No One Interferred, and They Should Have, Dammit
August 17, 2006
I love hockey rinks. To this day, I step into a rink and I feel the rush of freedom. My brother and I used to run up and down the bleachers, each with $5 in our pockets to eat whenever and whatever we wanted to. We would gorge on ketchup chips and cream soda until our bellies hurt. Call my mother what you will, hell she was a real bitch at times, but my brother and I had fun as kids. It helps when no one is parenting you.
Then she met step-dad #2. Dick was an IT type of guy, with an immaculate apartment and stacks of Heavy Metal magazines, full of cartoons with naked women. My brother was in heaven of course. I think he was 7 at this point and he was fascinated by these magazines. We weren t allowed to touch anything at his place without being told we were getting fingerprints on it. Of course, everything at Dick’s apartment was made of glass: his dining room table, his coffee table& I was sure his frigging bed would be made of glass if I looked. He liked things absolutely perfect.
Dick had a dry weird sense of humour and we later found out, he got mad easily. I remember sitting on the balcony at our apartment once with him. I was eating a banana and we were talking about something silly and he smashed the banana into my face. We both laughed hysterically. My mother was funny, but she never did silly things like that. I liked Dick and when my mother told us he had asked him to marry her, we were really excited. We began jumping up and down and screaming, and so did she. I ll never forget that moment. That was the last moment that I remember it being a happy household.
The wedding was average, held at a place with no church affiliation. Dick did not believe in God and as a child, this really confused me. The summer we spent at Greg and David s (both had been boyfriends to my mother during the previous summer), us kids were sent to Sunday school every week. As an adult I know it was so the adults could have time alone, but back then, it was all about God.
Before the wedding, we had moved into a townhouse, much bigger than our tiny apartment on the 24th floor. My brother and I had our own rooms! My mother and I had shared a room for so long, it took me a long time to get used to being alone. She had complained I was a teeth grinder, so she ended up in the living room in the apartment most nights anyway especially if she had a man home.
The townhouse complex had so many kids to play with and it was in a good neighbourhood. It was hard adjusting to being the new kids again, although my brother settled in better than me. I was the shyer of the two of us by far. My brother was a charismatic little man who knew how to win friends fast. He soon fell in with a crowd of boys who were mean to me and got into trouble with the law later on.
I befriended Michelle. Michelle was a semi-popular girl who was the tallest in our grade 6 class. She was kind to me and we laughed so hard when we were together. I called her parents Mom and Dad. I still do actually. They are Grammie and Grampie to our kids to this day.
I spent more time at Michelle s house than my own, which was becoming increasingly tense and violent. My mother and Dick fought, both physically and verbally, frequently. She would walk by him while he was reading and slap him upside the head just to piss him off and he would be quick to throw her into a wall, or once, through his precious glass coffee table. My mother was moody, unhappy, drunk a lot of the time and I couldn t stand to be home. My brother witnessed his fair share of this, being younger, he had to be home earlier than me.
At 14, I had butted heads with my mother and Dick so much that I finally ran away from home. Dick tracked me down the next day and chased me halfway around the perimeter of the local mall before grabbing my arm, shoving me into his car and taking me home, where my mother kicked the shit out of me. Two days later, I left again. I went to another friends house, since Michelle s place would be too obvious. My friend hid me for four days until her parents insisted I go home, and Michelle s family took me in.
My mother wrote me a letter and dropped it off at school. She also brought me some of my belongings and told me that I was to never come back. The letter said something about taking my braces off unless someone at Michelle s was going to pay for them. I called my grandparents and they agreed to pay for the braces.
Every time the phone rang at Michelle s, I would tense up. My mother called me nearly everyday to swear and yell at me for ruining her life. Michelle s parents did not interfere until I broke down and told them the things she was saying. They put a stop to the phone calls by answering the phone themselves and hanging up as civilly as possible.
She eventually gave up.
That is, until my great-grandfather died.
She and my brother picked me up at Michelle s to go to the funeral. It was the one time I remember my mother telling me I looked nice. She gave me a big hug and I could tell she was very upset over the loss of her grandfather. I kept my mouth shut, with the exception of one word answers, while she babbled during the long car ride there. I couldn t wait to see my family. I knew at 15, to never say that to her, as she fought with her parents so much, and that most of the family didn t like her at all. We hadn t seen them in a really long time. It’s been about 15 years since any of the family has had anything to do with her. They’ve given up.
We attended the funeral and it was bittersweet of course, as our reunion overshadowed the death we were here to grieve over. I had written a poem for my great-grandmother and she placed it in the casket with my great-grandfather. She was touched and my mother made it crystal clear that she was unimpressed with me upstaging her, although that isn t how I had thought of it at all.
After the service, we all went back to my grandmother s, and my mother only went because us kids were begging her to go. We loved being there and it pained her and made her jealous that her children preferred her parents to herself. She proceeded to sit at the bar with all the men, some family, some not, and got so drunk that she was flirting with family friends. My grandmother was crying for someone to take her out of there. No one wanted her to take us home, driving drunk, but back then people didn t step between a mother and her cubs, and we piled into the black Monza in the dark that night and drove the hour to get home. It was freezing because my mother had to have her window down to stay alert and the radio was blasting. She drove to our old townhouse and expected me to stay the night, rather than take the extra 5 minutes to drive me back to Michelle s. Of course Michelle s parents were expecting me to be home and so I ended up walking, near midnight, in a black skirt and sweater. At least I knew my brother was home safe. We didn t see our family members again for years.
My mother cornered me outside of school soon after the funeral, only to tell me that they were moving across the country. Dick had gotten a transfer and they wanted me to come along. I said no and she told me I would never see my brother again. I still maintained my position and told her she couldn t pay me to go with them to be abused some more. She slapped me across the face, turned on her heel and left. My peers stared at me while my cheek stung and my eyes welled up yet again. I vowed that was going to be the last time she made me cry. It wasn’t.
They moved to that other city and sent letters, photos and gifts all the time. My mother made it sounds as if the new city was the solution to all their problems. I spoke to my brother on the phone infrequently, and missed him a lot.
The Christmas Eve after they left, Dick beat the crap out of my brother and sent him, then 15, into the streets, where he lived for 2 months. Finally my brother tracked me down and he came to live with me. We both lived with my grandparents (my mother’s parents, who still do not speak to her) until we were old enough to live on our own. I didn’t speak to my mother until years later (we don’t now, but there was a time), and my brother still doesn’t.
So now that my oldest plays hockey, when I step into that cold air that tickles my senses with sweat, peeled paint, slaps of pucks on the boards, and that strange metallic icy taste, these good memories of before the man come to me. It was after Dick arrived that our innocence as children was stolen from us. Though the three of us: my mother, my brother and myself, had problems before, none were so great as after his arrival. My mother transformed into this monster, and we were forever after thought of as slaves, pawns and burdens.
I don’t understand how a mother can choose an abusive husband over her children. Or why my ‘normal’ family members never stepped in. I just. don’t. understand.
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August 26th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
I am sorry Jane. I know how you feel. I hope you have found other people to fill the hole left by her dismissal of you.
October 23rd, 2006 at 12:16 am
[...] Luckily for me, I left home at 14, and my best friend’s mother helped fill in all the gaps in my knowledge base. She was patient, answered silly questions, and made me feel alot less dirty and alot more normal. [...]
December 20th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
It is as mysterious to me as you why some women
seem to need male attention over even condoning
molestation of their own children. These people are sick. Pitiful creatures who did not have a strong father who was the
figure of integrity. I can make that statement
with full confidence even though I don’t know
any of them from Adam. However it is still
amazing tht these children many times want to still be with these parents and their monster
boyfriends or husbands. these people end up with no children, grandchildren or caring family
and drink themselves to death usually