I have noticed over the past few days that I am writing because I feel obligated to do so. In the past week, my hits have dropped and I am tired of trying to dream up good stuff to say about not drinking when it really sucks. I miss hanging out with my friends. I miss coming home and having one or two glasses of wine. I miss meeting my girlfriends for a cocktail.
I am also aware of feeling like I have boxed my self in. Just like when I hid under the bed when my father beat my grandmother to a bloody pulp. As a young child I assumed responsibility for all my siblings, for my grandmother, for some semblance of peace in a violent home. Now, as a product of this blog and my public commitment to abstain from alcohol for 40 days, I feel like that little girl, all alone, squeezed tightly into the corner under my bed. Here is the story I wrote about that night.
The Closet
I lie struggling to stay awake, eyes riveted on the shard of light between the door and the hallway. I pray to God for protection.. The light from the doorway spreads across the floor. The grim reaper enters. His mother shares my bed. He lays his sweaty, naked body over mine. He snakes over me squeezing the air from my lungs. My brain falls to the back of my skull. Here I sort through my strategies…The wagon train circles as the war party approaches. l hide under our wagon and play dead. A painted warrior lifts my head but does not scalp me. I have been spared. I must escape this horror. The stench of cigar smoke and scotch assault me. I know the truth. He penetrates me.
Where is grandma? Can she help?
Grandma reads me bedtime stories from an illustrated children’s bible edition. “Grandma, please read me one more story, the one about Isaac and Abraham.” I plead. Was Abraham really going to kill his only son? Did God tell him to stab Isaac? Why would God do that Grandma?” I ask. She explains that God is testing Abraham’s faith.
I am thinking, “Is that why Daddy comes into my room at night? Is God testing my faith?” I do not tell Grandma. She reads the story of Jonah and the whale.
Grandma and I sit cross-legged on our bed. She lets me win a game of checkers, chiding my silly moves. “King me, “ I scream, slamming red checker on her back line. We laugh. I want the game to last forever. I feel safe. But grandma must get to her chores. She reaches her arthritic hands skyward. The clothes pin catches the line and my panties dance in the wind. In the afternoon, she cooks soft-boiled eggs for my Dad. He is a late sleeper.
I stand at the bottom of the attic steps and holler, Dad It’s 3pm. You said to wake you up at three.” No answer. I yell again. “Dad, time to get up.” I hate this job.
I hear the monster stirring. “God Damned son of a bitch. You fucking kids make so much God damned noise. I never get any sleep.”
I don’t know what to do. If I don’t keep trying to get him up he will give me a verbal beating when he does come down. If I do as I have been told and continue to call up to him, he will keep cursing me until he comes down. I cannot escape. And grandma is cooking his damn egg, which, since he won’t get up, will be overcooked. I dread this time of the day.
His slippered feet clump down the wooden steps. I scamper into the kitchen and crouch behind grandma’s long skirt. She takes two eggs off the stove and gently places them in a clear glass bowl. Do you want me to break them, Carl? she asks cautiously.
“No, “ he snaps. “Give me a fucking spoon. I’ll do it. And where is my coffee? It better be fresh.” I watch as he strikes the side of one egg. The shell splits open but nothing comes out. I feel my jaw clench as he launches into a tirade. “You stupid Bitch. How many times do I have to tell you, I want the yolk runny? Look at this. Look at this. See it. The yoke is hard. God Damn it. How can you fuck up something so simple? It is the same god damned thing every God Damned day. Jesus fucking Christ.” I run down the hall and hide in the bathroom.
Grandma holds my hand as we stroll 10 humid blocks to the Lutheran Church. I love going to services with Grandma. We both dress up. I get to carry a purse with change in it. On the way home, we stop at the dime store to buy penny candy and iron-on embroidery patterns. I use my coins to pay for the candy. Grandma buys the stickers. I think Grandma enjoys teaching me to iron patterns on old pillowcases. Her thin lips reach cheek to cheek as she show me exactly how to hold the iron. She shows me how learn to make French Knots and whip stitches. I embroider kittens and dogs on every cotton pillowcase and kitchen towel I can find. I feel proud when I see my work on our bed or hanging over the stove handle.
I awake to sobs and screams. Crawling to the edge of the bed I see Grandma at the back of the closet, my closet, with all my toys on the floor. The devil fills the threshold. Grandma’s body recoils with every punch he throws. Spiders crawl up my spine and out of my mouth. “Stop, Stop,” I scream. Fragments of his hands burst into her body. He fires over and over again until she collapses like a rag doll to the floor. I hide under the bed wincing as the bare box springs tear my pajamas. Scooting on belly, I push further and further back to the wall. Am I safe? What will happen now? I close my eyes and wait.
Men’s voices thunder over my head. “Mr. Sinclair, what the hell happened here? Jesus Christ, look at her. Did you do this?” I creep forward so I can see. “Now I am safe,” I think. “They will take him away. Please God. I want them to take him away.”
Wait, my father is talking. “I did it to protect my little girl,” he so innocently says.
I want to shriek, “He is lying. Don’t believe him. NO, don’t let him fool you.”
He goes on. “I came in, just like I do every nigh, to give my sweet little girl a kiss, and the bitch was touching her. I went crazy. The old bag managed to get out of the bed and into the closet. I couldn’t stop myself. The next thing I knew she was unconscious.” The regret oozes out of him. “Then I called you.”
I must have cried out, because I hear another man’s voice, “Where is your daughter now? Is she under the bed?”
Yes,” my father answers. “She won’t come out.”
I see his face, the man in the white shirt with the blue letters on the pocket. He is kneeling beside the bed. He reaches a hand toward me. “It’s okay,” he says. “ No one is going to hurt you. You can come out now.”
I retreat, the imprint of my body presses flat to the wall. “No, No,” I say. “I am never coming out. Not until he goes away. I hate him.”
My father intercedes. He seals the con. “This has happened before,” he tells them. “ I am ashamed to admit that I have suspected for some time that my mother was abusing her. I ignored it because I know how much Sarla loves her Grandma. Tonight, I just had to do something. I know I went too far. She is terrified. She saw me strike her Grandma. Please let me deal with her.” My father, the snake charmer, speaks in tongues. He repents and the congregants give absolution.
The men take grandma out on a stretcher leaving me, under the bed, alone with him. “How will I survive without Grandma?” I spend the night pinned to the dark undergarment of the bed.
I awake to sounds in the kitchen. Someone must be making breakfast, but who? It is a school day. Grandma is gone. I crawl out of bed and peak around the corner. My stepmother, Elaine, stands at the stove, cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other. Her razor-sharp eyebrows slice deep lines across her forehead. I hear my own voice whispering, “Does she know what happened? Should I say anything?” I am suspended in time and space. My tip toes dance across the room. I sit in my chair at the chrome legged dinette table. I must be dreaming. My Dad did not beat up my Grandma. We are a normal family. My stepmom and I eat breakfast, bite after silent bite. “Who can I tell? Do the walls have ears?” I sense them pulsing in an effort to speak. The butter dish reaches out to touch my hand. My burned toast wanders off the plate and skips over the speckled linoleum. Milk is jumping in my glass. I hear myself singing, “Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go. It followed her to school on day, which was against the rules.” Then more. Hey diddle,diddle, the cat in the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon. Little dog laughed to see such sport and the dish ran away with the spoon.” An ominous voice in my head is yelling, “Tell me what the rules are. I will play by the rules. Just tell me. Is this a new game we’re playing? I love games. Where’s Grandma? She will play with me.”
My inner protector chimes in, “Do not ask. Shut up right now. It is time to go to school. Get dressed. Get out of this house. Go to school.” I do as I am told.
On the way to school I play the memory game. When did Elaine come to live with us? I was 4. My Dad introduced Elaine to me as his new girlfriend. She was too old to be a girlfriend. I liked the way she dressed, a fitted blouse with a bow at the neck. It was tucked tightly into a pencil skirt with kick pleat on the side. Her hair was drawn back into a bun with what looked like a big fold diaper pin sticking out the top. Her high heals clicked as she walked over to shake my hand. “ I am very pleased to meet you,” she murmured turning her gaze toward my father who was standing over us both. “Isn’t she sweet,” she added.
In the blink of an eye, she was my stepmother. I hated her. Jealousy pushed up from my belly threatening to spew out. “How dare she sleep with my Daddy? Ever since she came, he doesn’t come into my room at night. Daddy doesn’t love me anymore.”
I can see her now, coming into the house, my father’s arm wrapped like a mink around her shoulders. They would go out at night and come home laughing, stuck together like magnets. Then she left, without any explanation. She was gone. I was so excited. I knew my Dad would now want me to sit in his lap, that he would call me his little princess again. But I was wrong. Elaine came back. She was carrying a package bundled in a blanket. She and my father walked slowly into our den. She gingerly placed her parcel in a big white Easter basket. It had legs with rollers.
Just the day before, I used this oversized basket as a stretcher, pretending to wheel grandma out to the ambulance. Curious, I walked over and peeked into the woven container. There was a baby doll. I reached forward and poked its face. Dad instantly grabbed me, screaming, “Cut that shit out.” Shaking me he said, “Leave him alone. He’s your baby brother, Scott.”
“What, I don’t want a baby brother. What about me? Daddy, Daddy please pick me up. I want everything to be the way it was before Elaine came. Did I do something wrong? Are you going to leave like Mommy did?” He turned on his heels, walked into the living room and switched on the TV. And that was that.
I am six now. It is two years later. I am in my room playing when I hear the cursing and screaming erupting in the living room. I run to see what is happening and there he is…. Scott, 3 feet tall, eyes downcast, crew cut tipping like a bowl of cereal falling off the table standing before Little Hitler. That is what Scott and I called him. I made it up. I had seen pictures of Hitler on TV with all his armies standing at attention giving the Hiel Hitler salute. I decided Daddy look liked him and told Scott about it. We would play army and pretend to salute Dad like Hitler’s soldiers held up their hands to him. But this was not a game.
I never knew why Dad hated Scott so much. Later I would calculate the date of his birth and the date of Elaine and Dad’s marriage and figure out Elaine got pregnant and they had to get married. I also speculated that Dad saw himself in Scott and all the opportunities that he had missed. In one of the few conversations my father and I had as adults, he told me that my grandma never let him do anything. She was so afraid he would get hurt. He never rode a bike or learned to swim. He had no playmates. My grandfather left when Daddy was a little boy or maybe grandma left him. I will never know, but I do know that my Dad grew up without a father, smothered by a overprotecting mother.
So Scott became the object of my father’s rage. If Scott passed my father in the hall all Hell would break loose. “Get out of my fucking way.” my father yells. “What the fuck are you doing in here, you stupid bastard? I though I told you to stay out of my way. You dumb shit. Can’t you hear?” His flaming words scorched the ceiling. The smoke of his rage blackened our lungs, leaving my stepmother, grandmother and me speechless. Scott was immoveable. He took it all without flinching. You could see the reflection of the flames in his eyes. I silently cried out to God, beseeching him to stop the carnage. Again, there was no reply. If I dared to intervene, my interference would have propelled my father onward. Like a wildfire, he would abruptly explode, lurching into Scott, hands and eyes ablaze, slapping my brother, and pummeling him until he wept. I would cry out, “Stop, Stop. Why are you doing this? Scott never does anything wrong. Why do you hate him so much?” Scott never flinched. It was as if he knew why he had been born, to bear this punishment
Like me, Scott survived, but the abuse left permanent scars. Throughout his childhood, Scott was a loner. He rescued stray dogs bringing them home to love, but in the end beat them and then abandoned them. He spent much of his high school year in and out of juvenile detention. There he met some seasoned criminals who taught him how to steal cars and how to use PCP, angel dust. Today, I believe that it was the drugs that sent Scott over the edge. He started stealing from us. My Dad banned him from the house. He would be gone for months at a time eventually ending up in a Missouri prison. We never even knew how the Hell he got to Missouri or what crime he committed. Next thing I heard he met a woman and was living in a car with 3 children. Were they his kids? I do not know. I think Scott came into the world like Christ to light up the sky. He suffered our pain. His innocence hung on the cross of my father’s inextinguishable fire. Today, Scott lives on the street. He is a “scrapper,” someone who collects metal to barter for food, alcohol, cigarettes and whatever else he needs to survive on the street. .
Scott. Damn him. I hated him for being born. He took my place as the object of my father’s abuse. I became invisible. How, you ask, can a little girl of six want to be hurt by her father? At least when he touched me, I felt loved. “Daddy, Daddy, please hurt me. I promise I will be good. What did I do wrong?” Crazy for his love, I did not want the abuse to end.
My Dad and Elaine had more children, 6 in all. Yes there are six of us little “rug rats’ as my father used to call us, ranging in age from 1 year to 13 years old. Elaine did have one miscarriage. 6 live births in 7 years. My Dad refused to work. He slept all day and sat on the couch sipping scotch into the wee hours of the night. We had no money. My stepmother tried. She worked two jobs, but she never made enough to feed and clothe and care for us. I shoplifted to get by. I created quite a system I carried a shopping bag with me. I would visit a store, gather several items to try on, and once in the fitting room, fill my bag with goodies. Today I ask myself, “Why was I never stopped and searched?” More importantly, why didn’t my parents ask in their own subtle way, “Where the Hell did you get all those clothes?” I never made a big deal about the wardrobe I pilfered. Just silently wore the outfits and remained invisible.
The 9 of us lived in a 900 square foot house with one bathroom. It had a claw foot bathtub that would hold three or four of us at a time. My three brothers, Scott, Mark and Kirk, shared an 8×10 foot room. I was so jealous of Scott and Mark because they got to sleep in a trundle-bed (the bottom bed rolled under the top for storage). Kirk slept in a baby crib with the front side pulled down. My Dad and Elaine camped out in the attic with my youngest brother, Duff and my sister, Carrie. They each had their own crib.
Grandma and I still slept after Daddy beat her up. In the morning we put on our robes. I brushed my teeth while she lit the fire under the percolator. Then as the coffee brewed she navigated the steep basement stairs to load and stoke the furnace. One frosty winter morning I awoke to see Grandma’s silver-feathered head wrenching side to side as she carried stair wide cardboard boxes down to the basement. “Granma be careful. What are you doing? Do you need help?” I asked,
“No, she said. “Ran out of coal. Just trying to keep the furnace going. Get dressed now. It’s time for breakfast. Got some oatmeal on the stove. “
“ Ugh, ”I say to myself as I turned back to my icy room. “Maybe we have some real butter I can put on it and brown sugar.” I think. Real butter was a treat at our house. I can see myself now; head bobbing over the counter, inspecting every item my father is removing from a brown paper bag, praying there would be butter. I guess God didn’t think a request for butter was very important. Nor did he respond when I implored him to turn the electricity on or to fix the hot water. I learned not to complain. I wore my coat the house, spent the night with friends at whose houses I took hot baths and ate till my belly pushed into the table. I learned how to survive.
My Dad did have one job that I can remember. He worked at a bank. That was the year we went on vacation. He rented a lake house. I believed he had changed. We laughed and played board games. Even Dad played. There we all were, even Scott, with a joker face, laughing, cross-legged on the floor, rankling one another, throwing the dice and praying to be the first to land on Boardwalk. I never wanted the game to end. I felt safe. My family was together and Dad was smiling, just like the TV show, Father Knows Best.
My Dad started a fight with his boss at the bank. He said the guy was a bastard and he didn’t know anything about banking. My Dad always knew more than anyone else. He never worked again.
Why did I leave my Dad’s house and move to Memphis? I had a recurring nightmare in which I was married to a factory worker, some dead-beat husband who drank beer and smoked lucky strike cigarettes. We had kids, so many I could not count them. Well, I knew here was no way in Hell I was going to end up pregnant and married to an uneducated, abusive husband.. Not me. I had dreams, dreams of going to college, of marrying a respectable man, one who worked and loved his children. I wanted a nice house with more than one bathroom.
So I called my mother, Sally, who after leaving my Dad when I was a year old, had remarried multiple times. She was now on husband number five. At the time of her divorce from my father, The Circuit Court of Indiana made me a ward of the state and placed me in the custody of my father and grandmother. I was now 16 and eligible to speak for myself. I hired a lawyer, went to court and asked for permission to live with my mother. I packed my bags, said good-bye to my friends and, just like that, got into the back of Mom and Bill’s station wagon. My brothers and sister cried. My grandmother hid in her room. I found out later she never spoke again. My father ignored me. I left without saying goodbye I escaped.
My mother emulated Elizabeth Taylor. She was well cast opposite, her husband, Bill, who though he lacked the machismo of Richard Burton, put up a good fight. They starred in their own version of “Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf. They brought me in as the production manager, caterer, and cleaner upper. I made their cocktails, played cards with them, went bar hoping (mind you I was only sixteen at the time) and even refereed their colossal cock-fights. In my spare time, I went to high school, made top grades, and joined a sorority. I dated a nice Christian boy whose mother quickly ascertained that I had not been born again. He said, “Sarla, my mother says that unless you find Jesus, I cannot go out with you anymore.” He was too much of a prude for me anyway. His parents certainly did not let him drink and smoke at home.
Mom and Bill prepared me well for college or so it seemed. At the University of Tennessee Knoxville, I spent days and nights in a drunken stupor. I ate diet pills like candy. My life depended on me fitting in so I cut all my skirts and dresses off to make them into minis. I pretended to have fun football games and dances. The more I drank, the easier it was to pretend. I took speed to study for tests and stayed awake all night praying to God to stop the room from spinning. He did not respond.
I could not hack it. I believed my sweet mates hated me. I accused my boyfriend of having affairs. We had never even consummated out relationship. I drank more, and studied less. In the middle of my Freshman year, Bill came in his Buick sedan to haul all my stuff back to Memphis. I ran away from what I labeled the insanity of UT. I wanted to be normal. I was determined to be normal. I just needed someone to give me the guidelines. I knew I could follow the directions, but I did not know where to find them.
I landed a job processing insurance claims at a local hospital. I worked 9 to 5 and smoked dope into the wee hours of the night. I hooked up with an old high school flame who had gone off to school and returned a full-blown hippy. My parents loathed him, which made me love him even more. My mom had an affair. My stepfather traveled for work so she brought the man to our house. I called her a slut and a whore. She was.
A year later, my stepfather received a promotion which required them to move to Florida. When asked if I wanted to go, I said, “No way in Hell.” All my life I dreamed of being free, of escaping the horror that had been my childhood. I thought living with my Mom would be a solution. It was a cluster fuck. I knew I was capable of living on my own. I moved in with a girl I had met in college. I survived.
I stand now a 60-year-old gnarly oak tree shading the decades of my life with the limbs of my memories. Upon which era will the next leaf fall? Will I remember clearly what happened when my stepmother died? Or how my father passed? Did my grandmother suffer lying unattended on a gurney in her own home? My brother Duff told me she cried out in the night, “ I have to go to the bathroom. Someone please help me.” I was not there. Will I eve know where my brother Scott is? Will I ever see him again? Is there a heaven? Is that where my brother Duff, who died of stage 4 lung cancer, is now? Did he make it to the judgment at the pearly gates? Grandma used to tell me that the angel, St Peter was there to greet everyone as they passed through. Did Duff give him the finger? I hope so. Will I ever know why my mother sent me a letter divorcing her only daughter, accusing me of being the cause of her misery and pain? Not unless she returns from the grave to answer my laundry list of questions. Why did she let Dad abuse me? Why did she abandon me? Why did she sill herself with alcohol and drugs?
Lightning strikes! I will never know the answer to all the “what ifs”. I am not a victim of my past; I am the creation of all that preceded me. I am the amalgamation of my father’s abuse, my mother’s neglect, my 4th grade teachers love and interest, and my yoga practice, meditation and life style which have taught me to digest what I have experienced and to eliminate what does not help me to thrive. Today I am grateful for every life experience. I take what the Buddhists say to heart. Do not throw anything away. Keep it all for each and every moment is fodder for what is yet to come.
And here is part of a blog I posted on February 17 2012.
I realized last night I cornered myself, like a treed raccoon when I started this blog. There I was, a young teenage girl grasping for ways to vent years of stored up anger. I could have been a “cutter”. I too might have taken a baseball bat to my dad’ car windows and to his most treasured possessions. Instead, I internalized my rage. I pretended to have it all together excelling in school where I made straight A’s. I campaigned for and was elected to the student council, freshman class president. I played the violin, was first chair and won competitions throughout the state of Indiana.
So how did I cope? Food. Binging. At 12 years old, 5 feet, 4 inches, I weighed 140 lbs. That would never do. I needed to be invisible, to hide my pain so I started taking laxative which led to full blow bulimia. Success. No one noticed.
This blog opened the pages to my personal Dante’s Inferno. All my demons are escaping. By telling my readers that I would not style my hair or drink alcohol for the next year, I once again terrorized myself. I set up a no-win situation. What I really wanted was to say “Look at me. I am hurting. I cannot hold this pain anymore.” Instead, I did what I have perfected over the years, I abused myself. In so many words, I said, “Okay, if you are going to spill the beans, here is what I am going to do to you. I am going to punish you. You will not take care of your hair as it grows out. You will not enjoy a glass of wine at night or with friends. You will, while you write the tales of your past, be miserable and alone, a freak. I
Epiphany… I am still internalizing the abuse I suffered as a child. A therapist once revealed to me that, as an adult, I did not seek exploitive relationships because I had successfully invented numerous, secret ways to batter myself. No more. A.W.O.L. Better yet, absent without asking permission to leave.
Writing into the Light 