Setting The Scene, Part Two

Because I want to keep the worst elements of this story private, I am going to try to be as succinct as I'm able in this entry.

I can't remember the exact year this happened, but I think it was in 1970 when my brother Johnny was arrested in Florida and was sentenced to ten years in Starke Prison. This was the event that sent my mother completely over the edge. As the years went by, she became even more abusive to me, and to my father as well. When she was enraged, anything immediately at hand was a weapon with which she could lash out at us: a heavy ashtray, knives, broomsticks, hairbrushes. The worst in my eyes was the time in which during one of her screaming rages she broke an antique Chinese urn that my father had bought her as a gift, and used a shard of it to carve up his forearm as he physically struggled to grab her wrists to stop the attack. In my eyes, my father was sacrosanct, and for her to go after him was worse than her stabbing me in the hip with a steak knife.

I believe that in the 70s, it was virtually impossible for a man to admit to abuse at a partner's hands. The term "emasculation" comes to mind. I know my father felt trapped by his love for my mother---she was an absolutely beautiful woman, and he was not willing to give her up---and he must have also felt that if he had admitted to the physical abuse she dealt him, he would have been ridiculed. In addition, when he tried to intercede for me, he suffered more of her abuse. Later, during therapy sessions, I tried to hold my father accountable for not doing anything to help me, but I simply could not fault him for it. He was caught in the cycle and could not see how to escape, just as I could not get out because kids didn't just go call Social Services at the time.

When I was fourteen years old, I ran up a $200 phone bill in one month. My mother went berserk and started beating the hell out of me. What's memorable about this event is that it was the first time I decided to defend myself. I threw my mother down on my bed held her down, and began to hit her hard. My father, hearing her yells for help, tore into the room and pulled me off her. My mother went for me again with her fists, and my father---who before then had never raised his hands to me---also started beating me.

It was a betrayal, of course...but as I said earlier, I couldn't really blame him. I still can't. I know he was horrified at what he had done, and I wasn't going to push him for an apology.

My brother Johnny got out of jail in 1977, presumably for good behavior. However, this didn't help my mother in the least. Her abuse took on a new dimension for me when she began to sharpen her skills at mental and verbal demoralization, which were in some ways even more horrifying to me than the physical maltreatment. You can duck a blow---you can see the windup happen and at least try to get out of the way, but you can't look in someone's head to see what their next words will be. She once forced me to sit at the kitchen table to eat dinner while holding me down in the chair and hissing in my ear that the food was laced with arsenic and that I was to eat it all so that my father would come home and finally see me dying. When I would come home from a date, she would force me to take off my underwear so she could check it for "suspect stains".

Five months before high school graduation, the bottom truly fell out. In January of 1980 my father was hospitalized. A week later I confirmed with his doctor---who was also our family friend---that my father had chronic lymphocytic leukemia. However, he also told me that my father had had it for ten years but had been in remission until then, and that he had sworn the doctor to secrecy so that no one would know but them.

On March 23, 1980, my father died. I remember screaming to God in front of my entire family, asking why He didn't take my mother instead. She heard me, but did nothing, and I think that was when she started to fear me a little. She avoided me throughout the wake and the funeral. I was inconsolable and felt completely unsafe, totally vulnerable.

She sent me to college in September. I wasn't ready, even though it meant getting away from her. I sat in my dorm room and looked at the walls and did absolutely nothing. I failed the first semester. I was failing the next semester. I had no idea what to do, and a slow, quiet panic built in me. Near the end of second semester, we were called into the dean's office for counseling. The dean told her I had not attended a single class. I can't even recall if I was expelled or not, because what happened next pretty much erased the memory of that meeting.

My mother and I left the counseling session and walked to the lot where she'd parked. She got in her car, but wouldn't unlock the door for me. I watched her hit the gas hard and begin to drive out of the lot.

Fine, I thought. Later, bitch.

And then she spun the car around and drove straight at me. I stood there, shocked. I remember thinking, "Fuck! She's going to hit me if she's not careful. Wait a sec...she wants to hit me. Holy shit, she wants to KILL me!"

As she got closer, I saw she was smiling maniacally. I turned and ran to get out of the way, and I fell on the ground. She missed me, but not by much. I got up and started pelting down the lot, and she came for me again. I dodged the car. I fell down again, she tried to hit me again, I ran, she followed. Finally I tripped and fell just as I was getting out of the way one last time, and her tire grazed my foot.

I don't remember what happened next, or if I was really expelled. Then the semester was over and I was back home for the summer, making plans.

I'd met a boy the previous summer at Rockaway Beach and he had moved to California to work for a large company. He had come back to New York six months later for additional training and was planning to return to work in early August. He asked me to go with him. I agreed. Much of the summer was spent in tossing various personal items out of my window at three AM while he stood below, catching them, putting them in his car, and taking them to his house so they could be packed for the trip to California.

Somehow, my mother got wind of the plan and called the cops to assist her in kicking me out of the house. My boyfriend met me outside and we drove to his place. I had been saving my clothes to pack last, I had nothing to wear but what I was already wearing, and had no money. His family kindly donated some clothes, and he bought me some sneakers.

A week later, my mother called my boyfriend's house. She had found his phone number in my phone book. His mom answered the phone to my mother's yelling, and she immediately read my mother the riot act for being rude and abusive. I got on the phone, and my mother demanded that I come back to her house because my uncles--her brothers--wanted to talk to me and my boyfriend. Today. Now.

I don't know why I decided to go, but my boyfriend and I got in his car and drove over there. We were met by my uncles, who started grilling my boyfriend. My mother just stood by, hurling irrelevant abuse. My uncles asked what did he think he was doing, told him how they were going to stop him from taking me, etc. He answered them very respectfully, and when they found out what he did for a living, they paused and told my mother that he seemed nice and that he appeared to have a promising career. My mother was shocked, and began screaming at them to kill me and my boyfriend. They ignored her and took my boyfriend with them to talk outside the house on the stoop.

I was alone with my mother and I knew what was coming. She turned to me and lunged---and I was so tired of this, so goddamned tired. I decided I'd finally had enough and I didn't really give a shit about what I was going to do. I caught her wrists and threw her down to the slate kitchen floor. It was like wrestling a rabid dog; I literally saw her foam at the mouth. She bit my arm, and I just beat the hell out of her. I finally got up off her; she was crying, cursing, and spitting at me. She rolled over on her side and vomited. I felt completely detached as I watched her retching. Although shaky from adrenaline, I made it to the front door. My hands and arm hurt badly. I kissed my uncles goodbye and walked with my boyfriend to the car. He and I left for California about two weeks later.



More tomorrow.