As I go through my nightly routine before bed, I find myself unable to use the face wipes I keep on my bathroom counter. I pulled one out of the container and held it in my hands, looking at it in disbelief.
Some days, Peter would dump me back into my bed after a long day of working. It would be in the middle of the night, and oftentimes I couldn’t walk. That meant that I couldn’t shower away the blood and other bodily fluids that my clients had left on me.
I knew that I couldn’t go to sleep until I felt clean again, so I pulled a box of baby wipes out from under my bed and sat on my floor to clean myself up.
Standing there in my bathroom, I remember little girl Hope wiping away the evidence of cruelty as if it was all in a day’s work. And it was for me in those days.
I wiped the crusted blood from my lips and nose. I cleaned the blood and saliva off the bite marks I could reach. I ran the wipes over the trails of blood clear down to my knees. I cleaned myself until I could feel my own skin again, until the fingertips of the men were only memories, until the evidence was on the wipes and no longer on me.
I shoved the wipes into a plastic bag and stowed them away under my bed. I knew the bag would be gone in a few days, when a new box of baby wipes appeared.
Today, I tossed the wipe into my trash, unable to use it. My mom isn’t here to take out my trash anymore.
Hope
