was the one time, when she was sitting in the kitchen floor coloring, that her mother got off the telephone where she had been arguing with her father, and she told the little girl, "When your father gets home, tell him I have gone to commit suicide and don't come looking for me". The little girl didn't know what "sueyside" was, but it sounded bad to her. What she did know for sure was that her mother was leaving again, and the little girl would be all alone. She had no idea when her daddy was going to be home from work. Before her mother left, she walked over, got her purse, and got a pill bottle out of it. The little girl had seen this bottle often, when her mother would get it and take one of the little yellow pills, and then go take a really long nap. This time, her mother poured a whole bunch of the pills into her hand and took them all at once. Then, without another word, or even a backwards glance at the little girl, her mother walked out the front door, got in the car and drove off.

The little girl stared at the front door for quite a while, listening to the utter silence of the house and smelling the leftover smoke of her mother's last cigarette she had been chain-smoking before she left. Then, with a sigh, the little girl just went back to coloring in the kitchen floor, while a couple of tears rolled down her cheeks. Hours passed and it was beginning to get dark. She saw lights, and knew her daddy was home. Finally she wasn't alone anymore! Her daddy walked in and said, "Where is your mother?". The little girl told him what her mother had said before she left, and then told him what she had seen her mother do. He turned a little pale, and cursed under his breath and turned around and ran out the door. Suddenly, she was alone again. And it was dark. All of this time, since her mother had left, she had sat in the kitchen floor. Now she just stood up, and went to her room and lay down on the bed. She turned on the radio so it wouldn't be so quiet and maybe she wouldn't feel so alone. After some time had passed, her daddy came back home and told her that her mother was in the hospital. He told her they had to go to the hospital to see her mother and to get ready and get in the car. She didn't want to go. She didn't want to see her mother, but felt guilty for feeling that way. She couldn't understand why it was so easy for her mother to just walk out the door and leave her all alone. She was angry with her mother and felt like if it was so easy for her mother to walk out and leave her all alone, why should she have to go see her.

But, the little girl loved her daddy, and did what he told her to do. After a long, almost silent ride to the hospital, they went in. Before they went to see her mother, a nurse asked to talk to the little girl. The nurse asked her what had happened before her mother had left the house. The little girl told her everything, including the part about what her mother had said about "sueyside", and getting the yellow pills out of her purse and taking them. The nurse sat there looking at her for a minute, and then asked her if she could show her the pill bottle if the nurse got her mother's purse. The little girl thought about it and decided she probably could. When the nurse went to get her mother's purse, the little girl started worrying, because there was one hard and fast rule at their house. Never get into your mother's purse! Now she was going to have to look in her mother's purse while her father was sitting right there! That big knot in her stomach got even bigger.

The nurse came back with the purse, and the little girl was so confused. She didn't want to make her daddy mad about looking in her mother's purse, but the nurse had said it would help them to be able to help her mother if she could show them which bottle the pills had come from. The nurse handed her the purse, a black and off white purse with gold colored metal clasps and white straps. The little girl just stared at it for a second, terrified to open it, because her daddy was sitting right there beside her. Her daddy must have figured out what was going through her mind, because finally he said, "It's okay, you can look in your mother's purse and show the nurse what your mother took". The little girl was still very nervous about the whole situation and felt sick to her stomach by now. She hadn't eaten all day since breakfast, and it was getting late now, and she was very upset by all of the things going on. But she opened her mother's purse, and looked inside. The first thing she saw was her mother's cigarette case, some tissues, and her mother's bright red lipstick she always wore. The little girl moved these things to the side, and saw the bottle of pills. She took it out and told the nurse that she thought that was the bottle she saw her mother get the pills from. The nurse opened the pill bottle and showed the pills to the little girl. There were the little yellow pills, with the heart design cut out of the middle. This was the first time the little girl ever heard the word "Valium". Little did she know it sure wouldn't be the last.

TO BE CONTINUED...