Hold Me In Your Dreams

In her darkened bedroom, Samantha quivered beneath the covers as she listened to the fight.  For the third time in as many nights, her father had come home drunk,  and the terrible things he was shouting at her mother made Samantha cringe with fear.  She wondered if the neighbors could hear it – how could they not?  Why doesn’t someone just call the police?

There was a terrible shout, a crashing sound, as though something had broken, and then her mother screamed.  More sounds like furniture breaking, and finally, the strangled little cries her mother made as she pleaded with him to stop, and then just the sound of her heart-rending sobs.

Now her father was bellowing, “Shut up!  Just shut up, dammit!”  Samantha shuddered.  She wanted to run downstairs to her mother, to try to comfort her, but she dared not.  Her father was extremely strong and extremely violent.  Tonight, he sounded as though he could kill someone.  She shrank down under the covers as far as she could.

Her heart almost stopped when she finally heard the clomp of his heavy shoes on the stairwell.   She stopped breathing altogether as the sounds halted just outside her bedroom door.  She remained absolutely still for what seemed like an eternity before he finally grunted and lurched off in a drunken stagger, bumping into the wall, headed for the room where he and her mother slept.  How could she stand him?   Samantha cried herself to sleep, weeping as quietly as she could into her pillow, which soon grew damp with her tears.  Finally, the waking nightmare ended and she dreamed.

She was playing in a sunny park in a small town somewhere.  There were shade trees, and picnic tables, and a small playground.  Across the street, in someone’s front yard, a riotous blaze of blue and yellow iris blossoms caught her glance as she swung slowly on the swing, dragging her heels in the dust.  She could smell freshly cut grass and wet concrete where spray from the lawn sprinkler had blown across the hot sidewalk.   She was humming to herself when the other girl appeared.  Shyly, they introduced themselves to one another, talked a little bit, and then together, they walked across the park, arm in arm, confiding secrets like old friends.  Samantha had no friends, no brothers or sisters, and so Mary, as the other girl called herself, seemed heaven-sent.  Samantha unburdened herself of all her cares and worries.  She and Mary sat in the dappled sunlight under a large cottonwood tree for what seemed like hours, joking and laughing, plucking four leaf clovers, and watching a group boys play soccer.

But finally it was time for Mary to go.  Evening had come, and the air was turning chilly, and she had to go home to dinner.  The girls parted with hugs, promising to meet again the next day.  And then Samantha woke up.

The dream recurred, night after night, as her father’s drunken homecomings became more violent and frightening.  She could hardly stand the sight of him in the morning.  He’d be lying in bed in his underclothes, snoring heavily.  There’d be the stink of stale beer in the room, and sometimes, she could smell his vomit.  He was disgusting.

Some mornings, her mother came downstairs with bruises on her face.  Samantha would kiss her and cry when she had to leave for school.  The day would pass, somehow, and she’d come home again in the evening and sit in melancholy silence with her mother, usually until quite late, straining to hear the sounds that told them he was home:  the sound of his car’s engine, the crunch of his tires on the gravel driveway, the slam of his door, the fumbling of his key in the lock.  Secretly, each of them hoped those sounds would never come again.  That the phone would ring, and that it would be the police, telling them he’d been killed.  They hated him and they feared him.  Samantha would pad silently up the stairs to bed before he burst through the front door, blind staggering drunk, cursing and shouting his filthy obscenities.

Once, her mother told her that she wished there was some place she could send Samantha, so that she could grow up happy.  Her mother cried.  Samantha tried bravely to comfort her, but when she herself went up to her bedroom later, she was crying, too.  And after her father returned home again that night, drunk and swearing, and after the inevitable row that followed, she drifted off to sleep, and dreamed of Mary.

It had become her refuge, her salvation.

Mary was perched atop the picnic table in the park, her knees drawn up under her chin, watching the sun go down behind the trees at the edge of town.  The air was crisp, and a slight breeze came up.  They both shivered.  Mary suddenly turned to Samantha and asked, “Sam, Could you have dinner with us? Could you stay over – spend the night?”  And Samantha had wanted nothing more.  If only it could be . . . if only she weren’t dreaming.  She buried her face in her arms and wept.

“It doesn’t look too hopeful,” the sheriff’s deputy said, sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa.  Samantha’s mother was grief-stricken.  “She’s been missing for a week,” he continued, “and usually that’s a bad sign.  I have to be honest with you.  We’ve searched the entire neighborhood.  We’ve interviewed dozens of families.  Nobody saw anything.  We haven’t uncovered a single lead, a single clue.  There’s just nothing we can do at this point but hope that someone comes forward – someone who may have seen Samantha last Saturday.  Tell me again, was she upset over anything?  If she just ran away, and wasn’t abducted, there may be hope.  She may turn up.”

Samantha’s mother was wringing her hands in her lap.  She nodded, almost imperceptibly.  “Her father – Samantha is afraid of her father.”

“Has he abused her?” the deputy wanted to know.

“Not physically.  He drinks, and he comes home yelling at me, and sometimes he shoves me around.  Sam seemed so distant and withdrawn for the last few weeks.  In the mornings, she’d hardly say a word.  It was as though she were in a different world.  And then she just . . . .”

But Samantha’s mother broke down completely at that point, and wailed hysterically, clutching at a small pillow, trying to rend it apart, and the deputy, who never knew how to handle it when it finally came to this, didn’t know what to say or do.

It wasn’t the same dream any more.  It was a different dream.  In it, Samantha’s father came to her with gentleness, sorrow and remorse written into his every movement.  He held his arms out and Samantha allowed him to sweep her up, and together they cried, and her father whispered “I love you” over and over again.  It was a sad dream, and Samantha strangled on her own emotion, swept away on a flood of warm and sorrowful forgiveness, grieving for what could have been, for what might have been . . .

“Are you alright?  Are you alright?  Sam, speak to me – are you okay?”  The arms gripped her shoulders and Samantha looked up into the face, blinking, trying to recognize it, trying to remember where she was, who she was.

“A dream, I had a dream, that’s all,” she finally answered, searching Mary’s eyes.