Daughter’s Prison – part 1

My name is Janine Simms, Janey for short. I am 30 years
old. I live here in Georgia, in the midst of the Savannah
marshlands. I live with my younger brother Timmy, and my
daughter Hope. We live a quiet but peaceful life.

For all these years, I have been silent about what had
happened to me, trying to forget; but of late, the
memories have been coming back, filling me with haunting
pain. I figure the only way I can ever escape these
memories is to tell my story to someone else. And
so…here’s my story.

I grew up in the woods of Pennsylvania, the eldest
daughter of Rupert and Erin Simms. I had one younger
brother; Timothy-he was the most adorable little sibling.
Our parents were normal rural parents.

Sundays we’d all attend service like all the other
families in the area, Mom was an active member of the
church choir. We were everything you’d expect from the
average American family. That all changed during the
winter of my fourteenth year. Mom got stricken with
cancer, at the young age of 36. I had just turned 14
years old, and Timmy was 3. It was now only us two kids
and dad.

When Mom died, we all took it really hard. But we never
really shared our grief together, as a family. Timmy was
only 3, so he was too young for her death to really
impact him, and as for Dad, well; he just got really
moody, and spent most of his time outside the house.

While he had never really been the warmest father to us,
even while Mom had been alive, he was almost distant now.
Many nights, he would come home drunk, the smell of booze
and cigarettes all over his clothing. For the most part,
it was just me and Timothy at home. I wound up having to
do most of the housework. I was only 14 then, and most of
the times, it was just us two fending for ourselves.

My body started to really develop about the time I turned
fifteen. I think Dad also became aware of my development
then, because I began to notice him eyeing my chest-at
first furtively, but then more and more openly as time
went on. We were never really a cuddling type of family,
so I knew things weren’t quite okay when he started
asking me for hugs, or when Timmy and I would be watching
a movie in the living room, and he’d walk in, sit on his
couch, and pat his lap and ask for his little girl to sit
in Daddy’s lap.

A few months after my fifteenth birthday, I’d come home
from school to find him still there, snoozing on the
couch with a newspaper and an opened can of beer.