Me, Myself and I.

I was 6 when my folks divorced. I had not a clue what was going on. I only knew I was being taken out of school that day. We, my sister and I. We were left at somebody’s home somewhere. I knew none of these people. I was not allowed to go to school. All I did was to sit outside wondering where I was and missing my daddy. My mother had hidden us away from our father. That is how she was. We were her bargaining chips. She would get what money she wanted out of him in order for him to see us.

We did spend some time staying up to my foster grandmothers. I do not think she was happy to have us there. It was a large brick house with a fireplace in every room. There were antiques all throughout the house. There were no toys but plenty of books to read only if we sat while reading. Grandmother would cook us our breakfasts but it was nothing I wanted to eat, but eat we did. There was a hammock between 2 large trees. I used to go and lay on that during the days. While I swung on that I would dream of how I wish I lived.

Uncle Ernie, as we called our foster grandfather, was not usually around much. He was always golfing. My grandmother had a henhouse full of chickens. I helped her with those. 3 stories of chickens kept me busy. There was also a hired hand named Jerry. He used to play music which flowed out of the window of his rooms above the house. We would all dance around in circles in the driveway. I think it was then when I realized music would play a big role in my life. Uncle Ernie had Scottish Terriers all named after the Kennedy clan. Jack was the last one left that I remember. One day the mailman ran over Jack. It sent Uncle Ernie to the ground. Gram drove Uncle Ernie to the hospital and he was transferred to the VA hospital. He ended up passing from a broken heart. He loved all of his dogs very much.

After Uncle Ernie passed we moved to a little house out on Route 3. We had to lug our water from a spring that set deep within the woods behind the house. I never minded. It was like an adventure. The neighbors used to go with us. Their home was full of life and there was always fresh baked bread going in the oven. I can still remember the taste of that bread slathered with butter. It was a nice house where I lived but there were only two bedrooms. I had to share one with my sister. She was always mean to me and very secretive and hated my mother. There was a garage across the road. If I had a quarter, I would walk across the road to get an ice cold bottle of root beer from an old fashioned cooler. You put the quarter in, slide the bottle down and lift it up out of the ice cold water.

Living in that little house was the first time I heard my mother cry. She had always been so mean and vindictive. She thought nothing of raising her fist to me and here she was feeling vulnerable. I could not figure out why but I bet it had to do with the divorce coming up. While listening to her cry, I remembered all the times I had cried when she was taking my baseball bat to me, pulling my hair so I would land on the floor or hit me with her fists. I only went outdoors and walked down to where the stream was. Then the day of the divorce hearing. As I went to get into the taxi because the judge wanted to talk to me, my sister slammed the taxi door onto my fingers. I hated my life. My sister was as miserable as my mother. After the divorce, we moved to an apartment in town. It had running water so I did not have to lug that anymore.

The new place we lived in had a large kitchen downstairs and a garage. Upstairs were 3 bedrooms, a living room and the bathroom. There was an upstairs door so we could exit that way if we chose to. My mother grew more miserable. The man she had been chasing did not want anything to do with her but she would tell him stories of to get his sympathy. And when she grew angry, it was taken out of me. My sister was more interested in finding boys. She would hand wash mini skirts as mother left for work, she would turn the heat up high so the skirts would dry. One day she forgot to turn the heat down and it killed my mothers canary. I got the beating for that. I was to do all the housework as if I knew what I was doing with having no teaching of anything. All I could think of was Cinderella but there was only one sister there.

I did not have many friends. I had also gotten pretty good at reading people. I was usually not allowed to stay at a friends house just as I was not allowed to have friends at my house. God forbid if someone saw my mother backhand me. Lois asked me if I wanted to spend the night one time. Her mother surmised there was something amiss in my household but she let me stay over. It was during that night when I heard my name being called. When I finally woke up, it was dark. As my eyes focused, I looked at the end of the bed I was in and there stood my Uncle Ernie with Jack in his arms. I wanted to scream but only stuffed the top of the bedding into my mouth. Why did he come to see me? We were not close but I loved that dog. I never spoke of it. I had to figure out what and why.

It was at the end of my 8th grade that we were moving. My sister had run away from mother and was living with her friends. So I was left to be alone with mother. We moved to another town far from what I had been used to. She ran a small roadstop. She thought with me going to a private school that it would keep me out of trouble as I was becoming a teen. I did not like Lincoln Academy. Different classes in different buildings. All brick built. I was shocked to make a few friends. We would go to the movies or to the dances at school. It is also when I would smoke a cigarette. My mother was too busy chasing men to know what was going on in my life. Some of my friends had parties at their homes and I went. I never drank with them. I met a lot of parents who were not what I was used to. They were actually nice. All it took for me to stop going to the parties was one guy, Buzzie, he was called. He was in the navy and really liked me. He wanted what I was not giving out so I stopped going to parties. That was also the time in my life when my mother told me I should marry rich. That money was everything to a woman. She was even picking out boys who came from money for me to date. I showed no interest which pissed her off even more. I mean, by then I was only 16.

At school I found I was good at sports. I was good in all sports except baseball. I got sick of getting hit with the balls. I was good at tennis, basketball, soccer and was exceptional at running/track. I only contributed that to running away from my life with mother, but I was good in it. I did not like gymnastics. Especially after falling on the balance beam and it sending me to the hospital bleeding. It was then when my mother looked at me as a whore because the beam had broken my hymen. Here I was at 16 and I not a clue of what a whore or slut was. I never asked any of the other girls what it meant because I was the laughing stock of the kids as it was, coming from a small country town. I tried tag football but being the runt, the other girls laughed when they would all land on me. I was to assume they wanted me to cry to make fun of me but I did not.

Christmas came and went. My dad had called me to say he would see me. My mother gave him directions. Come to find out, she had given him the wrong directions so that he would drive right by where we lived. I wondered why she was laughing hysterically at one point. It must have been when she saw him driving by. It would have been the first time of seeing him in a very long time. And then the next move.

She was still chasing the man who would become my stepfather. I liked him but also felt sorry for him. We then headed north, next to New Hampshire. It was out in the country which was more my style. She had opened another restaurant. The school I would go to next would be the newest up to date school in the whole state of Maine. It was high tech. I met a few of the girls in the neighborhood but they came from real good families. I tried fitting in but I was not in their league. It was my own insecurities that kept me from forming friendships. I never felt good enough. They remained kind and friendly. I am to assume that from the way I was built, the boys felt I was older than I actually was. I had one boy, well a man, that wanted to date me. I admit I was afraid of him because of his size. He was very tall and muscular. I told him I was too young to go out with him but he persisted. In the end, my mother scared him off. He had a car and she worried I would leave. That meant her not getting child support. Again, after the end of that school year, my mother had pissed off everyone as usual so we moved again.

The next stop was near the coastline. I was happy with that. Being near the water gave me peace. We rented an apartment near the next school I would be going to. It was a nice school but the “uptown” girls were really mean. I made one friend, Ella. That was when I first got a taste of bullying. I was bullied my entire year there. The town was a rough town. My mother worked at one of the top restaurants downtown. I liked that I had a large bedroom. I also liked that she was not home much. I cannot remember what happened but for some reason we had to move again and quickly. I had not finished that year in school so she went to my school and told them we had to move then and there so they gave me my grades and we were off, again.

The last stop with her was in Old Orchard Beach. The city of sex, drugs and rock n roll or back then it was. I cannot say why but I never touched a drug nor hung out with any of the girls. They were too wild for me. And the drugs they took, well, I wonder what they are all doing now or if they are even alive. I got a job after school. I would go to school, come of the front door and hop on the bus to take me to my job in another town. Once done work at 11 pm I would walk the 7 miles home. When I got home she would accuse me of being with a boy because I did not walk home fast enough. When I got my paycheck and cashed it, as I opened the door to enter the trailer we lived in, she would meet me at the door, hand outstretched. She took my pay for that week, giving me 50 cents to go me the week. I also had to find a place to stay every weekend so she could entertain her men and here she was married. Red, my stepfather, had run away from home. I would stay at some off season motels where the rest of the homeless kids stayed. I was allowed back home late Sunday night to shower and to change for school and work the next day. I took that for a long enough time. Graduation day was the last she day she ever hit me. It was right in front of my nephew. She had taken her fist to the left side of my face. My eye was bruised and bleeding. I jumped out of her car, ran across a field and went to the police station. They directed me to the judges office and I signed papers to have her arrested with her sitting in a chair opposite of me. Then I took off to never see her again. I hid out at a friends far from where I had been for the next 3 weeks, until I turned 18. I did not even see my dad but I did call him to let him know I was okay. That was when he said he had bought me a car so I could go job hunting where he lived. I told him I did not want it. I was going to stay where I was. He was not happy about it but he knew I had to find my own way. My dad had always told me I would need someone to take care of me. If he had only known that I had always had to take care of me. I could not count on anyone else.

I cannot say how I made it through all I had. I had never taken an illegal drug nor smoked pot. I was not chasing the boys and had no relationships with them. I only knew I had to get through school while keeping what sanity I had and get away from my mother and I did just that. She was really pissed off that I had signed papers to have her arrested. She broke into a chest I had been saving dishes, etc… to equip an apartment with, broke the dishes and tore my yearbook to shreds, then dropped it off at my dad’s house, telling him what an ungrateful little whore I was. What she did not know was that I had never been touched by a man, only her abuse.

Years later my dad told me it was a wonder why one of us kids never killed her. I told him we never thought about that. It was not how our generation was. However, I was proud that I was the only one of us who did not get pregnant or run away just to get away from her. I only wanted her to stop hitting me. Her bitterness, her nastiness, her abuse. I spent too many times at a clinic getting patched up. I also spend too many days missing school so no one would ask why I had the cuts and bruises I had. Perhaps the kids in school took their drugs and drank to escape what unpleasantness they had in their lives but I was not going to do it. And I am proud of that.