chapter nine - fun with dad and mom
The emotional abuse was often subtle, insidious, the physical abuse more dramatic. They beat me so many times that I lost count. I don’t remember most occasions. Oddly enough, my siblings do. Reminiscing with my youngest brother on one occasion, he said to me, “Do you remember the time … ?” and proceeded to describe in detail various beatings I received. In several instances he remembered the clothes I was wearing at the time. To our mutual surprise, I had little or no recollection of any of the events he described. Apparently I have blocked a lot of it out.
Rarely did my parents lay a hand on my half-sister or my sister: rarely, as in I don’t remember it ever occurring although I would not put it past them and would not doubt it if either one of my sisters reported to me having been slapped or hit. My parents never touched my step-sister. My step-mother was never so inclined and my father would never have dared. Years later my step-sister told me about an incident in which my step-grandmother witnessed Dad beating me as he carried me up the stairs in his arms – talented at the abuse business, he was – and she quietly told my step-sister to let her know if he ever did anything like that to her. The old lady was dead serious and Dad would have certainly lived to regret it had he done so. My younger brother got a slap or two, but was probably never beaten. Neither of my parents would have dreamed of physically abusing the child they had together, around whom the household came to revolve. By contrast, Jack and I caught hell.
My step-mother was responsible for the mundane, day-to-day assaults, like breaking a plastic glass over my head at the dinner table – I don’t know what I said – or slapping me so hard first thing in the morning that I banged my head up against the wall and couldn’t get my eyes to stop watering for hours. I got that one because I didn’t say “Good morning” in a pleasant enough manner. Thankfully, no one at school asked me about my red and teary eyes. It would be impossible for me to remember all of the times she hit me. She also got in some good beatings in her day.
It was also her job to set my brother and me up for most of our major beatings at the hands of my father. She seemed to prefer that. I guess she preferred not to work that hard, and knew that Dad enjoyed the task. He was like a simmering pot, and all she had to do was turn up the burner to bring him to a boil. He was also a pretty sadistic son-of-a-bitch. I later heard about how all the way back to when we were infants, he used to delight in tipping our highchairs to the side until we would begin to cry. The older we got the more he went all out, and did so on a regular basis. I suppose that as the child’s bones become harder, one gets a sense that one can beat harder as well.
Many of these signature events were precipitated by an interaction Jack or I had with my half-brother, Henry. Henry could do nothing wrong, and could do or say anything he wanted to any of us. All he had to do was say, “Jump!” and we had to jump – unless he was talking to my parents, in which case they jumped. He was the only one of us besides my father who got special meals at dinner time. (Well, on occasion my step-brother did, too, but not often.) The rest of us had to eat what was on our plates or eat nothing at all.
It would begin like that. We would do something that Henry didn’t like, and he would tattle to my step-mother. That is where the exaggerations invariably began. After my step-mother got hold of the story, however, it would be transformed into a work of art. In a calculated and deliberate effort, she would begin her tale. Accidently bumping into Henry as we passed him in the hall, for example, would become maliciously and violently throwing him against the wall. She told her stories slowly, methodically, meticulously, to ensure their maximum effect. She would add whatever embellishments and make up whatever details were necessary to guarantee the result. With her, it was not only an art but a science, and it worked every time.
The whole thing would have been comical if it hadn’t been so demented. More demented still is that my siblings and I would joke about her techniques afterwards. My sister and my younger brother didn’t suffer the same fate, but that didn’t stop them from recognizing the absurdity of my step-mother’s behavior. Jack and I had to commiserate with someone about the hell we were going through, right? Sometimes you have to laugh through the pain.
My father would listen to her with rapt attention, and you could watch the expression on his face subtly change with each new detail. Like clockwork, one could watch his temperature rise. Then, sure enough, he would explode and rip into us like a savage tornado. He used his hands and fists and sometimes handy nearby instruments. It would a while for his energy to be spent. Then everyone went back to their places to await the next act.
