Relative Secrets

2006-10-24T21:08:00.000-05:00

He's Gone.
I just got the call. He died about an hour or two ago. I don't have any tears. He can't hurt us anymore. I'm kind of pissed that he left with a parting shot, though. My sister had been calling as often as she could, and 3 days ago, he had his number changed and unpublished. Asshole. Oh well. We can maybe get some fucking peace in our lives now.

Just another chapter ending. And his secret is out. It was him, all those years, who changed his number so that we couldn't reach him. Not her.

2006-07-10T14:55:00.000-05:00

And it's stupid, that we wait for something like this to take care of the things that matter, instead of doing it on-going. It seems like I've been working on issues I had with my mother since I had my daughter. And, for my effort, I have NO issues with her at all. We can even talk about the custody battle without any tension, and that was a big, big thing. But it seems like it's mostly been the opposite with my father. Things are swept under a rug and not dealt with until there's a tragedy, then we're all expected to be all LifeTime Channel and put everything on the table and deal with it till it's Happy Ever After. Thing is, we've been called to the drill so many times that it almost seems scripted. "Okay, here's the danger, here's how we talk about it, and it's all better now. See you in another few years." I'd like, for once, to be able to really talk about this shit. I think I've done pretty well so far at being completely honest about what the issues are. I think it's helped that it was done via e-mail, because it's helped me actually DO it, instead of making an attempt and being hushed by a look or an eye-roll.

He hasn't responded yet. At first, and, still, really, I felt like I was being disregarded yet again. My sister said that he's told her that he's read the mail over and over again. I don't know what that means. I guess it could mean that he just can't believe I'm saying this shit. It could mean that he empathizes, though, if what my sister says is true: that she is being investigated for abusing him, for only feeding him once a day via the tube, instead of 3-4 meals a day. I don't know what it means. She asked me, "What do you want from him?" I asked her to read the letter again, because I think I was very clear about what I wanted from him. That is no longer a secret.

2006-07-05T01:22:00.000-05:00

Well, that was a blast. (/sarcasm) It kind of reads like I was blasting him, but that's not the way I feel about it. It all needed to be said, and then some. I'm hoping that it's not more than he can swallow right now. Because the "then some" is mostly good.

I wrote about the feeling that we could just pick back up where we left off pretty seamlessly. It's been this way with all of the most important people in my life. It's sort of like a soul-mate thing: "I knew I'd see you again, hey," and off we go. I think I know him well enough to say that he'd know exactly what I mean, and that's why I really hope that he will read that letter with the intent it was sent, and the reason I believe he's capable of doing that, whether he chooses to or not.

That sounds kind of crazy or new-agey or something, I guess, but that's how it goes. It's NO secret that I'm a nutter. (:

2006-07-05T01:04:00.000-05:00

Here's the email I sent. We'll see how it goes.

I'm sorry to hear that you are ill. I knew that I'd eventually hear
this kind of news, and, frankly, I tried not to think about how I'd
react when I did. Kellye and I have been emailing about this back and
forth, which has been good for us, because we're both more mature, and
can talk about this in a more logical way than we could've in the
not-too-distant past.

I have a lot of things to say. First, I am embarrassed about how I've
handled some of our issues in the past. My last letter to you was the
most scathing and mean thing I've ever written, and I wish I'd handled
it differently. I meant every word of it, but that does not excuse
the way I expressed it. It was immature and knee-jerk. At this point
in my life, I'm learning to deal with issues that upset me in a more
mature manner, and I hope I can do that now.

I have a lot of anger about our relationship. I have a tremendous
amount of pain. That anger and pain has really been an obstacle for
me in a lot of areas of my life, and I'm ready to get rid of it, once
and for all. Some of the things I'm going to say will hurt both of
us, but I'm not saying them for that purpose. I am interested in
cleansing, getting past issues, and forgiving.

I'm not sure if you understand what an impact you've had on my life.
For a long time, most everything I did, I did to impress you and make
you proud of me. That's what daddy's girls do, you know? And that's
what I've always been: a daddy's girl. I know this is sad to hear,
and I want you to know that I am not saying any of this to cause you
any guilt or pain. I just want to say all the things I could never
say to you, good and bad, right now.

Kellye's told me that you don't want to discuss Sandy, but we really
have to, if we're going to somehow find peace between us before you
go. I will eventually forgive both of you, with or without your help,
but I'd rather do it with your help. This is going to require you to
not to be defensive about her, protective of her, etc. It's going to
require that you actually believe what I say is true about her, which
is something I've never felt you've been able to do, for whatever
reasons. I know that the dogma for 30 years has been that we've lied
and said hurtful things because of our mother. That has never been
the case. Mom despises Sandy, that's true, but her hatred comes from
having seen her daughters demolished by Sandy over and over. But
everything we've said is true, and I even have proof of some of it.
I'm just going to list a few things here, and what I want you to do is
just open your mind and just "listen."

She beat us. Severely. She made us keep it a secret from you. And
we did, for a while, until we tried to tell you that time, sitting in
your car in front of my school in Flora. And, just as much abuse is
handled in this country, we were not believed, by the time it was
over. I remember you telling me about you going home and the fight
you had, but I think that, eventually, she convinced you, somehow,
that it wasn't true, that we were exaggerating or something, It
became a non-issue..

She made us terrified of our own mother. I told the judge that I
wanted to live with you because I was more afraid of my mother than I
was of Sandy, which is about as twisted as it gets. I know that you
heard some of it, because she told us that mom was a monster pretty
constantly the whole time we lived with y'all. I'm now a stepmother.
I can not STAND these childrens' mother, but I would never say
anything bad about her in front of them. I can't imagine where that
comes from.

She humiliated us, publically and privately, and exposed us to ideas
and evils we weren't old enough to comprehend. You know, she let us
watch Sybil, which had the scene about the buttonhook, and it wasn't
long after/before that, that we were on the kitchen table, legs
spread, having some kind of stuff poured into our private parts,
listening to her talk about what all could have happened that we ended
up with a yeast infection.

She made me wear RIDICULOUS clothing to school, and it wasn't a matter
of "this is all we can afford," because it was not. A pair of cheap
jeans at the thrift shop would not have cost more than the wedge
heels, stockings and very short skirts that I was made to wear. The
clothes my teacher took me outside the class to talk to me about.

She did not feed us enough food. You were only there at dinner. This
is the thing I have proof of. Stef and Kellye went from two slim,
happy girls, to two fat, insecure, unhappy girls in a very short
period of time. I watched this with my own eyes and there are
pictures of this. We fought over food when we got back to mom's,
Daddy. She couldn't keep enough food in the house to feed us. We ate
everything in sight. Kellye and Stef could not ever get the feeling
of being full in their bellies. That trigger had gone away. This
still affects all three of us. We all have eating disorder, where
before the time in Pascagoula, we had healthy appetites and no food
issues.

We did not get enough sleep, many times. She'd wake us up and make us
re-do chores we hadn't done just right, in the middle of the night.
If we started to cry, she threatened us with severe punishment if we
woke you up. She threatened us with severe punishment for telling you
ANY of this.

And that's just the time we lived with y'all in Pascagoula. That
doesn't count when I was living with y'all in D'I. I don't know if I
told you this, but she did lock Xi in the closet. Xi remembers that
to this day.

Like I said, I want to do this without angry words, and without blame.
I just want you to believe me, and ackowlege what happened. There's
nothing any of us can do to change what happened. It happened. Most
of my anger at you comes from a place of not being able to tell you
these things without fear that you wouldn't believe me and/or just
blow it off and excuse it by talking about how hard it is to deal with
Shannon, and how awfully Sandy was treated by Butch, or whatever other
excuse y'all had for her behavior..

Another part of my anger comes from the fact that it was allowed to go
on until very recently. I'm alcoholic, just like you are, so I really
get the whole denial thing. I also get the thing about not quite
paying the right kind of attention about what's going on. That's what
lost me Xi for that time, me not paying the right kind of attention to
what was going on.

I know I've not been the best daughter, not for you, or for Mama. If
circumstances were different, however, I could've shone. I think all
three of us could've. I think that all of us will find that hard to
not think about off and on for the rest of our lives. That's hard.

I've been writing about this pretty consistently since '02, and I want
to share a couple of things with you, especially a few things I wrote
the past two days. Please remember that these things were written in
my private journal, and, as such, are sometimes peppered with angry
words. But I think it may offer some insight to my perspective:

"I want to do this gracefully. I want to do it as the 41 year old, and
not as the still hurt and angry child, full of blame."

"I'm not going to keep this secret anymore with him. I'm not going to
pretend it didn't happen for his own sanity. This is one way that he
can BE a daddy for me: to believe the secrets that I've tried to tell
him."

"but here's the thing: I feel really stupid sitting here, at age 41
thinking that all I ever wanted from him was for him to be my daddy.
But that's the very basic bottom line. I do really believe that he
loved us, and that's what's fucked up about it. If he didn't, I'd have
different issues, I'm sure, but I think it'd be less hard. The fact
that he loved us and still allowed all that to happen and stayed in
denial about it for so long and so intensely gives me the WTFs."

"He's one of the best storytellers I've ever known, and he loves to
talk about when we were little girls and he was with us, and the
things we did and how he felt, and I love to sit with him and bask in
that, but another part of me is screaming, "What about the REST of my
life?" He left when I was six and my sisters were two and three. The
stories end there, as far as his turn is concerned, and ours start,
filled with secrets, pain, abuse and emotional neglect. And from that
point on, there is a cliff of differences in our points of view."

"He completely missed the million times I tried to catch his eye to
somehow signal to him that things were not okay and that we needed his
help. He also missed all the times, after we were finally home with
our mother again, that we tried to contact him just to say hello,
because the stepmother was always wondering aloud, "What do they want?
What do they want?" and it was somehow translated into "Y'all never
call unless you want something," which, yes, we did. We wanted our
daddy to be our daddy."

"I'm trying to figure out how that got skewed in such a way that I
ended up feeling guilty for calling him at all. As if I had a hidden
agenda. I guess I did have a secret motive. Why was it so impossible
for me to simply ask him to spend time with me without her being
around? Why could I never tell him that I simply enjoyed his company
and his stories. His laughter, and the way it always felt like we
never skipped a beat, even when we hadn't seen each other in a few
years? How could she have sabotauged us so completely, emotionally,
with guilt about things we shouldn't have felt guilty about? How could
he let her do it? How could he not have seen it happening? Why
couldn't I see all of this until right now, at this moment?"

"I guess a lot of this is about secrets we keep from ourselves, more
than secrets we've kept from each other. Those are much more powerful
and do the most damage."

"I'm sad I'm going to lose him, but it's not like I'm losing him,
since we haven't been in contact. I guess I'm losing a chance to spend
more time with him in the future, which may've been possible, since
she's not around anymore."

About Katrina:
"Dad's not in the picture (the one I saw in the paper), but we have
word from distant relatives that they are all okay, but once again, I
feel like it's another slight: he has no idea whether or not any of us
are okay, and has not asked. I really shouldn't worry about it. I
shouldn't expect him to give a shit. I KNOW better. I guess part of
the reason that it bothers me is that I'm seeing the community come
together and check to make sure everyone is okay. Neighbors I never
knew are suddenly intertwined in the effort to survive around here.
Friends on my phone list I haven't talked to in ages are coming by to
check on us, and I'm getting in touch with them to make sure they're
okay.

"This is not something I can talk about to anyone else. It's a secret
that I still get hurt by his complete disinterest in us. I have to
pretend that I'm not even thinking about them. To bring up their names
in conversation in this family is considered a weakness, and
stupidity. Because we KNOW better. Or we should."

About the dentist (not Privet):
"After it was over, I could barely walk. I was shaking so hard, and I
could hardly see through the tears that wouldn't stop. When I got to
the waiting room, my stepmother grabbed me by the arm, dragged me out
of there, and yelled at me all the way home for screaming and
embarrassing her like that. And when we got home, I was severely
beaten with a belt, from neck to knees, on my backside. I was told
that I was NEVER to embarrass her like that again. I was also told
that if I told my father what happened, I'd get the same treatment
again. So I didn't tell.

For a week, my jaw throbbed, I had blisters on my tongue, and I could
barely sit down, or lean back, or even sleep very well. But I figured,
at least I got my teeth fixed, and prayed I'd get to go home to mom
soon.

What I didn't know was that the dentist was not finished."

"My dad still doesn't know. But if I ever told him? He wouldn't
believe me. And maybe that pisses me off more than anything else."

"Someone mentioned Poptarts earlier, and I started thinking about
something that I've never written about: starvation. When we lived
with our father for a while, when mom was hospitalized, we were mostly
under the "care" of our stepmother. I'm not really sure where she
learned about brain washing, since she really wasn't they type of
woman who read much about anything other than illnesses, or god, but
she somehow knew that, in order to break someone down, you starve
them, give them very little sleep, and work on their self-esteem
almost constantly. We were always hungry. We had three meals a day,
but they were sparse, and even when there were leftovers, we were not
allowed bigger portions, or seconds. I remember throwing leftovers
away, sneaking bites of it when she wasn't looking."

"Anyway, poptarts. When we finally got away from this woman, and back
home, we all had eating problems. Both my sisters gained a lot of
weight, and mom could not keep food in the house. We knew that she'd
let us eat as much as we wanted, but, having been hungry for a solid 6
months, that feeling just wouldn't go away. There was something guilty
about it too. It felt like we were cheating somehow, to get enough to
eat, somehow sinful and not something we'd get by with for long.
Sometimes, the stepmother would give us a poptart for breakfast. We'd
get one, and that'd be it until lunch, at which time we'd get half a
peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I remember how good the poptarts
were. I remember using my fingers to pick up any crumb that dropped
onto the the table. I remember savoring every bite, wishing I could
have more, knowing that I wouldn't, and feeling almost desperate about
it."

"The suffering wasn't an obvious thing. It was deep inside, and ached
like no physical pain ever could. After we were home, I was at the
grocery store one time, and had a little extra money. I bought a box
of poptarts and hid them under the seat of the car. Later, when noone
was around, I went to the car and ate all of them. After I finished
the box, I sat in the car and just wept. It felt like I'd just been in
a fight; my heart was pounding, I was angry, and my stomach was in
knots. I finally leaned out of the car and puked."

What might be the most fucked up thing about me cut-and-pasting these
things to you is that, right this minute, I want you to see that I'm a
very good writer. See? Still Daddy's girl, in some twisted way.

I can't quite wrap my head around the idea of this adopted son. I
know that you have guilt and regret about us, but I wonder why, if you
had a void there, that you could not fill it with us, the daughters
you have history and blood with. I am very glad that you're helping
this young man, but I wonder what kept you from coming to us and
saying something like, "I know we keep bashing our heads into a brick
wall, but can we try again, only this time, without Sandy?"

I want to say it again: I know it is hurting you to read these things,
but that is not my intent. I want you to know why I hurt, and how.
If you can be my Daddy one more time, be my Daddy by believing what I
say and acknowledging my pain. That's the only thing I'm asking from
you, the last thing. Can you do it?

Very Sincerely, and with many regrets,
C

2006-07-04T21:33:00.000-05:00

I want to do this gracefully. I want to do it as the 41 year old, and not as the still hurt and angry child, full of blame. He's told my sister that he'd rather we not talk about the stepmother, but if he really wants to make peace with me, we are going to have to talk about her. I'm trying to get myself in a headspace where I can talk to him about it without making him feel defensive.

I need for him to believe me. I need for him to push all her years of dogma out of his head and really listen to me and believe me. Every time I've tried to tell him what has happened, he hasn't believed. When I told him, the weekend he came to pick us up for a visit, that we couldn't go with him, because she had starved us, beaten us, and shoved things in our cunts on the kitchen table, he didn't believe. He thought, I guess, that our mother put these things in our heads. When I told him that she locked my daughter in a closet once, while I went to a dr's appointment, he didn't believe me. If we're going to have good closure, solid peace-making, he's going to have to finally believe those things. He can say he's sorry about not having spent much time with us all he wants, and that is important, though hard to believe, but the important thing is that he's going to have to understand that what we've been saying for 30 years IS true, and is not the result of our mother hating our stepmother. It's crucial for my forgiveness of him at this point in my life.

Either that, or we won't be making our final peace. I will hope that he'll find peace before he dies, and I'll find it for myself, eventually, when I can forgive him, and, I guess when I can forgive her. Makes me want to throw up, thinking about forgiving her, right now, but I'll do it eventually, because I have to.

I'm not going to keep this secret anymore with him. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen for his own sanity. This is one way that he can BE a daddy for me: to believe the secrets that I've tried to tell him.

2006-07-04T18:47:00.000-05:00

And here's the thing. I was talking to pips about this, because she, more than anyone else, knows about all my issues with him, and has lost her father after having some similar issues, but here's the thing: I feel really stupid sitting here, at age 41 thinking that all I ever wanted from him was for him to be my daddy. But that's the very basic bottom line. I do really believe that he loved us, and that's what's fucked up about it. If he didn't, I'd have different issues, I'm sure, but I think it'd be less hard. The fact that he loved us and still allowed all that to happen and stayed in denial about it for so long and so intensely gives me the WTFs.

He's one of the best storytellers I've ever known, and he loves to talk about when we were little girls and he was with us, and the things we did and how he felt, and I love to sit with him and bask in that, but another part of me is screaming, "What about the REST of my life?" He left when I was six and my sisters were two and three. The stories end there, as far as his turn is concerned, and ours start, filled with secrets, pain, abuse and emotional neglect. And from that point on, there is a cliff of differences in our points of view. His vision, I guess, is seen from the spot of just going to work and coming home and seeing that we were clean and supper was on the table. He completely missed the million times I tried to catch his eye to somehow signal to him that things were not okay and that we needed his help. He also missed all the times, after we were finally home with our mother again, that we tried to contact him just to say hello, because the stepmother was always wondering aloud, "What do they want? What do they want?" and it was somehow translated into "Y'all never call unless you want something," which, yes, we did. We wanted our daddy to be our daddy.

Sitting here now thinking about this, I can remember three times when I've asked him for help financially, and neither of those times was it anything big. I'm trying to figure out how that got skewed in such a way that I ended up feeling guilty for calling him at all. As if I had a hidden agenda. I guess I did have a secret motive. Why was it so impossible for me to simply ask him to spend time with me without her being around? Why could I never tell him that I simply enjoyed his company and his stories. His laughter, and the way it always felt like we never skipped a beat, even when we hadn't seen each other in a few years? How could she have sabotauged us so completely, emotionally, with guilt about things we shouldn't have felt guilty about? How could he let her do it? How could he not have seen it happening? Why couldn't I see all of this until right now, at this moment?

I guess a lot of this is about secrets we keep from ourselves, more than secrets we've kept from each other. Those are much more powerful and do the most damage.

2006-07-03T23:23:00.000-05:00

I knew this day would come. I just got an email from my sister, telling me that my father is dying and he wants to talk to me. We've gone through a few scares in the past, heart problems, bad ulcers, emphasema, etc, but this is the big C and he weighs 114 lbs, at 6'4".

He's staying with his cousin and his wife, and they're taking care of him. I haven't spoken to him in five years, because of the stepmother I've talked to in this blog, and I wonder where she is now. I don't know how many times she told us, and him, that it'd be HER taking care of him when he got old and sick, not US.

So, lots of emotions right now. I'm angry that she's not doing it, and I don't care why she's not. I'm sad I'm going to lose him, but it's not like I'm losing him, since we haven't been in contact. I guess I'm losing a chance to spend more time with him in the future, which may've been possible, since she's not around anymore. I'm back and forth about whether I should contact him or go see him. My last letter to him was the most evil, scathing thing I've ever written, and that's saying a lot. Every bit of it was true, but I could've said it differently. So that's embarrassing.

I can sort of picture what it would be like, to see him again, at this stage of his life. I imagine he'd talk about regrets. I imagine he'd also tell fun stories, like he always does. I imagine we'd cry a lot.

I know I don't have much time, but I can't rush into this if I'm going to do it. I don't want to say something like, "Where's that bitch NOW?" He doesn't need that shit, and neither do I. But I've got to get it out of my system before I see him.

This is a secret that we need to keep from my mother, though. I really don't think she can stand it. Her health is bad, and because of how often and much we were hurt in our lives by his wife, and by him for letting her, she gets very emotional any time his name is mentioned.

I'm just all over the place.

2005-12-23T02:31:00.000-05:00

The post-Katrina coast is making me think a lot about the housefire I had a couple of years ago. Before it happened, I was in denial about the relationship I was in, but wouldn't think of moving, because I'd have to move all my STUFF again. It was also a secret to most everyone that I was feeling very suicidal. I don't tend to tell people when I'm really feeling like I want to die. When I get that way, I'm very serious about it. It's not a plea for help. It's for real. The arthritis was having a field day with my body, I was useless to everyone, I was far away from my family and friends, the guy I was living with seemed to be sabotauging me, I couldn't work, and I was just about OVER it all. I was thinking about ways to do it. I could find a quack and get a bunch of opiates, mix that with my xanax and a bunch of liquor, and bye bye. The only thing really keeping me from it, I think, was thinking about how we all felt when Doug killed himself. That if he'd just held on, he'd've been able to see how temporary his problems were. I didn't feel like my problems were temporary at all, but I do remember how it felt -- the loss, helplessness, anger, etc. I didn't want to put Xi and my mom through that sort of shit. I do sort of think they'd halfway understand, maybe, and thought about writing letters to explain it. Anyhow, it was something I kept to myself. A secret from my relatives.

When I saw the smoke, my mind wouldn't work fast enough. I just thought I had to get water to put it out, so I dumped the trash on the floor and started filling up the trashcan with water. The smoke was boiling into the kitchen at that time, and I knew I had no time to put it out. I tried to go into the middle room, and maybe grab my purse or some stuff, but the smoke was too thick. I saw my cat, grabbed her, looked around for Chris' cat, couldn't see her, and got the fuck out. My cat scratched the fuck out of me and went back IN the house. There was no way I could get back in, as thick as the smoke was, and it was choking me pretty badly, and I ran like hell, yelling, "Fire!"

I sat in front of the house and watched it burn and explode, thinking about all the things in there, worrying about the kitties, really just dazed and sick. But there was something new about me. Something similar to what happens when I go to the woods for long periods of time. I could sort of see myself, sitting there, covered in soot, with a new outlook, at a starting-over point, with another chance to live, and I just cried. Not about the kitties or the stuff, but about how sad I'd been, and about how lucky I was to be alive. And about how stupid I'd been to keep all that shit inside and not get away from a harmful environment.

I still get upset about some of the stuff that burned, especially Xi's paintings and my books. The kitties went into the basement, and they were okay. It's still a secret, the fact that I so seriously considered suicide, but I think I washed that part of me off with the smoke the next time I showered.

2005-09-21T17:18:00.000-05:00

You've heard me talk about the step mother. Her picture was in our local newspaper recently. It shows my step-sister being rescued from Katrina flood waters, and the step mother is coming along behind her, dragging a cooler. It was interesting that some of you were so invested in my history that you wanted to see a picture of her. That's what she looks like -- she's real, and she looks very harmless. Dad's not in the picture, but we have word from distant relatives that they are all okay, but once again, I feel like it's another slight: he has no idea whether or not any of us are okay, and has not asked. I really shouldn't worry about it. I shouldn't expect him to give a shit. I KNOW better. I guess part of the reason that it bothers me is that I'm seeing the community come together and check to make sure everyone is okay. Neighbors I never knew are suddenly intertwined in the effort to survive around here. Friends on my phone list I haven't talked to in ages are coming by to check on us, and I'm getting in touch with them to make sure they're okay.

This is not something I can talk about to anyone else. It's a secret that I still get hurt by his complete disinterest in us. I have to pretend that I'm not even thinking about them. To bring up their names in conversation in this family is considered a weakness, and stupidity. Because we KNOW better. Or we should.

2005-08-17T16:40:00.000-05:00

Went to the dentist today. I had an abcess last week, which made me seriously consider suicide, or at least some really nasty self-lancing of my gums. But the whole time, there was some serious anger right below the surface. See, I have a horrible fear of dentists. It's not a phobia, because a phobia is an irrational fear. This fear is real, and it's traumatic, and it was caused by a really evil bitch and a friend of hers.

When I was 12, we went to live w/ Dad and his wife for a while. His insurance didn't cover us (of course), and I had a couple of cavities, so instead of taking me to the good dentist in town that her kids went to, I went to another one --a close friend of hers, I found out later. So I was in the chair, and I felt pokes, and he got the drill going and I tried to tell him that I wasn't numb. That's when they got the restraints. My arms and legs were restrained to the chair. A band of something was strapped around my forehead so I couldn't move it, and my mouth was propped open with something like this: http://www.medicaltoys.com/whiteheadgag.htm. And he proceeded to dril and drill. And I screamed, gagged on my own spit, and was terrified more than I'd ever been. Finally, that part was over, and it was time to do the fillings. Now, I guess they used metal back then, and I guess the metal was pretty hot. He kept dropping it onto my tongue. Oh, by the way, no. There was no nitrous oxide being used.

After it was over, I could barely walk. I was shaking so hard, and I could hardly see through the tears that wouldn't stop. When I got to the waiting room, my stepmother grabbed me by the arm, dragged me out of there, and yelled at me all the way home for screaming and embarrassing her like that. And when we got home, I was severely beaten with a belt, from neck to knees, on my backside. I was told that I was NEVER to embarrass her like that again. I was also told that if I told my father what happened, I'd get the same treatment again. So I didn't tell.

For a week, my jaw throbbed, I had blisters on my tongue, and I could barely sit down, or lean back, or even sleep very well. But I figured, at least I got my teeth fixed, and prayed I'd get to go home to mom soon.

What I didn't know was that the dentist was not finished. I had another cavity. Sandy knew not to tell me she was taking me to the dentist. I was supposed to be going to my piano lesson. When I saw where we were going, I started to freak out. She pulled up to the back door of the place, and the dentist and some thug came out, dragged me into the office, strapped me down, and repeated the same thing again. And, yes, I screamed again. And yes, I got the fuck beat out of me again when I went home. And no, I never told my dad.

So, years later, in 2000, I started having problems with one of those teeth. I went to a dentist that had a big sign, in red letters that said "HIGH FEAR!!!" I figured that might be an understatement, but an abcessed tooth will make you overcome a fear, so I went. He wanted to do a root canal, but I didn't think I could handle that. So he did a temporary thing, so that I could see how well conscious sedation worked, and get my head wrapped around the idea that all dentists are not evil, and that there would be no stepmother waiting for me in the lobby. He did say that there is no way in hell any human should've been subjected to a drilling that was so deep (he could see how deep it was in the xray) without anesthesia, and he also said that that dentist did it wrong anyway. It was not an unpleasant experience, but I never went back.

Now I'm having problems the same tooth. I didn't sleep last night. I really hoped that she is dead now. I had a lot of really fucked up thoughts about her, and things I'd like to do to her, or to her kid while she watched. I was just seething, and afraid, and felt very vulnerable.

Anyhow, today, the dentist just xrayed it, said the tooth had to go (no root canal at this point), and referred me to an oral surgeon. I go tomorrow for a consultation. I figure I'll just get that tooth pulled, and all four wisdom teeth as well, since I will be completely unconscious. And I'll try not to cry tomorrow when I tell him why I'm so terrified of him. That didn't work today.

My dad still doesn't know. But if I ever told him? He wouldn't believe me. And maybe that pisses me off more than anything else.

2005-06-25T12:35:00.000-05:00

Someone mentioned Poptarts earlier, and I started thinking about something that I've never written about: starvation. When we lived with our father for a while, when mom was hospitalized, we were mostly under the "care" of our stepmother. I'm not really sure where she learned about brain washing, since she really wasn't they type of woman who read much about anything other than illnesses, but she somehow knew that, in order to break someone down, you starve them, give them very little sleep, and work on their self-esteem almost constantly. We were always hungry. We had three meals a day, but they were sparse, and even when there were leftovers, we were not allowed bigger portions, or seconds. I remember throwing leftovers away, sneaking bites of it when she wasn't looking. Anyway, poptarts. When we finally got away from this woman, and back home, we all had eating problems. Both my sisters gained a lot of weight, and mom could not keep food in the house. We knew that she'd let us eat as much as we wanted, but, having been hungry for a solid 6 months, that feeling just wouldn't go away. There was something guilty about it too. It felt like we were cheating somehow, to get enough to eat, somehow sinful and not something we'd get by with for long. Sometimes, the stepmother would give us a poptart for breakfast. We'd get one, and that'd be it until lunch, at which time we'd get half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I remember how good the poptarts were. I remember using my fingers to pick up any crumb that dropped onto the the table. I remember savoring every bite, wishing I could have more, knowing that I wouldn't, and feeling almost desperate about it. It was a feeling like being trapped, or in hell. The suffering wasn't an obvious thing. It was deep inside, and ached like no physical pain ever could. After we were home, I was at the grocery store one time, and had a little extra money. I bought a box of poptarts and hid them under the seat of the car. Later, when noone was around, I went to the car and ate all of them. After I finished the box, I sat in the car and just wept. It felt like I'd just been in a fight; my heart was pounding, I was angry, and my stomach was in knots. I finally leaned out of the car and puked. I think it was strawberry.

2005-05-24T04:48:00.000-05:00

Well, there was a newspaper article recently that kind of explained why Blair was murdered. We all looked for an obit for him, and any info about the murder, after finding his memorial page online, but couldn't find anything. I almost doubted that he was killed, and wondered if my dad put that memorial up to see if we'd contact him. Yeah, I know that's kind of vain/paranoid/whatever, but, really, even though there are mental issues on my mother's side of the family, there are problems on my father's side of the family that, though not as tangible, seem more... evil, I guess. So we really didn't know what happened, since noone thought we were important enough to tell, but I guessed, and accurately, that it was a drug deal gone wrong. And it was. His killer was sentenced to 20 years in jail.

About the evil: I have written quite a bit about people's hands. There are some hidden memories about someone hurting me when I was small that I can't access yet. One of them almost came to the surface once when I was studying music. Our choir was working on "The Phantom of the Opera," and there's a part that talks about him watching her, and suddendly, in the middle of it, I needed to throw up. So I went to the bathroom, which was very thankfully close to the music hall, and started puking. In my head, an image of the hands sort of swam around, and I flashed to a memory of sitting on a porch somewhere, and it was like my brains were spewing out of my mouth into the toilet. I was afraid to remember, but I desperately wanted to know what happened. I still don't know, but whatever it was is a little more clear. There was an old man's hand that went into my shorts, through the leg of the shorts. I'm a little nauseous right now writing about it, but that is all I have right now.

There are only two porches I remember when I was small. One was my uncle's. I believe it was next to my grandfather's house. I remember the smell of stale wine around my uncle's house, and I've learned that my uncle and aunt drank regularly. I don't know if they drank wine. I can't ask my father, and it's just not worth it to even think about finding him for that kind of information. I don't think I've been on that porch since I was 6, so, if the buried memories are there, that was a long time ago, and I doubt I'll ever remember.

The other porch was at a babysitter's house, somewhere close to Atlanta. I think I was in the third grade. I do know there was an old man who lived there. I remember that there was an old record player on the porch, and that someone used to play "Dock of the Bay" on it. That song hits some kind of trigger, and makes me feel a little sad, a little angry, and a lot confused. There are a few other songs that create a similar reaction. "Angie" is one of them. I'm not sure I heard that song on that porch, though. I can't remember what the others are, but next time I hear one, I'll let you know.

For now, I'm hoping that writing again might help stir memories, but I'm not getting much more than a fogginess. But I can almost hear someone saying, "Shhh, shhh, don't tell anyone."

2005-05-18T03:29:00.000-05:00

My last girlfriend was the hottest, sexiest, most intriguing woman I've ever known. The day we met, she walked into the office with testosterone just OOZING. Her hair was short and neat, and I think she may have been wearing men's cologne. I could tell that she really didn't want to train the new girl, and she gave me that look that dykes give hets, the one that says "You just don't know." For a few minutes, I was intimidated. After that, I just wanted her to like me. I knew she was good at what she did, and that everyone in the company respected her. And I remembered her in the company newspaper, the article about how she played pro football. Yum. Anyhow, I had a good idea about how to do the job already, having worked a related job in the company, so, pretty soon she relaxed and realized that I wasn't a total moron. It took her a while to realize that I was flirting, though.

I think it first dawned on her when she came in after I'd worked a shift without her, and the desk was almost exactly set up the way she liked it. She smirked at me, rearranged the pen on the desk, then turned the AC up. Of course, the next time her shift followed mine, the pen was where it was supposed to be, and the room was freezing cold.

Now, I guess, to the unsuspecting eye, that wouldn't look like flirting. It'd seem like I was brown nosing, or sucking up, whatever. But the dynamics between us were electric, and you could just SMELL the chemistry. It wasn't long till we were dating, and she moved a couple doors down from me. For a while, we were inseperable. We were either on the phone with each other, at each other's shifts, fucking, flirting, or asleep.

She had this way of morphing. I could look at her, and watch her change from male to female. One second she'd be sitting there, legs propped open like men do, with a look on her face that I'd never seen from a woman, and the next second, she'd do something, blush a little, tilt her head just a bit, and slide right into feminine mannerisms. It blew me the hell away. I'd be soaking wet just watching her.

I still don't understand quite why that affected me so powerfully. Maybe it's because that's how I want to be: not quite either gender, or both genders at once. And maybe that's one of the reasons I suddenly stopped seeing her. Maybe I was afraid of watching someone so closely be what I wanted to be that it was too much like narcissism.

Before her, it was a secret to my family that I am a dyke. Sometimes.

2005-05-10T16:53:00.000-05:00

Thanks to whomever nominated me for blogette awards. If you want to vote for me, go here. Thanks again,
C

2005-05-10T12:05:00.000-05:00

I had a dream last night about being a bat girl for a baseball team. I hadn't thought about this for years, but when I was in the 6th grade, I wanted so badly to be on the baseball team. They let me practice with them, and I was damned good, but, since girls were not allowed on the teams back then, I fetched water and stuff for the boys during the real games. It just pissed me off. Not only was I better than most of the boys on the team, but it became a button that my stepmom could push. Every chance she got, she'd remind me that I couldn't play on the team. To me, that was reminding me that I was not really a boy. Of course, noone in my family really knew that I thought of myself as a boy. I couldn't trust anyone with that information, especially her. And, as memories tend to do, this one scrolled me into others, and I began to get angry at her again.

I haven't been angry about her in a few years, and I guess it's time to write about it, so that it doesn't snowball into hatred again.

I don't know how she figured those things out; how she knew that starving us, not letting us get enough sleep, dressing us in pathetic clothes, keeping us outside in the heat, and constantly filling our heads with bad things about our mother would fuck us up so badly. There was no internet, and as far as I could tell, the only books she read were the bible and books about brain injury (my "step" sister is brain injured). So how did she know that those tried and true techniques for brainwashing? Those are all abusive things, but there's one thing that stands out in my mind to this day.

We were NEVER allowed to stay up past bedtime (which was 6:30, weekend or not), but one night, she mysteriously allowed us to stay up and watch Sybil. That's not the best show for a 12, 9, and 8 year old to watch, but we were happy to be able to be up, and not trying to go to sleep while it was still daylight. So we watched it. If you've seen it, there is this part where Sybil's mom would do things to her genitals. That was disturbing to me for two reasons: 1. my mom would NEVER do those sorts of things to us. 2. my stepmom just might. So we went to bed terrified.

And the next day we were kept home from school. She had us strip and put each of us on the kitchen table and "examined" us. The examination consisted of a bunch of random poking, pinching, and general humiliation. She decided that we all had yeast infections, so she shoved some of those monostat tablets inside us, and made us lie on the table like that for what seemed like hours, holding our legs up and together. I guess I should mention that my step brother was also home, and was watching all this.

And here's where it gets really fucked up. The next day, she took us to the doctor and told him that she'd seen signs of abuse while bathing us. She had the doctor examine us, and he said yes, that indeed it looked like there had been sexual abuse. They blamed my mother for this. My mother, who we hadn't seen in over a month.
And, of course, we weren't allowed to tell our father about any of this. It was a secret.

What a fuckin crock of shit. You know, I believe in karma, and, though I don't see it as a thing in which someone is punished for what they do as much as I see it as a system of justice where people learn to be better people, I do hope something bad happens to her. That's not good, and I'm nowhere near the point of forgiving her, but that's where I am right now. And I guess I blame myself for part of it. Why didn't I just kick that bitch in the face? Why didn't I protect my sisters? What kept me frozen in fear of her?

2005-05-06T14:50:00.000-05:00

This is something I wrote over 10 years ago as a piece of fiction. Not much of it is fiction. It's badly written, and pathetic, but it describes a part of my life when gender became even more confusing to me. It was a time when I had to pretend to be a girl, to make another girl leave me the hell alone.

Bears

"Look at this one, Gramma," Morgan said, touching a t-shirt. "It's got a tear at the seam. You can get them to knock the price down. And it's already on
sale." Morgan knew how to shop with her grandmother.
Her grandmother slid the frilly, colorful dresses back and
forth on the rack inside Sears. Morgan tried to pull her toward
the t-shirts.
"But these dresses are so pretty. Don't you want to wear
pretty dresses like your friends at church?" She kept flipping,
but looked back over her shoulder at the sign above the t-shirts.
"Let's see," she finally said. She checked the rip, making sure
she could repair it.
"Okay. You have some purple pants that will match." She
took the shirt off the hanger, hung the hanger on the dress rack,
and walked toward the underwear section. "You need some panties
too."
Morgan rolled her eyes and walked down the row of tile that
seperated the carpeted departments, dragging her toes, then
squeaking the bottom of her sneaker with each step. It sounded
like a donkey. She wanted plain white panties, but every year
her grandmother tried to talk her into getting flowery ones or
pink ones, or the kind with lace.
When she caught up with her grandmother, she was going
through a bin of silky ones with big colorful flowers. Some had
lace, some didn't. Maybe I can at least get some without lace,
she thought. She reached over into the bin and found three pair
that weren't as loud as the rest and handed them to her
grandmother. None had lace. She looked at Morgan like she'd
never seen her before, then at the panties, then back at Morgan.
"Okay, honey." She walked to the register, put the t-shirt
and the panties down, propped her purse on the counter and leaned
on it with her moley elbow.
The cashier took a deep breath, steadied herself against the
cash register. She remembered Gramma.
"There's a rip in this shirt," Gramma said. "We want this
shirt, there's not another one like it, but I think we should get
a discount since I'll have to go home and fix it."
"How about ten percent, Mrs. Lacey?" Carol knew how she
ticked too.
"Fine." She rummaged through her purse as Carol rung up the
purchase.
"What grade this year, Morgan?" Carol asked, putting the
clothes in a brown plastic bag.
"Fourth, but that's because they put me up a year." Morgan
clicked her dirty fingernails on the counter and drummed the toe
of her shoe against the carpet.
"Good going. Six twenty-eight." Mrs. Lacey dug for the
exact change.
* * *
Everything was still and hot on Lacey Mountain. Crickets
and birds were probably too hot to sing. Morgan lifted a brick
out of the wheel barrow and held it out, waiting. Her
grandmother swiped at the mortar once more, took the brick and
pressed it into the cement, then wiped the extra off with the
splattered trowel. Sweat dripped down her face and she wiped it
off with the back of a gloved hand. Her dyed strawberry hair
curled out from under the brim of her flowered sun hat and she
stood up.
Morgan looked down the long wall they were building. They
had been working a month and only half the land was bricked off,
and it was only three bricks high. She tried to pull the handles
of the wheelbarrow up, but it wouldn't move. It was
time to head back the other way, adding the fourth brick. Her
grandmother wanted it ten bricks high. That would take. . . too
much math, she thought. A long time.
"Hey, Gramma."
"Yeah?" She drank from the gallon of water they had frozen
the night before. A chunk of ice thumped against the side as she
put it on the ground.
"Can I have the sewing room?" There was room for a bed in
there. And her cousin's night games made her sick; she had been
throwing up every night that week.
"The other room's big enough for y'all. And I need all the
space in there." She shifted the bucket of cement closer to the
wall.
"We could move that old TV in Phyllis' room. That bed in
the closet would fit there." She leaned against the wheelbarrow.
"We'll see." She dunked the trowel in the bucket and
slathered mortar on the two top bricks.
"Gramma. I don't want to sleep with her. She makes. . ."
Morgan closed her mouth and lifted a brick out of the
wheelbarrow, handed it to her grandmother.
Gramma took the brick, turned around, stopped, then looked
back at Morgan and narrowed her eyes. "She what?" The brick
hung limp in her hand and a slight breeze came through the trees.
A bird trilled and flew close. It was gray.
"Nothing." Morgan looked at the mortar on the wall.
"Don't tell me 'nothing.' Whatever you hide from me, God
sees." She dropped the trowel on the ground.
"She makes me sick talking about Donny Osmond and the Bay
City Rollers. And that loud Wolfman Jack man."
Her grandmother raised her eyebrows and started to smile.
Morgan's vision swam and she threw the brick she was holding back
into the wheelbarrow. "I just don't like the music she listens
to."
Her grandmother took a deep breath, frowned, and scratched
her head with her hat. "Okay, we'll move that stuff tonight."
The wind picked up more and blew a few leaves against the wall.
Morgan looked over at her grandmother's house. It looked small
and dark through the thinly forested valley.
* * *
Clouds blocked the sun for a few cool seconds. Morgan ran
through the woods toward the wall, her cousin chasing her, a few
feet behind, falling back some. Morgan reached the wall, vaulted
it, kept running. She was headed for the garden where her Big
Wheel was. Bushes and dead limbs scratched her bare legs and
pulled on her overalls as she mad-dashed it down the hill, into
the clearing.
She whipped through two corn rows, skidded left, then ran
down the row, snatching her faded orange Big Wheel, dragging it
up the next hill, toward the pear tree. It seemed like there
were more rocks on the way up. It seemed steeper; the sun was
hotter and the Big Wheel was heavier. She had to sit down and
rest before she could make it to the top. She breathed, wiped the
sweat out of her eyes and off her forehead, and breathed.
Phyllis had climbed over the wall and was coming out of the
forest, stepping over brush, pushing branches out of the way.
She was afraid of spiders and messing her hair up.
Morgan got up and pushed her Big Wheel the rest of the way
up the rutted hill to the pear tree. She kicked a few pears
around, found one without wormholes in it, picked it up and bit
into it. You couldn't get the crunchy kind at the grocery store.
Phyllis had crossed the garden and was coming up the hill.
Her makeup shined and her brown hair stuck to the sides of her
face. Her face was red. She reminded Morgan of the goon on
Popeye, the way she swung her heavy arms and walked slumped under
the weight of her huge breasts.
Morgan dropped the pear, jumped on her trike and yelled,
"Coming down the hiiiillll!" Phyllis stepped out of the way as
Morgan bumped by, holding her too-long legs straight out, gaining
speed.
She put her heels lightly on the ground, then dug them
further in as she got near the garden. Her heels started burning
as she dug deeper into the dirt, but the trike kept going.
Gramma's going to kill me, she thought, as she barrelled
straight down a row of okra. She hit a big plant, flipped to the
side and landed in the beans in the next row. She jumped up and
brushed herself off, breathing in through her teeth, blowing a
jagged scratch on her arm. Her legs were scraped up, her knee
and forearm were bruised, but she itched more than anything. She
tried to brush the okra fur off, but it got worse. She tore up
the hill, past the pear tree to her grandmother's house. The
hose was already on and she turned it on stronger. She put her
finger over the opening, making it spray harder on her legs.
* * *
"Come let me read to you," Morgan's grandmother called from
the living room.
"I'm looking for Wolf." The Bible scared Morgan. She stood
at the sliding glass door, looking at herself, listening to her
grandmother read out loud.
"The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed,
mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. . ."
Everyone kept calling her a girl. She looked like a boy.
She didn't have breasts like her cousins and her grandmother.
Her black hair was cut short all the way around. She smiled a
fake smile. Her missing tooth, her nose and her bland hazel eyes
looked like a boy's.
Phyllis stepped behind her, her breasts almost resting on
Morgan's head. Morgan stepped closer to the door, cupped her
hands around her eyes and looked out at Wolf lying curled around
his stainless-steel dish. Phyllis stepped closer, almost
pressing Morgan against the glass.
"There are bears out there, Morgan."
Morgan closed her eyes.
Once a bear had come to eat the dog food on the back porch
and Morgan had listened to the fight from her bed, afraid to
move, stiff, listening. She heard the back door open, a gunshot,
then a loud moaning scream. Her grandmother cleaned, stitched
and taped Wolf's wounds, but Morgan would never forget the sound
the bear made as it went back into the woods, toward the top of
the mountain. She knew that bear wouldn't be back. But others
had come. She heard them sometimes, rooting the silver bowl
around the back concrete porch.
"Yep. Black bears. They don't eat people," Morgan said.
"Nope, they eat dogs." She put her hand on top of Morgan's
head.
Morgan's back tensed and she opened her eyes again. She
stared out through the trees, looking for moving shadows. A
skinny elm was bent over next to the porch. She had ridden it
too much that week, would have to let it rest and straighten up
so she could ride it down again.
"Wolf's tough. He's half wolf." She wiggled, trying to get
Phyllis' hands and breasts off her head. They smelled bad, like
cheap soap.
"But you're scared. You should sleep with me tonight."
Morgan closed her eyes again. "I did last night."
"If you don't sleep with me tonight, I'll tell Gramma about
last night." Her nasal voice spilled a rotting smell down to
Morgan, and she gagged.
She didn't care if she went to hell, but she didn't want to
sleep with Phyllis. But she didn't want her grandmother to know
she was going to hell. She bounced up and down on her toes,
bouncing her cousin. "I did the dishes. You said that if I
did the dishes I wouldn't. . ."
Their grandmother walked into the kitchen, her heavy
footsteps rattling the glass door. "It's time for bed, girls."
"Morgan's scared again. Can she sleep with me?" Phyllis
backed up and looked at Morgan, daring her.
"I don't care where y'all sleep, but you need to get in bed
now." She walked back to the living room.
Phyllis shrugged and smiled at Morgan, then walked to her
room humming a random-sounding tune. Morgan's stomach flipped
and she took slow, small steps down the hall. Her face burned
and she ran her hand along the wall, across the bathroom door
toward Phyllis' room.
Posters--red Mustangs, Donny Osmond, beagles--collaged the
walls. A pink towel hung across the top of the closet door.
Shoes, clothes and bent magazines covered the floor; coathangers,
albums and a beanbag spilled out of the closet. The console TV
was covered with makeup: powder, blush, dried up mascara.
Phyllis had her shirt off and her breasts pushed out over the top
of her too-full bra. She reached back to undo it.
"You get to be Donny tonight," she said.
Morgan stepped back, looked down the hall, heard her
grandmother say, "Blessed are the meek for they--"
"Shall burn in hell," Morgan finished with a whisper.
Phyllis leaned against the swirly brass headboard of the bed, the
covers pulled to her neck, her bare shoulders white against the
tarnishing brass.
"I have to pee," Morgan said.
She stood in front of the full-length bathroom mirror,
looking at her new panties. They had huge yellow flowers with
even larger green leaves that stretched from one side to the
other, down, then up the back. She rubbed the silky sides of
them, turned around, then back around. They looked strange, like
the ones on the mannequins, but they felt soft, not too slippery
like she thought they would. She pulled them down, looked at her
bare front, then pulled them back up.
* * *
Phyllis and Morgan rolled around under the new quilt their
grandmother had just finished. Morgan was pinned on her back,
sweating, straining as hard as she could to turn Phyllis over.
Her right shoulder was off the bed, and she felt Phyllis' arms
start to shake. She was getting tired. Morgan whisper-giggled,
pushed harder, throwing her head forward, gaining.
Phyllis whispered, loud, "Stop playing around. I don't want
to wrestle. Let's play." She pushed harder, but Morgan was
getting more desperate, stronger, still giggling and kicking.
Phyllis reached up and grabbed Morgan's hair, right behind her
ear, and yanked. Morgan started to yell, but Phyllis slapped her
hand over her mouth. She held her hand there and reached down
with the other, sliding it down Morgan's stomach. She got to her
panties, froze.
"Silk? What the fuck?" she whispered, and drew her hand
back out from the covers. "Take those off," she said, raising
her fist, casting a gargoyle on the far wall.
Morgan slid down in the bed and slipped them off. Through
the window above the bed, the moon's light reflected off the silk
and it looked like a shiny puddle on the floor.
* * *
Red clay sucked at Morgan's shoes as she stomped, running up
the driveway on her way home from Greg's. Morgan had been
helping his mom put up apples all day. She didn't like Greg, but
his mom paid her a dollar fifty for each bushel she peeled.
Morgan thought about what Greg had shown her before she
left. He had walked with her a little way down the road. He
stopped, but she kept walking.
"Hey, look at this." His pants were down to his knees.
Morgan blushed, laughed, then turned and ran toward her
grandmother's.
"I'm a girl," she yelled, loping through the mud, not caring
about her shoes or clothes. "I'm a girl!"

* * *
They were in Sears again, and Morgan tore through the
dresses, looking for the frilliest, laciest ones she could find.
She found a yellow one with green lace around the neck. The
pricetag was perfect--$3.50. She took it off the rack and threw
it at her grandmother.
"Slow down," Gramma said, catching the dress, then looking
at the tag. A red one with a huge silk bow in the back was four
dollars. And a lacey blue one, with a bonnet, was six-fifty.
That left room for leotards.
* * *
She bounced out of the bathroom in her new blue dress. Her
hair was up in the bonnet and it looked like she might have long
hair tucked inside. The wobbly, shiny white shoes clunked on the
hardwood floor. Phyllis was outside.
Morgan walked down the hall to the sliding glass door, slid
it open and stepped outside. The tree was straightening out now.
She reached up. She'd have to climb it to get it down. Phyllis
sat on the rusting propane tank next to the house, her eyes wide.
Morgan looked down at her white leotards, back at her
gawking cousin, and smiled. She skipped around in a circle,
swinging her dress, singing "London Bridge," going faster and
faster in a wider and wider circle, kicking the first autumn
leaves. She twisted her ankle on a root, but kept going, the
pain popping into her eyes, slowing her some, then boosting her
faster. Phyllis' face got whiter every time she made the circle.
She started to slide off the tank, but Morgan swung straight
out of the circle, and slammed into her, knocking her back
against the brick house. She heard Phyllis' head hit and watched
as she slid backwards, getting lodged in a V between the house
and the tank. Morgan yanked Phyllis' sneaker off and started
tickling the bottom of her foot. Phyllis could barely breath and
there was blood on the wall where her head had hit.
"I'm not sleeping in your room anymore. A girl needs her
own space, you know." She kicked the tank and listened to it
echo as she went in to tell her grandmother that she wasn't going
to hell.

2005-05-05T16:40:00.000-05:00

And Before That...

I guess I was a pretty normal kid before my father left. The pictures seem to say so. There's some fuzziness about one little incident, but nothing that I think would have been life-changing, had things remained the same. But when he left, things changed, big time. Mom was very vulnerable. Oh, she worked like a horse to support us, but she was emotionally vulnerable. Much like young boys whose fathers leave, I began to try to fill his shoes. I took care of my sisters, told Mom things would be okay, and generally FRETTED about life as it was, and worried about how to fix it. Big job for a six-year-old.

I think this is when my ideas of gender roles and where I fit began to shift. Sure, I knew I had the same parts my mother and sisters had, but my role was different. By the time I was 12, I was supplementing the income of the house, doling out discipline for my sisters (how fucked up is THAT!), and making decisions for my mother. There were some other factors involved, such as the fact that my mom was schizophrenic, and I discovered real early that moving would snap her out of an episode, but my role was important. I was the Man of the House.

That didn't even change, years later, when I had my daughter. Yep, I gave birth to her, but as soon as I had healed, and had left my ex, I was out, earning money, and my mother and sisters took care of Xi in the daytime. Of course, there was a lot that happened in between times that influenced my idea of gender role. I'll post about that soon.

2005-05-05T16:37:00.000-05:00

I am me and you are you and we're a bunch of witches!

Strange title, I know. I ran across some song lyrics that were sort of like that and it reminded me of when I hung out with a bunch of witches in the woods. I wasn't really Wiccan or anything, but we did a sister circle and sang fun sing songy songs, and banged on the ground and stuff, and it was fun. I think it was the first time I ever really bonded with a group of women.

Before that, I usually had one best friend/lover who was female, and the rest of my friends were guys. Before that, I also hated god. I felt like he stuck a male in a female's body, you know, just to laugh at or something. (hmm, wonder why I have tomato sauce on my shirt. Oh well, nevermind) But that month in the woods was pretty eye-opening for me, in a lot of ways. My perception of god changed. "He" was no longer one being-ish thing. He became, in my perspective, a force, a something much bigger, a not so purposeful thing. And I began to open up to the female who was inside.

It's kind of funny how these things happen. After I left the woods, 7 months later, I went back to college, and suddenly found myself surrounded by the most amazing women. Mothers, professors, students, caretakers of parents, musicians, artists, psychologists, athletes. Life was really good, then. We cooked and ate together, raised our kids together, danced, talked, shared. I began to think about things differently, and I grew in ways that wouldn't have been possible without the influence of those women.

But it made things harder for me, in the long run. There began to be a conflict at that point. Before then, I was a boy. After those years with those women, I didn't know what the hell I was. I started having what I call "modes," or phases, when I'd feel more masculine, or more feminine, and they'd last for short periods of time. I had two separate wardrobes, and would wear whatever fit the mode of the day. I was happy, because of my kid, and because of all my friends, but I was confused, and conflicted and unsure of who I was, and what I wanted to be when I grew up...

2005-05-05T16:35:00.000-05:00

Okay, time to split some of this blogging up. I'm going to keep the general family secret type stuff here, and the BDSM stuff in another blog. That should help. Ha! Prepare for updates.
C

2004-09-28T22:32:00.000-05:00

Greg, you'll be happy to know that I've made a deal with myself: I can't read anyone else's blog before I write in mine. That should do it. Uh, yeah.

2004-09-28T21:42:00.000-05:00

I was looking through some of my older scribblings, thinking about relative secrets , looking for something to write about. Sometimes it's better when a secret is out in the open. Sometimes, it's not. I wrote the story below about 10 years ago. My mom's still alive, but it's no longer a secret that she's not well. We still don't know what exactly is wrong, but we're planning for things to be worse:
On the phone with my aunt:
Her: How's Jean?
Me: Same. She's tired today.
Her: She needs the oxygen, Cindy, you have to talk her into it.
Me: She won't. I can't make her.

On the phone with my sister:
Me:She has a hard time washing her hair.
Her:I'll take her down to the shop once a week and let them do it.
Me: Okay...

It's dry; it's smothering because it's always there, and it's smothering because I'm so tired of knowing that it's going to happen. I try not to dwell on it. The word "dwell" is weird. Dwell means to live. I try not to live on it. Hmm. I think it dwells on me. If it takes her too long to get home from the corner store. How much longer can she drive? When I locked myself out of the house and it took me a long time to wake her up. Sometimes, she wakes up later than I do, and I look at her door and wonder...
There are only so many ways I can make peace with her. There are only so many ways I can make her comfortable. After that, it's like waiting in line in a room with nothing on the walls to read, unless I can somehow just forget, for a little while, and do the only thing that's left to do: make more memories. Just keep making them and pretending that it's a secret I don't know, so that I can laugh at her jokes, pick on her, and sometimes even have fights with her.
These days I drink beer. It's slower.

Written sometime in 1994:

Letter to the Drive-thru Cashier at KFC

There are some things you don't know about me, things I could tell you that might keep you from being so rude to everyone who comes through. I could start with where I went when I left you. I went to the liquor store to get some Vodka for the Sprite that you shoved at me, because I've been drinking heavily lately. Alcoholic, you say? No. It's just that I've recently decided that my mother is going to die. I'm the only one in my family who knows.
I had a dream about it last night. My sisters sat on the floor, reversed in age to the time when they played on the floor. They're 25 and 26 now. They were sitting there, probably playing with dolls. Dreams can be fuzzy, so I'm not sure what they were playing with, but I was standing, looking down at them, wondering who would hurt more. I'm the oldest, so, in the dream I thought that since I had spent more time with her, I would hurt worse. But I looked at Stephanie, the baby, and I doubted. She didn't get to spend as much time with her as I did, so, well, who knows how other people hurt, how badly?
Back to the alcohol. I might be in a race with my mom. It feels that way sometimes. Since I decided that she is dying, I drink more, drink every night. I outsmoke her every day. I drive fast without my seatbelt. I eat bologna.
I don't get drunk and cry. I get drunk and pretend it's not happening. I get drunk and pretend I'm my sisters, who don't know. I get drunk and pretend that I'm my seventh grade english teacher, Mrs. Rowland, and walk across the front of my living room, diagraming invisible sentences on my invisible chalkboard. "My mother is dying, class," I say. "Past, present or future tense?"
By now you probably think I'm crazy. That's okay, because I think so too sometimes. I say that I decided that my mother is dying, instead of that I realized it, because I need to get it over with. The mourning. I need some time to stretch it out, to play with it like a cat plays with a cricket. It will be easier this way, and when they do tell me that she's dying, I'll have known already and it won't hurt as
badly, as deeply, as long.
She wasn't the typical mom. She suffered from schizophrenia, so we all did. I figured out how to keep her from having an "episode" when I was twelve. I would tell her, when I saw it coming on, when she started telling me that all the people
at work were against her, that we should try a new location. Moving is good shock therapy. I went to twenty-three different schools. But she loved us. Loves us. She would work two jobs at Christmas to prove it, wearing her body and her mind down to a dull point, like a pencil that scratches the paper and leaves only light, dotted lines.
I go to see her more often now. It's amazing that a woman who is dying can look so vital. Granted, she's never been the healthiest person I know. Ninety pounds at the most and five foot four, addicted to caffeine and nicotine. But she has that glow when she's working with her plants, the kind that's not supposed to ever go away.
I'm trying to make it easier for her to die. She's worried about me the last few
years, about my soul. It bothers her when I don't quite agree that the answer to every single problem on the planet can't be solved by simply praying. So I wrote her a letter last week told her that I pray every night. I said a lot of things that weren't true about God and his will and how I believed.
I really don't believe all that, but as long as she believes that I believe, she's more comfortable. And I tell her that I don't need to borrow money, that I'm financially secure. I sometimes beg for spare change at the corner to get cigarette money, but that's a secret.
It all started with a phone conversation. I think I dreamt
it, but I'm not sure, so I'll assume it really happened. It went
something like this:
Mom: "You know, Christi told me the other night that she
never wanted me to die, so I told her I wouldn't."
Me: "Yeah, you told me the same thing, remember?"
Mom: "Sometimes I feel like I'm going to die."
She used to say that all the time when she was mad, but she
wasn't mad that day, so I said, "I think we all think that way,
Mom."
And she said, "Well, when you get my age and you start
having certain problems, you have to start thinking about dying.
You have to get serious about it, get ready for it."
And I said, "What is it, Mom? What is it?"
Mom: "Oh, I'm okay. Now."
"Now. Now you're okay," I said. "But what's wrong? You
know you hated it when you found out that Gramma knew she was
going to die a year before she did. Don't do that to us, okay?"
Mom: "You just get your degree. I'm okay. You just get
your degree."
After that, I threatened to tell my sisters, threatened to go talk to the doctor, threatened to beat her to it. All these threats and she just laughed. Just like the time I told her that I was going to beat her playing rummy. I never did, and she laughed.
So, see, drive-thru cashier, you never know what kind of things are going on with your customers. Some of us could live without your rudeness. Oh, by the way, you forgot to give me napkins. People always need napkins.

2004-04-14T03:18:00.000-05:00

Let's skip my father for a moment.

My mother's hands are skinny and frail-looking. They're olive with a weathered look, but I remember them strong, like a skinny alley cat is strong. She worked as a waitress, so she washed her hands often and they had a reddish look at times. She used Curel lotion on them every day. Her apartment smelled like Curel. She's a quick, bright woman, but sometimes, when she's really thinking about something, her mouth will fall slack and she'll clasp her hands loosely in front of her.

I feel comfortable when I live with her, no matter which of us are paying the rent. I can let myself go, I can watch a movie and not be distracted by peripheral memories. I can dance and worry only about the neighbors. It could be the pictures she has on the walls, of my sisters and me and our chilren. We are three generations of young hands. There are not many things that I keep secret from my mother. This is rare.

2004-04-14T03:07:00.000-05:00

When I got a break, I would tear through the woods to some private place where I'd raked leaves into boundaries, or rooms. I'd scatter the leaves, then run to find another spot to domesticate. I'd pull skinny young elms down and ride them like horses. I felt alone and completly free. Later, gramma's house wasn't so safe, but I always felt safe in her woods. The dampness of the shade, the smell of honeysuckle and pine, the occasional skitterings of small animals in the leaves, sometimes a bee close by--all these things may have distracted me. In any case, they saved me.

There were secrets there, though. One of them was that my father had friends who were missionaries, and that if he ever got his hands on us, he'd give us to the missionaries, who would take us far away, and we'd never see anyone again. This was sometimes whispered into the phone, sometimes relayed to us with point-blank precision, but most of the time, an awareness of what evil would happen if he got his hands on us. My father.

2004-04-14T02:10:00.000-05:00

My grandmother's hands were strong hands. She worked in her two acre garden everyday, and cooked, canned and cleaned at night. When I lived with her, I helped her; she had some magical way of making me enjoy weeding, washing jars, and scrubbing baseboards. The smells of dirt, cleaning liquids, fresh clean rags, made me think of how I was helping her, and made me think of other smells later that day, of chili powder, turnips, and later, chocolate muffins. Her hands always baffled me. They'd go from being scratched and dirty in the garden to pink and smooth at night. I could never get the dirt out from under my fingernails.

I've come full circle, 30 years later. While I turn my compost and ready my balcony for a vegetable garden, I try really hard to remember what I learned from her. I just wasn't paying attention. I was too busy griping about working in the garden, or too busy eating its fruits and greens to understand how much information I was missing. But I remember that we blanch the veggies before freezing them, and I do remember the smells of her kitchen and her garden. And other things too, like how her baby-fine strawberry-blonde hair looked in the sun, transluscent, and how her eyes always sort of looked watery, but clear. We were both Pisces. It is no secret that I miss her. Still, I can not manage to get the dirt from underneath my fingernails.

2004-04-14T02:05:00.000-05:00

When I write an essay, if one small fiction slips in, the whole world tilts sideways and it's hard to steer it back to its course. I usually have to trash it and start over. I can't start my memories over, though, and I don't know if the hands are fiction or not, so I'll have to keep them and try to make sure they don't veer me too far off. I do look for them sometimes, when my environment feels safe and I have time to veer. Now is one of those times. But sometimes I look for them when I have no harbor or time, and that's scarier than the hands are. I wonder where I will end up, where the search will take me. I might go too far. Shhhhhhh, this is a secret.

2004-03-27T03:55:00.000-05:00

I remember a man's hands. They are older hands, with slim purple veins running under too-thin skin, pale with brownish smears of age. But they are big hands, strong ones. I don't know who they are attached to; something won't let me access the rest of the person. The hands themselves did not surface in my memory until a few years ago. They came swimming up from the bottom of some elusive pool, like a dead fish, belly-up, and by the time I noticed them, I don't know how long they'd been there. I may have just made it up. But they were attached to something that's been there, a guilt that's heavy and sometimes stunningly sharp, like I feel the day after a forgotten birthday, or like I felt as I saw a truck rumble over my dog who had crossed the road at my calling. Before the hands, this guilt floated around in a soupy void, surfacing like
a chunk of potato when I least expected it to. Now it's finally linked to something tangible--these hands. This is a secret about a relative.

2004-03-25T21:21:00.000-05:00

There is a question of just how Blair was related to us. We were always told that he was our half brother only by law. However, there is a picture of me and him when we were 12 and 13, and we looked like twins. But if we were truly halfs, that would mean that my father was messing around on my mother. Can't have the children thinking that, can we? But the logistics were right. We were all in the same place when he was conceived. And there is a picture of us all, myself, my two sisters, Blair, his sister, his mother, my father and a firetruck in Texas. My mother also lived in Texas, and she was married to my dad. I wonder where she was that day. I also wonder if my father thinks that we're all stupid. There is a family trait from my father's side of the family that he is very proud of. Our middle fingers are just slightly crooked. He used to say "That's how you know you are a Dale!" Blair had the same crooked middle finger. He and I talked about it one time, whispering so noone would hear. Relative secrets.

2004-03-25T19:41:00.000-05:00

I found out from a phone call that Blair was murdered last summer. June 4, which would have been just a few weeks after Doug committed suicide. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I think that I would probably have felt more if I'd known then, when it happened, since it would have been a sort of silhouette of the emotions I'd felt about Doug. Blair's my brother, and Doug was "only" my cousin, but I grew up with Doug, and rarely saw Blair. It makes me think about the ways things're similar and the ways they aren't. For instance, Doug's suicide came as a complete surprise. I can't say I'm really shocked that Blair was murdered. Doug had had problems, but he was the happy tough guy. Blair was the I-don't-give-a-damn guy who'd already tried to commit suicide a few times. Would it be evil of me to say that if it were my decision to make, that Blair would have succeeded instead of Doug? That's a relative secret.