Growing up ... (continued)

... As all families, we had our problems.  There was a lot alcohol and fighting as we got older and the alcohol took more of a hold on my mom and the rest of our family.  I want to first say that my sisters and I never went without and we had much more than a lot of other children did materially, such as a pool, very nice house etc., and lucky to have a mom that worked out of the house and was there when we got home from school, which was nice, and I will never doubt the love our mother had for my sisters and I, but alcohol did cause a lot problems within our inner family and relatives.  It started to create problems, people started fighting etc., but the problems did not really start until my mom divorced her second husband and met and married her third.

This is when things started to go insane.  Well, not at first, but in time, within a couple of years into the marriage, he started showing his real self.  He was true "redneck" through and through.  He was racist and made it well known that he did not like anyone who was not of his color.  He was very controlling of my mother, of what she did and who she was.  It was slow at first, but as time went on, it became much worse.  We started to see signs of that, my sisters and I, and as a matter of fact, the rest of our family as well.  My grandparents, her mother and father, who both were re-married and had families of their own as well, but they could see the manipulation that was going on and was afraid for my mom and us children.   They really did not want to come around as much any more to visit us unless it was absolutely necessary and only did it for my mom.  As the years went on, a total of fifteen, my mom began to drink more and more, and I could tell that she was very unhappy at times and my heart broke for you.  I know now all the drinking on a nightly basis was to numb the pain and thought that she was stuck and unable to get out of the relationship.

The end of my seventh grade year in Junior High, my mom and he, and I believe he convinced her, decided to move over one hundred miles south of our home town, the town where we all grew up.  Where my grandparents were and all my aunts, uncles and cousins.  My mom left a wonderful business that she had built up all behind just for him, to make him happy because she loved him so much and thought he would be able to take care of us.  Until now, she was the bread winner of the family and made a lot of money with her business.  He knew that if we were that far away, that it would make it much harder for my mom to see her family and likewise with them to come and see us.  We were to move by the end of the summer so that we children could get settled in before the new school year began.  As I mentioned above regarding the control issue, well, I believe this was another tactic used by him to get us as far away from my our family and their influence on my mom as possible.  He began to poison my mother's head and feeding her all sort of lies about her family and how they want to come between the two of them and make their lives hell.

The new home is where he really took the abuse to a whole new level with me and my mom, both physically and mentally!  As young kids, we were finally at the point where we were so afraid of him, afraid of being yelled at, ridiculed or made fun of, that we finally just started to "hide" out in our basement.  As soon as we got home from school, sure we would watch TV on the main floor until he got home and then we would rush downstairs for the rest of the night because we were that afraid of him. If anyone has seen the movie "Mommy Dearest", well, this is the same scenario.  When we came home from school, we had a list of chores, which is fine and all kids have chores, but it was the way he went about it that made it so difficult to deal with.  He would leave a list of things to do for us to have completed before they got home from work, again no big deal, but when he got home, and he always got home first, he would inspect our job and always would make a big deal about it not being done correctly, and make us all do it over again.  For example, the bathroom was always my job, fine, no problem, but he would do the "white glove" inspection every time and every time, I would have to do it over again.  It's like when Joan Crawford through comet all over Christine's bathroom and then made her clean it up!, same GOD DAMN thing!

My mom worked very hard to provide for us and to make all of us happy, but nothing was ever good enough for him.  One year during Christmas, about a week or so before, my mom had her holiday party for work and she went a bought a brand new beautiful expensive sequence dress for the party, she was so beautiful that night, they came home and we hear them come in.  We had a split level house at the time, where you come through the front door and either go up stairs to the main floor and where my half sister and parents slept or downstairs to the family room and where my real sister and I slept.  Well, my real sister and I heard them come in and stumble upstairs and heard some scuffle so I got up and went to the bottom of the stairs outside my real sister's bedroom and found her standing there as well.  We were listening to the scuffle, mom telling him to stop, he was wanted to be "with" her, and she did not want to and kept pushing him away, so all of a sudden we heard a drawer open and all I heard was a scream and what sounded like a knife being pulled out and then sequence fall all over the floor of the kitchen.  That is when I ran upstairs yelling at him to "stop, leave my mom alone you fucking ass hole!"  All of a sudden he came around the corner out of the kitchen and I ducked and tried to protect myself, but it was not enough.  He grabbed my face and clawed into it and turned me around and through me down on the ground and started kicking me in the ribs with his steel toe cowboy boots.  My mom came running out of the kitchen screaming at him to stop and through herself down on top of me so that he could kick me anymore, but by that time he had kicked me at least ten to twenty times and enough to crack my ribs in three places and my face was all bloody from the scratches he had made by digging his fingers into it. 

By now my real sister had ran out of the house and down the street to her friends house to call the police and this was all at two or three in the morning.  Her friends parents were mortified and so scared for me and mom and as well as my younger half sister.  I had finally gotten loose of my mom and he had stopped kicking me and also my mother, I ran downstairs and they started to yell and scream at each other.  I am not aware if he had hit my mom at this point because I was in my room in so much pain and in shock and very scared he was going to come down and continue to beat on me.  Finally, the police had arrived at our house and by this time, my step father was down in my room trying to make nice with me and apologize because he saw the police, with their lights and sirens on, come up to our house.  I had know idea at this point until they were in my room and the son of bitch was trying to put his arm around me and pretend that nothing was wrong.  The police officer asked if I was ok, I had my face in my hands and slumped over on the side of my bed, crying and in so much pain because of my ribs, I finally took a deep breath and looked up at the officer and said no, I am not ok.  This was enough for the office to take my step father into custody at this point.  He was taken off to jail that early morning.  What was supposed to be an enjoyable evening at my mom's holiday work party, turned out to one of the worst nights of my life and is still so very fresh to this day. 

.... I have to stop for now, I didn't realize the feelings were still so fresh and this was over twenty five years ago!