Once in the dark recesses of my past, I spent three days in
a mental institution in Nevada. At the
end of the three days they booted me out saying, “Lady, you’re not crazy, your
life is crazy. We can’t fix that.” Before I got the boot, I made an enemy of the
fellow who was in charge of my “humor therapy”. You’d think this therapy would be a perfect
fit for me but it wasn’t. Our humor
therapist choose Howie Mandel as the Humor Guru. I love comedy, but even when I
was sane I never thought Howie Mandel was funny. I tried to be a good patient; I sat there
watching the program and tried very hard to make laughing noises. But my humor therapist, George, was not
fooled and sat across the room glaring at me.
After class was over he threatened to report me for being
uncooperative. Since that meant I would
loose cigarette privileges I tried to explain my failure to enjoy Howie. I said that I preferred a different kind of
humor and that my humor was rather dry.
He asked me to give examples of what exactly I considered funny. Put on the spot like that I was unable to
think of a single funny thing. He
stomped off and told me he was going to be watching me. He was true to his word
and watched me like a hawk. Soon it
became a battle of wills between the two of us. If it looked like I was going
to crack a smile he’d be in front of me saying, “Ok so what’s so funny? You think THAT’S funny?” He caught me watching reruns of “Northern
Exposure” once and demanded that I explain what was funny about the Moose. (In
view of recent Alaskan imports – I now declare that there is nothing funny
about a moose.)
The last day of my stay, I was alone in the Day Room, a big
empty green “institutional” room with twelve foot ceilings and a row of long
narrow windows. It was raining hard outside and the rain was sliding down the
windows like a veil of tears. I just
wanted to be alone for awhile and collect my thoughts. I wanted to ready myself
for all the problems that waited for me outside the asylum. I needed some mindless activity to keep my
hands busy while my mind rested. I found
a stack of jigsaw puzzles on the bookshelf and started looking through
them. The first thing I noticed was that
there were no pictures on the boxes.
Just titles scrawled in black magic marker “Tree in Autumn”, “Country
Lane” and last but not least, “Dogs Playing Poker.” I opened the boxes and
there were no further instructions. Then I started to laugh hysterically and
began to sing the Jigsaw Puzzle song by the Rolling Stones.
“Me, I'm waiting so patiently,
Lying on the floorI’m just trying to do this jig-saw puzzle
Before it rains anymore.”
George came running into the room. I looked up at him and said in a loud clear voice, “Rolling Stones, the Rolling Stones are pretty damn funny!”
That incident is typical of my attempts at mental health.
It’s been like trying to put together a puzzle without the picture, aided by a
humor therapist with no sense of humor. A decade later I tried again, this time
with a woman who was more interested in “launching” my daughter than in
treating me. The Cuckoo Bird therapist
launched her alright, without wings or even a parachute. She had inserted herself and poisoned our
relationship so badly that when my daughter crashed, she no longer trusted me
to help her. The damage was irreparable.
It has been that way all my life. Each time I reached out for help, the
therapists have done more harm than good.
I'd struggle through on my own and think I’d recovered. I’d make plans, fall in love, marry and have
children. Then something would trigger a
flash of memory and I was either running for my life or digging at the past
again. It’s like an itch that won’t stop
or a wound that just won’t heal. Maybe you see a commercial for a movie where
the girl is dragged out of bed by her feet.
You filch. You realize that you
know exactly how that feels. You feel
your head bounce against the floor. Or
you smell Aqua Velva and the nausea makes you vomit. You pull your daughter
close to you and feed her your fears.
She grows in the shadow of your nightmares. Then you turn away and try
to shut it out and you shut out her as well.
By looking away and trying to pretend it out of existence, you’ve kept
yourself deliberately naïve to what’s right in front of you. You keep yourself a victim and left your own
daughter unprotected.
Then a few years ago I met Joshua. Unlike my humor therapist, Joshua has a sense of humor. Unlike my Cuckoo Bird Daughter Launcher, he was not interested in parenting my children or collecting my stories. He was only interested in treating me. He’s only thirty-something but he has a whole wall full of degrees, a ton of experience and incredible sensitivity. He’s also the spitting image of Matt Damon. (Yea, God does in fact love me!)
I started seeing Joshua for grief counseling after my mother died. It had been a year filled with family deaths, starting with my big brother and ending with my mother. I had hoped for reconciliation and healing but their deaths ended that hope. Instead there were new wounds from old enemies and fresh betrayals from the people I loved. I slid into a well of depression that I could not escape alone. Only sheer desperation forced me to allow another “professional” into my life.
During the grief counseling, memories of childhood sexual abuse emerged. They dripped out like a leaky faucet- neither on nor off but just enough to keep you awake at night. Joshua was wonderful. He had a way of asking just the right questions and then giving me the tools to unravel my mystery at my own pace. I made more progress in the few years working with Joshua than in the thirty years before I met him. In fact the work was going so well that the day I saw the Jell-o Jigsaw, I had become a bit glib about the whole thing.
I had gone to the doctor for problems swallowing. I was choking on scrambled eggs and even swallowing water was a problem. “It’s a lifelong problem,” I said to the doctor, “and it would be foolish not to acknowledge the possible psychological link”. Then I glibly told her, “I was choked by my stepfather as he raped me and later my mother choked me for telling about it. I went to live with foster parents and for my eighteenth birthday, my foster father choked me as he raped me. With his hands around my throat he kept telling me not to wake his daughters. I’m in therapy now and I’m just beginning to unravel the memories. The increase in choking may be related to that." I said all of that without a single, tear or any sign of emotion, just matter of fact. I just said it like I was asking for flu shot. I felt so liberated that later I told a friend from church. Then I emailed a friend from high school. I wanted everyone to know my secrets! I thought the truth would set me free.
When Joshua came the next day, I was still high on my new found liberty. I told him about the doctor visit. Then he asked me for details, nothing major, just details of the sexual assault. I found myself arguing with myself right in front of him. You see, Kitty had always remembered the abuse but I didn’t. When I began to remember anything, I only remembered what happened after Kitty told Mom. I insisted over and over that nothing happened before that. Now sitting in front of Joshua, I was having the ancient argument with Kitty all by myself.
It seems that in spite of my glib proclamations, I still wanted to pretend it didn't happen. I did not want to be that little girl. I did not want those memories to be a part of me. I wanted to make excuses. I said, “He was only drunk. He had a head injury.” Then in the middle of one hell of a rationalization I stopped and turned to Joshua. "I kept the bottom drawer of the dresser open so he couldn't get to me” I said. “I hated Kitty because she got the room with the cubby and she could hide in there. He couldn’t fit inside and he couldn’t reach her. That’s why I kept the bottom drawer open, so he couldn’t reach me. But he did reach me. Hid did reach me. He grabbed my foot and pulled me off the bed and cracked my head on the open drawer! He hurt me."
Suddenly, I was frozen with fear. Every muscle in my body ached as I fought to keep the words from reaching my lips. I was amazed by the how much pain I still carried and how long I had shoved those feelings deep inside. It stunned me to see how much power it still had over me. I wanted to wrap my arms around myself to keep the pain inside, but I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe.
At one point Joshua was trying to tenderly comfort me from the other side of the room. I hate being touched lately. I am afraid of physical contact and I found his tenderness frightening. I backed away from him, “No! No kindness, no tenderness! It’s a lie, it’s the way they trick you into letting down your guard. It can’t be trusted.”
At that moment, it became clear to me that I choose men who are indifferent to me. I intentionally choose men who can not love me; men with no tenderness because tenderness has been used to hurt me. Now I go even farther. I have physically cut myself off from the world. A diagnosis of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity keeps me safe inside a bubble without human touch. I don't comb my hair because it will keep me safe. I hide behind closed curtains because it will keep me safe. Like the choking, only a fool wouldn’t see the correlation here. I live in isolation because only then am I safe. Joshua sat back in his chair. He used his words to try to reach through the pain. He asked again and again what would make me feel safe. I could not answer. There’s no such thing as safe.
I ushered him out the door. He left reluctantly reminding me that I could call anytime. I pushed him away thinking I had to do this by myself. No one can help me. No prince ever comes to the rescue. If they do it’s just a foster father with cameras in your shower. Trust no one – trust no one they will betray you.
I did tell once, I told my half-a-sister. She grabbed me by the arm and shook me hard. Then she told me that I’d kill my mother if I told her. She screamed in my face, “Do you WANT to kill your mother?” I loved my mother. So I kept quiet. A year later my mother confronted me in the bathroom. She said that my baby sister Kitty complained that the step-father was ‘bothering’ her at night. “Bothering’ like ‘molesting has as much in common with what grown men do to little girls as questioning does to torture. Some guy bumps into you on the street – he’s molesting you. When the man who is father to you comes into your bed and takes your innocence, its rape. It’s rape. Don’t try and use nice words in front of the kids. They know they are damaged. They know something precious and irreplaceable has been taken from them. They don’t feel molested.
I started my period. He’d stopped ‘bothering’ me at night. I didn’t think he would bother Kitty. I didn’t mean to abandon her, I thought she was safe. I still heard my half-a-sister’s warning. I could not tell my mother about all the nights he had bothered me. All I could say was “Kitty didn’t lie”. I kept repeating that like a criminal repeats a fabricated alibi. Whenever I was asked about that year, I try not to lie but I’ve never been able to tell the whole truth. I do not remember that year. Kitty didn’t lie.
When we finally left my step-father’s house it was not because I finally told my mother or because she finally believed Kitty. It was because my step-father had found another waitress to charm. This one had several young daughters who were ripe for the picking. He would be the devoted husband and good daddy for a time. Then he would slowly pick at the mother’s mind. Pulling her close then pushing her away, loving her, rejecting her. All the while he would present himself to the daughters as the reliable one, the good father. Then slowly the touching would start. At first it was a back rub that felt affectionate and nice. Then his hand would slide down your back and caress your butt. At first you didn’t know what it was. You’d want to move, to pull away but he wasn’t hurting you. He wouldn’t hurt you, he was the Good Daddy. Mom was so erratic, you dare not offend him. You dare not lose him too. So you stand there unable to move, unable to breathe. Before long, the hands slide up between the legs and he starts a gentle rhythmic rub. You’re stuck; you don’t know what you’re feeling. You don’t want those feelings but they’re there. Your body betrays you. It flushes and rushes and you hate what he does but your body doesn’t know it’s repulsive. You never outgrow this dichotomy. You never know true pleasure.
When I was not quite sixteen we moved to a new town leaving my step-father behind, leaving the night visits behind. I wanted to be washed clean of his sin. It was a new school in a new town and lots of new friends. Before long, I’d met a boy and fallen in love. I was full of teenage dreams. I wanted to be like Gidget in the movie, in love with my Moondoggie.
Then one day I’d been out with friends and I came home to find my mother crazy on diet pills, my diary and fear. She greeted me at the door full of rage. There was nothing in my diary but the sweet longings of a girl and her first love. I ached for slow dances and hand holding and nothing more. I wrote of class rings and prom dresses. Somehow in spite of everything my heart was still innocent and I was trying desperately to keep it that way. But she is having none of it. She ripped at me with slut and whoring and evil shame filled words. She threw them like darts at a dartboard. Sharpened words meant to pierce the skin.
In the corner is baby sister Kitty, the only person who could have revealed the secret location of my diary. She was looking like a repentant suicide bomber. Kitty does not understand why I say I don’t remember. She is angry with me for leaving her to carry the memory alone. She digs out my diary wanting to expose the truth.
I am tired of the damn lie. I scream that we didn’t lie. Kitty and I did not lie! Before I know it the words are out of my mouth. She stops, turns her head slowly and stares at me. I do not stop. I shout at her for all the nights she left me alone to fight him off. I shout at her for the knife under my pillow and the stitches in my head. She flies through the air and I land flat on my back. She is on top, her hands around my throat screaming, “You stole my husband, you little slut, you stole my husband from me!” At first I fight, then I let go. Then I want her to choke the life from me. I welcome the darkness. I’ve killed my mother.
Sometime later I hear the sounds of the song “They’re coming to take me away” on my bedroom radio. I see my mother in a straight jacket being led to a police car. The half-a-sister has come and taken Kitty. I am alone and the house is empty. I stumble in a fog the two mile walk to the High School Basketball Game. I slide onto the bench in the front row. A friend leans over and asks, “Where’s your jacket? What are those marks on your neck?” I don’t remember much after that, not for many months. Another black hole.
That was the end of my family and the death of my mother. The woman I knew and loved never came home again. Instead an almost robotic figure would pick me up at my foster parent’s house. Sitting across the booth at a Bob’s Big Boy she would tell me she was sorry. Our eyes never met. Never again in her lifetime was I her daughter. The rest of my family scattered too. Whatever glue held us together was gone. I had killed my mother. I had killed my family. I had made myself an orphan. It is all my fault. I don’t remember. Kitty didn’t lie.
I spent the weekend, the long weekend alone remembering. I can trust no one with the truth, maybe not
even me. I spent three days trying to
pull the pieces together but this puzzle is as slippery as the jell-o in the
recipe. Memories keep slipping through my fingers. I remembered dresser drawer and then
later the same day I forgot. I shove my
hand back into my jell-o memory to find the purple drawer and come up with a
piece of a blue knife. That kept happening.
I’d remember and then the memory would slide through my fingers. Some were seemingly benign memories; my first High School Dance the summer before 9th
grade, a new bicycle or a homework assignment. It made no sense that I would
try to hide those memories. I finally
wrote “bottom drawer” on a purple post it note and stuck it to the mirror. Later other slippery memories would get the
post it note treatment. I had a stack of
post it’s in different colors. I left a
pad in each room along with a pen. The
blue notes were on my desk, the pink in the living room, purple were in the
bedroom and green were kitchen notes. On
each one I scribbled notes like clues to that Holy Grail.
I scooped up all the notes and stuck them to the bedroom mirror. It looked interesting but held more questions than answers. The memories were disconnected with no sense of time. Events floated unattached. Then I lined up the post it notes according to date. I had to check other sources to verify dates. I looked up yearbooks, checked wedding dates, Army enlistment dates and old letters. Finally I had a timeline. It was only then that things began to make sense. There seemed to be a logical order to events. I still could not remember without the notes but at least now I had the notes.
Months and months of tiny flashes, weekends full of jigsaw jell-o pass as I sorted through the broken bits of my life. Then one day, out of nowhere, I said to Joshua on his weekly visit, “I can hear him grunt.” The words escaped before I knew I’d said them. I would have been ashamed but I was busy getting the sound out of my head. Ugguhh. Ugguhh. Ugguhh. I’m shaking my head, shaking my head; I want to shake him out of there. Suddenly I stop. “I can’t do this” I said and Joshua believed me.
A month later Joshua asked about doing “Body Work”. It was a kind of meditation where you connect with your body memories. I was ready to try and I trusted Joshua to help me through. First he did some guided meditation and then began asking about where I might feel pain or discomfort. “My chest” I quickly answered, “there is always a weight on my chest.” It seems a harmless answer but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I felt the weight on him on top of my tiny body. I was barely 70 pounds and the weight of him crushed me. I heard the grunting noises again. I saw images in the mirror over the dresser. I saw the bottom drawer left open. I saw a figure standing in the doorway. Was that me? It looked like me. I sat up. “I can’t.” Joshua was talking but I couldn’t hear him.
It wasn’t anger or fear but sadness that overwhelmed me. I could hear the child in me saying, “If I don’t remember he can’t hurt me. If I don’t remember I won’t kill my mother. He can’t hurt me; I won’t kill my mother, if I don’t remember.” The pieces snapped together.
There it is. There it is.
I did tell. I told the half-a-sister the next day at the top of the basement stairs. She was doing laundry. She saw my bloody sheets and asked if I’d started my period. As I shook my head back and fort, the words gushed like tears. I told her how the blood got there. I told her about the grunting. I told her he hurt me. I could barely speak I was crying so hard. Then she grabbed my arm hard and said, “"Don't you EVER tell! Do you want to KILL your Mother? Do you? Do you want her DEAD?" I sucked the words back in and I shut up good. I loved my mother. I didn’t want to kill her. So whenever I wanted to tell, I sucked the words back in. Sometimes I choke on them. Sometimes I can’t breath.
That next night my mother dreamed of me dead in a white coffin. She woke up screaming, “The blood, the blood!” I remember hoping that she would find out and that it wouldn’t kill her. But she didn’t notice. She was busy working to pay off half-a-sisters wedding. She was working nights as a waitress. She’d come home in the early morning hours and drag herself over to the sofa and fall asleep. I tried waiting up for her, but I’d fall asleep.
My big brother came home from Basic Training in the Army and I wanted to tell him. But the words stuck in my throat. There was a dance at the tennis courts for all the high school. It was my first high school dance. All my girlfriends and I were in a little huddle when my big brother walked in. He was bad boy handsome and all my friends swooned. He started walking across the tennis courts and I grinned when I realized he was headed straight for me. When he walked up he didn’t even say hello he just leaned down and said, “Sis, your nylons are sagging around your ankles and what is THAT zit on your chin?” I think he was embarrassed by me.
I think my brother told our mother that since I was going to start high school, it was important that I make a good impression. He said I needed clothes and he even sent some money to help pay for my new school clothes. It makes sense now. Because my step-father refused to buy clothes for my brother he went to Vietnam. It really is that simple. My brother didn’t have a winter coat and my step-father had stopped the charade of being the good father. He had become a demanding miser who argued over every dime. My brother broke into a dry cleaning store and stole a coat. OK so it was a James Dean leather jacket, but it was a coat. I remember the police showing up at the door and my big brother looking like a scalded cat. My step-father was saying that the military would “Make a man out of him”. Everyone seemed to agree except my brother who had other plans. But whoosh my big brother was gone.
Then a few years ago I met Joshua. Unlike my humor therapist, Joshua has a sense of humor. Unlike my Cuckoo Bird Daughter Launcher, he was not interested in parenting my children or collecting my stories. He was only interested in treating me. He’s only thirty-something but he has a whole wall full of degrees, a ton of experience and incredible sensitivity. He’s also the spitting image of Matt Damon. (Yea, God does in fact love me!)
I started seeing Joshua for grief counseling after my mother died. It had been a year filled with family deaths, starting with my big brother and ending with my mother. I had hoped for reconciliation and healing but their deaths ended that hope. Instead there were new wounds from old enemies and fresh betrayals from the people I loved. I slid into a well of depression that I could not escape alone. Only sheer desperation forced me to allow another “professional” into my life.
During the grief counseling, memories of childhood sexual abuse emerged. They dripped out like a leaky faucet- neither on nor off but just enough to keep you awake at night. Joshua was wonderful. He had a way of asking just the right questions and then giving me the tools to unravel my mystery at my own pace. I made more progress in the few years working with Joshua than in the thirty years before I met him. In fact the work was going so well that the day I saw the Jell-o Jigsaw, I had become a bit glib about the whole thing.
I had gone to the doctor for problems swallowing. I was choking on scrambled eggs and even swallowing water was a problem. “It’s a lifelong problem,” I said to the doctor, “and it would be foolish not to acknowledge the possible psychological link”. Then I glibly told her, “I was choked by my stepfather as he raped me and later my mother choked me for telling about it. I went to live with foster parents and for my eighteenth birthday, my foster father choked me as he raped me. With his hands around my throat he kept telling me not to wake his daughters. I’m in therapy now and I’m just beginning to unravel the memories. The increase in choking may be related to that." I said all of that without a single, tear or any sign of emotion, just matter of fact. I just said it like I was asking for flu shot. I felt so liberated that later I told a friend from church. Then I emailed a friend from high school. I wanted everyone to know my secrets! I thought the truth would set me free.
When Joshua came the next day, I was still high on my new found liberty. I told him about the doctor visit. Then he asked me for details, nothing major, just details of the sexual assault. I found myself arguing with myself right in front of him. You see, Kitty had always remembered the abuse but I didn’t. When I began to remember anything, I only remembered what happened after Kitty told Mom. I insisted over and over that nothing happened before that. Now sitting in front of Joshua, I was having the ancient argument with Kitty all by myself.
It seems that in spite of my glib proclamations, I still wanted to pretend it didn't happen. I did not want to be that little girl. I did not want those memories to be a part of me. I wanted to make excuses. I said, “He was only drunk. He had a head injury.” Then in the middle of one hell of a rationalization I stopped and turned to Joshua. "I kept the bottom drawer of the dresser open so he couldn't get to me” I said. “I hated Kitty because she got the room with the cubby and she could hide in there. He couldn’t fit inside and he couldn’t reach her. That’s why I kept the bottom drawer open, so he couldn’t reach me. But he did reach me. Hid did reach me. He grabbed my foot and pulled me off the bed and cracked my head on the open drawer! He hurt me."
Suddenly, I was frozen with fear. Every muscle in my body ached as I fought to keep the words from reaching my lips. I was amazed by the how much pain I still carried and how long I had shoved those feelings deep inside. It stunned me to see how much power it still had over me. I wanted to wrap my arms around myself to keep the pain inside, but I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe.
At one point Joshua was trying to tenderly comfort me from the other side of the room. I hate being touched lately. I am afraid of physical contact and I found his tenderness frightening. I backed away from him, “No! No kindness, no tenderness! It’s a lie, it’s the way they trick you into letting down your guard. It can’t be trusted.”
At that moment, it became clear to me that I choose men who are indifferent to me. I intentionally choose men who can not love me; men with no tenderness because tenderness has been used to hurt me. Now I go even farther. I have physically cut myself off from the world. A diagnosis of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity keeps me safe inside a bubble without human touch. I don't comb my hair because it will keep me safe. I hide behind closed curtains because it will keep me safe. Like the choking, only a fool wouldn’t see the correlation here. I live in isolation because only then am I safe. Joshua sat back in his chair. He used his words to try to reach through the pain. He asked again and again what would make me feel safe. I could not answer. There’s no such thing as safe.
I ushered him out the door. He left reluctantly reminding me that I could call anytime. I pushed him away thinking I had to do this by myself. No one can help me. No prince ever comes to the rescue. If they do it’s just a foster father with cameras in your shower. Trust no one – trust no one they will betray you.
I did tell once, I told my half-a-sister. She grabbed me by the arm and shook me hard. Then she told me that I’d kill my mother if I told her. She screamed in my face, “Do you WANT to kill your mother?” I loved my mother. So I kept quiet. A year later my mother confronted me in the bathroom. She said that my baby sister Kitty complained that the step-father was ‘bothering’ her at night. “Bothering’ like ‘molesting has as much in common with what grown men do to little girls as questioning does to torture. Some guy bumps into you on the street – he’s molesting you. When the man who is father to you comes into your bed and takes your innocence, its rape. It’s rape. Don’t try and use nice words in front of the kids. They know they are damaged. They know something precious and irreplaceable has been taken from them. They don’t feel molested.
I started my period. He’d stopped ‘bothering’ me at night. I didn’t think he would bother Kitty. I didn’t mean to abandon her, I thought she was safe. I still heard my half-a-sister’s warning. I could not tell my mother about all the nights he had bothered me. All I could say was “Kitty didn’t lie”. I kept repeating that like a criminal repeats a fabricated alibi. Whenever I was asked about that year, I try not to lie but I’ve never been able to tell the whole truth. I do not remember that year. Kitty didn’t lie.
When we finally left my step-father’s house it was not because I finally told my mother or because she finally believed Kitty. It was because my step-father had found another waitress to charm. This one had several young daughters who were ripe for the picking. He would be the devoted husband and good daddy for a time. Then he would slowly pick at the mother’s mind. Pulling her close then pushing her away, loving her, rejecting her. All the while he would present himself to the daughters as the reliable one, the good father. Then slowly the touching would start. At first it was a back rub that felt affectionate and nice. Then his hand would slide down your back and caress your butt. At first you didn’t know what it was. You’d want to move, to pull away but he wasn’t hurting you. He wouldn’t hurt you, he was the Good Daddy. Mom was so erratic, you dare not offend him. You dare not lose him too. So you stand there unable to move, unable to breathe. Before long, the hands slide up between the legs and he starts a gentle rhythmic rub. You’re stuck; you don’t know what you’re feeling. You don’t want those feelings but they’re there. Your body betrays you. It flushes and rushes and you hate what he does but your body doesn’t know it’s repulsive. You never outgrow this dichotomy. You never know true pleasure.
When I was not quite sixteen we moved to a new town leaving my step-father behind, leaving the night visits behind. I wanted to be washed clean of his sin. It was a new school in a new town and lots of new friends. Before long, I’d met a boy and fallen in love. I was full of teenage dreams. I wanted to be like Gidget in the movie, in love with my Moondoggie.
Then one day I’d been out with friends and I came home to find my mother crazy on diet pills, my diary and fear. She greeted me at the door full of rage. There was nothing in my diary but the sweet longings of a girl and her first love. I ached for slow dances and hand holding and nothing more. I wrote of class rings and prom dresses. Somehow in spite of everything my heart was still innocent and I was trying desperately to keep it that way. But she is having none of it. She ripped at me with slut and whoring and evil shame filled words. She threw them like darts at a dartboard. Sharpened words meant to pierce the skin.
In the corner is baby sister Kitty, the only person who could have revealed the secret location of my diary. She was looking like a repentant suicide bomber. Kitty does not understand why I say I don’t remember. She is angry with me for leaving her to carry the memory alone. She digs out my diary wanting to expose the truth.
I am tired of the damn lie. I scream that we didn’t lie. Kitty and I did not lie! Before I know it the words are out of my mouth. She stops, turns her head slowly and stares at me. I do not stop. I shout at her for all the nights she left me alone to fight him off. I shout at her for the knife under my pillow and the stitches in my head. She flies through the air and I land flat on my back. She is on top, her hands around my throat screaming, “You stole my husband, you little slut, you stole my husband from me!” At first I fight, then I let go. Then I want her to choke the life from me. I welcome the darkness. I’ve killed my mother.
Sometime later I hear the sounds of the song “They’re coming to take me away” on my bedroom radio. I see my mother in a straight jacket being led to a police car. The half-a-sister has come and taken Kitty. I am alone and the house is empty. I stumble in a fog the two mile walk to the High School Basketball Game. I slide onto the bench in the front row. A friend leans over and asks, “Where’s your jacket? What are those marks on your neck?” I don’t remember much after that, not for many months. Another black hole.
That was the end of my family and the death of my mother. The woman I knew and loved never came home again. Instead an almost robotic figure would pick me up at my foster parent’s house. Sitting across the booth at a Bob’s Big Boy she would tell me she was sorry. Our eyes never met. Never again in her lifetime was I her daughter. The rest of my family scattered too. Whatever glue held us together was gone. I had killed my mother. I had killed my family. I had made myself an orphan. It is all my fault. I don’t remember. Kitty didn’t lie.
I scooped up all the notes and stuck them to the bedroom mirror. It looked interesting but held more questions than answers. The memories were disconnected with no sense of time. Events floated unattached. Then I lined up the post it notes according to date. I had to check other sources to verify dates. I looked up yearbooks, checked wedding dates, Army enlistment dates and old letters. Finally I had a timeline. It was only then that things began to make sense. There seemed to be a logical order to events. I still could not remember without the notes but at least now I had the notes.
Months and months of tiny flashes, weekends full of jigsaw jell-o pass as I sorted through the broken bits of my life. Then one day, out of nowhere, I said to Joshua on his weekly visit, “I can hear him grunt.” The words escaped before I knew I’d said them. I would have been ashamed but I was busy getting the sound out of my head. Ugguhh. Ugguhh. Ugguhh. I’m shaking my head, shaking my head; I want to shake him out of there. Suddenly I stop. “I can’t do this” I said and Joshua believed me.
A month later Joshua asked about doing “Body Work”. It was a kind of meditation where you connect with your body memories. I was ready to try and I trusted Joshua to help me through. First he did some guided meditation and then began asking about where I might feel pain or discomfort. “My chest” I quickly answered, “there is always a weight on my chest.” It seems a harmless answer but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I felt the weight on him on top of my tiny body. I was barely 70 pounds and the weight of him crushed me. I heard the grunting noises again. I saw images in the mirror over the dresser. I saw the bottom drawer left open. I saw a figure standing in the doorway. Was that me? It looked like me. I sat up. “I can’t.” Joshua was talking but I couldn’t hear him.
It wasn’t anger or fear but sadness that overwhelmed me. I could hear the child in me saying, “If I don’t remember he can’t hurt me. If I don’t remember I won’t kill my mother. He can’t hurt me; I won’t kill my mother, if I don’t remember.” The pieces snapped together.
There it is. There it is.
I did tell. I told the half-a-sister the next day at the top of the basement stairs. She was doing laundry. She saw my bloody sheets and asked if I’d started my period. As I shook my head back and fort, the words gushed like tears. I told her how the blood got there. I told her about the grunting. I told her he hurt me. I could barely speak I was crying so hard. Then she grabbed my arm hard and said, “"Don't you EVER tell! Do you want to KILL your Mother? Do you? Do you want her DEAD?" I sucked the words back in and I shut up good. I loved my mother. I didn’t want to kill her. So whenever I wanted to tell, I sucked the words back in. Sometimes I choke on them. Sometimes I can’t breath.
That next night my mother dreamed of me dead in a white coffin. She woke up screaming, “The blood, the blood!” I remember hoping that she would find out and that it wouldn’t kill her. But she didn’t notice. She was busy working to pay off half-a-sisters wedding. She was working nights as a waitress. She’d come home in the early morning hours and drag herself over to the sofa and fall asleep. I tried waiting up for her, but I’d fall asleep.
My big brother came home from Basic Training in the Army and I wanted to tell him. But the words stuck in my throat. There was a dance at the tennis courts for all the high school. It was my first high school dance. All my girlfriends and I were in a little huddle when my big brother walked in. He was bad boy handsome and all my friends swooned. He started walking across the tennis courts and I grinned when I realized he was headed straight for me. When he walked up he didn’t even say hello he just leaned down and said, “Sis, your nylons are sagging around your ankles and what is THAT zit on your chin?” I think he was embarrassed by me.
I think my brother told our mother that since I was going to start high school, it was important that I make a good impression. He said I needed clothes and he even sent some money to help pay for my new school clothes. It makes sense now. Because my step-father refused to buy clothes for my brother he went to Vietnam. It really is that simple. My brother didn’t have a winter coat and my step-father had stopped the charade of being the good father. He had become a demanding miser who argued over every dime. My brother broke into a dry cleaning store and stole a coat. OK so it was a James Dean leather jacket, but it was a coat. I remember the police showing up at the door and my big brother looking like a scalded cat. My step-father was saying that the military would “Make a man out of him”. Everyone seemed to agree except my brother who had other plans. But whoosh my big brother was gone.
My Mom and I went to the big Hudson’s store downtown and spent the whole day shopping for me. I got three new wool skirts and a kilt. I got new loafers and a sweater with my initials on it. I loved shopping with my mother, she was better at picking out clothes for me than I was. When we finished we stopped at the mezzanine and had lunch. Since we were very small my mother took us out to eat. It was important to her that we learn how to behave in public, especially in restaurants. I could have told her that day, but it was such a wonderful day. I didn’t want to spoil it.
I was tender hearted my mother used to say. She would take me aside and explain to me so I would understand. She never thought my tender heart was a damaged heart. Not until my half-a-sister called me “too sensitive” and everybody knows that too much of a thing – even a good thing – is bad. I longed for the day when my mother would sit beside me and wrap her arms around me. But I didn’t want to kill my mother.
After school started and I slept through my classes. I would try to stay awake until my mother got home. I’d go to school exhausted. One day my English teacher, took me aside and asked about my essay titled “Living versus Existing”. I said nothing. In the emergency room when I got twelve stitches in my head the doctors asked why I slept in my clothes and if someone was hurting me. I said nothing. Over the years when my little sister would demand that I remember, I said nothing. Nothing nothing nothing.
I felt like nothing in my life was real. Every night he'd rape me. Then every morning I'd make his breakfast; two eggs sunny side up, two pieces of crisp bacon, toast lightly browned and coffee and go to school. I would struggle to stay awake during class then after school I would dread coming home. I would get off the bus at St Patrick's and pray for divine intervention before going home. Once I went into the confessional but I didn’t even tell the Priest. I just asked if I could kill myself. He said no. I asked if I could kill someone who was hurting me. He said no. It was alright for me to be killed defending myself. I started sleeping with a knife.
I tried to stay awake as long as I could but I fell asleep. I woke with his hands around my throat making those grunting noises. I stopped wearing pajamas and started sleeping in my clothes. I still sleep in my clothes. I pulled the drawers out of the dresser thinking he couldn’t get past them. But he just grabbed my foot and pulled me off the bed.
At the end of the first term my once solid A’s were now failing grades. The friends from junior high school never came by. I failed cheerleading tryouts and my English teacher reported me as suicidal and the school called my Mom.
The half-a-sister offered to take me to the doctor. She said my mother shouldn’t worry about me because "It was all that housework I was
doing" The doctor told half-a-sister that I had an infection and bruising.
But half-a-sister told my mother I'd broken my hymen riding a my brother's bike
(crossbar). That year my Mom spent too much money buying me a new bike.
It gets complicated after that, I got my period, he left me alone and went
after Kitty. I didn’t think he would, I thought it was just the evil in me. I
failed to protect her but Kitty told. I still couldn't. My mother didn’t
believe Kitty but it destroyed her anyway, she never recovered. Stepfather was
the love of her life. She still has his name.
Once my Mom was dead, once I could no longer kill her by telling, I remembered. I remembered all of it. I remembered how much I loved her. I remembered her sitting on the bed next to me talking to me when I was upset. Who she was before my step-father's betrayal, before half-a-sister got her hooked on speed, before a nervous breakdown before months of shock treatments. It was like someone gave me an old photograph album full of pictures of my mother. Things I put aside to help me keep my distance from her. Pictures of her in the kitchen, working in the yard, trying to teach me to sew. A lifetime of memories flooded into me. Then I cried like hell for all the damn years lost.
Later I stood in front of the mirror. I opened a photo album to a picture of my family. It was taken on the front porch of our house in North Carolina. My mother wearing a flowered summer dress, her hair long a loose, my big brother out in front with that charming smile and my father still in uniform, cigarette in hand, holding me, a fat faced little girl in a blue bonnet on his knee.
Take the mirror image of that plump faced, bonneted, thumb sucking little toddler and shatter it with a sledge hammer. It fractured my memories, leaving a sunburst fracture with long ragged shards that dropped to the floor. All that’s left is an empty frame and a pile of disconnected memories. You try to walk away but the fragments clutter your path, one gets stuck in your heel and you walk with a limp. You try to reconstruct your childhood. You sort out the pieces, finding a corner piece here, a piece with two lumps, a straight side or a v shape. Each piece is dangerous, sharp and slippery. The glass shatters in your hands leaving your fingertips laced with slivers of glass. You have to force your shaky hands to grab hold and make the pieces tell the story.
Once my Mom was dead, once I could no longer kill her by telling, I remembered. I remembered all of it. I remembered how much I loved her. I remembered her sitting on the bed next to me talking to me when I was upset. Who she was before my step-father's betrayal, before half-a-sister got her hooked on speed, before a nervous breakdown before months of shock treatments. It was like someone gave me an old photograph album full of pictures of my mother. Things I put aside to help me keep my distance from her. Pictures of her in the kitchen, working in the yard, trying to teach me to sew. A lifetime of memories flooded into me. Then I cried like hell for all the damn years lost.
Later I stood in front of the mirror. I opened a photo album to a picture of my family. It was taken on the front porch of our house in North Carolina. My mother wearing a flowered summer dress, her hair long a loose, my big brother out in front with that charming smile and my father still in uniform, cigarette in hand, holding me, a fat faced little girl in a blue bonnet on his knee.
Take the mirror image of that plump faced, bonneted, thumb sucking little toddler and shatter it with a sledge hammer. It fractured my memories, leaving a sunburst fracture with long ragged shards that dropped to the floor. All that’s left is an empty frame and a pile of disconnected memories. You try to walk away but the fragments clutter your path, one gets stuck in your heel and you walk with a limp. You try to reconstruct your childhood. You sort out the pieces, finding a corner piece here, a piece with two lumps, a straight side or a v shape. Each piece is dangerous, sharp and slippery. The glass shatters in your hands leaving your fingertips laced with slivers of glass. You have to force your shaky hands to grab hold and make the pieces tell the story.
No wait, you have a shattered
family portrait. What my step-father did
destroyed all of us. His betrayal broke
my mother in ways that only another woman can understand. A child can’t understand. It’s unbearable to know that the love of your
life has cast you aside for your child.
It torments your soul. My brother
was confused by secret events he often misjudged. My little sister was forever cast as the liar
even by me and forced to carry the horrible secrets alone. Fifty years later,
the children and grandchildren of this family still bear the scars of one man’s
perversity.
For decades I just closed off memories in order to survive. Later, things kept
creeping into my life at the worst possible moments. When my mother died I found I had to open the
door and solve the puzzle. My childhood memories slowly began to reveal a
picture. I finally understand my sister’s determination to
make me remember, my brother’s desperate wish that I would forget and I think I
finally understand my Mother. She was a woman who couldn't
understand my sadness and tried what she could to help me. She bought me
a new bicycle to save my virginity and new school clothes to ease my
sadness. Having raised a daughter I understand how deep the
wounding goes and how many generations will feel the pain.
It began with the Jigsaw Puzzle Jell-o at the doctor’s office and ended with the shattered glass puzzle. During this process I learned some hard facts and faced some truths. I also found my Mother. It was worth the journey.
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