The Guardian by Keisha Orphey

damn obvious his family didn’t approve of their marriage. They’d simply dealt with his decision. And with every pregnancy, their attitude grew colder. More distant.
            My family , he’d said. Wasn’t she his family? Her and the kids? Hadn’t his church-going mother taught him the word of the Bible? That man is supposed to leave his parents, cleave to his wife, and be head of his own household?
            That’s when she thought of her mother.
She’d never forget the tears that poured from her mother’s eyes, as Dawn (only three-years old then) and her older brother Xavier fled their paternal grandmother’s house.
            Something happened.
            A barrage of scarring words was exchanged between grandma, her mother, and her father’s sisters (her father’s sisters had taken grandma’s side, of course. That much Dawn remembered). She wished she could travel back in time and console her mother as she, herself, now needed consoling.
            Dawn dreaded the summer as a child. For as long as she could remember, her father would bring her and Xavier to their grandparents in the country. The same home Edward Miles grew up in with his parents and four siblings. Sylvia avoided the trip. The house was hot; just a window unit blew room temperature air in the kitchen. The property was situated on about five acres of land with dozens of heads of cattle and horses, but the animals were off limits. An electric fence ran the length of the lot like a decorative fixture. The shock felt like a bee sting, but nothing in comparison to the pain she experienced at the hands of her cousins.
            Frank and Oscar lived about an eighth of a mile down the uneven road from their grandparents with their parents and three siblings. The yard of the shabby wood-frame home was littered with broken lawn mowers, but Xavier much preferred spending time there than at his grandparents. At least they had air conditioning. Dawn wondered now if Xavier remembered Frank and Oscar’s disgusting behavior. Or did he even know they’d take turns pulling her into the dim lit bathroom to show her their erect penises. Where was Xavier when this was happening? Had Frank and Oscar found reason to send Xavier out of the house while they took his five-year old sister in the bathroom? Where was their sister Tabitha? Dawn remembered how much Tabitha enjoyed eating raw margarine and how Frank and Oscar fondled her on a riding lawn mower.
            What had become of the life she dreamed of as a child? She felt raped by her own family.  And the man lying beside her now felt like a stranger. An intruder in her bed. Maybe they’d never known one another. Two people swept in a moment of possible forever. A forever not even his family approved of.
            The house was quiet. The kids were asleep. For a moment longer, she lay in the darkness. Even the street lay silent. She barely remembered crawling in bed; it must have been around seven that evening after dinner and time with the kids. She remembered Christopher’s detailed account of his love of archery and how one day he hoped to be a sniper in the military. I’m gonna shoot those bad men right in the head and save our country! He’d said. And I’m gonna run’em over with big tanks! Mason had added in his adorable three-year old voice, falling onto his brother’s back playfully. She’d read Cat in the Hat to Sierra on the sofa, as the one-year old fell asleep in her arms.
            This was the part of her life she’d loved. Cherished. Treasured.
            Dawn smiled and turned on her side facing Philip’s back. The wall between them. What happened to us? She thought, extending her hand to caress his warm skin. He shifted and mumbled inaudibly, as if disgruntled. As if her touch disgusted him, even in slumber.
            “Hey,” she whispered