Chapter 7
Buffalo, New York, United States
March 10, 1992
A middle-aged woman hid a pack of cigarettes in her trouser pocket. From the uniform she was wearing, everyone who saw her would know that she was an employee at a suburban burger restaurant.
The woman was very unfriendly, never returning people's smiles or greetings. Her eyes continued to glare full of hatred, her brown hair was starting to turn white and she didn't pay attention to her appearance at all. She just walked quickly while carrying several plastic bags containing food and three bottles of black beer.
The woman walked towards a narrow alley containing old buildings that were rented to families with low economic standards. The woman in yellow stopped right at the corner of the building, she put the plastic package on the floor and started banging violently on the door of the house while shouting loudly.
"Eli...! Open the door, Eli...!" She shouted in a loud voice, her screams could be heard at the end of the small hallway. Some people around her lived looked at her cynically, everyone seemed to know the bad habits of the mother of five children.
"Eli...quickly open the door!" Once again she shouted loudly while banging on the door, from inside the house she heard the sound of footsteps rushing to open the door.
A teenage girl with long hair fearfully opened the door for her mother with part of her body hiding behind the door, her head bowed as a sign that she was ready to be scolded for being late in opening the door.
As if she couldn't wait to scold her child, the woman immediately shouted harsh words without waiting for her and her daughter to enter and close the door. The middle-aged woman deliberately made other people hear her screams which were actually not worth hearing.
"What took you so long? What do you do?" She shouted in question while glaring at her daughter who just looked down and didn't dare to look.
"I'm so sorry, Mom-" she answered quietly, the girl didn't say much because whatever she said, in the end she would still be scolded.
"Arrange this food in the refrigerator, don't scatter it, do you understand?"
"Yes."
The woman pulled a chair and sat back while smoking the cigarette she had just bought. This woman is a heavy cigarette addict, no different from her husband who is also an alcoholic.
The girl was named Elijah Houlding, the fourth of five children. Lives with father who is a construction worker and mother who is an employee at a burger restaurant. Both of her parents could not be said to be good parents, the father was rude and easily emotional and the mother was always cursing the child with harsh words, Eli did not understand the life she had been living for the past 18 years.
Her siblings are also not much different from her parents, two unemployed older brothers who can only steal things belonging to other people who pass by without feeling guilty, an older sister who is still in high school but works as a call girl for a lonely rich old man and the last one is her younger brother who is still 10 years old, but is very good at stealing food and toys in supermarkets, Eli really lives in very difficult conditions and she is forced to survive.
Eli was different from everyone else in her family, she was different in every sense of the word. Weak body and weak mentality, never graduated from elementary school because she couldn't read and write properly, so she was forced to be expelled because there was no support from the people around her who didn't care about each other.
She had to live in adversity, receiving harsh treatment from her own parents and siblings, but she didn't know what she was really experiencing. This girl can't think like a normal person. She always daydreams and locks herself in a dark and damp room, she won't come out of her room if she isn't called and her habit is to come out at night when all her family members are asleep and won't care about her.
"Mom…!" Shouted Tod, Eli's older brother who was a town hoodlum.
The young man walked roughly through his house looking for his mother. He shouted like a shameless and arrogant debt collector. Tod found his mother still busy smoking cigarettes in her room.
"Why are you screaming?" Asked the woman while glaring.
"Give me some money!"
"What? Money? It's fine for you to ask for money, you think I'm the bank owner so you can ask for money as you please!"
"Mom,I have to redeem the item now otherwise Josh and his members get ahead of me with a cheaper price." He said affirmatively.
"Who are you going to sell it to?" Asked the woman while exhaling the smoke of her cigarette.
"You doesn't need to know, what is clear is that this person will pay a high price."
The woman frowned, she was silent for a moment, thinking. A few minutes later she went to the cupboard to take some money and handed it to his son.
"This is the money, but remember you have to give half of the proceeds to me and don't get caught by the police." She said warningly.
"I know it." The young man walked away while counting the money in his hand.