Ronnie and Lynne

Ronnie and Lynne were my step-brother and step-sister. I lived with them from the time I was six to ten years old. Ronnie and Lynne were Wayne's children. My mom married Wayne two weeks after they met and moved me and my brother away from the loving nest of our grandmother's home, into hell. Ronnie was seven years older than me and Lynne was my brother's age, four years older.

If I could embrace one word to describe how I perceived Ronnie's feelings towards me, I think "despise" would suffice. As for Lynne, I think the word best suited would be "contempt." Well then, those two words mean just about the same thing, so there you go. I learned to despise and feel contemptuous towards them after my mom and Wayne divorced and I didn't have to live with them anymore. Before that, I lived in dread.

Lynne was a big girl and not pretty. And she was mean. I used to envy her a bit though, the way she doted on herself after her shower, rubbing lotion all over her body and then sitting at her vanity curling her hair, filing her nails and giving herself an incredible amount of attentive care. I would watch her carry on, almost mesmerized. That level of self-care was foreign to me. I was fairly disheveled and couldn't be bothered to take the time for much personal hygiene.

When Lynne was irritated with me she would grab my arm and squeeze her manicured nails into my skin until I bled. She also liked to tattle on me to her father so I would be punished with his skinny, "razor" leather belt.

Ronnie used to babysit me and I guess he felt he wasn't compensated well enough by our parents so he took advantage of the other perts of the job that I provided for him.

He would send me to my bedroom to take a nap in my panties and usually I would just pretend to sleep while he had his fun. One day though, I just couldn't bare the thought of going through the routine and so I decided to hide from him. I was too afraid to actually run away so I devised a plan that I thought was the ultimate in hide-and-seek innovation. I knew that if I simply hid behind the curtain that he would notice the bulge. So, leaving the curtain closed, I opened the window and balanced on the windowsill, half of my body hanging outside of the window, and half inside, but not enough to disturb the curtain.

I heard my bedroom door open and Ronnie's voice mumbling as he sought out my hiding place. I heard him look in the closet and then under the bed, but to no avail. He was getting annoyed. How dare I have the audacity to resist him? I was praying fervently, "Please, God, don't let him find me, please God..." when the curtain parted and he stood there with a triumphant grin.