I am eleven now and about this time my mother calls a yellow cab to load us all up to take us to an orphans’ home in Duncan. However, she backs out before the first kid gets out of the car. We all go back to that house on Walnut, back to a life of fear. I know this life can’t continue. Through the Captain Kangaroo show and his grandfather clock I mark the times of that fear in my life.
From this point on it all seems so sudden. I am twelve, and one day, I exaggerate on the phone at my aunt’s house how we have no food to eat and how dirty the house is. I never tell my father about the abuse. He once fought in Normandy during the War, he has enough on his mind. The next day I am up in an Oak tree when a social worker pulls up in front of our house. We find out later that she would make us kids move. I always say it is my fault but never know for sure. A week later a yellow cab moves us kids to my dad’s house. I am in the second car load.
It seems so exciting at first, a new life and everything. We had no way of knowing that we were all trading our physical abuse for emotional abuse at the hands of my dad’s second wife, Brenda. It becomes a learning experience, the difference between the two types of abuse; physical or emotional. This struggle at the new home on ‘L’ Street actually comes at a convenient time. Back on Walnut it got way too boring for me to deal with anymore.
As mentioned before, the run toward struggles becomes my way of life. It’s not a great life because of my stepmother; however, it is my life now and I just have to accept things. Whether it is all about my childhood, or the way it would affect my life later remains unclear. Maybe it is that this confusing way of living is everyone’s life. Life becomes one big experiment.
In spite of all the past sexual trauma by my uncle and his new wife, Sue, my mother not being there when it counts, and now my stepmother being so cruel, I have to prove I could date someone of my own age. Conflicts are great but something beyond me drives me to keep to the “higher road”. I can only assume it is the love of God or maybe the way my earthly father loves me. As long as I have this attitude my life could not be sweeter in a small Oklahoma oil-rich town. I awake each morning with a new purpose. My father made sure of that, by a new work task every day. He was a war hero and a lumber contractor so we had plenty of money. Life with my stepmother is actually better than on Walnut Street. “We simply have to make the best of things,” my father says.
Every so often my thoughts creep back to the past. I quickly snap out of that frame of mind but wonder just why and how my past slowly creeps into my life. Self-discipline is hard to achieve. An example of this are the times my brother and I would put together my dad’s new-bought prefab cabinets. The smell of those cabinets of Birch, Mahogany, and Walnut, as we put them together, gives a faint smell of pecans and baking powder. However, that smell seems to threaten and open a door to the past. It’s something about Sue. Perhaps it is her perfume. The thought of her actually makes my head hurt. Anyway, this type of confusion is my struggle at the new home. Things are better now, and I am going to make every minute count. I go to grade school in new clothes with no holes in my jeans. That’s better than before, and has to account for something.
I wait on customers at my dad’s H and H Lumber Company after school and weekends. We (my two brothers, three sisters, two step-sisters, my father, and Brenda) seem to shelter me from any hurt of the past. With Brenda’s mean spirit I develop a kind of depression from new experiences. I keep in mind that depression is like a springboard to reach out and enjoy my new life. To be happy, and no matter what, covers up the intensity of a negative past. This idea becomes a penitence for something I do wrong on Walnut. There is just one thing I still can’t figure out—what it is exactly I am to forgive myself of doing. It is just a feeling I grow to live with.
One thing I have going in my favor were absolutes. They were plentiful. Men are men and women are women. No blurry lines. A person believes in a work ethic, honors and respects parents, and then goes to college to uphold American values. One of the most egregious statements ever said to another human being is later repeated to me by my brother, a lawyer now. He mentions that a woman tells him, “since you are free, male, white, and twenty-one, you will never have any problems in life.” Some people not only believe in their self-promoted ideas but live with them as truth and never believe in absolutes.
When I am almost fourteen I start wetting the bed. My stepmother would lock me, along with my innocent older brother, in a very cold patio room full of windows. She does this in order to punish me. The mattress I lay on in the bottom bunk would soon be eaten through by the stench of yellow urine. Once, my brother lets me sleep on the top bunk with him. That proves too crowded, but I could finally feel warmth for at least one night. My father comes to the rescue after weeks of night torture. That rescue only earns us a pallet on a hard floor just inside the house and next to that patio sliding-glass door. My stepmother tells me I am going to turn out to be like Jac, my mother’s brother. I wonder if she is right.
My definition of abnormal becomes the opposite of the very wild shenanigans of one of my teen step-sisters. There are many sexual and other acts she does inside and outside the family. These acts of hers become part of my reality, and I definitely need a definition of reality. It’s a reality better than none. Without definitions it would be like going through life like a reindeer, something my father used to say to me and my older brother whenever we act lazy or silly.
From this point on it all seems so sudden. I am twelve, and one day, I exaggerate on the phone at my aunt’s house how we have no food to eat and how dirty the house is. I never tell my father about the abuse. He once fought in Normandy during the War, he has enough on his mind. The next day I am up in an Oak tree when a social worker pulls up in front of our house. We find out later that she would make us kids move. I always say it is my fault but never know for sure. A week later a yellow cab moves us kids to my dad’s house. I am in the second car load.
It seems so exciting at first, a new life and everything. We had no way of knowing that we were all trading our physical abuse for emotional abuse at the hands of my dad’s second wife, Brenda. It becomes a learning experience, the difference between the two types of abuse; physical or emotional. This struggle at the new home on ‘L’ Street actually comes at a convenient time. Back on Walnut it got way too boring for me to deal with anymore.
As mentioned before, the run toward struggles becomes my way of life. It’s not a great life because of my stepmother; however, it is my life now and I just have to accept things. Whether it is all about my childhood, or the way it would affect my life later remains unclear. Maybe it is that this confusing way of living is everyone’s life. Life becomes one big experiment.
In spite of all the past sexual trauma by my uncle and his new wife, Sue, my mother not being there when it counts, and now my stepmother being so cruel, I have to prove I could date someone of my own age. Conflicts are great but something beyond me drives me to keep to the “higher road”. I can only assume it is the love of God or maybe the way my earthly father loves me. As long as I have this attitude my life could not be sweeter in a small Oklahoma oil-rich town. I awake each morning with a new purpose. My father made sure of that, by a new work task every day. He was a war hero and a lumber contractor so we had plenty of money. Life with my stepmother is actually better than on Walnut Street. “We simply have to make the best of things,” my father says.
Every so often my thoughts creep back to the past. I quickly snap out of that frame of mind but wonder just why and how my past slowly creeps into my life. Self-discipline is hard to achieve. An example of this are the times my brother and I would put together my dad’s new-bought prefab cabinets. The smell of those cabinets of Birch, Mahogany, and Walnut, as we put them together, gives a faint smell of pecans and baking powder. However, that smell seems to threaten and open a door to the past. It’s something about Sue. Perhaps it is her perfume. The thought of her actually makes my head hurt. Anyway, this type of confusion is my struggle at the new home. Things are better now, and I am going to make every minute count. I go to grade school in new clothes with no holes in my jeans. That’s better than before, and has to account for something.
I wait on customers at my dad’s H and H Lumber Company after school and weekends. We (my two brothers, three sisters, two step-sisters, my father, and Brenda) seem to shelter me from any hurt of the past. With Brenda’s mean spirit I develop a kind of depression from new experiences. I keep in mind that depression is like a springboard to reach out and enjoy my new life. To be happy, and no matter what, covers up the intensity of a negative past. This idea becomes a penitence for something I do wrong on Walnut. There is just one thing I still can’t figure out—what it is exactly I am to forgive myself of doing. It is just a feeling I grow to live with.
One thing I have going in my favor were absolutes. They were plentiful. Men are men and women are women. No blurry lines. A person believes in a work ethic, honors and respects parents, and then goes to college to uphold American values. One of the most egregious statements ever said to another human being is later repeated to me by my brother, a lawyer now. He mentions that a woman tells him, “since you are free, male, white, and twenty-one, you will never have any problems in life.” Some people not only believe in their self-promoted ideas but live with them as truth and never believe in absolutes.
When I am almost fourteen I start wetting the bed. My stepmother would lock me, along with my innocent older brother, in a very cold patio room full of windows. She does this in order to punish me. The mattress I lay on in the bottom bunk would soon be eaten through by the stench of yellow urine. Once, my brother lets me sleep on the top bunk with him. That proves too crowded, but I could finally feel warmth for at least one night. My father comes to the rescue after weeks of night torture. That rescue only earns us a pallet on a hard floor just inside the house and next to that patio sliding-glass door. My stepmother tells me I am going to turn out to be like Jac, my mother’s brother. I wonder if she is right.
My definition of abnormal becomes the opposite of the very wild shenanigans of one of my teen step-sisters. There are many sexual and other acts she does inside and outside the family. These acts of hers become part of my reality, and I definitely need a definition of reality. It’s a reality better than none. Without definitions it would be like going through life like a reindeer, something my father used to say to me and my older brother whenever we act lazy or silly.