Anna laid in her bed as she heard screams escape her mother’s throat and the loud noise of plates smashing on the floor downstairs.  She kept her eyes closed as the noises, she was used to hearing, grew progressively louder with each minute that passed by.

She heard her father scream vulgar names at her mother. “S***.” “B****.” “W****.”  Anna wondered what Mommy could have done wrong this time.

After a half hour of fighting, Anna could not take it any more.  She crawled under her bed and prayed to “the man in the sky” – that’s what Mommy had told her to do before.

She heard Daddy’s loud footsteps stomp up the stairs and pass her room.  She heard a door open, slam, and then open again.  Back down the stairs he went.  The house went silent. Until she heard a click.

“Boom.” “Boom.” “Boom.”  Anna peaked out underneath her bed.  “Did the man in the sky hear my prayers?” She thought.

Anna’s tiny body crept down the stairs in her pink footie pajamas.  She poked her head out from behind the wall into the kitchen.  Red covered the walls, the kitchen floor, and worse her father’s hands as he cried over Mommy’s limp body.

Anna’s young mind couldn’t comprehend.  She asked her Dad, “was Mommy painting? Why is she sleeping on the floor?”  “Dont worry Baby,” he said, sobs in his voice.

He picked her up in his red-smeared arms and brought her back upstairs, where he tucked her back into her bed.  She rolled over onto her side.