Without Oasis, a ministry of Kids Alive International, a 100-year-old charity that rescues at-risk children, these girls would likely remain broken, battered, and discarded in the barren desert of a government shelter that does not have the means to provide specialized care. But in Oasis, girls who are victims of child pornography, sex rings, trafficking, incest, rape, and other sexual crimes, some among the 4,700 Guatemalan girls between the ages of 10-14 who are impregnated by rape each year, they not only get a warm compassionate home, they get a bit of justice, too.
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The spring morning smelled of dank earth. Dense clouds, thick and rolling, hung heavy on the horizon. A few leftover drops from last night’s shower ran in rivulets down the drain where she could hear the water surging beneath the city.
She couldn’t cry anymore.
Her throat burned like tears, but the rain that fell from bloated clouds could not fall from empty eyes. Her cheek still ached from his back-handed blow. She traced shaky fingers across the swell. At least her injury came from his open hand and not his fist this time, or a belt like last Memorial Day when Patty from down the road found her sprawled on the tile, beaten bloody.
Read MoreA month ago, my 10-year-old son, Brady, hovered in a cannonball over the crystalline blue of our sparkling pool. I shielded my eyes from the sun, pressed play on my phone, and he splashed into the water and back out half a dozen times. Pressed together around the screen, my three boys laughed at the Instagram boomerang, and I shooed them back into the pool with promises to record some more later.
"Mom!" my 8-year-old, Kaden, called as eased himself from the ledge into the deep end. "Why don't you get in?"
I looked up from my phone. "Not today, bud."
"Aww." His mouth turned down as he bobbed in the water, but within a few seconds, he forgot me and started a game with Brennan, my 4-year-old.
"She never gets in." Brady met my eyes, then dove under when I started to protest.
My chest squeezed at his words, but I made excuses to the woman in my head who typically disapproves of the decisions I make.
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911 Operator: "911. What is your emergency?"
Me: Hyperventilating. "Yes, hello. I need you to send an officer to my house. Right now."
911 Operator: "Calm down, ma'am. What is the situation? Are you safe?"
Me: "Yes, I'm safe, but this is a very dire, very urgent problem. I'll need you to send someone immediately."
911 Operator: "Okay, ma'am. I'm dispatching someone to your property as we speak. What is the nature of your emergency?"
Me: "Yes, it's nature."
911 Operator: Pauses. "No, I mean, what is the problem?"
Me: In a whisper. "It's my son."
911 Operator: "Speak up, ma'am. I cannot hear you. What is the problem?"
Me: Shouting in despair. "It's my SON!"
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Kids groan when they hear that they're being assigned an essay test. They stress about sentences. They agonize about organizing. Essays can certainly cramp a kid's style.
They don't need to.
You can help your child prepare to score as high as she can during an essay exam with a few simple tricks. But first, you need to know what's expected of her.
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As the mugginess of a July dusk washed over us from the outside, we heard cars rattling by in the rutted dirt road as George Kell called the play-by-play on WDIV-TV.
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The beating inside my chest, that fluttering of an idea, the winged creature encapsulated in my ribcage flaps mercilessly as I take the toddler's temperature or sit, jailed and impatient, behind the wheel in the carline to pick up my shiny-haired boys from school.
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Brennan, my three-year-old son, is standing at the refrigerator door, balanced precariously on a kitchen chair. "I can get my OWN juice," he tells me.
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My 9-year-old lost another tooth today at school, and I can't begin to express the level of devastation this caused me in the ensuing hours.
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