I am ten years now when my mother rushes to the protection of my two little sisters sitting on her brother’s lap. The three are in the enclosed front porch on Walnut. One sister is sitting in my uncle’s lap and the other seems to be waiting her turn again at something. I find out later the hard way that something is not a gentle pony ride. Mental illness is on my mother’s side and her brother likes to exercise his special brand of illness relief.
I try from time to time to act out my version of being normal. I know, even at ten, it would be a constant struggle. I make up my mind, however, that no matter what happens to me, I will be okay and will do it without medicine, too. Struggles become a way of life and I run toward them like finding candy. I think it is at least something to do and something to keep my mind busy. After all, I tell myself, it is not easy to forget things that are not normal, things that are just wrong. I’m convinced that someday these experiences will make me a better person. Going through these trials of life, and all.
I remember one night getting out of bed and leaving my uncle behind to join the uncleanliness under the bed. Feeling I belong there under the bed, alone with the dust of time. That same night I go to the kitchen sink for a drink and find cockroaches swarming everywhere, scurrying to find a place to light. I do not know where to go, or what to do next, so I figure I am like them. I know for sure I have to forget what is forced on me that night.
It all gets monotonous what with my uncle’s constant complaining about the hicks in Duncan (what he called “Bible Duncan”) and his preaching. One day we are made to lay down on the cold wooden floor in the living room as he says the Martians were flying over and might see us if standing up. He said this as he holds onto his Bible. My mother tells us that to obey him is the easier thing to do. She is right.
As time goes by I find ways to pay penance for the things that happen in our family, to prove I am an unwilling participant. Sometimes I hold church in a little house out back. It is the same little house where Jac takes my little sisters. Every time my siblings seem to get bored I bring up our mother’s illness and the fact that someday she will no longer be with us six kids. They start crying and that is my cue to pass an offering plate. What little change I get I take to Van’s Grocery to buy candy. Once, there is enough change to buy a small screwdriver. In turn, this somehow reminds me of how I am misusing my siblings, and the feelings of good intentions. Soon, not wanting to be like my uncle, I give up the so-called preaching. After all, I realize it’s not all about money or making people feel sorry for themselves.
Soon I replace preaching by making sure that those same three or four siblings attend Sunday School and church with me at the Immanuel Baptist Church. It’s hard to maintain organization in our pew, especially with kids younger than myself. Through it all, however, they need to know what I know. They must love God with all their heart, mind, and soul. I tell them that this is the only way to survive the effects of abuse in later years. Nevertheless, I have to remind myself of those same memorable passages of Proverbs in the Bible. I cannot count the times I interrupt my playtime to read through onion skin paper a summary of those passages. This struggle seems more than just something to do, it is the right thing to do.
My uncle would cut telephone lines at night. He would say the government could not control his mind that way. He’d brag about assaulting anyone on the outside world that would not conform to his way of thinking. My mother grows afraid of him. We all do. The only times we feel at peace are when he drinks his Pepsi-Cola, which he finagles from my mother’s welfare check when buying groceries at Barnes Food Store on Seventh Street. Also, for some reason, he draws pleasure from going outside, even in the cold, and spying on us through the windows. We continue ignoring him. A task sometimes impossible.
Once, as thoughts of past abuse are on my mind, I dig through a cedar closet to find a catcher’s mitt and then walk out the back with a prayer to God. I ask Him to show me the way to go in life. “How in the world would I ever be okay growing up otherwise,” I say out loud. I walk to an area beside my friend’s house across the street. My best friend and a few other kids interrupt daily plans of playing soldiers and exchanging baseball cards in order to play catch. That afternoon ‘Mickey Mantle’ (really my best friend), is hitting fly balls to the rest of us. We are catching those fly balls in the spirit of Roger Maris, another baseball hero. I look up to catch a ball, and when I do, I have to rub my eyes for a second time. Suddenly, I see what looks like a castle there in the sky. Out of an open door of that castle is a figure dressed in a red and purple robe. I continue to watch. A command punches my mind. “Follow me and I will show you the way.” The figure then seems to hop toward the north a little. I later decide the hopping effect is just the blinking of my eyes.
My uncle or his wife never abused me again after that day. I lay in bed that night as the new year of 1960 is ushered in by the honking of car horns on East Main Street. A new hope envelops me for that new year.
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.
I try from time to time to act out my version of being normal. I know, even at ten, it would be a constant struggle. I make up my mind, however, that no matter what happens to me, I will be okay and will do it without medicine, too. Struggles become a way of life and I run toward them like finding candy. I think it is at least something to do and something to keep my mind busy. After all, I tell myself, it is not easy to forget things that are not normal, things that are just wrong. I’m convinced that someday these experiences will make me a better person. Going through these trials of life, and all.
I remember one night getting out of bed and leaving my uncle behind to join the uncleanliness under the bed. Feeling I belong there under the bed, alone with the dust of time. That same night I go to the kitchen sink for a drink and find cockroaches swarming everywhere, scurrying to find a place to light. I do not know where to go, or what to do next, so I figure I am like them. I know for sure I have to forget what is forced on me that night.
It all gets monotonous what with my uncle’s constant complaining about the hicks in Duncan (what he called “Bible Duncan”) and his preaching. One day we are made to lay down on the cold wooden floor in the living room as he says the Martians were flying over and might see us if standing up. He said this as he holds onto his Bible. My mother tells us that to obey him is the easier thing to do. She is right.
As time goes by I find ways to pay penance for the things that happen in our family, to prove I am an unwilling participant. Sometimes I hold church in a little house out back. It is the same little house where Jac takes my little sisters. Every time my siblings seem to get bored I bring up our mother’s illness and the fact that someday she will no longer be with us six kids. They start crying and that is my cue to pass an offering plate. What little change I get I take to Van’s Grocery to buy candy. Once, there is enough change to buy a small screwdriver. In turn, this somehow reminds me of how I am misusing my siblings, and the feelings of good intentions. Soon, not wanting to be like my uncle, I give up the so-called preaching. After all, I realize it’s not all about money or making people feel sorry for themselves.
Soon I replace preaching by making sure that those same three or four siblings attend Sunday School and church with me at the Immanuel Baptist Church. It’s hard to maintain organization in our pew, especially with kids younger than myself. Through it all, however, they need to know what I know. They must love God with all their heart, mind, and soul. I tell them that this is the only way to survive the effects of abuse in later years. Nevertheless, I have to remind myself of those same memorable passages of Proverbs in the Bible. I cannot count the times I interrupt my playtime to read through onion skin paper a summary of those passages. This struggle seems more than just something to do, it is the right thing to do.
My uncle would cut telephone lines at night. He would say the government could not control his mind that way. He’d brag about assaulting anyone on the outside world that would not conform to his way of thinking. My mother grows afraid of him. We all do. The only times we feel at peace are when he drinks his Pepsi-Cola, which he finagles from my mother’s welfare check when buying groceries at Barnes Food Store on Seventh Street. Also, for some reason, he draws pleasure from going outside, even in the cold, and spying on us through the windows. We continue ignoring him. A task sometimes impossible.
Once, as thoughts of past abuse are on my mind, I dig through a cedar closet to find a catcher’s mitt and then walk out the back with a prayer to God. I ask Him to show me the way to go in life. “How in the world would I ever be okay growing up otherwise,” I say out loud. I walk to an area beside my friend’s house across the street. My best friend and a few other kids interrupt daily plans of playing soldiers and exchanging baseball cards in order to play catch. That afternoon ‘Mickey Mantle’ (really my best friend), is hitting fly balls to the rest of us. We are catching those fly balls in the spirit of Roger Maris, another baseball hero. I look up to catch a ball, and when I do, I have to rub my eyes for a second time. Suddenly, I see what looks like a castle there in the sky. Out of an open door of that castle is a figure dressed in a red and purple robe. I continue to watch. A command punches my mind. “Follow me and I will show you the way.” The figure then seems to hop toward the north a little. I later decide the hopping effect is just the blinking of my eyes.
My uncle or his wife never abused me again after that day. I lay in bed that night as the new year of 1960 is ushered in by the honking of car horns on East Main Street. A new hope envelops me for that new year.
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.
