(A possible perspective of a mother on her little girl’s abuse by the father)
You probably hate me. I know I do. Everything is so upside down. . not the way it was supposed to be. Nobody is to know. I have to be sure of that. Nobody knows . . . but I do.
If only I hadn’t married him. If only I had known. Well, I guess I did know. But not the part about how it would be now, when everything has to be a secret, when I have to hide his insanity from everyone, when I have to make myself a stone inside every time he . . .
Booze helps. It helps that mother place inside me stay dead. I need that to help calm the gut wrenching pain that only a mother can know. Something has to be done with that . . . that tearing of my soul.
He has his grip on me. 
Sometimes when the horror of it all rakes its fingernails across my mother’s heart, when I can’t stand the look in my little ones eyes, I go to my dead place inside . . . but it still hurts. Her eyes . . . they need me . . . she needs me. What kind of a **** mother am I anyway?
There is always a first time . . . oh, not that . . . no . . . no . . . just take me instead. She’s so little. You’ll hurt her. Look away . . . look away. Stop . . . stop. Oh no . . .
He has his grip on me.
I wish I didn’t have ears. I wish I couldn’t hear her when he takes her . . . when they have their way with her. Something needs to be the cotton for my soul, stuffed tightly there at that place inside me where it bleeds for her . . . for what they are doing to her . . .
Do you think I don’t know? Do you think I don’t care? Do you think I don’t wish to God that I could stop it all . . . that I could rescue my little one . . . my precious little one?
He has his grip on me.
How could I love the one, the monster that abuses her, that makes her bleed . . . but somehow I do. I know that he knows what he is doing, how he is destroying his little girl. I know that afterwards when he comes down from his high, he feels terrible. He does . . . doesn’t he?
There are two kinds of love, the love I have for him and the love I have for her. It isn’t fair . . . they are at war in my heart . . . they arm wrestle for my soul . . . and he always wins. He has to. I have no other place to go. Where would I go? What would I do? He would come after me, no matter what. I am sure of that.
He has his grip on me.
There are times when I daydream, when I go far away from here, to a place where she would be safe . . . to a place where I would be safe . . . from his rage . . . from his fists . . . from his insanity. I dream of that place where everything is O.K. . . . where everything is calm and quiet . . . and safe.
I’ve never been safe. Even before my brothers took me as their wife, I was broken. They just finished the job. She, like me now, knew what they did to me, their sister, when the smell of alcohol was strong on their breath. And she, like me now, did nothing. How could she? Like me now, she was married to a man whose secrets she had to hide . . . like me now, she too had to hide the black eyes, the bruises, the deadness in her own mother heart.
He has his grip on me.
He grips me with his insanity as his hands close tightly around my neck. His face comes close as I try to interfere, to stop the madness, to keep her safe. But his real grip is on my soul. It closes in on me . . . it pushes down on me . . . it brings the tragedy of hopelessness to that special mother place inside.
It’s hopeless . . . there’s no way out . . .
He has his grip on me . . .
