She started having cold sores and unsightly rashes.

Mommy didn't protect Anita. Couldn't wouldn't. Turned the old blind eye. Anita's eyes changed from velvet brown to black lakes.
Bottomless lakes where dirty secrets sank through to the sludgy end. She started having cold sores and unsightly rashes. She would wake up in the middle of the night screaming so the nice china in the kitchen cabinet almost shattered. Mommy just rolled over and reached for the ear plugs. Sometimes Anita wet her  bed. That made mommy furious. Because she hated going to the laundromat. She would say to Anita: You're not a child anymore.

Anita was twelve when it started.

Later Anita started smoking cigarettes and hanging out with boys who drove stolen cars and drank beer and sniffed glue.

Mommy liked to watch TV. Mommy liked to drink white wine with an ice cube in. She liked mail-order catalogs. She liked her boyfriend. Or she liked the fact that she had one. That made her feel lucky, she said. But if she really would have thought about it, about him, maybe she would have come to the conclusion that he really didn't contribute anything but troubles.

Sometimes he would pick Anita up from school. That was the one good thing he did. So why the hell did Anita complain about it? Especially since he would buy her ice cream and soda?

She had just turned sixteen when she finally called the police. In mommy's boyfriend's computer there were many videos that he had made when he raped her in stairwells in public buildings. When he had brought friends along. When he forced her to perform oral sex on him on a polluted beach, behind some shrubs, under a cloud bursting with rain.