Crystal stared at her mother across the dinner table, searching for a sign that she was conscious of what was going on in the bathroom down the hall. A grimace, perhaps a single tear, anything to indicate her awareness; but there was nothing. Her mother continued to carry the food from her plate to her mouth as if oblivious to the chaos around them.
Crystal silently pleaded. "Where are you mom? I know you hear them. Make it stop, please make him stop."
Again, nothing, only the scrape of utensil on plate and her own sobs bubbling up from her throat.
She could hear her sister, Amy's, pitiful cries as she struggled to breathe, while swallowing the water their father forced down her throat. Only when she vomited was she allowed to stop drinking long enough to catch a breath. Then once again made to drink and drink and drink. She'd been locked in the bathroom with him for twenty long cruel minutes as he drilled her on proper dinner etiquette. Her crime had been gulping her milk too loudly at the dinner table. In her mind Crystal could not see how such an indiscretion could warrant so cruel a punishment. Dad had dragged Amy by the hair, jerking her from the dinner table, sloshing a pitcher of water as they headed for the bathroom. He'd been forcing her to drink ever since. All the while Crystal and her mother continued to sit before their dinner plates acting as if this were a normal family meal.
In some ways it was. Amy was not the only one who occasionally needed correction. Crystal carried her own scars from a lesson in table manners . Dad had taught her never, to use her fingers to push food onto a fork. His method of teaching meant a quick trip to the stove where gravy bubbled in the frying pan. Crystals hand had been shoved down into the brown sauce and held there until her screams assured him she would never make the same mistake again. As painful as that lesson had been, it was nothing compared to this. Hearing her beloved Amy's cries and unable to rescue her.
At last her fathers rage subsided and he stopped the torture as quickly as he'd started. Without saying a word, the two of them headed back to the dinner table, sat down quietly, and continued their meal as if nothing had ever taken place. Crystals mother glanced up at her husband and said.
" For dessert I made peach cobbler. Won't that be nice girls?"
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