Interrogations

 

“Jennifer!” thunders through the house and lands like a bomb in the pit of my stomach. Filled with panic I race to the source, and I see Dory, Gary, and Davy standing in line-up formation by age. With a gesture of anger and disgust Dad points to the empty place next to Davy, my older brother. We are 6, 10, 11, and 12 years old, and we know these interrogations well. Dad wants one of us to confess to an atrocity that none of us has committed. We wait in silence and fear for the crime to be revealed.

A blow torch is retrieved from the table next to Dad. He holds in front of us, one by one, and seethes, “who was playing with my blow torch?”

Stomach tightens. He sets it down and begins with Dory, my sister and the oldest of us. “Did you touch the blow torch?” “No” she blurts back at him almost defiantly. Dory is not afraid of Dad. Same question, same response from us though we say it with much more trepidation than our sister because we fear the beatings.

The second round of questioning begins again with Dory, who again with disdain rather than fear in her voice, says "no". A slap across her face and what I imagine is a look of hatred from her into his soul. Next is Gary. He, again, denies being the culprit of Dad’s imaginary crime. I jump at the sound of Dad’s hand slapping him across the face. Next Davy. I am pleading with him in my head to please admit to it so this will end. “No” followed by the whack. Dad looms over me next and demands my admission of guilt. I know that if I say 'no', the questioning and slaps will continue for all of us, but if I say 'yes' I will be punished for “lying” the first time I was asked. “No” I hesitantly answer, and the side of my face immediately burns from the slap of my father’s huge hand.

Two more rounds of this, and he announces, “I’m going to leave this room and when I get back you better have decided who did this”. Dad exits and I immediately begin begging Davy to say it was him. In my young mind Davy doesn’t feel the pain like the rest of us because Dad always beats him. My brothers try to explain to me that if I take the blame the punishment will be less because I am little. My heart knows this is right but my head is filled with fear and selfishness. I continue to beg. Dory remains silent in her rage.

Dad returns and begins with me this time. For a moment I consider saying yes, but I am again consumed with fear, so I squeak out, “No” and wait for impact. My face burns. I pray.

Davey is next, and my chest caves as I hear his denial. Dad is now becoming very angry, and the slaps are increasing in severity, if that's possible. Gary is next and he does it. Dory, Davey, and I are ordered out of the room I hear the beating and I am sick. I hear Dad tell him before each blow, “You let me hit your little sister?” I am overcome by guilt and shame and sadness and frustration. My head and heart both know I should have taken the blame. Sometimes it was Gary, sometimes Davey, but I never accepted the blame or beating. Damn that fear.

I will always carry the guilt of my selfishness during those interrogations.

I will, for the rest of my days, try to right the wrongs I imposed on my brothers. I, now, not only take the blame immediately when I’ve done something wrong, but more importantly, I assume blame even when I haven’t.

Shouldering the blame now helps my body grow strong so that I may swim gracefully past each slap-across-the-face rock thrown into my already melodious brook, giving it a funky little background beat 😊

I Am an Animal

I am consumed with trepidation as the school day comes to a close. I do not utter a word for the rest of the day. Not to Mrs. Hyde or my classmates, not to anyone. My mind is too busy talking to itself about the fate that awaits me at home. I look at the kids who so mercilessly picked on me, and I look at Mrs. Hyde who not only didn’t protect me, but became one of them. I hate them. Every one of them. I hate myself for my lack of control. I hate myself for not knowing how to stop them. I just hate. Everyone and everything at this moment.

I can feel the acid burn through my stomach lining as I walk home. I feel the lump in my throat, and I am unsure whether its tears or vomit.  I realize it’s both as I stop along Oakwood Avenue, and I puke and cry and beg God to help me simultaneously.  I contemplate not going home, but I know that I would have nowhere to go permanently. I’d have to go home eventually and the beating would be tenfold because his anger would be increased.

I get to the corner of Frear and Oakwood Avenues and I can see the yellow Corolla that Dad ‘borrowed’ from Uncle Chuck over a year ago parked in front of the house. My heartbeat is deafening in my head and painful in my chest. My limbs go numb. I feel dreamlike force my body up each step onto the front porch. I reach the outer door and I inhale as much air as my lungs will hold. I keep it captive in there until my head swoons, then I let it out and I open the outer door. I stop between the outer and inner door, gather the little bit of courage I have, stand up tall, and enter the inner door into my nightmare.

Dad is in the living room waiting for me, belt in hand. There is rage splashed all over his hate-filled face. I stand and stare at him with a dumb look—my mind has gone blank and all courage and stature has disappeared.

“You want to behave like an animal in school, Puke?”

“No”, I answer, and I see his jaws clench.

“You obviously think you’re an animal, so you will be treated like an animal. Do you understand, Animal?”

“Yes”, is the only way I know to answer this question.

I am immediately knocked to the floor with a punch to the center of my body. Before I can get up, he kicks me back down to ensure I am unable to do so. “Animals belong on the floor, Puke. From now on you will walk on all fours.” I answer, “Yes”, to which he replies, “And animals don’t talk. If you want something you will bark like the animal that you are. Do you understand, Animal?” I bark in response, and I remain on the floor waiting to be kicked again. Like the animal that I am. It is taking every bit of will power in my arsenal not to cry because I am more humiliated than I have ever been in my short life. I hurt physically, but I hurt more in my heart than anything.

 

“Get out of my sight, Puke Animal”.

I climb the stairs to my room on all fours and I am filled with more hatred than I ever knew it was possible for one person to feel. I sit on the floor of my bedroom because I assume that’s where an animal would be, and I want to punch something. I want to punch and scream. Instead, I sit on my floor and I cry. I try to cry out all of the hatred that has welled inside of me for the kids at school, for teachers, for dad, for this life that I have been given to live.

Struggling in My Cocoon

My happiness returns bit by bit as I finish fourth grade and head into fifth.  It returns as I spend summer afternoons with Kim, Karen, Tricia, Patty, and Sue—my Frear Ave friends. Sometimes we create whirlpools by swimming circles or we play Marco Polo in Kim or Patty’s backyard pool. Sometimes we play with Tricia’s antique tiny Barbie dolls. Some days we play kick ball in the center of the road on our little dead end street. We use whatever we can find for bases: old boxes, someone’s jacket, or even a rock. Kick ball days are my favorite because we have to round up more neighborhood friends who we don’t normally play with—brothers, sisters, kids from neighboring streets. Neither age nor gender is an issue for any of us. We are boys and girls, children, adolescents, and teenagers, and we never fight nor is there ever a power struggle. We play happily until the sun is replaced by stars. It is these days that refill my heart with the happiness it has been missing. It is these friends who remind me that people are good and that life is good.

So I happily enter my fifth grade year at Public School #2. Gretchen is not in my class this year—I assume someone of importance made the wise decision to separate us. My new teacher is Mrs. Fran Hyde. She is new to our school. She is clearly green and every child in the class knows it. The teachers as School 2 are gritty and tough. They are tired and sarcastic. Mrs. Hyde is kind. She wears her heart on her sleeve. She is emotional. She shows that she cares. We eat her alive. Our class is pure chaos.

Most girls enter a cocoon of change around the fifth grade. It is the point where boys begin to notice them as more than peers, and so the teasing begins when one develops an interest in another. It begins innocently for me with a boy calling me “spaghetti head” because of my long, straight hair. This teasing spurred other boys to begin using this nickname for me.  Still, it doesn’t bother me because I like my long hair and I understand that they do to. Unfortunately, my body is also changing now, and Mom notices. She lets me know that it’s time to go bra shopping. The timing for this could not be worse with me already being on everyone’s radar.

I return to school lifted and pronounced, and it is quickly noticed and pounced upon. The kids, boys and girls, begin to call me “tissue tits”. The more red-faced I become, the more I am taunted. The more I explain, the guiltier I look. So I go into the hallway with Arshea Phillips, the alpha female in our class. I actually lift my shirt in the hallway and expose myself to her, hoping she will then tell everyone that I am not stuffing a bra to appear to have something that I do not. It is humiliating, but completely worth it to stop the constant barrage of accusations hurled at me. Arshea decides to keep my proof to herself. The taunts intensify in frequency and vulgarity.

The next day I open the lid to my desk and there is a Charmin wrapper. The class erupts in laughter and I shrink and my face burns. I quietly allow this behavior for over a week, hoping that the kids will forget me or move onto some other not-so-hurtful interest to occupy their small minds. They do not. I'm too easy a target for them.

I finally have enough, I swallow my pride, and I quietly tell Mrs. Hyde what has been happening. Mrs. Hyde responds flippantly by telling me that I have been encouraging them to say these things to me. I have encouraged them to dub me “tissue tits” and to leave tissue wrappers in my desk? I assume she is saying this either because she, too, believes that I am stuffing my bra with tissue or because I have not fought back. My heart begins to beat very hard. My temples are thumping so loudly that I cannot hear anything else that is being said. The blood in my body has risen from the pit of my stomach and now covers my entire chest and face so that my skin resembles a hot tamale candy. I completely lose control of my tightly held emotions. David Banner has morphed into the Hulk. I pick up a desk and I throw it at Mrs. Hyde while I curse her very existence.

 

I feel utterly defeated--more betrayed than I have ever felt. How could she, as a teacher and a woman, not understand this? How could she blame me? I realize on this day that no one will ever understand me. I am different than everyone else in this world, no matter how much I think we have in common, I have been cut from some crazy mold that I shattered upon exit.  

Mrs. Hyde dramatically runs from our classroom. I quickly realize where she is going and fear immediately turns me back into David Banner, then from David Banner to the terrified 11 year old girl that I am.

I will receive the worst punishment of my life for this lack of ability to control my emotions. I still struggle to pass the boulders placed in my brook by my “animal behavior” at school. This is the only musical composition of my life, that if I could choose, I would remove. OK, this and Punishing Gary.