Being a mother I cannot imagine behaving as my mother did. I cannot imagine allowing someone to starve my children, beat them, terrorize them. I cannot fathom allowing such a thing to happen to my children. My mother, however, just sat by and let them happen. Not once in my life did she ever try to protect me from any of it. I realize she was likely in a "survival" mode of her own. But how do you allow ANYONE, husband or otherwise, to harm your child and just sit idly by. This also wasn't the only thing she did...she "threw me under the bus" many times over in later years....... Still trying to process some of that!
In the very early years, mostly my memories from living in Rockford, IL, were fond ones of her. I remember her picking me up to watch the rain and hail, telling me to eat the tomatoes in my soup last as they were the hottest, letting me play and learn to tie with the strings on the ironing board. She would bath me down with baking soda water when I was sick and give me a big ole glass of cold pepsi, which she said made everything better.... well... as I've learned it don't make my massive intestinal destruction better!
While I had those memories...there were others. My very first memory of my dad was when he was sitting in a chair, up close to a small black and white tv, smoking a cigarette and drinking beer. I tried to climb on his lap like any little girl likes to do with their daddy. Instead of being welcomed...this is the treatment I received.... "get the fuck away from me" while taking his arm, swinging it out, and flinging me backwards with it. Causing me to fall on the floor, slide and hit the front of the couch. My mother was home, nothing was said, nothing was done. I just got up and sat on the couch... that was it. This was just the beginning of my memories of this sort of thing.
One of the things that has really opened up to me as an adult the actions my mother had or rather did not have as a parent...and the recognition of that...
I recently have come to a realization of just what was happening...that I had not put together before...
We moved back to Indiana when I was 4 and this is when things began to get worse. My mother went to work when we moved back to Indiana and I went to a babysitter... Eloise Jones was her name I believe... she lived just down the block from my paternal grandmother. Frequently my grandmother would pick me up from there...and at some point I would end up home....
There were, however, frequent problems between my dad and my grandmother (his mother) and my mom... nasty fights, hatred spewing... not nice.
So... my parents decided, like many other parents, to arrange the work schedule so that they did not need a sitter, paid or related.
My life definitely changed at that point. My mother would be gone by around 5am... I know this as this was her schedule she kept for all of her working years. She left that house without making any arrangements for her child, no food, no clothing, nothing.... and she left me with a known abuser who didn't want to get out of bed til noon or after and didn't want anyone around him when he did. Thus the "fun" began.
Waking up hungry, early in the morning, knowing not to wake up my dad, I would walk across filthy, cock roach ridden floors, trying to get to the kitchen to hunt something up. Because there never was any grocery shopping that took place, there generally was not much food around. I remember many times getting a chair, climbing up on the counter to see if the cereal box had anything in it. Sometimes it did, sometimes it was buggy, sometimes it was stale. Never any milk that was good, so I frequently had nasty cereal with water or nothing. Many times I just went hungry. My dad would get up around noon or so and be hateful that I even existed in his universe... but I was hungry.... I wanted food... so what did he do? He would burn butter beans, put massive amounts of hot peppers in them.... then laugh while I cried trying to eat them.... then vomit...
He has hit me because I put to much of something on my plate than he thought I should have... been hit and thrown across the room for such things. I've been threatened with death, insane asylums, beaten on a regular basis for just existing... and not ONE time, ever in my life did my mother even attempt to defend or protect me... Never...she just sat by and let it happen....
How does a mother do that??? It happened, I know it happened...
Then I got older.... and the game changed! Oh yes...she threw me under the bus... I have yet to figure out exactly why this phenomenon occurred but it surely did! By this time I was in high school...we had moved.... and life with them had morphed yet again.
My dad worked shift work as long as he worked with that company and that meant 4 nights, 2 days, 2 days off. On his 4 evening shifts, mom would get home right before he left, I would get home after he left. In that time he was home he would have been bitching her out about the filthy house.... he also gave her instructions of what he wanted done before he got home at midnight. When I would get home from school she would ask me to do things for her, which would be the items he had demanded she have done! Ok, fine, whatever. I was helpful and obedient in at least those areas... can't say all areas.... but I did help or rather do most of the household chores. So.. I did them and went on my way.... Well, as was the normal pattern of my father, he would call upwards of 30 times a shift... I'm not exaggerating, actually could be underestimating a bit... his first call of an evening.... he would ask mom if she did what he told her to... and this was her tale.... Wayne, I've been up since 4 o'clock, my feet hurt, my back hurts, I told Janice to do it but she wouldn't do it. WHAT?????? So he of course wants to talk to me.... starts yelling and screaming and spewing in the phone.... telling me what a lazy bitch I am to not help my hard working mother.... I try to tell him...but it's already done and I DID IT.... which then means my mother is lying....oh so that's the second whammy! So I said I don't care she asked I did it...she's lying.... and his words to me were: "DON'T YOU EVER CALL YOUR MOTHER A LIAR" Ok..whatever! He then would inform me that I had a price to pay when he got home.... at this point most of those were empty threats...
I have yet to figure out exactly what she thought she gained from this game....she did that a good bit....
When dad came home he rarely ever carried out a physically violent threat... but I can tell you that it didn't matter what time it was, who was there, or the fact that sleeping people were in the house.... he had a grand entrance..... He would open the door, every light in the house would be flipped on while he was yelling like a nut... he was slamming things, opening closing things, turning his tv up about as loud as it would go.... and he kept it that way all night long....
This was the way that part of life was... this is very hard to pick apart as there are so many twists and tangles in all this.... but the fact remains that my own mother not only did not protect me from a violent, seemingly mentally ill abuser, but she also set me up to have more of the same.... How does this happen??? (rhetorical of course)
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