When Smiles Fade Read Online Free PDF Page B

much information as was necessary to explain the fresh bruises on her body to a concerned Mrs. Tisdale.
    During an unusually long winter, Emma came down with a violent case of the flu. The virus was going around school and most of the kids were affected. Annoyed that she had allowed herself to get sick, Pepper started picking on her as she lay in bed with nausea and high fever. Listening to his ranting, Emma was suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea and jumped off the bed, stumbling over her father as she made a run for the bathroom to vomit. She was just short of the toilet bowl when her insides heaved. Unable to hold back any longer, she puked all over the bathroom floor.
    Furious with her, Pepper demanded she clean the mess immediately. Gracie tried to step in and clean up for her sister, but their father pushed her out of the doorway and warned her not to intervene. Pepper stepped inside the bathroom, grabbed Emma by the hair, and pushed her face toward the pile of warm, smelly vomit.
    “If you don’t clean it up, you dirty little scumbag,” he snarled, “I’ll make you lick this floor clean!”
    Emma’s hands slid in the vomit as she tried to back away. Losing the battle against her father’s brute strength, her arms slipped out from under her. Her face slammed down onto the tile and into the pile of puke. She knew from the searing pain that shot up her nose that it was broken; the pain from the fracture was more intense now than her nausea. Blood streamed from her nose and into her mouth, its sour taste mingling with that of vomit and threatening to make her throw up again. In a panic, she lunged at a towel from the rack and began to wipe up the puke with it.
    “Alright, Daddy,” she whimpered. “I’ll take care of this mess. I’m really sorry for being such a pig and throwing up on the floor. I swear it won’t happen again. I’m just going to clean up the bathroom. Then I’ll go downstairs and make you dinner. I swear, Daddy? Is that okay?” she crooned, trying to make her voice sound as sweet as possible in an attempt to get her father to back off.
    Satisfied at having established that Emma understood his lack of tolerance for her illness, he turned to leave the bathroom. “Hurry up!” he snapped on his way out. “I’m hungry. You’ve played this sick card long enough!”
    Once he was gone, Gracie quickly stepped into the bathroom to help her sister. “Emma, are you okay?” she whispered. “I think your nose is broken. I think you need to go to the hospital.”
    Emma shook her head. “No, Gracie, I’m fine,” she told her. “I need to clean up here so I can go cook dinner. I don’t want him getting more upset than he is already.”
    While Pepper had been brutalizing Emma, Valerie sat in her bedroom, polishing her toenails and brushing her long, silky hair. She was selfishly grateful for not being the target of his rage. Besides, she thought to herself, if Emma would just do what he wanted Pepper wouldn’t have to beat her so often.

Chapter Seven
    For Emma’s thirteenth birthday, Mrs. Tisdale threw a small party for her after school. She invited Gracie, of course, along with her three sons, who were there more for the cake their mother had baked than for Emma. Nonetheless, they sang “Happy Birthday” and enjoyed big slices of the homemade chocolate cake that Mrs. Tisdale had lovingly decorated with chocolate icing and served with generous portions of vanilla ice cream. The girls were ecstatic; cake and ice cream wasn’t something they often had the pleasure of enjoying.
    While Emma was happy that Mrs. Tisdale had thrown a party for her, she was just as disheartened that no one in her own family had thought of celebrating her birthday at home. Neither of her parents acknowledged her birthday in the morning before the girls left for school. Emma’s birthday was always an annual reminder of how Pepper’s dreams had been stolen from him and his life reduced to nothing.
    At four thirty