Clara

Clara looked at the hammer. It
s redness and hair. She
wondered what had been done with it for she was to young
to realize. She
d been keeping it in her room for sometime
now. She would take it out after
mommy
was done yelling at
her and would think about how she would like to hit
mommy
with it. When she was bad and
daddy
hit her, she would hold
the hammer alone in her room and think how she would like to
hit
daddy
and
mommy
. Then she would cry because she was
thinking bad thoughts and they frightened her sometimes.
Sometimes when she was sitting in her room she would be
looking at the hammer and she would be so very very angry
and she would feel hot and funny all over and then she would
be lying on the floor with the hammer still on the bed and she
would have no idea what had happened. That
s how it was this
time.

Mommy
had been especially mean to her today and she
had beat her hard. Clara had been lying on the floor with a
cut on her cheek and
mommy
was gone. Clara wanted
mommy
to make her face stop hurting, but she knew
mommy
would just hit her again. She had gone to her room and taken
the hammer out of the shoebox in the back of her closet and
she had actually gone so far as to take the hammer out to
the living room where
mommy
was sitting with her back to
Clara. She had gotten the hot funny feeling and she
remembered wanting to cry because it felt like she was going
to explode because she was so hot. She started to say
mommy
because she was afraid. It had never been like this
before. Then she looked up and she was on the floor. The
chair
mommy
had been sitting in had been tipped over and the
hammer was lying next to it. Clara walked over to the chair,
more than a little confused.

Mommy
was lying on the floor
next to the chair. Her face was all red and it had scratches
from the end of the hammer that was like a hook. Clara
hoped that
mommy
was just sleeping, but she knew that it
was worse than this. She looked again at the red and hair on
the hammer and she wondered what
daddy
was going to say.
What had happened to
mommy