Inside
Someone close to me was telling me about a couple's nonstop fighting. It immediately made me a little short of breath. I don't think people realize how their actions affect others around them, especially little ones.
I grew up in a relatively quiet household until around 9 when my grandparents started drinking. My grandfather had been a drinker previously but had stopped for years. He once broke my grandmother's back.
When the drinking started, everything went to hell. My grandmother was the type who curled her hair every night and wore ironed dresses, sewed, cleaned, cooked, did embroidery, gardened, etc. Our home was immaculate and always furnished with the best. Her gardens held beautiful flowers all the way across the yard. She could grow anything. I used to walk around the yard and just sniff the flowers or try to catch the hummingbirds.
After the drinking, the cleaning pretty much stopped the entire weekend. On Friday, the freeloaders came around for the free booze. The smoke was so thick I'd go outside or just climb the mountain behind the house and sit in a cave there and pretend that was my home. They started out laughing and carrying on, then came the music and singing, then religion, then couples would pair off and go to different parts of the house. It wasn't odd to find my grandmother with a man I didn't know in my room, which I had moved to the basement even though one wall was half open to the ground. After this pairing off, somebody would inevitably say something and the fight would start. People would leave. The screaming was unbearable. I can't remember the words even, just the volume of it. It became violent as well. One night my grandmother locked herself in my room and he tried to get in with an ax. He never replaced the door, just filled the hole with wood putty. It stayed there now 40 years. One night he brought out his rifle and said "I'm a gonna shoot you" and aimed it at her. I went and sat beside her and he kept telling me to move and I wouldn't. He shot a hole in the wall beside her. I remember being afraid to go to sleep after dark because of what would happen late at night. I'd be startled awake by the fighting and hunker under the blankets and pray for it to stop. One night I actually had the feeling of leaving my body. I went out the window, above the street lights, and ended up at the school playground. It was deserted except for me. I went and got on the merry-go-round and I can remember the squeak every time it made a rotation. I walked to the swings and looked back at the dark building. I then became afraid I couldn't get home and whoosh, I was in bed again.
These things make your chest tight and your breath short. One of the local boys down the street started coming around, I'm not even sure why. I was 10, he was much older. He would sit and hold my hand and occasionally kiss me which felt really weird and I didn't like it. My grandparents didn't care. I guess I was near marrying age. He went a little further than he should have, not all the way but too far. One of my then female friends who was older than me molested me and my grandmother caught her and made her go home. I didn't see her again until recently and of course she's all about prayer and all that - yeah right - those skeletons are rattling.
I tried to stay gone as much as possible. I went to any friend's house who wanted me over. My friends weren't allowed to come to my house anymore. We went from being an affluent respectable family to the bunch of drunks. Our once immaculate home now had roaches and smelled like a bar. She went from wearing pressed dresses to polyester pant suits. He became bizarre. I had a male and female hamster kept in an aquarium divided by a board. He said if they mated I had to get rid of them. I came home from school one day and they were gone. He had mated them and when the babies were born took them to the creek and threw them on the rocks. I can't remember having any emotion, it was just another thing. He brought home a baby squirrel I raised and loved, named it Peanuts. It had the run of the house. He got irritated with it and said he put it outside in a pen and it drowned. He brought home a baby chicken hawk I raised. It disappeared too, he said a cat must have gotten it.
I can't say how much money he drank away. I know sometimes it would be an entire paycheck and in the 70s he was making 25 an hour. He wouldn't give me a dime, not even for lunch, but when he was drunk you could get anything. They drug me to bars with them. I was already 5 feet 10 inches tall so I looked old enough to get in. I remember one Saturday night my friend was over, her mother drank with my grandparents. She laughed and said "let's get dressed up" so I wore a short white dress with knee-high black boots. I thought it was fun until we got to the Eagles and all the drunk men were all over me. I was chastised by my grandfather for "not being nice." I hated every minute of it. He would give me 20 to go shopping at Murphy's and get out of his hair.
At age 12 my grandparents went up McDunn to party with other people. Somehow they got in a fight and she walked home in the middle of the night. The doors were locked so she woke up a neighbor to get a key. The rest is sketchy.....he says he came home and went to bed to go to work and she was in my room. The next morning when she didn't make breakfast he thought it was odd. He says he found her on her back dead holding a beer bottle. He called a neighbor who said she hooked horrified. He put her in the truck and drove her straight to the funeral home and they told him he can't do that. He took her back home story goes and called the ambulance. My long-time friend and eventual coworker told me how she was found years later. Her death was ruled a heart attack because she had heart trouble. Back then people didn't want to hear stories about anything and autopsies were rare. At the funeral home we pulled down her collar and her neck was purple all around.
I then had to go live with mom. I'd never lived with her except for 2 years because she was sick and because my stepdad hated my guts because I reminded him of my dad, whom she never got over. We lived in Handley and he was always mad about something. He treated my little sister like dirt. She didn't like beans so he made her sit at the table all night, tell her she couldn't get up until she ate them. She eventually poured them down her pants but when she got up some fell out and he beat the living shit out of her. She was only 6. I couldn't do a thing and I don't know why mom allowed it, or if she even had a choice. I would take her and go walk the alley and go to the park and play in the caboose, or we'd watch the trains in the train yard. Mom made a friend, her name was Dottie. She was never allowed to have any. One night he worked evenings and her and Dottie snuck out and went to a bar. When they were leaving, two men up Cabin Creek ran them off the road, took her wedding rings, and both women were raped. When the police brought her home (nothing ever done to the men), he beat her nearly to death. You could hear the blows and the screams. I took my little sister to the YMCA and called his dad and begged for help and all he said was "not my affair." I knew not to even try my own grandfather. This was life. You learn to close off emotion.
We bought a mobile home and moved to Kimberly. It was better for awhile. Mom got sick again and had a double mastectomy, cancer had come back for the 4th time. We had a mixed dog, part retriever named Frisky. They got in a fight over her and again I took my sister to a neighbor's house. We were out front of their house talking and we heard a gunshot and help and Frisky came running to me. I could see a little blood spot on her forehead. He came around holding the pistol and grabbed her and started dragging her off and she was yelping. I can't tell you the sick feeling of hopelessness you have when a dog looks to you for help and you can't do a thing. Next we heard another shot and mom screaming. She planned to leave him after she got a job at Murphy's and she did well and then she developed yet another cancer. Mom was an amazing woman. All my friends loved her. They'd come over and we'd have all night board game sessions, having to be quiet because he was sleeping for work. Sometimes we'd run outside to laugh. She didn't deserve what she was handed in life, maybe none of us do. One of my most vivid memories of her is before we knew she had cancer but she was sick, I was walking to the post office and she was on the porch and looked very sad. I asked her did she want to walk with me and she said "I can't." I wonder what was going through her mind.
People don't think kids remember things but they do, I'm living proof. You block all the hurt and fear, pretend it doesn't exist, but it doesn't go away. As I write there are tears on each cheek, remembering my pets and my mother. I hated men for so long due to those I was around. I never wanted my children around that. More on that later. But watch what you do and say around your children, they will remember, it will affect them as a grownup and then their children. I'm 53 years old and this shit still can make me cry. Sometimes I wish I could go somewhere, like back to that cave, and just scream.
I grew up in a relatively quiet household until around 9 when my grandparents started drinking. My grandfather had been a drinker previously but had stopped for years. He once broke my grandmother's back.
When the drinking started, everything went to hell. My grandmother was the type who curled her hair every night and wore ironed dresses, sewed, cleaned, cooked, did embroidery, gardened, etc. Our home was immaculate and always furnished with the best. Her gardens held beautiful flowers all the way across the yard. She could grow anything. I used to walk around the yard and just sniff the flowers or try to catch the hummingbirds.
After the drinking, the cleaning pretty much stopped the entire weekend. On Friday, the freeloaders came around for the free booze. The smoke was so thick I'd go outside or just climb the mountain behind the house and sit in a cave there and pretend that was my home. They started out laughing and carrying on, then came the music and singing, then religion, then couples would pair off and go to different parts of the house. It wasn't odd to find my grandmother with a man I didn't know in my room, which I had moved to the basement even though one wall was half open to the ground. After this pairing off, somebody would inevitably say something and the fight would start. People would leave. The screaming was unbearable. I can't remember the words even, just the volume of it. It became violent as well. One night my grandmother locked herself in my room and he tried to get in with an ax. He never replaced the door, just filled the hole with wood putty. It stayed there now 40 years. One night he brought out his rifle and said "I'm a gonna shoot you" and aimed it at her. I went and sat beside her and he kept telling me to move and I wouldn't. He shot a hole in the wall beside her. I remember being afraid to go to sleep after dark because of what would happen late at night. I'd be startled awake by the fighting and hunker under the blankets and pray for it to stop. One night I actually had the feeling of leaving my body. I went out the window, above the street lights, and ended up at the school playground. It was deserted except for me. I went and got on the merry-go-round and I can remember the squeak every time it made a rotation. I walked to the swings and looked back at the dark building. I then became afraid I couldn't get home and whoosh, I was in bed again.
These things make your chest tight and your breath short. One of the local boys down the street started coming around, I'm not even sure why. I was 10, he was much older. He would sit and hold my hand and occasionally kiss me which felt really weird and I didn't like it. My grandparents didn't care. I guess I was near marrying age. He went a little further than he should have, not all the way but too far. One of my then female friends who was older than me molested me and my grandmother caught her and made her go home. I didn't see her again until recently and of course she's all about prayer and all that - yeah right - those skeletons are rattling.
I tried to stay gone as much as possible. I went to any friend's house who wanted me over. My friends weren't allowed to come to my house anymore. We went from being an affluent respectable family to the bunch of drunks. Our once immaculate home now had roaches and smelled like a bar. She went from wearing pressed dresses to polyester pant suits. He became bizarre. I had a male and female hamster kept in an aquarium divided by a board. He said if they mated I had to get rid of them. I came home from school one day and they were gone. He had mated them and when the babies were born took them to the creek and threw them on the rocks. I can't remember having any emotion, it was just another thing. He brought home a baby squirrel I raised and loved, named it Peanuts. It had the run of the house. He got irritated with it and said he put it outside in a pen and it drowned. He brought home a baby chicken hawk I raised. It disappeared too, he said a cat must have gotten it.
I can't say how much money he drank away. I know sometimes it would be an entire paycheck and in the 70s he was making 25 an hour. He wouldn't give me a dime, not even for lunch, but when he was drunk you could get anything. They drug me to bars with them. I was already 5 feet 10 inches tall so I looked old enough to get in. I remember one Saturday night my friend was over, her mother drank with my grandparents. She laughed and said "let's get dressed up" so I wore a short white dress with knee-high black boots. I thought it was fun until we got to the Eagles and all the drunk men were all over me. I was chastised by my grandfather for "not being nice." I hated every minute of it. He would give me 20 to go shopping at Murphy's and get out of his hair.
At age 12 my grandparents went up McDunn to party with other people. Somehow they got in a fight and she walked home in the middle of the night. The doors were locked so she woke up a neighbor to get a key. The rest is sketchy.....he says he came home and went to bed to go to work and she was in my room. The next morning when she didn't make breakfast he thought it was odd. He says he found her on her back dead holding a beer bottle. He called a neighbor who said she hooked horrified. He put her in the truck and drove her straight to the funeral home and they told him he can't do that. He took her back home story goes and called the ambulance. My long-time friend and eventual coworker told me how she was found years later. Her death was ruled a heart attack because she had heart trouble. Back then people didn't want to hear stories about anything and autopsies were rare. At the funeral home we pulled down her collar and her neck was purple all around.
I then had to go live with mom. I'd never lived with her except for 2 years because she was sick and because my stepdad hated my guts because I reminded him of my dad, whom she never got over. We lived in Handley and he was always mad about something. He treated my little sister like dirt. She didn't like beans so he made her sit at the table all night, tell her she couldn't get up until she ate them. She eventually poured them down her pants but when she got up some fell out and he beat the living shit out of her. She was only 6. I couldn't do a thing and I don't know why mom allowed it, or if she even had a choice. I would take her and go walk the alley and go to the park and play in the caboose, or we'd watch the trains in the train yard. Mom made a friend, her name was Dottie. She was never allowed to have any. One night he worked evenings and her and Dottie snuck out and went to a bar. When they were leaving, two men up Cabin Creek ran them off the road, took her wedding rings, and both women were raped. When the police brought her home (nothing ever done to the men), he beat her nearly to death. You could hear the blows and the screams. I took my little sister to the YMCA and called his dad and begged for help and all he said was "not my affair." I knew not to even try my own grandfather. This was life. You learn to close off emotion.
We bought a mobile home and moved to Kimberly. It was better for awhile. Mom got sick again and had a double mastectomy, cancer had come back for the 4th time. We had a mixed dog, part retriever named Frisky. They got in a fight over her and again I took my sister to a neighbor's house. We were out front of their house talking and we heard a gunshot and help and Frisky came running to me. I could see a little blood spot on her forehead. He came around holding the pistol and grabbed her and started dragging her off and she was yelping. I can't tell you the sick feeling of hopelessness you have when a dog looks to you for help and you can't do a thing. Next we heard another shot and mom screaming. She planned to leave him after she got a job at Murphy's and she did well and then she developed yet another cancer. Mom was an amazing woman. All my friends loved her. They'd come over and we'd have all night board game sessions, having to be quiet because he was sleeping for work. Sometimes we'd run outside to laugh. She didn't deserve what she was handed in life, maybe none of us do. One of my most vivid memories of her is before we knew she had cancer but she was sick, I was walking to the post office and she was on the porch and looked very sad. I asked her did she want to walk with me and she said "I can't." I wonder what was going through her mind.
People don't think kids remember things but they do, I'm living proof. You block all the hurt and fear, pretend it doesn't exist, but it doesn't go away. As I write there are tears on each cheek, remembering my pets and my mother. I hated men for so long due to those I was around. I never wanted my children around that. More on that later. But watch what you do and say around your children, they will remember, it will affect them as a grownup and then their children. I'm 53 years old and this shit still can make me cry. Sometimes I wish I could go somewhere, like back to that cave, and just scream.
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