“Laura the Beast”
I suppose I should feel sorry for all the grieve I caused my cousin growing up, but she never understood why I acted out the way I did. I knew why. I always knew why. But no one cared to ask me why. Wish they would have ’cause I wanted to talk to someone about it. I wanted a shoulder to cry into, but for the longest time, that wasn’t something anyone was willing to give me. Not until I was my seventh birthday began to rear it’s head.
Whitney put up with nearly two full years of the reign of Laura the Beast. But after a while, she had enough. Looking back on it, now, I can say that every time I did something bad or broke something or acted out in some way, I was desperately hoping that someone would sit me down and ask me why the hell I was being such a brat.
By that time, Whitney had married Taylor Bane and had given birth to Sasha. Her attention was hungry for her own family, but Aunt Heather and Uncle Joseph were still far to busy with their respective jobs to watch me, and my other cousins were simply too young or too scared of me. If my memory serves me correctly, Maxwell was still in the hospital with a broken arm from his encounter with me. That should give you an idea of just how bad I was.
Aunt Heather…she would always come home towards the end of the wars and find me nose first in a corner, my ass sore from a series of spankings that Whitney was growing tired of giving and which were becoming harder and harder with each series. The older wolf would just frown at me most days. Sometimes though, she would pick me up and just hold me. She didn’t have to ask why I was such a brat, she already knew. As did Uncle Joseph, who could stand to look at me in the eyes, for they never held any bit of hatred, but caged my sorrow and pain like a beast in a zoo.
Heather lost her sister and niece just as I lost my sister and mother. She understood my pain and knew it never went away. She of all people taught me that it was okay to cry, though I never shed a tear in those two years after my loss. I don’t know why I didn’t. I guess my counselor would argue that I had some odd urge to be a grown up; that I had to “be the woman of the house” and wanted to show everyone how tough I was. Maybe that’s part of the reason.
I remember catching Aunt Heather wiping away tears most nights. It wasn’t ever mentioned out loud, but I always suspected that she often stopped by the graves of my mother and sister to give them the report on all the horrible things I was doing. It was only later that she informed me that she never said a word when she looked at those graves, but just shed a lot of tears.
Anyways, I remember it was an extremely hot day in Earth when Whitney’s patients with me finally broke. Of course, it didn’t help that I attacked Sasha for no real good reason. Sasha was always Whitney’s little angel.
From what I can recall, it was pouring outside, and Whitney wouldn’t let either of us go out. “No, you’ll just track mud through the house, and I don’t want my mom to yell at me for it,” she said.
Whitney was understandably nervous whenever I got close to Sasha. With the wolf fox mix being only two, she was the center of attention. Now, as far back as I can remember, I loved to draw and build things. This is why Aunt Heather kept a healthy supply of paper, crayons, colored pencils and legos around. That day, Whitney gave her daughter some of my paper and crayons to play with, which I was furious about.
As soon as I saw what she had, I marched over to Sasha and pushed her, shouting, “These are MINE! DON’T TOUCH THEM!”
“Laura! Leave Sasha alone!” Whitney ordered as she sat on a nearby couch and watched us intently.
“But she has my stuff!” I spat. “I don’t want her touching my stuff.”
As I said that, the little pup reached up and stole back a couple of crayons, which got her a slap across her arm. Sasha has never been one to cry just to cry, and even the sting of my slap didn’t draw tears.
“Don’t hit her! You have plenty of other crayons and things. Why don’t you go play with your legos,” Whitney suggested, and I could tell, even then that her stress levels were elevated just because I was near her daughter.
Having a reputation for injuring any child I came across meant I didn’t have very many friends, and the ones I did have, I never got to see because everyone was afraid I what I would do. But, I didn’t care about friends at that time. My two greatest friends of all time abandoned me to the harshness of life and I was afraid that if they could leave so suddenly, so could my other friends, and I didn’t want to experience that again.
I tried to fight Sasha for my stuff again, but Whitney snatched me up and plopped me down a good twenty feet away from Sasha. Quickly, my gray-furred cousin went into my room and grabbed my bucket of building blocks and set it down before me. “Play with these and leave Sasha alone or I blister your butt and lock you in your room, understood?”
Reluctantly, I conceded and began to build a city using my blocks. I remember Taylor never liked coming over while Whitney was babysitting, because she would always have her eyes and attention locked on me to make sure I wasn’t getting into any trouble. However, that day, Taylor did decide to show up, which proved to be a blessing.
Sasha eventually grew tired of my paper and crayons and decided that she wanted to play with my legos. She wandered over and pushed herself into my little city, completely destroying it. Not happy about that, I shoved her to the ground and punched her a couple times as hard as I could before I brought my claws across her back a couple times. That got her screaming in pain. “DON’T TOUCH MY STUFF!” I screamed over her. “STUPID IDIOT! I wish you were never born!”
I barely got the last part out before Whitney grabbed and dragged me into my very pink room. Her patients was at a breaking point. Which is understandable as Sasha had to get stitches and her scars still haven’t gone away. I can’t look at them, for remembrance of that day would rush back full of guilt.
Whitney sat me in a chair at a pink drawing table. “Laura Marileen Graives, you sit right here in this chair and you can either draw or whatever, but I do not want you to move from this spot until Mom gets home. If you do, I swear to God himself that I will put you over my knee and literally spank you until you can’t sit. And then you will go to bed without any lunch or dinner or snacks, is that understood?”
I didn’t get a chance to respond, which always meant that she didn’t care if I understood or not, she was intent on keeping her promise. “What do you care what I do?” I called after her. “You don’t even care about me! All you care about is your stupid husband and your stupid daughter! You wouldn’t even care if I killed myself!”
My cousin paused at that last part. She didn’t want me to think that way, but she also didn’t know what to say to it. Taylor gave her a kiss on the cheek while he held their crying daughter in one arm and chatted with the 911 operator with the other hand.
The silence that she gave me just made me angrier. I slammed the door to my room as hard as I could and turned on my little pink CD player that instantly belted out the Def Leppard album that I had in it. I turned up my music as loud as I could. Getting no response from my cousin, I took the chair I was suppose to be sitting in and proceeded to destroy my drawing table and put some serious holes in the walls of my room.
Finally, Whitney swung the door open and caught the chair as I tried to swing it at her, my strength all but gone, tears finally close to pouring down my cheeks. That was temporarily halted when Whitney tossed the chair aside and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck. Quickly she sat on the edge of my bed and put me over her knee. After lifting up the skirt I had on and pull down my underwear, she proceeded to keep her promise and made sure that my hide was so sore I couldn’t sit. After dressing me again, she laid me on my bed. “I hate you!” I spat.
“What am I going to do with you, Laura? I can’t keep spanking you. That doesn’t seem to be working. Nothing works on you. You are just determined to be a little monster, and I am sick and tired of having to fight with you all the time,” Whitney said.
“Why don’t you just kill me and then I would be out of your life,” I replied, wanting more to be with my mother and sister than relieve her stress.
“Oh my word, Laura. I don’t want you to die. You’re my little cousin. I love you, but I don’t know….I don’t know what to do. What do you want from me?”
That was close enough to the question I was looking for all those years. I couldn’t fight the tears anymore and as I said, “I want my Mommy!” the tears flooded from me in a torrent that had spent two years building steam.
Whitney picked me up and held me while I just cried into her shoulder. “I know you miss your mother and sister, Laura. I know. I miss her too, we all do,” she told me.
I repeated. “I want my mommy,” over and over in hopes that the shoulder I was crying into would somehow turn into my mother’s. But she was really gone.
When Aunt Heather came through the door, she glanced at Sasha, but couldn’t ignore my crying and soon took me from Whitney. She cried with me. As did Whitney. Everyone cried that day. Even Taylor and Uncle Joseph. But no one cried more than I did. I wept until I fell asleep. And when I woke up, I cried some more.
For many nights after that I would often wake up in the middle of the night, crying, and Aunt Heather would instantly rush in and cry with me. There were even nights when I woke up in the middle of the night already on Aunt Heather’s lap.
That wasn’t the complete end to Laura the Beast, but I wasn’t nearly as nasty after that. Aunt Heather even threw me a birthday party and invited some of my friends. I still remember my sixth birthday party ended with me crying into Cindy’s shoulder. Cynthia Torane was my closest friend, and like a sister to me. That is what got me crying that time.
It took another year for my outburst of crying to subside to the point where everyone could get a full night’s sleep. It felt good to cry. Still does. I don’t cry as much anymore, and it is only when remembering my mother that my tears seek the open air. I would always miss my mother. Always. She was the greatest friend I have ever known, despite only knowing her for five short years. Those are still some of the happiest years of my life.
