eirenemaker

The In Between

I left off yesterday with dad leaving. I never saw him again until I was 15. He called on my birthday, like it was just another of many many phone calls...I answered the phone.."hello"...."hi honey, it's your dad". Huh? Very weird. He was in town and wanted to come over 'cause he had something to tell me. My heart pounded outside my chest the entire time we waited for him. He showed up with his wife, and a picture of the baby brother that I never knew I had and who had died of SIDS a few months earlier. The something he had to tell me??? He was doing his amends step for AA and wanted our forgiveness for having never called. Aaaahh, ok. It was all very polite, and he left, and I think I next saw him at my sister's wedding some 6 years later.

I carried this almost dreamlike, surreal image in my head all through my childhood, teens and into my young adult years. I never knew if it was a dream, or real...or a movie I'd seen, or some out of body experience. I have a picture of being awakened in the middle of the night...frantic, panicky...I remember "hurry....get your cloths on!..... no, just your coat!... shoes...get your shoes...no, you can put them on in the car!

What's happening?? I remember fear...it was palpable in the air and I remember Lori crying. Then there was a drive in the middle of the night...and a big man behind the wheel....mom in the front seat, so I guess it's ok. Isn't it? I remember being bedded down on a sofa, in a room with a green fireplace in the corner. The ceilings were really, really, really high, and I stared out the stop sign shaped window high up on the wall, all night. The stars were twinking on the other side. I remember muffled voices and wondering where Lori was. I remember standing out in the middle of a huge yard - I think it was the next day. Alone. Where was every body? There was one of those bathtubs with lion feet in the garden. I remember running up to it, looking inside and freaking out...it was full of water, with guppies and garder snakes inside. And that's it....the entire scene, played over and over in my head in flashback moments all throughout my wonder years. It always left me with a sense of having no footing....it still does. When I was in my 30's I told my mom about it....never quite sure if it really happened or not. She said "oh, sure, that's the night we went to so and so's house". And why we'd do that? "you're father was coming to kill us". End of discussion. Turns out, he'd been in a drunken rage and had started calling her...... he was on the way, and he had a gun. Mom and my grandpa found the house trashed the next day, so I guess he must have meant some of it, anyway.

Mom started dating pretty quickly after she and dad quit eachother...I remember a couple of boyfriends before she brought Rick home. Their first date was New Years Eve, and he was living with us by the time I turned 5 in April. I know that for sure, 'cause he got me a dog for my birthday...and the dog took to Lori, so he never did become my dog.

Rick was a two weeks on, two weeks off seaman, and when he was on his two weeks off, he was my babysitter. Lori was in kindergarten. Mom was at work. I was at home, getting babysat by mom's new boyfriend. One day he called me into his bedroom. Because good little girls do as they're told..... never talk back.... and are seen, not heard..... I obeyed. He molested me that day....and quite often after that, right up until he and mom split when I was 11.

Mom once asked me why I never told her. My answer to her was the truth. It hurt her, but she wanted to know. Rick had convinced me that if I ever told, mom would hate me and leave me....she'd leave with him and I'd be alone. I bought it, hook, line and sinker, because mom had never demonstrated to me anything to give me reason to believe otherwise.

Phew!! I've shared this story many times and it never get's any easier. Thank God, because that would mean I'm numb again.

Stay tuned.

posted by peaceMkR @ 4:59 PM