abuse

Hard Time Marrying Part 13

anya-and-baby

Anya had no idea of the horror behind Joe’s outburst as he tore into the cabin, though she knew plenty about the moods of men, none of it good.  She covered her head and cowered on the far side of the bed, expecting a beating or rape, the way men had most often dealt with her.  His previous kindnesses were forgotten in her shock.

“What’s going on here?  Who the Hell are you and how did you get here? I thought you were my wife! Who are these kids?”  He crossed the room shaking her by the shoulders as she waited for the blows to rain down. “

Despite her confusion, with him shouting directly into her face, there was no mistaking, “I THOUGHT YOU WERE MY WIFE!”

He was insane!  Bracing for what was sure to come next, she covered her head with her good arm.  God help me!  Distraught and overwrought he fled the cabin, slamming the door before the boy could get out behind him.

The boy wailed and tore at the door.  The baby cried and clung to her.  The shock of the man’s outburst cleared her confusion a bit.  She rushed to the door, and slid the wooden bar to lock the man out.  At least that would give her a moment to think.  She’d hoped to have a few more days to rest.  In her clouded mind, the baby girl had become the little sister she’d so loved. She to figure a way to get herself and the girl away.  The man might burn them in their beds tonight, but if they survived, she’d have to figure out a way to get them out of here in the morning.

 

 

Hard Time Marrying Part 9

traveling-medicine-show1No mother had ever loved her.  A woman or two passed through, but none of them stayed long.  Ever since she could remember, she’d trailed Pa at his blacksmith or on the homestead though some days he didn’t speak five words to her.  As she got older, she picked up a little cooking, but neither of them did more than they had to in the house.  She was near thirteen when Bessie and her three boys moved in homestead after marrying Pa, Bessie railed at the filth in the house and set about teaching Anya housekeeping with a ready back-hand.  She wasn’t partial to the girl, backhanding her own boys just as often.  When Bessie’s baby girl was born a few months later, she carelessly handed it off to Anya, taking it only to nurse.  For the first time in her life, Anya knew love, never leaving her new sister in Bessie’s way.

Bessie remarried quickly after Pa was kicked in the head by a horse and liked Anya even less after she caught her new man looking Anya’s way.  Within a month, she’d handed Anya off to a Snake Oil peddler passing through.  He warned her not to try to get away.  “I done paid good money for you.”  Anya endured his drunken assaults and those of men who paid him for her time.  After the most brutal beating and rape she’d yet endured, he passed out from his own “Snake Oil.”  Fueled by adrenaline and the knowledge that it was now or never, despite her useless right arm, Anya dragged herself to the wagon, took his pistol from under the wagon seat, aimed at his head and pulled the trigger.  It kicked her backwards against the wagon.  Desperately, she pulled herself up, took the shovel propped against the wagon wheel, steadied herself as best she could, and bashed in his skull.  Repositioning herself, she took another go at him, knowing if he lived, he’d kill her.

With agonizing effort, she pulled his old horse next to the wagon and slid over from the step.  Fortunately for her, the horse was old and docile or he’d have never tolerated her clumsiness.  Popping the reins, she gave him his head.  From time to time she’d nod off and awaken to find his head drooping, as he rested along with her.  Urging him on, they’d travel a bit more till he sensed she wouldn’t notice his dawdling. In that manner, they traveled on through the night and early morning.  As her fatigue and pain got the better of her, she spent less and less time pushing him.  He ambled along and grazed as he pleased with no interference from her.  She slid from his back as he made his way down a little slope to a stream.  She drank beside him and crawled into the shade of a willow to rest.  Somewhat interested, he watched his fellow traveler, then began grazing further and further along the stream.  It was a good day to be a horse on the loose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Boogerman’ll Get You By the Hair of Your Head!

shamMother and I natter on incessantly.  Yesterday we went to visit my aunt a couple of hours away.  As we rode along, I was asking Mother more about the details of her early marriage at eighteen.  She slipped up and confessed a tale she’s felt guilty about ever since.  I couldn’t believe she stumbled and told on herself after sixty-nine years.  She usually bumbles right away.  To set the stage, you have to know she has a ridiculous conscience.  If she suspects there is a rule somewhere, she is obligated to follow it, no matter how senseless.  If she fails, she is required to feel guilty.  That’s the rule.

Mother, married at eighteen.  Within months Daddy moved her into the house with his widowed mother and her two daughters.  They were poor and lived in a decrepit unpainted house miles out in the country, not the newlywed home she’d envisioned.  To put the icing on the ruined cake, Aunt Julie with her two squalling brats had settled in as well.  The house was uncomfortable, Mother felt unwelcome, Daddy was never home except to sleep.

The kids, two and four, whined without ceasing, unless they took a break to throw a fit.  One day, she was alone in the room with them and was totally fed up with the whining.  She told Yvonne, the oldest, “Stop that squalling or the Boogerman will get you!”  To reinforce the lesson, she stepped into the next room, scratched on the door-facing and wailed “Wooooooooo!”  The terrified kids shut up immediately.”  From then on, when the whining started, she’d give them another little dose of Wooooo, if she got the chance when Aunt Julie wasn’t in the room.

“Why didn’t I ever hear this great story before?” I had to know.

“Because I felt guilty, I guess. I didn’t mean to tell it now.  I’m still ashamed,” she confessed.

“Well, you should be.  I am sixty-five years old and I could have been enjoying this story my whole life!”

Rest Your Weary Head: Uplifting Advice for the Heartbroken

victorian angel

Dear Auntie Linda,  I am a first-grade teacher in a small town.  One of the major problems my students face is hunger.  It is not just the children of homeless or jobless people who face hunger on a regular basis.  So many working parents simply do not make enough to provide sufficient food for their families.  If they qualify for free lunch program, at least they get that meal, but come to school hungry and go home in the afternoon to families who can’t consistently provide enough food, not to mention, nutritious food.  If families qualify for food assistance, they will very likely run out before the end of the month.  Churches and food pantries help, but they are facing funding issues as well.  I see hunger in children’s faces every day.  I keep a supply of low cost, nutritious snacks I can slip to a hungry child on the sly, but my budget is limited and I usually run out before my monthly payday.  Friday afternoons toward the end of the month fill me with dread.  It breaks my heart to see little ones going out who will miss their milk and school lunch over the weekend.  I encourage those of your readers who can afford it to contribute packets of nutritious snacks to your school.  It would help little guys so much if teachers could make an opportunity to pass them out to little ones who can’t learn because they are hungry.  Teaching the Hungry

Dear Teaching,  It is a wonderful idea to ask parents or those in the community who can to contribute.  It would be easy enough to have a snack drive or ask parents to add a packet of snacks to their school supply list, if they could afford to do so.  This would also be an excellent community service project.  Maybe the idea will catch on if you ask your school to promote it.  Auntie Linda

Dear Auntie Linda, My only sister has one child, a nine-year-old daughter, who is extremely spoiled.  My husband has always said he’d “love to straighten her out.”  Granted, Megan is a brat.  She whines, is selfish, and has a smart mouth.  Last week Annie called asking to speak to Bill.  She told him she and her husband have a chance to go to Paris and asked if Megan could stay with us for two weeks.  I am not surprised she asked him.  She knows he is domineering and knew it was her best shot, knowing I’d have to talk to him about it anyway.  He’d agreed and it was set up before he hung up.  Bill is not a patient man.  He angers quickly and acts before he thinks.  I know having Megan here will be a disaster.  Our kids tiptoe around him, but Megan will be wide open, since she’s never been disciplined.  She doesn’t even flush the toilet when she’s done.  Bill looks at this like a project.  He is going to straighten her out.  How in the world do I get out of this?  Annie’s Sister

Dear Sister.  Call Annie and tell her your home is not a fit place for Megan.  While you are at it, look hard at your situation.  It doesn’t sound like your home is a safe place for your children either.  Children have a right to grow up free of fear.  They deserve better.  Auntie Linda

Instrument of Torture

I grew up way back in the 1950s and 1960s before the days of “Time Outs.”  I think I would have loved time out.  My parents had five wild kids.  They were partial to the time-   honored switch and belt system.  If Mother wasn’t too serious about the point she was making, she was fairly likely to pull the plastic fly swat off the nail by the stove and give us Continue reading →

Maniac in the Wilderness

Bill 2Bill ever survived my mother’s abuse.  When he was only a tiny lad of eighteen, he was six feet four inches tall. I think the fact that she wasn’t even acquainted with five feet gave him a feeling of superiority.  While I won’t say he had a smart mouth, I will allow it was extremely well-educated.  I am sure they only reason my mother hadn’t already killed him was because she hated to go to prison and leave her younger daughters motherless.  It certainly wasn’t because the thought hadn’t crossed her mind at least a thousand times a day since puberty attacked him and her by proxy.

Anyway, on occasion, they had to travel places alone together.  It was a misery to them both.  It didn’t help that the car was a tiny Volkswagon Beetle.  It’s always worth a person’s time to stop and watch a huge guy unfold himself and crawl out of a Beetle, a pleasure Bill dreaded providing mirthful onlookers.  It didn’t improve his mood on arrival, a mood already blackened with inevitable conflict he’d shared with Mother.

At any rate, on this particular day, they started home with Bill driving.  According to Mother, he was driving like a maniac: driving too fast, following too closely, cutting people off.  I have no doubt this was true.  It was his typical manner.  She insisted he slow down.  He crept along at ten miles an hour, hoping that was slow enough to please her.  She’d finally had enough, telling him to pull over.  She’d drive.  He critiqued her driving as soon as she started.  “Speed up!  Don’t ride the clutch! Change Gears!”

Finally, she’d had enough.  She pulled over.  “Get out!”  Delighted, he hopped out, thinking she’d come to her senses and wanted him to drive.  She drove off and left him standing on a country road, thirty miles from home.  She enjoyed the rest of the peaceful drive.  At  home, Daddy wanted to know where Bill was.  “I left him somewhere close to Bossier City.”

Daddy was shocked she’d left the little fellow all alone in the wilderness.  “Well, You’d better go get him!  It’ll be dark soon!”

“You go get him if you want to!  I don’t care if he never gets home!”

Daddy was a lot better at giving orders than taking them, but he jumped in his truck to rescue his precious son and heir.  Billy met him at the end of the driveway, brought home by a Good Samaritan.  He’d somehow survived his abandonment but I think he still drives like a maniac.  I don’t think he and Mother voluntarily ride together till today

See attached picture if you care to put out APB on either