Free Prayers and Lies by Sherri Wood Emmons

slammed his fist down on the table so hard the silverware rattled. “That will be enough of that, young lady. You are excused from the table!”
    But Tracy had already left the table. She pounded up the stairs to the attic room we shared, and we heard the door slam shut. Then the screaming started—long, terrible shrieks punctuated by the slamming of drawers and the thudding of books being thrown across the room.
    Nancy and Melinda and I sat as quietly as we could. Whatever the truth was about Bobby Lee didn’t matter now. Tracy had lost control again.
    Mother sat frozen for a moment, then rose abruptly and walked into the kitchen. “I think I forgot to turn off the oven,” she murmured. I knew she was lying—we all did.
    Daddy looked at the three of us and smiled wanly. “Well, girls, eat your supper now.”
    He spooned mashed potatoes onto his plate and ladled pan gravy on top. We ate in silence until Mother returned. She was composed, but her eyes sparkled suspiciously and her nose was red. She gave Daddy an impenetrable stare, then sat back down at the table and took up Reana Mae’s letter again.
    “Let’s see what else Reana Mae has to say,” she said brightly. She read the letter out loud, so everyone heard how Ruthann had finally let her beau kiss her cheek and how Caleb had argued with Ray over a hunting knife that was missing. Normally, I wouldn’t have let anyone else read Reana Mae’s letter—especially the part about Ruthann, who would be mortified if she knew her first kiss had been talked about all the way to Indiana. But tonight I didn’t make a peep.
    Tracy’s fits were the subject of many whispered discussions in our house in those days. She’d always been moody, explosive even, but since starting junior high school, she’d become a living time bomb, as if reaching adolescence had set off something dangerous inside her. She seemed happy enough at school. She was on the student council, she made the honor roll every semester, and she was a cheerleader. She hung out with the right crowd, flirted in the school yard at lunch, and had a steady stream of friends calling on the phone.
    At home, however, she was completely unpredictable. It seemed like she held it together through the school day and then just had to let loose when she hit the front steps of our house. We never knew what would set her off—an interrupted phone call, a perceived slight, a giggle at the wrong time. She said we were out to get her, and her beautiful hazel eyes radiated suspicion and hostility most of the time—except, of course, when she was being charming. And the change from charming to rage could come as suddenly as lightning.
    It was a terrible rage when it came. When Tracy was raging, the only thing to do was get out of her way, fast. She poured red fingernail polish on Melinda’s white bedspread because Melinda laughed at her platform shoes. She wadded Nancy’s clothes into a pillowcase and lit them in the trash-burning pit because Nancy wouldn’t let her borrow a blouse. Even Mother wasn’t above abuse. One time when Tracy had to miss a party because of a church dinner, she took the kitchen scissors and cut Mother’s best party dress into shreds.
    Tracy and I shared the attic of our small house. The room ran the entire length of the house, and Daddy had let us choose the décor—an explosion of bright, primary colors. Crazy quilts covered the beds; posters of Mac Davis, Glen Campbell, and Bobby Sherman plastered the walls; stuffed animals and trolls with neon hair filled every available surface of the shelves, the beds, and the dressers.
    I had been thrilled two years before when Daddy and some men from the church had finally finished the attic into a bedroom for us. But now I spent as little time there as possible. I lived in fear of setting off one of Tracy’s fits. At nights I lay awake, waiting for her to fall asleep, afraid that if I slept first, she might kill me in my sleep—I’d never forgotten