Con Artist

She didn't have the best childhood, but her adulthood is nothing worth emulating unless you want to spend the rest of your life behind bars or six feet beneath the ground in some ancient, no longer-in-use Catholic burial ground.

I'd say, "Society forced her into making some impetuous decisions", but hey, each one of us is liable for his own actions, and so is Arielle, Ariana, Mariana, Marianne, Patricia, or whatever that con artist's real name is. The point is, I'm a victim too, okay? She took half a million from me overnight and disappeared just like the night, and I swear to black Jesus that I'll make that whore pay.

They say that on one hot summer afternoon in 1993, an infant's first cry was heard by a mother who had been longing to see the child of her affliction. It was a she. The very sound of the innocent girl's voice disgusted the man whose reproductive parts aided in bringing her to life. And whenever the words of the doctor 'it's a girl' echoes in his mind, all the pent-up wrath within him from the very first time they had their first girl child causes furore on his face.

Being a man who was picky about everything, he found having two daughters, when he was interested in having just one child who was of the male species, a nuisance. There would have been some consideration, at least, if they came out as twins and one of them was a male while the other was a female. The orphanage could have taken care of one, and he would have had the remaining two. But both were female, which, to him, was just trouble in the flesh.

For nine months, his wife argued with him. His disdain for women enraged her badly. Their first child, Natalie, under his influence and wanting to please have her father feel loved in return, had begun to dress up like a boy at age six when she understood the reason for their frequent alterations. One time she heard her father threatening to divorce her mother if she were to give him another "disgusting baby girl". Those words caused her to quiver, and instantaneously, she began to pray for the unborn child to be a boy. Her mother, on the other hand, stood her ground and threatened to put him behind bars for child neglect if he dared. On one occasion, when he was asked to give a reason for his dislike of female children, he said, "I want a man. Someone responsible like I am. Someone who can inherit everything that I have Someone who can paint like I do—you know, a great man like me—to inherit the honor and prestige, to continue the Crane legacy." Even though that elucidation was absurd, he stood by it firmly—almost too firmly—that his wife perished due to stress and depression, leaving him with her two daughters, Melissa and Natalie, eleven and seventeen years old, respectively.

For two weeks in a row, Melissa, who was the youngest among the two, cried, constantly praying for her mother to come out of the grave, saying to her resting mother, "That's not your home, Mama; don't leave us here alone with this monster." To her, Natalie and her mother were the only two people that existed in a world of seven billion people, for she was an introvert, and the two were teaching her to communicate with others and make friends. The man whom she was taught to call 'Father' never called her by her real name. She doubted he even knew or remembered what name she was given during the naming ceremony. He just called her 'kid', and for Natalie, he nicknamed her 'Nate' for how boyish she looked in appearance.

Natalie was forced to take care of her little sister and keep her away from her father at all times. Melissa was safe in the room alone; anywhere close to her father or his gallery meant she was looking forward to a scolding. In her own small ways, Melissa managed to comfort her and eventually get her back on her feet for school and church, like her mother requested.

As time went on, the single parent's harsh treatment worsened. He would go out, get drunk, and come home with a couple of friends to watch him paint his young girls unclothed. The girls had all the rights in the world to retaliate, but who was going to feed them? Who would buy them clothes? Who would pay their fees? And where, after their retaliation, were they even going to sleep for the night? Their rights were just as useless to them as the church was to a rat. They were forced into submission in their own father's house until one night, when Natalie was sexually assaulted by two of his friends who lost their self-control after satisfying their eyes in his in-house gallery. She was seventeen, a woman already, with all that a man could not resist, but she had to pose that day for her father's art because she couldn't watch her little sister get punished for saying "no." Punishments came in different forms for them. For instance, one night, while he was drunk and wanted Natalie to kiss him on the lips and comfort him for losing two hundred dollars during a gamble at his favorite bar, he fired the housekeeper and locked the sisters in their room because she refused. They were made to starve until midday of the following day, when he woke up and realized there was no aroma coming out of the well-furnished kitchen. Since then, Natalie and Melissa have been made to do all the cooking and cleaning before and after school.

On the night when Natalie was assaulted sexually by the two drunk "Bustards," Melissa watched how she was ranting around with fire in her eyes and blood in between her thighs. She was trying to keep herself from crying to teach her sister to be strong, but her voice was wavering and her hands were shivering as she rummaged through pills to find what they called "emergency pills ', but she had no idea what they looked like.

"Nattie," Melissa called out to her after a while of observing her scared and confused sister, throwing pills and bottles of all kinds that they had for headaches, stomach aches, and whatever they went through. Their father never cared whether they needed a doctor's attention; he just knew what drugs were good for what. "Please stop, we can."