The Rules of Survival
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - MURDOCH
Chapter 2 - ABOUT FEAR
Chapter 3 - MY FIRST MEMORY
Chapter 4 - SEARCHING FOR MURDOCH
Chapter 5 - MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT
Chapter 6 - NICOLE (NIKKI) MARIE O’GRADY WALSH
Chapter 7 - PORTUGUESE SEAFOOD PAELLA
Chapter 8 - MIRACLE SUMMER
Chapter 9 - ON THE ROCKS
Chapter 10 - CALLIE’S DREAM
Chapter 11 - THE BREAKUP
Chapter 12 - FUN, FUN, FUN
Chapter 13 - FATHERS
Chapter 14 - THINGS USUALLY WORK OUT OKAY
Chapter 15 - THE RULES OF SURVIVAL
Chapter 16 - PRAYER
Chapter 17 - “TELLING”
Chapter 18 - CALLIE’S PLAN
Chapter 19 - DEMONS
Chapter 20 - CHURCH
Chapter 21 - RIGHT AFTERWARD
Chapter 22 - AUNT BOBBIE
Chapter 23 - FIRST BLOOD
Chapter 24 - THE NEIGHBOR
Chapter 25 - MURDOCH’S DEMONS
Chapter 26 - PROPERTY
Chapter 27 - LIAR
Chapter 28 - GET RID OF HER
Chapter 29 - ALLIES
Chapter 30 - NOWHERE TO GO
Chapter 31 - SISTERS
Chapter 32 - JULIE LINDEMANN AGAIN
Chapter 33 - THE NEW BENJAMIN WALSH
Chapter 34 - CALLIE
Chapter 35 - A FAMILY CHRISTMAS
Chapter 36 - CHRISTMAS EVE
Chapter 37 - MEN ARE IDIOTS
Chapter 38 - CRASH
Chapter 39 - THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
Chapter 40 - FAMILY MEETING
Chapter 41 - MY OWN ROOM
Chapter 42 - THE ADULTS
Chapter 43 - HOMECOMINGS
Chapter 44 - THIS HOMECOMING
Chapter 45 - WAR ZONE
Chapter 46 - TANTRUM
Chapter 47 - MY FAULT
Chapter 48 - UNKNOWN NUMBER
Chapter 49 - PORT OF BOSTON
Chapter 50 - THE O.K. CORRAL
Chapter 51 - LIKE ME
Chapter 52 - MY PROMISE
Chapter 53 - P. S.
Acknowledgements
Teaser chapter
impossible
ALSO BY NANCY WERLIN
THE HARSH TRUTH
The human instinct for self-preservation is strong. I know, because mine pulls at me, too, like the needle on a compass. And everybody—I’ve been reading some philosophy—everybody seems to agree that the instinct and responsibility of all humans is to take care of themselves first. You have the right to survive, if you can.
But how come there don’t seem to be any rules about when you ought to help others survive? Rules telling you when that’s worth some risk to yourself? Callie and I were working so hard for you, Emmy, but as far as I could see, nobody else cared at all. For any of us.
ALSO BY NANCY WERLIN
Are You Alone on Purpose?
Black Mirror
Double Helix
Extraordinary
Impossible
The Killer’s Cousin
Locked Inside
SPEAK
Published by the Penguin Group
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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by Dial Books,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006
First published in paperback by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., in 2008
This edition published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., in 2011
Copyright © Nancy Werlin, 2006
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DIAL EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Werlin, Nancy.
The rules of survival / Nancy Werlin.
p. cm.
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their emotionally and physically abusive mother.
ISBN : 978-1-101-57626-7
[ 1. Child abuse—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction.
3. Emotional problems—Fiction.] I. Title
PZ7.W4713Ru 2006
[Fic]—dc22 2006001675
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
This book is for all the survivors. Always remember:
The survivor gets to tell the story.
Dear Emmy,
As I write this, you are nine years old, too young to be told the full and true story of our family’s past, let alone be exposed to my philosophizing about what it all meant. I don’t know how old you’ll be when you do read this. Maybe you’ll be seven–teen, like I am now. Or maybe much older than that—in your twenties or even thirties.
I have decided to write it all down for you, and I will, but that decision doesn’t keep me from having doubts. I wonder if maybe it would be better if you never read this. I wonder if you really need to know exactly what happened to us—me, you, Callie—at the hands of our mother. As I sit here writing, part of me hopes that you go along happily your whole life and never need or want to know the details. I believe that’s what Aunt Bobbie hopes for, and Callie. I can understand that. For example, I have to admit that I don’t want to know any details about what hap–pened when our mother kidnapped you—so long as you’ve forgotten it, anyway. So long as you’re not having screaming nightmares or something.
But if you are reading this letter, that means you are about to find out everything I know. It means I will have decided to tell you—decided twice. Once, by writing it all down now. And then again, by giving this to you to read sometime in the future.
I hope my memories of that time won’t always be as clear as they are now. As I write, I only have to focus and I’m there again, in the past. I’m thir–teen and fourteen and fifteen—or younger. It was terrible living through it the first time, but I think it’s going to be almost as bad to live through it once more on paper. To try . . . not just to get it all down accurately, but to understand it. I need to make sense of it. I need to try to turn the experience into something valuable for you, and for myself—not just something to be pushed away and forgotten.
Emmy, the events we lived through taught me to be sure of nothing about other people. They taught me to expect danger around every corner. They taught me to understand that there are people in this world who mean you harm. And sometimes, they’re people who say they love you.
Matthew
1
MURDOCH
For me, the story begins with Murdoch McIlvane.
I first saw Murdoch when I was thirteen years old. Callie was eleven, and Emmy, you were only five. Back then, you talked hardly at all. We weren’t even sure if you’d be able to start school when you were supposed to in the fall. Don’t misunderstand—we knew you were smart. But school, well, you know how they are, wanting everybody to act alike.
That particular night in August, it was over a hundred degrees, and so humid that each breath felt like inhaling sweat. It was the fourth day of a heat wave in Boston, and over those days, our apartment on the third floor of the house in Southie had become like the inside of an oven. However, it was a date night for our mother—Saturday—so we’d been locked in.
“I want my kiddies safe,” Nikki had said.
Not that the key mattered. Once Callie and I heard you snoring—a soft little sound that was almost like a sigh—we slipped out a window onto the back deck, climbed down the fire escape, and went one block over to the Cumberland Farms store. We wanted a breath of air-conditioning, and we were thinking also about Popsicles. Red ones. I had a couple dollars in my pocket from the last time I’d seen my father. He was always good for a little bit of money, and the fact that it was just about all he was good for didn’t make me appreciate the cash less.
It wasn’t really his fault, that he was so useless. My dad was afraid of our mother. He kept out of her way. On the few occasions they were in the same room together, he wouldn’t even meet her eyes. I didn’t blame him for it too much. I understood. She was unpredictable.
I remember that night so well.
“We have to bring a Popsicle back for Emmy,” Callie said, her flip-flops slapping against the pavement. “We can put it in the freezer for tomorrow.”
I grunted. I didn’t think there was enough money for three Popsicles, but if Callie wanted to sacrifice her own for you, knowing you would drip half of it onto your shirt, that was her business. For me, it was hard enough knowing that we couldn’t stay long at the store, or even out on the street, where there was sometimes a breeze from the ocean a few blocks away. If you woke up and found you were alone, you might be scared. I’d decided we’d risk being away fifteen minutes. I glanced at my watch; it was only just before eight thirty and the sun hadn’t quite gone below the horizon.
Doubt suddenly pushed at me. If you woke—or if our mother returned unexpectedly—
“Don’t worry. Emmy won’t wake up,” Callie said. When it came to you, little sister, we always knew what the other was thinking. “And we’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” I said. But I made a mental note to get us back in ten minutes rather than fifteen. Just in case. And next time, I’d let Callie go to the store alone. She was old enough, really. I’d stay with you. Or bring you, maybe.
It was hard to figure out what would be the safest thing to do, for all three of us, all the time. But it was my job. As we pushed open the door to the Cumberland Farms and were greeted by a glorious blast of cool air, I was thinking that in a year—year and a half—I could maybe go out by myself at night and trust Callie with you. Even if I could only do that once in a while, it would really help. I could get over to the ocean at night, walk the causeway, hang out with some of the guys from school. Maybe I could even talk to this one girl I sort of liked. If our mother were out anyway, it would be okay to leave you girls alone, I thought. I’d still be careful that you weren’t alone with her when she came home after her Saturday night outings. That wouldn’t be hard, considering she rarely came home before two or three in the morning. If at all.
Then I saw him. Murdoch. Okay, I saw him but I didn’t really see him. That came a few minutes later. I just glanced around the store. There was a teenager at the cash register behind the front candy counter. A huge, barrel-shaped man stood in front of the counter with a little boy, smaller even than you were then. And Murdoch (of course I didn’t know his name then) and his date (a woman I never saw again) were in line behind the man with the boy.
Callie and I headed straight for the ice cream freezer, and we’d just reached it when the yelling began. We whipped around.
It was the barrel-shaped man and the little kid. The man had grabbed the boy by the upper arms and yanked him into the air. He was screaming in his face while the kid’s legs dangled: “What did you just do?”
The little kid was clutching a package of Reese’s Pieces and he started keening, his voice a long, terrified wail, his small body rigid.
The big man—his father?—shook him hard, and kept doing it.
“I’ll teach you to take things without permission! Spend my money without asking!”
And then the other man, the one I later knew was called Murdoch, was between the father and son. Murdoch snatched the little kid away from his father and put the kid down behind him. Then Murdoch swiveled back.
Emmy, I like to freeze the memory in my mind and just look at Murdoch. He was a medium kind of man. Medium height, medium build, hair shaved close to the skull. You wouldn’t look twice—until you have looked twice.
He wasn’t afraid. I noticed that right away about him. Here was this huge enraged man, facing him. But this other man, Murdoch, was calm. At the same time, there was this tension coiling off him.
Callie and I were behind Murdoch and to the left, so we had only a partial view of his face and expression. But we had a full-on view of the barrel-shaped man. And we had a good view of the little kid, who was so shocked that he stopped crying and just stared up at Murdoch’s back with his mouth open.
Meanwhile, Murdoch said, quietly but audibly, “If you want to hurt somebody, you can hurt me. Go on. Hit me. I won’t hit back. You can do it until you’re not angry anymore. I’ll let you.”
There was an endless, oh, five seconds. The father’s eyes bulged. His fists were clenched. He drew one arm back. But Murdoch was still looking straight at him, and I knew—you could feel it vibrating in the air—that even though Murdoch had said he wouldn’t hit him, he wanted to. He wanted to hurt him.
I liked him for that. No, Emmy, I loved him for that. Immediately.
“Hit me,” Murdoch said. “Come on. Better me than the kid. Why not? You want to.”
And then it was all over. The man blinked and took a step back. He said something, loudly, about having had a hard day and it doesn’t hurt a kid to learn to keep his hands to himself. And Murdoch was nodding even though I guessed that he was thinking what I was about that man. But Murdoch turned away from the father as if he was no threat anymore. He knelt on the floor in front of the little kid.
You could smell the kid’s fear floating on the stale, air-conditioned store air. He stole one little look behind Murdoch at the big man, and you could see him thinking, I’ll have to pay for this later.
But Murdoch talked directly to the kid. “It’s wrong for anybody ever to hurt you. No matter who does it, it’s wrong. Can you remember that?”
The kid’s eyes were now huge. He looked at his father again. Then back at Murdoch. Then he nodded.
“You’ll remember that?” Murdoch insisted. “You don’t have to do anything else. You just have to remember.”
He waited.
The kid nodded. Solemnly.
“Good,” said Murdoch.
The kid reached out one hand toward him. In it was the package of Reese’s Pieces. Murdoch took it and said, “Thank you.” He stood up in one smooth motion. He put the package on the counter. But his eyes didn’t leave the little boy. The little boy kept looking back, too, while the big man finished paying for his stuff and then hustled the kid outside.
As the door slammed behind them, there was complete silence in the store. It was then I realized that Callie had grabbed my hand and was holding it.
“Oh, hello?” said the woman who was with Murdoch. “Hello, Murdoch? You should have thought about me. What if there was a big fight and I got hurt? What kind of a date do you think that would be? Huh? Murdoch? Are you listening to me? Murdoch!”
&n
bsp; Murdoch, I thought. It was a name I had never heard before. A strange name.
It suited him.
Murdoch didn’t reply. His eyes had narrowed into slits. He held up the pack of Reese’s Pieces and said to the teenage clerk, “I’ll take these. And the ice coffee.” The woman sighed and shrugged. She moved a step closer to Murdoch, but without even looking at her, he took a step away.
One more moment from my memory of that night: On his way out the door, Murdoch turned. He tossed the Reese’s Pieces underhand to me and Callie. He smiled at us as he did it, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. And he wasn’t thinking about us at all, or really seeing us. I could tell. Not the way he’d seen that little boy.
He was still giving off that invisible coiled pulse of—whatever it was.
He was still angry.
Then he was gone.
2
ABOUT FEAR
I don’t know if you’ll understand this, Emmy, but for me, fear isn’t actually a bad thing. It’s a primitive instinct that’s your friend. It warns you to pay attention, because you’re in danger. It tells you to do something, to act, to save yourself.
I read a book about this recently. If you remind me, I’ll give it to you. The guy who wrote it, he’s a security expert, the kind of person celebrities and politicians hire to keep them safe from crazies. He says that the ability to become aware of fear is a gift. That if you honor that gift—if you notice when you’re afraid and if you respond to your fear instead of ignoring it, you will be safer. Run, he says, run when your fear tells you to.
But he doesn’t talk about what happens to your gift of fear when you live with the feeling all the time.
I remember one night, when I was little. I waited until our mother had gone to bed, and then I sneaked into the kitchen. There was a package of Oreo cookies there. My plan was to take one of them back to bed with me. She wouldn’t notice one missing cookie, would she? I would eat quietly. And I would make sure not a crumb escaped as evidence.