Child Abuse

Yard Work Now and Then

When I was a kid, I never dreamed I’d enjoy yard work. It was a punishment then, literally, usually precipitated by Daddy’s anger. We’d get the bad news the day before. “When I get home from work tomorrow, there better not be a leaf down anywhere in this yard.” Daddy would proclaim. “I don’t want to hear any excuses.” My mood plummeted.

Daddy woke us before he left for work the next morning with a variable mood, either falsely cheerful or still angry from whatever precipitated the sentence of yard work. Yard cleaning meant raking leaves, picking up branches, and hauling the detritus to a burning area. We owned one good yard broom, one snaggletoothed yard broom , one rake, and a wheelbarrow.

We started out by fighting over the yard broom, the easiest and most efficient tool. Nobody wanted the snaggletoothed yard broom or rake. The worst job was hauling the leaves to the burn pile. None of us wanted that job, leading to another round of fighting. The shouts and insults usually brought Mother out to intervene before blood was drawn. That was one rule universally acknowledged. Never injure a sibling to the point of necessitating medical care.

Mother would threaten enough to get us properly started. She assumed a supervisory role and reminded us of our mission and consequences should we fail. In desperation and misery, we’d settle down to our task. After an interminable day of yard work interspersed with fighting, we’d finally finish the hated task. Should we not be able to finish for some reason, Mother would vouch for us, explaining to Daddy why we couldn’t finish. Maybe one of us ran a high fever and broke out with measles or perhaps Aunt Esther and Mawmaw stopped by asking Mother to let us play with our cousins while they visited. Mawmaw was familiar with the work/punishment principle from her marriage and interceded when she could. I admire her for that. It does a kid good to know someone’s on their side even if it doesn’t change their life much.

Failing that, there was no quarter for lazy kids. Punishment was swift and sure with whippings all around and an extra measure of work the next day.

Bumps in the Road Part 3

At one desperate point, while Eddie was about the slow business of dying at Grandma Swain’s, Mettie gratefully moved her family to her brother Albert’s recently acquired farm, miles and miles from town. Red dust fogged up with the rare passing conveyance. In foul weather, the red dirt road was impassable. There was no possibility of the kids attending school since the nearest bus stop was ten miles away where the dirt road joined a hard surface road. School attendance was not mandatory at this time.

Mettie’s focus was on survival. Fortunately, in addition to the farmhouse he and his wife moved into, a battered, unpainted house was available for the poor band. Had Mettie not been in such need, he would have used it as a barn  Again, it was free. They could get milk and butter from Albert’s cows if Mettie helped with the milking. Albert’s wife, Mary, kindly passed along a hen with twelve chicks and young rooster. They could eat from Mary’s garden if she and the girls helped with gardening and canning. Of course they would! They settled in the hovel where wind sailed through the rickety walls and rain poured through the leaky roof. The uncles put the boys to cutting  and splitting wood for shingles, then set them to roofing.  A toilet leaned crazily out back, but the deep well provided cool,clean water.  Of course the rural farm had no utilities, no matter, since Mettie hadn’t funds to pay. Her brothers, Willie and Albert, did what they could to help, from plowing her garden, providing her a pig to fatten and slaughter in the fall. Willie traded a fine sow with a litter of pigs and gifted her bony milk cow.  Fortunately, when the old cow freshened, it was a heifer, ensuring Mettie would have a young cow to replace the old one at her inevitable  This was a Godsend.  A family without a milk cow was in trouble.

When Eddie eventually died in 1937, the four younger children qualified for seventy-four dollars a month Aid to Dependant Children. Mettie was able to move to a better house near town so the little girls could go to school. Mettie had a penchant for moving till the day she died. Daddy said she’d start crying and nothing would satisfy her till she got to move. No doubt, she had mood issues.

The same year the family got on “relief,” her eldest son joined Civilian Conservation Corp for which he was provided clothes, wages, food, and lodging for working on government conservation projects.  He was paid the princely sum of thirty dollars a month, twenty-five of which went directly to his mother.  Three years later, the second son joined.  The boys had never lived dressed or lived so well.  At thirteen, Daddy was six feet tall.  He was able to pass for fifteen, snagging a job on an nearby oil rig as a night watchman. He slipped home most nights to eat  a late supper.  All three boys had given up school long ago to look for work.  At any rate, Daddy said they couldn’t face the taunting of hateful kids over their bedraggled clothes.

My father is boy in front row holding hat
Eddie Swain

Old Man Hillen

“Are you gonna pay for that gum?”

Phyllis and I turned to see Billy’s cheek bulging. His eyes got big and a stream of purple drool ran out of the corner of his mouth. The three of us stood horrified before Old Man Hillen, the proprietor of the Variety Store. It was obvious the sour old geezer took no prisoners where pilfering children were concerned.

“Spit it out.” Phyllis demanded, her face as hard as the old man’s. She hurriedly paid for our purchases as Billy and I beat her out the door. We knew there would be Hell to pay. Phyllis aligned herself with our parents and could be depended upon to report any infraction. This one was huge.

The situation was made more ominous since our business in the first place was the purchase of Mother’s birthday gift. The three of us had walked to the Variety Store after school. Mother was to pick us up. The wait seemed endless, knowing the catastrophe that was brewing.

“Billy Ray stole a piece of gum!” she exploded before she even got the car door shut. “Mr. Hillen made me pay for it!”

Mother was appalled. “Oh no. I hope you’re ashamed of yourself. I’m gonna have to tell your daddy about this.” A pall hung over us, dreading what was to come.

Justice was swift and sure. Daddy was enraged as he railed at Billy, before strapping him with his belt, then pausing before giving him a few more. Worse yet was the pronouncement that they’d be going back tomorrow for Billy to apologize and make it right. It was a terrible night at our house. No one escaped Daddy’s black mood.

Daddy was waiting for Billy when the bus ran, always dependable when punishment was due. He led the small boy into the Variety Store and announced to Mr. Hillen, “My son has something to say to you.”

Humiliated, Billy managed to stammer an apology.

Rather than accepting Billy’s apology, the hateful old man launched into a tirade against thieving kids and the way sorry parents were raising them. Daddy was infuriated and told him they’d made it right and he wasn’t listening to anymore of his mouth. They left. We never went back in that store.

Right in the Mouth

I never expected to be the kind of mother who’d hit her sweet child in the mouth but I was, totally unintentionally! I was a registered nurse on call for emergency acute hemodialysis.  One Sunday night, I got a call just about the time the kids were headed to bed.  I told Bud what was up and headed for the car.  Unbeknownst to me, my young son, John, had also heard the call and thought it would be fun to scare me.  Just as I settled in my car for the drive, somebody screamed and grabbed me from behind.  By reflex, I slammed a backhand connecting with teeth.

John yelled for sure that time, as shocked as I was.  He hadn’t taken the fight or flight response into consideration, never expecting his mother to attack.  We both felt awful but I didn’t even have to discuss not pulling that stunt again.

 

 

Charley’s Tale Introduction

This is the first episode in a serial I posted several years ago. I am dusting it off, Charley tugs at my heart, reminding me,”Don’t shut me out! I have a story to tell.”

The outsider looking in could have been forgiven for assuming Charley was born to a life of ease. Unfortunately, things don’t always work out that simply. True, she was the much-hoped for daughter born to a prominent couple, her father a doctor and mother a wealthy socialite. She knew the joy of two adoring older brothers, an admiring little sister, a doting grandmother, and a cousin who left her a valuable estate.
Given that mix, the fates dusted in a bit of trouble to complicate the life to which she was destined. At birth, the father who delivered her, noted an oversized clitoris which he snipped before presenting her to her mother, thinking he’d spared her a life of confusion. Unfortunately, it had just the opposite result. Gender identification goes a lot deeper than outward appearances, as he learned over time.

Not only that, Ellen, Charley’s narcissistic mother was repulsed by her perceived imperfection of her child. Ellen and Charley never bonded due to her mother’s rejection. Little Charley was cherished by the rest of the family and nurtured by Cora, the family’s maid. Her grandmother and Cousin Jean adored her. Early on Grandmother Geneva and Cousin Jean recognized the child’s nature and allowed her the freedom to express it.

Charley’s nebulous connection to her mother was severed on the occasion of her baby sister’s birth. Ellen developed post-partum psychosis, attempted murder, and lived out the short period of her remaining life in a state hospital. Unresolved psychic trauma was to follow Charley from that point on.

Life has never been easy for an intersexed child. It was likely for a well-meaning surgeon to assign the child a female identity, if anything at all was done. Unfortunately, this was as apt as not to be wrong. So it was for Charley. The child who would have been celebrated as a robust little boy was expected to behave as a dainty little girl. The confusion was overwhelming. From the time Charley’s mother went into the asylum, Cora and Grandmother Geneva assumed maternal roles with both girls. Geneva and the children passed the long summer weeks at the farm and the lake house where Geneva encouraged Charley’s relationship with the Washington family who maintained the farm, knowing they’d likely be in her life for years. They were good people.

Josie, the girl who’d helped cared for the girls since Ginny’s birth had married Bobby Washington who’d grown up working the farm along with his father Robert. Since the dairy barn was no longer in use, Geneva gave Robert permission to tear it down and salvage the materials to build a cabin for the newlyweds on the land Cousin Jean left him. They worked evenings till a tin-roofed three-room shotgun house stood proudly under a pecan tree with the requisite toilet about one hundred feet down the hill. It was close enough Bobby and Josie could share the older folk’s well. It was a fine thing for a young couple to start out with a house on eighty acres they could look forward to inheriting one day.

Life was a succession of peaceful days till school attendance required Charleys to spend her days at her father’s house. Cora was devoted to both girls, spending a great deal of time with them, serving as a buffer to Ellen. Geneva lived just a few blocks over, so they frequented her home as well. Charley enjoyed several years of relative peace till she reached the age of cruelty.

Two Roads Part 14

img_1697Over the next few years, their brood grew to include seven.  The boys were tall and strong, a lot of help to Eddie, so he didn’t need Neeley’s help so much.  A stern taskmaster, he was apt to take his belt to the boys should they dally.  When Will, their third son was about eight, he was given the task of planting corn as his older brothers made up the rows on either side of him.  The rows seemed to stretch on forever and his back ached with bending and planting four kernels per hills ten to twelve inches apart. He fell further and further behind.  Desperate to catch up, he buried a big pile of seed in one hill and caught up to his brothers.  It rid him of so much of the accursed seed, he repeated the process up and down the rows, finishing up in time with the rest.  He thought no more about it, glad to be done with the onerous task of planting.  Several evenings later, Eddie went out one bright moonlit night to check to see if his corn had sprouted late that afternoon.  Indeed it had, but not all in rows like he expected.  Big clumps of corn sprouts stood in patches up and down the rows.  Infuriated, he knew immediately what Will had done.  He strode toward the house, determined to set the boy straight.  In their exhaustion, the three boys had gone to bed immediately after supper.  Eddie stomped into the room snatching the covers back from the sleeping boys and started beating them with his belt. Though Will got the worst of it, the other boys suffered welts, too.  Neeley heard the screams from the kitchen and burst in to stop Eddie.  In his fury, he didn’t seem to notice her.  Neeley ..  got the fireplace poker and got between him and the boys, beating him about the shoulders. Finally, she stood him off.  Threatening to crack him over the head, she assured him she’d kill him if she had to. In the face of her ferocity, he backed down, putting himself on one side of a wall and herself and the kids on another.  This was repeated several times over the next few years, made worse as the boys’ hormones kicked in and Eddie aged. Neeley wondered if his meanness was due to his head jury or his nature.  It could have been a combination since Eddie had learned violence at he hands of his own father, many years earlier.

Eddie didn’t deal a lot better with the girls.  As they entered  puberty, he suspected them of all manner of misbehavior.  Always on the lookout for trashiness, they couldn’t smile at a boy without inciting his anger.  In view of Eddie’s violent tendencies, Neeley  always lined up on the side of her children, creating anger on both sides.  As Neeley became more defensive, the boys became more undisciplined.  Neeley had the girls firmly under control, determined they not be led astray as she had been.  Though Eddie never voiced it, Neeley feared he’d make reference to her dalliance before their marriage. Like any mother, she wanted her children to hold her in high regard. It was an uncomfortable situation.  Not only that, fearing more pregnancies, Neeley refused to have sex except immediately before or after her “curse,” increasing the tension between them.

 

Maniac in the Wilderness

Bill and mother
I don’t know how my baby brother Bill ever survived my mother’s brutal 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 added to his raging hormones 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 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 into or 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

Lissy’s Heartbreak

Lissy, a tiny black-haired girl came to Vacation Bible School with her cousin Judy the summer I was ten.  I immediately warmed to her, though she was so shy she’d only talk to her cousin.  She and her mother had come to spend the summer with her Uncle Joe and his family.  I didn’t see Lissy again until August when Mother spent a few days in the hospital delivering my youngest sister. 

Lissy was Mother’s roommate.  I was almost totally ignorant of anything to do with sex, having only accrued a bit of misinformation at that point, but I did catch on that there was a big secret about Lissy.  I overheard Lissy’s mother talking to the doctor, “She wouldn’t start, and she wouldn’t start, but when she finally did, she wouldn’t stop.”

Lissy was crying and wouldn’t answer the doctor’s questions.  I never saw her again.

Mother sent me out before I heard any more.  I felt bad for Lissy, but was intrigued.  Knowing I’d learn nothing more, I sequestered that information in my mind, hoping I’d understand later.  Long after I was grown, I remembered to ask Mother about it.  She remembered well.  Little Lissy had suffered a miscarriage and was admitted with massive blood loss.  She was only eleven.

 

“Spontaneous Combustion” or “Because I Love You”

Warning:. Post may trigger persons who have been victims of abuse.imagePop..pop..pop..pop..pop..pop..pop…the percussion of Daddy’s belt flying out of his belt loops would have brought me out of a coma. Of his various approaches to discipline, “Spontaneous Combustion” was my specialty and the one I experienced most, being both clumsy and a smart mouth. Things could be rocking along just fine till someone – usually me – broke a dish, made a smart remark, or embarrassed Daddy.   Though I never set out to be “smart-alecky”, I could always count on my big mouth.  What I thought was funny, didn’t always amuse him. I carefully memorized jokes, even if they were way over my head, to tell at just the right moment. My judgment of the right moment was poor, such as when we had the preacher’s family over to Sunday dinner and I told loudly a joke I’d overheard on the school bus.  Continue reading →