Pulled Under (eBook)

A Tenuous Beginning

My life began in the absence of love as a “mistake.” I was the product of alcoholic parents. I was the fifth child of an already-declining marriage which produced twin boys, two daughters, and then myself on the way.

I was an unwanted pregnancy. My mother was intent on aborting me. She used alcohol, drugs, and physically beat her stomach in an attempt to rid herself of her embedded burden. It was the early 1950’s, abortion was not yet legal. I survived the assaults. On April 17th, 1953, I stubbornly came to be.

I remember not my mother’s arms, it was my dad’s that were always there. I imagined that at some point, my mother must have held me, if for no other reason than to perform the necessary tasks of a mother burdened with a child. There were no pictures of her holding me, no stories of a mother’s love. No one can tell me that they ever saw her hold me. Early on, I came to believe that it was I that became my parents’ last straw; the final assault that ended their marriage and disintegrated the family. Those early-planted seeds of perception shaped the narrative of my life.

Several years after my birth we moved from my birthplace of Patterson, New Jersey, to the edge of the everglades in Miami, Florida. Dad had converted a couple of chicken coops into modest living quarters. My parents barely had enough to feed us. Years later, I viewed that period of my life as my white trash era.

After moving to Florida, it didn’t take long before my mother found a way out of her miserable life. When she was clean and sober, my mother was a beautiful woman. I am told she often left dad to go to bars at night, where she freely drank with men who nestled up to her.

During one of those outings she met a man named Lee. They fell in love. He was hardworking and offered her a life of love and comfort. Who could turn that down? She didn’t have the strength nor the tools to navigate the destructive, chaotic minefield of her life. She wanted out.

My Mother and Dad often violently fought. They physically assaulted each other, as we kids cowered and feared that one would go too far and kill the other. She finally made the choice to walk away. My mother turned to Lee, though she knew she couldn’t burden her new love with five kids, so she chose. She kept her boys. The twins were in their early teens and mostly cared for themselves.

The day she walked out, her three little girls, without an understanding of the finality of what was happening, stood terrified and cried after her. My sister Pat pleaded with our mother not to leave her behind, promised to be good, and begged to be wanted. My mother simply turned and shouted to Dad, “I will keep my boys, you take the girls”...and with that, she was gone.

Dad was left with his three little girls. Peggy was the oldest at nine, yet she was the most emotionally fragile. Pat, the middle child, was seven years – old, and was a strong-willed child who did her best to protect us. Lastly, myself, the youngest. I was six years old and quickly learned to please at any cost so as to not be discarded.

Dad was a severe alcoholic and could not take care of us on his own. His parents, our grandparents, owned a restaurant with a house attached. They lived a couple of hours north in Palm Beach County. Dad turned to his parents for help. Our grandmother insisted that Dad relinquish his custody of us. In return, she provided a home and raised us; eventually she gained full control of us by adopting us. After adopting us, she insisted we call her “Mother”.

We were groomed to become a useful commodity for the restaurant’s functioning. She allowed Dad to live with us and work as the cook, with no salary, since his mother was ‘raising his kids.’ She was the matriarch; a tyrant who ruled everyone with ironclad authority, even her husband. Thus began our new life–a life of emotional and physical cruelty under our grandparents’ rule. Our childhood and adolescent years were tumultuous and had been built upon intimidation and fear. That story, perhaps, is for another book.

The sister I was closest to, Pat, was one year older than I. She was my protector and confidant. We shared a bedroom and late at night, when the fear and sadness became overwhelming, she reached over and firmly held my hand to calm me. We were often slapped, beaten and bruised, and Pat endured the brunt of abuse. She resembled our mother the most. That, along with her willfulness, enraged our grandmother who frequently left Pat crumpled and bloodied on the floor, unable to move. Rarely did a day go by that we were not physically and verbally assaulted.

Peggy found ways to please the old lady. She managed to find favor and was spared the bulk of beatings, although once Peggy’s eardrum ruptured as the physical assaults were often targeted across the face and ears. As soon as Peggy graduated high school she devised a plan that found favor with our grandmother. She joined a catholic convent to train as a novice to eventually become a nun. That was her great escape plan. It afforded her living quarters and meals until she found a way to survive on her own. A short time after entering the convent, Peggy met a man at a halfway house for drug addicts where the nuns worked to convert the sinners. She had finally found her escape with the man and left the convent to live with him. The last picture of her at the convent was of her dressed in her nun’s habit, sitting on his lap, with rosary beads wrapped around a beer bottle. (Tempting the hand of God!)

The physical and psychological abuse remained a constant for Pat and me. As Pat matured into a teenager, eventually she was targeted by our grandfather who added sexual abuse to the mounting trauma. That was in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when no one spoke of abuse, even though the adults at our school must have seen the marks…They kept silent.

The “picture” my grandmother presented to the public was that of a loving, spiritual, catholic woman who sacrificed her life to adopt her granddaughters. Though she dressed us in pretty clothes and displayed us obediently praying before meals in the restaurant, it was a facade. Her religion was a religion of resentment and cruelty, and the bible and scripture were used to inflict pain and punishment. Dad was there, he witnessed the abuse and cowered in fear of his mother. He was under the constant threat of her admonishments that if he interfered, she’d put his girls into foster care. He drank heavily throughout the years. I imagine it was to numb his own pain while he allowed the abuse of his kids. He must have thought that his love was enough, and that he’d kept his promise, “never to leave us.” To him those justifications must have been enough… they were not.

When Pat was sixteen, she feared that she couldn’t survive the beatings much longer. She decided to run away. I begged her to take me with her. She had no idea how she’d care for herself, and though it was excruciating for her, Pat left me behind. She packed a small bag. We hugged and cried, and then she too…was gone from my life. I locked the door behind her as she fearfully ventured into a world she did not know how to survive in. I was the only one left with our grandmother, and with Pat gone, I took her place as the most accessible punching bag.

The morning after I locked the door behind Pat, our grandmother noticed her missing. I endured her beatings and refused to reveal where Pat had gone. Later that morning she called the town’s Police Chief, a close friend of hers. She asked him to the restaurant in an attempt to scare and intimidate me. He interrogated and threatened me, demanding I tell them where Pat went. I insisted I knew nothing about it and finally, after several hours, I was left alone.

I was shattered. Again I felt the pain of rejection and of being discarded. Those feelings burrowed deep within and attached themselves to every aspect of my life. That solidified my belief that I must do all in my power to be “acceptable” to others.

After Pat had left, every Friday night, at 9:00 p.m. I slipped outside to the phone booth located just outside of the restaurant and awaited her weekly call. She called to tell me what was going on in her life and that she loved me. Pat was struggling to get by, but her life was better. I was happy she had escaped.

Soon after Pat’s departure, Dad also left his mother’s restaurant to work at another local restaurant. Again I was left to fend for myself against the abuse. A few months later I met someone and began to formulate my own plan of escape.

My escape was with a man six years older than I, who was confidently settled into his own home and career. His name was Ken. He was a local police officer. I moved in with Ken a few months after we met. I slowly attempted building a relationship. He was my first date, my first love. Over the four years we lived together, he was honest and often told me that he did not love me. He had said that he liked me, but that it wasn’t love. For Ken, ours was a relationship of convenience. I was 17 years-old, and gave the relationship my all. I worked fervently to change “like” into “love.” I cooked, cleaned, and provided sex whenever he desired. These efforts made for a satisfying time…for him.

I had begun an on-the-job training program at a local hospital to become an Inhalation Therapist, (now known as a Respiratory Therapist). For the first time in my life I felt proud that I was building a solid foundation for myself.

One day I was working the midnight shift and came home earlier...