Remembering Shame

There was no reason to remember how it felt.  The darkness descended and it was years before the knowledge would be brought to light.  Yet it was always there.  Like pigment on skin it refused to leave.

It was sometimes difficult to know when the real world was truly real.  I lived on starships that sang and planets where all beings lived in peace.  Blurring of the lines between the mundane activities of daily living and that of transporting to new worlds was not uncommon.

But even fantasy worlds have their drawbacks.  The problem with having a visual thought process is that as the words come, so do the visions that the words describe.  You can say you saw a pansy.  I then see the pansy.  My mind conjures up the deep purple and the pale white that goes to make up the illusion of a face.  I see the deep yellows and can almost smell and touch my vision.  There are things that I cannot listen to because of the vivid imagery of my own thought processes, but I can watch them and feel little.  I can see the reality without truly experiencing it.

When certain shows are narrated, my desire to quiet their voice is enormous.  If they describe a horrific murder, I experience it in my mind and it haunts me for days.  On the other hand if I witness something first hand, I know what has happened and have no desire to mentally embellish it.

My life as a child was, how do I say it, interesting?  Sexual abuse conjures up the image of a child being penetrated by an adult.  I do not recall that particular thing happening to me.  But, there are things that happened that I wish I did not have to forget.

My father had just returned me to my mother.  It was something akin to returning a defective hair dryer.  I was 13 when my mother met and married Three. I have to admit that I thought he was nice looking and since I was an aspiring artist, I drew pictures of his face and gave them to my mother.

I used to scratch his back.  He lay on the floor and I would sit on his lower back and scratch his back.  I did not know what that was doing to him and my mother never should have allowed it to be done.  He was laying there on the floor becoming aroused while I sat on his rear end and scratched his back.

There was one time that I was thankful for having gas.  Oh, I was not thankful at the time, but looking back I think it kept me out of trouble for a while.  It happened one day while I was sitting on him and scratching his back.  I farted.  It was not one of those girly ones either.  It was a big fat loud one.  It was one of those that made a 13 year old hide their head in shame for days!  I never sat on his back again.

There was no HBO or cable or satellite television in those days.  There were maybe 3 channels if your antenna was pointed in the right direction.  Fifty years ago a 13 year old had not seen sex on TV nor in the movies.  I was not living in such advanced times and had no clue as to what made a man do what men did.  I had no desire to know either.  I liked my somewhat sheltered life.

I would still scratch his back from time to time but never like before.  But, looking back, I can see that he never quit trying.  There was never a time when I was ever considered as being athletic, but my joints were nimble and I could do contortions that most people could not do.  When he found that out, he asked me to do it often, until I just tired of being a trained animal.

When we moved out of state to the mountains, I thought things would be better.  He was taking Mom, my brother and myself to his home in West Virginia.  It was there that fantasy turned to horror.

Mom was pregnant with my little sister.  As mom grew larger in her pregnancy, things between her and Three got worse.  The fights were louder and his lechery started showing up more.  We were living in a 1 bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor.  Joyless slept on the roll away bed.  I slept on the sofa.  Mom and Three shared the bedroom.  And then it started.

Three, "Joyless, come here!  If you look through the keyhole, you can see your sister in the bathtub!"

Mom, "Three, your perverted son of a bitch!!  Stop it!!  Leave her alone!  CAN'T YOU SEE I'M BUSY!!"  She yelled at him constantly about everything and her yelling came to mean nothing to him.

I had just started undressing when I heard the commotion on the other side of the door.  I hung a towel over the keyhole, made sure the door was locked and continued with my bath.  I made sure that I was never alone with him and then there was little brother to worry about.

 The drama begins.  Three comes home from - wherever (work, bar, it does not matter).  They fight and suddenly he is choking Mom yelling at her, "I WISH YOU'D LOSE THAT DAMN BABY!!!"

Joyless and I run over to him and start hitting on him yelling and trying to make him stop.  He does stop.  The neighbors yell and they scream at each other and it is over as suddenly as it started.  Mom can still breathe and life goes on.

It was a Saturday.  I know because it was cold outside and brother and I were home.  Mom wanted to knock him out when he came home.  He was becoming increasingly erratic in his behavior.  You never knew what would set him off.

Mom was anxious and looking furtively about the kitchen. "I need something to knock him out."

I handed her the iron skillet.  She said, "That should do it."

She held it in her had for a few seconds and handed it back to me saying, "It might kill him.  I don't want to kill him, just knock him out!"

I thought about what she said as I put the skillet away and thought to myself, "So what?  What difference would it make?"

She finally handed me a bottle and asked me to fill it with sand.  I took the bottle and put rocks and sand and some water in it trying to make it as heavy as possible.  By the time I got back upstairs her plan had changed and she had 2 boards leaning against the wall.  I have no idea where she got them, but there they were.  Once she decided what she was going to do, we settled down, ate dinner and waited.

When he finally got home, she met him at the door and asked him where he had been.  They started arguing and swearing at each other.  As the argument escalated, she moved backward to where the boards were leaning against the wall.   She picked up one and slammed him hard against the side of the head.  He stood there looking at her, stunned for just a few seconds.  She raised it again and as she was about to connect a second time, he laughed at her.  He took the board from her and broke it in half across his knee while he laughed.

My heart sank and all I could think was that she should have used the skillet.

"What the Hell's wrong with you, Spet?" was all he said as he walked past her.

It was just too weird.  Nothing phased that man.  I was in shock, but there was no time for wondering what would happen next.  He just wanted to play cards.

I hated playing cards with him especially when he lost.  He just started swearing and throwing things and it was just a mess.  Once he just took the cards and threw them up in the air.  Joyless and I picked up the cards when he left the room and try as hard as we could, we could not find 5 of the cards.  We looked everywhere.  When I lay down on the sofa to sleep, I looked up and they were hanging on the chandelier.

President Kennedy was assassinated that year.  The baby was born shortly after and we called her Lost Innocence.  Three sent Joyless to the bar with a note that said, "Give this boy a bottle of beer." and scrawled his name.  Three came home drunk one time.  I remember that well.  It was close to Christmas.

Three said he was going to his brother's house to do something.  About 1:30 that morning, someone propped him against the door and the high heels clicked down the hall as he banged on the door.  Mom got up and went to the door.

"I love ya, Spet." and he threw up.  "Ya know I lub ya." and he threw up again.  She managed to guide him to the bathroom and hollered at me to clean up the mess and she would give me a dollar.

I managed to get it cleaned up.  I would have done it anyway without the dollar.  I loved my mother and felt sorry for her.  I tried to go to sleep, when Mom asked me to help her get him into the tub.  By the time I got to the door, she had him in the tub.  I stood by the door when she turned on the cold water.  The tub was an old tub and the faucet was one that stood straight out instead of curving down like modern faucets.  The ice cold water hit him full force right in the crotch.  He would have jumped clear out of the tub if he had not been so drunk.

I went back to bed and listened.  She got him out of the tub and led him into the bedroom.  I got up to see the carnage and noticed blood all over the place.  She told me he had come home with his hand cut.  It was quiet for a while.  She went into the kitchen and brought out a butcher knife.  I shut my eyes and willed myself to sleep.

Nothing was stirring the next morning and I went to the bathroom.  There was blood on the walls and all over the tub.  I used the toilet quietly and silently walked the few steps to the bedroom door following the drops of blood.  I looked in and saw Mom lying on the bed awake.  Three was hog-tied and asleep beside her.  There were splotches of blood everywhere.  It was not too long after I glanced in that Three started to stir, choking himself as he tried to straighten up.  There was a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed.  They were all either torn or cut up.

It did not take long to find out what had transpired the night before.

You could see the fear awaken on his face as he tried to look at himself and he screamed, "What've you done?  You crazy bitch! What'd ya do ta me?"  I had to stifle a laugh as he continued to rant and simultaneously choke himself.

There was the 6 foot 1, 185 pound crazy man tied up like the pig he was, screaming like a baby.  Yes, I thought it was funny.  My 5 foot 7, 100 pound mom had him in a real bad way and I was hoping she would leave him that way.

When he calmed down and she had had enough fun, she brought the knife close to his face and gave him one of those looks.  It was a look that said, "You are mine and I can do what I want with you.  You can't guess what I'm gonna do next."  When he thought he was going to die, she took the knife and cut the rope setting him free.  He was still hung over so he was in no shape to start any fights.  He was too busy checking body parts to cause any trouble.

Mom had cut up the clothes that she could not tear in half.  The only clothes that he had to wear were the clothes he wore home that belonged to his brother and a pair of shorts and old torn T-shirt that was in the laundry basket.

Yes, we were just one big happy family.  All that happened in just 2 months.  Intermixed with all of that was Three's hatred of Joyless.  He choked him holding him against the wall all the while watching him turn purple with me begging him to stop.  He berated Joyless calling him names and telling him how worthless he was.  It was heartbreaking.  I was scared and felt hopeless.  There was nowhere to turn and no one seemed to care.  It was frustrating and deep inside I knew that there just had to be a better way.  I lived for the day I could leave.