“Please stop… please, it hurts!” Anisa screamed.

Tears stained my cheeks. I could hear my sister crying, but I couldn’t do anything. I wished that we could switch places; that was how much I loved her. I knew the pain that she went through, and would take it all for her if I could, but I couldn’t. He never chose me. It was always her. She was fourteen, and budding into womanhood early, while I was only twelve and still composed of all elbows and knees. There wasn’t a curve to my body, so he ignored me mostly, but he violated Anisa, which meant he violated me.

I could hear the bed creaking from the other room, the headboard banging against the wall as a constant reminder of the atrocity that was happening behind closed doors. We wanted to tell someone, but who would believe us? Perry was smart. He made sure that he never hit Anisa. He never even left a mark. The sucking he did on her premature breasts was done lightly as to not leave any sign of trespass. We were scared, always walking around on eggshells and feeling like strangers in our own house.

The knocking of the headboard against the wall stopped, and I knew that it was finally over.

I waited in the bottom of the closet just as Anisa instructed me to. She always told me to hide and not come out until she came for me. The closet door creaked open and there stood my big sister. Her hair was wild and her eyes were red from crying. I took her hand and led her into the hallway bathroom. I was used to this routine. She never liked to talk afterwards, and she never looked me in the eye. I knew she was ashamed, but what she didn’t know was that I was ashamed too, because I just sat there and let it happen to her. I locked the bathroom door and ran a tub full of steaming bathwater. Anisa got right in, ignoring the sting of hot water against her bare skin. She hugged her legs to her chest, and I rubbed her hair gently while we both cried silently as she scrubbed her sins away.