
                  What happened to make me the way that I am?
                                       
   I used to blame it all on the evil stepmonster. But if I'm being
   honest, it started before that. When I was very young, my father put
   in a lot of TDY time in the Air Force. This translated to him being
   overseas more often than not until after I finished first grade. My
   mom had a hellish job -- she at one point was taking care of an
   11-year-old, an eight-year-old epileptic with severe leg and kidney
   problems, six-year-old me, and a four-year-old whose legs were both in
   casts to straighten them out because she was too pigeon-toed to walk
   (my three siblings and me). Oh, and my dad was stationed in Vietnam at
   the time, driving ambulances. I pretty much got ignored because the
   others needed her more. My clearest memory of that time is Valentine's
   Day 1970. I'd tried and tried to make the valentine heart we were
   making come out right, cutting it over and over until finally the
   teacher refused to give me any more paper. On the inside of the card,
   i wrote, "Happy Valentine's, Mom. I'm sorry this is such a flop. Love,
   Debbie." My mother laughed; she thought it was cute.
   
   When I was seven, right before third grade started, my mother died of
   pneumonia due to leukemia within a month or so of her cancer
   diagnosis. I was severely depressed and unhappy, and I was wetting the
   bed (I'd had bladder problems all my life). Word of this got out at
   school and I became the scapegoat, the one everyone teased and beat up
   and hated. This "status" lasted until we moved to another city during
   tenth grade. I got beaten up, slapped around, jeered at daily. Had I
   known what was to come, I'd've thought of it as training camp. One
   time I was ecstatic -- I'd been invited to a slumber party.
   
   While I was sleeping, they put toothpaste in my hair.
   
   When I was ten, three years to the day of my mother's death, my father
   met a divorced bar maid. Twenty days later, he married her. She turned
   out to be a psychotic alcoholic child abuser. She had a wooden picket
   about 8"x1.5"x1.5" she used to beat us with. She used fists, too, and
   belts and whatever else was handy. She controlled everything we did --
   she used to bake cookies and then count them every day to be sure no
   one had eaten any. We'd come home from school and everything we owned
   would be in a heap in the middle of the bedroom floor. Purse searches
   were routine, as were all-night interrogations that lasted until
   someone confessed (we'd sit there in the dark, talking in whispers,
   trying to persuade each other to confess to a nonexistent sin). She
   owned a gun and used to show it to us with the warning that some night
   she'd kill us all in our sleep. Sometimes when she got mad, she'd grab
   my hair and hack it off; the next day I'd get punished for having such
   badly-cut hair. She punished me sometimes by force-feeding me food I
   loathed (to this day, green peppers make me vomit). The electricity to
   our bedrooms was cut off at 7.30 pm, even when I was a senior in high
   school. She took the doorknob off my bedroom door. I was punished if I
   ever sought medical care, even though the military provided it free.
   
   here's an example of the sort of thing that happened:
   
   So that last summer before my escape I worked two jobs. It was better
   that way, actually; I worked 6 pm to 1 am four nights a week and 5 am
   to 1 pm five days. I ate a lot of Vivarin that summer, but at least I
   worried less that she'd make good on her threat to shoot us all in our
   sleep. The second job had been her idea, naturally. Twenty-eight hours
   a week was nothing. Any decent teenager would have another job.
   Especially one who was insisting on that college bullshit. And so on,
   until she told me to leave the house and not come back home until I
   had a second job.
   
   About 3 that afternoon I came back.
   
   "I thought I told you to find another job, dammit."
   
   "But I did, Mom. At Burger Chef, working breakfast shift during the
   week. Full-time." I was proud of the job and of the fact I'd found it
   in just a few hours. Hadn't I done what she'd said, and efficiently?
   
   But this was a bad thing. "You shouldn't have found one so fast, you
   bitch. I wanted you gone longer." In my confusion, I didn't even have
   time to flinch before the first blows landed. "I did what you said, I
   got a job, I don't understand..."
   
   Even though it didn't prevent that beating, the new job was kind of
   interesting. And if you didn't count the night I got carried away with
   the Vivarin (2400 mg of caffeine in one night will make you very very
   sick) the schedule posed no real problems. If nothing else, I learned
   to appreciate the concept of days off, especially when they were days
   off from both jobs.
   
   I remember one of those days. Not like it was an event or anything,
   not like I had a life and plans and things to do, but it was nice to
   get off work at 1 am and realize that no one but me owned my time for
   the next 28 hours. Well, in an ideal world it would have worked that
   way. Shows what I knew, even after seven years of intensive training,
   to think the adjective in "free time" was meaningful, naively
   expecting history not to repeat itself even though I'd been trapped in
   an infinite loop of pain for most of that time. Still, I thought that
   if I sat in my room with the radio on softly and played solitaire
   nothing bad could happen. The room was clean, I had no chores, I
   wasn't doing anything subversive like writing. The latest welts hadn't
   faded yet. When my favorite song came on, I closed my eyes and leaned
   back, singing along in my head. Just then, she walked past my room.
   
   "Wake up, you lazy slut! What in the fuck are you doing, sleeping in
   the middle of the fucking afternoon? If you're so goddamned tired, go
   take a shower and get in bed and don't let me see you up again until
   morning. Now." Having pronounced sentence, she turned to leave.
   
   But it was 4.25 and I couldn't bear losing my day. "I wasn't asleep, I
   wasn't, I swear. I was listening to music, call the radio station and
   ask they'll tell you the song please I don't want..." My voice trailed
   off as I realized my stupidity.
   
   "Are you trying to make a liar out of me?" Deceptively calm, as if
   what was about to happen might still be avoided, even though rituals
   begun must proceed to their end.
   
   I shook my head violently. "No, no, no, it's just that I was really
   awake, really." Crying now, as if tears would help. Trembling, but
   perversely unwilling to concede the point and go to bed quietly.
   
   "You cocksucking little bitch, you don't even know how good you have
   it here, how lucky you are. After all I've done for you kids and your
   father, you stand there and try to make a fucking liar out of me."
   
   her hand comes toward me slow motion stop action done what, you bitch?
   made us hate each other, destroyed our house? but the words are inside
   and I feel the heat of her body an instant before impact then feel the
   heat of her body handshaped on my cheek but one isn't enough for her,
   the dragon has awakened and must be fed. it loves to gorge on my
   tender virginal flesh. slaps aren't satisfying anyway because i refuse
   to cry out refuse to give any ground. silky brown hair, i'm so proud
   of it, now a handle as she jerks me around the room and i feel bumps
   rising on my scalp. she throws me to the floor and facedown at her
   feet i whimper. first blood. she's scored, gotten a reaction. mad
   physicist demented priest she repeats, experiments, jerks up and down.
   my forehead bounces on plaid carpet (god, what an ugly carpet, i hate
   it hate this please stop please) and i wonder how to explain carpet
   burn but make no sound; thwarted, she drags me to my knees, shoves me
   at the bed where i land with a thump and huddle against the wall
   watching spittle run from corner of mouth down tomato-face to chin she
   wipes with back of hand.
   
   she sees the cards on the floor, i was winning the game dammit and she
   stoops, grabbing at them, tearing everything she reaches in half,
   grotesque clown filling the air with clumsy confetti, bulbous red nose
   flowerprint caftan but no floppy shoes. as if reading my thoughts
   she's on me again, fists now, raining blows in places that don't show.
   she learns. no evidence for the neighbors, never another cut under my
   eye to draw comment, back and stomach and breasts and ass. staccato
   pounding on my back makes me breathe in hiccups when i can breathe at
   all. i feel my heart speed up to match the rhythm of her fists driving
   into me, the beat of an insane song. i refuse to give, refuse the
   screams that will save me or at least shorten the punishment. it
   hurts, god it hurts please make it stop so scared make it over i'll be
   good and never lie again and be nice to my sister do all my homework
   please let her just die make it stop god please let me just die
   
   she stops for a moment, arms tired, winded, panting heavily but her
   eyes never stop, she's looking for something else, it's not enough yet
   why can't i just beg her for mercy? her gaze settles. my radio. they
   gave it to me for christmas, should have known it wouldn't last six
   months. she grabs it, waves it at me. my god, she's really going to
   kill me this time. i will be very small, very tiny, try not to
   breathe, maybe she won't notice me cockroach in the corner before
   woman with shoe please no. and this time not a weapon, just a
   punishment: she brings it down hard on my night table. shattering
   plastic, splintering wood, it comes apart cleanly into two halves like
   a walnut, entrails visible. fingernail scrape on plastic, she rips its
   guts out, vulnerable wires no match for her fury pieces of circuit
   everywhere, screws and small metal bits and plastic buttons flying
   around, she brings it down on the table again and again, got to be
   sure it's really dead, i envy it, i do. empty shell finally tossed in
   disgust into far corner and i can see the dragon wants more, needs
   more. she remembers my presence, turns to me who is contracting in
   hopes of being overlooked but she knows, sees me, no second chances. a
   sacrifice is needed. i must pay. fists won't get it, hair didn't work,
   what's left? a weapon, she needs a weapon and she looks about. there,
   on a shelf, the brown glass bottle my grandmother gave me years ago,
   purple desert flowers painted on the side. perfect -- meaningful and
   capable of inflicting damage. it's in her hand, above her head, aimed
   for mine. "please god no please don't dear god please i want to live
   don't kill me please" i cry, beg, give her what she wants, concede
   game set match afraid this may really be it and i huddle, whimper,
   scream for mercy.
   
   it's enough. the bottle gets no stay of execution, but i'm spared for
   another day's sport. bottle descends on violated night table, crashes
   into hopeless jumble on floor. braver than i, it fights back, protests
   this senseless killing. as it dies, a small piece of brown glass
   slices through her right index finger. bellow of outrage and she's in
   my face, grabbing my shirt, smearing blood on it, on my forehead, on
   my lips, drink my blood, bitch, you've made me bleed, taste what you
   did after all i do for your own good this is for your own good i only
   punish you because i love you even though you don't deserve it you
   worthless bitch. but the fury's gone. i can see now that the dragon's
   sated, she's finished.
   
   for today.
   
   So I sat on the bed for an hour, crimson stripes drying on my face,
   swelling on my back, afraid to move, breath shallow, quiet. I could
   hear her in the other room, though, on the telephone, calling my
   father. He needed to be told of my iniquity, after all.
   
   My parents disowned me less than six months after I left home for
   college. They'd thrown my older sister out into the street when she
   was sixteen, and they disowned my little sister (and stuck her in a
   fundamentalist christian children's home) at the same time they did
   me. I had a daddy who loved me once. Then he married an evil bitch and
   went away. Finally, in 1982, the evil bitch sent us each a letter and
   a hallmark easter card. "Your father and I have no children," said the
   letter. "Happy easter to a wonderful daughter. Love, mom and dad" said
   the card. I called my dad. The letter won. I hate easter.
   
   Since then, I've had lots of other things (marriage, divorce,
   burglaries, rape, my brother's death, my grandmother's death, etc.,
   etc.) that many people would call tragedies but I just call life
   happen. Wheeee. Thud.
   
   The evil stepmonster died in August of 92. Still no daddy. Called my
   stepbrother in early 93. It turns out my dad became their surrogate
   dad after the stepmonster died. The stepbrother told me he knew all
   along what was going on but did nothing because he was afraid. He'd
   been abused by her when he was a kid; she potty-trained him by tying
   his hands behind his back and sitting him on the toilet. If he fell
   off, too bad.
   
   But my stepbrother has my daddy. Last year, when my grandmother was
   dying, my father was briefly in contact with us. After she died,
   nothing. We didn't exist. I got to be disowned twice by the same guy.
   I absolutely hate his fucking guts.
   
   Sometimes, late at night when no one's awake and no one will hear, i
   curl myself around a pillow and sob. "i want my daddy."
   
   [INLINE]
   
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References

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