A few of my relatives wonder why I stay away. They've called me all kinds of names. I don't care- I choose Life.
My mother's husband, Glenn, was a cop. A real crooked one, at that. He drove fear into the hearts of my little brother and me, and I wakened in the wee hours of the night when he was on the late shift, the sounds of his freshly polished shoes threatening to come into my room.
It was no secret he was a liar, and a cheat. Everyone knew it. The people at church, our neighbors, my mothers brothers and sisters... still, no one challenged him, no one said a word. Nearly all of our babysitters had been approached by him at one point or another and propositioned for sexual favors. My mother knew about it and never acknowledged it. Even when I told her about what the girls had told me when I was about 6 years old, she and her friend Marcia had laughed it off, told me it was not true. After that, I knew she would never believe me.
As it happened, once when I was 12 I told a friend at school what had been happening. How he touched me through my clothes, made me sit in his lap when he had an erection, how his hands would wander. I told her that he would force me to hug him when he was hard, pressing me into him, and how I was scared that soon it would get worse. We'd had a girl living with us, a babysitter who'd gotten pregnant and kicked out by her parents. Glenn had raped her, I later learned, or rather intimidated her into letting him do it to her. She was 5 months pregnant, and terrified. When I told my friend what was happening, a domino effect got underway. She told a teacher, who called in the counselor, who contacted my mom, who nearly had a nervous breakdown. Before I knew it, our house was full of relatives, yelling, accusing, and shouting- all because of me.
My mother didn't believe me. Though I was an obedient kid, got good grades, was by all accounts a wallflower and got into no trouble, she convinced herself I was making it up. No one stood up for me. She stayed married to the bastard for 5 more years, until he left her for another woman.
You read that correctly. HE left HER.
She was a mess. It wasn't long before she found someone else, and stopped coming home. The same woman who couldn't be bothered to pick me up from after school programs or sports- because it was too far, and too much trouble to drive- drove from her work to her new boyfriends house, almost an hour away, every night. Occasionally she would come home long enough to get some clothes, and leave again, assuring us she'd be home later. Except she wasn't. She'd stopped coming home.
It wasn't unusual for me to stand in as the mother figure. I was the oldest, and my mother had been leaving me home alone with my siblings since I was 7. At seven, I was left in charge of my 5 year old brother and my 1 year old sister. I was responsible for changing diapers, making dinner, washing dishes, and packing lunches. Often, we wouldn't have food for lunch, so we went without. It wasn't because we didn't have money, because my mother bought new clothes and went out every weekend. To this day, I still often forget to eat lunch. I am used to feeling hungry.
So, when he left her, I breathed a sigh of relief. Even though my mother wasn't coming home, at least the predator was away and my over-dramatic, narcissistic mother was somewhere where she couldn't belittle us. Nothing really changed for me, except that I felt slightly less fear.
One day, my sister came home sick from school. She had always had asthma, but now, it seemed she was really sick. My mother was home that evening, presumably to get some clothes, or maybe the school nurse had called her. I seem to remember that she was happier than usual, which usually meant that she was leaving us again. She seemed to hate our very existence, so having her gone was a great load off my mind. My sister was in the bathroom when she made an awful sound. My mother and I were on the other side of the house, and, instinctively, I pushed past my mother to run to my sister's side.
My sister had to be taken to the hospital. Turned out she had pneumonia. She was 9 years old, and understandably scared. She was going to have to stay in the hospital while she received treatment. My brother had gone to my dad's, so it was just the three of us. That is, until my mom had to go. I asked her if she was coming back, and she said no. She didn't feel like driving all the way back to Savannah from Richmond Hill (I knew she was really going to her boyfriends house on Wilmington Island, in the opposite direction from ours).
We had it out in the hallway. Or at least she did. I tried to contain my rage as she went on about how she didn't feel like driving so much, that who was I to question her. It escalated, with her, as usual, storming off in a very soap-operatic type rage, permed hair and shoulder pads and designer shoes angrily clacking down the hospital hallway.
I stayed with my sister for all but one of the 5 days she was admitted to the hospital. Her father stayed on the last day (probably the only decent thing I ever remember him doing). Our mother didn't stay once. She had a concert to attend over the weekend, so, understandably, she was too busy. I remember my sister looking like death, and a chill ran through my bones. It was just me and her… what if she died? I was 15, and frightened as hell.
This is just part of my story. I have more, so much more to share. Thank you for taking the time to read it.
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