I never find out whytheyhate me. I’ve always wanted to know. I love them. Why do they hate me? I am three---that’s my earliest memory---when they start hitting me. My Mom reaches back and slaps me hard at the table during breakfast. I don’t know what I’ve done to make her slap me. When I am old enough to be in school, I remember my preschool teacher taking me aside and asking about the bruises, welts and burns. Nothing comes of it, or mylife would be different than it is.
My kindergarten teacher calls a meeting with Mom and Daddy because I’ve slapped a boy in class for calling me an ashtray.
Before the Child Protection people come, my parents cram me into the car and drive north, from our house in south Sacramento to Oregon, to live with people on Mom’s side of the family. Arguments erupt between Mom and a lady I believe is my Grandma. None of the people in that house talk to me or pay any attention to me.
I prefer never to be left alone with Mom and Daddy. I always am.
From what I can scrape together from mymemories, Mom is dark- haired and slender, with bright blue eyes. In earlier years, she is elegant, projecting an image of a well-groomed professional at her job as a secretary for an attorney somewhere in Salem. Later, she turns stringy-haired and wild-eyed. She scares me.
Daddyis fair-haired with large brown eyes. He’s quiet. I never hear him raise his voice, but he’s susceptible to suggestion and battles several addictions.
The folks in Oregon kick us out after Daddy gets busted shoplifting at a Payless, and we move back to the Florin neighborhood of Sacramento. Myfirst grade teacher calls the cops when she sees how I look one morning---a black eye and blood drying in myhair. I have no idea how myparents manage to sneak me out of the police station.
We move to the small town of Sommerville, a hamlet of less than eight thousand people, just east-north-east of Davis off the interstate, into a two bedroom house that has some measure of privacy. It is on a corner parcel surrounded by weed-infested, loamy-soiled reject lots. The walls are of plaster, which has much better soundproofing than sheetrock.
That’s when theydecide that in order to avoid having to move around, I should stay hidden. I’m locked in my room. At first, I get fed two or three times a day. Then there comes a time when I don’t get a crumb for at least four or five days. I remember crying for them to let me out to go to the toilet. They bring me a bucket, and theybeat me because I have to use it, because theyhave to dump it every now and again. They lug it out to the real toilet across the hall, cursing me and covering their noses at the stench I’ve caused.
Once a week, sometimes everyother week, theylet me out to shower and stretch my legs. My muscles ache. Daddy begins to make me accompanyhim when he showers. He tells me I mustn’t run away and to do what he asks. I’ve tried to forget that first shower he made me take with him, and I do tryto run. I prize open the stubborn, splintery window in my room, and I have almost wriggled halfway out when they catch me. Mom rips chunks of my hair out while lashing me with a thick black belt with round metal studs in it. When it’s over, I tryto hide from the hot, throbbing pain bycurling in a ball and rubbing mybloodied bodyagainst myfilthy bedsheets, praying for another chance to escape.
“Why you wanna run away, Pretty?” asks Daddy with sad, dark eyes. “I
love
you.”
And then they put the chains on my legs, and I can’t even leave mybed to see what time of year it is, what color the skyand leaves are.
After the first shower, Daddyshows me how to do the things he likes the right way.At first I close myeyes. I don’t want to watch what he’s doing to me, but Mom yells, “Payattention!” So I have to watch. I watch, and I learn, but I hate the sight of him down there… the weird, crazy, scary faces he’s making at me. I hate that part of mybody…I hate it even more when he’s down there, because he’s doing things that feel good, and mybodybegins to do funnythings in response.
I’m afraid.
I know this is wrong.
It’s so wrong.
I hate myself.
When I’m seven or eight, they begin to make the videos, usuallyone or two a month.
I’ve tried to bury those years deep inside my mind. I’d be lying if I said I don’t remember. I remember liking some of it, and feeling dirty and guilty. I remember hating other things. The truth is I remember so much that I shudder and cower down like I’m caught in an ambush. Any moment, a deadly memory will strike home and kill me. When I’m awake, it’s easier to be in control. I can shoo the memories and the visions away. I can stay busy at work, with friends. Asleep, the nightmares are brutal, impossibly as graphic and horrific as the real thing so long ago. I relive those seven years every night in my sleep, my senses functioning perfectly in dreamstate. I see everything, I hear everything, I smell everything, I feel everything, I taste everything. Every so often, when I’m just waking, cozy in my bed, the dreams seemingly over, I’ll see it, and it’s so real, and I’ll hear his soft voice. “Come on, pretty baby…ShowDaddy you love him…ShowDaddy…”
I should die in that room, but I don’t. When Daddy’s not loving me, I feel so alone. When I don’t see him for a few days, I cryand beg him to come. Of course, he never comes in without her. Sometimes theyignore me. Sometimes mycries onlyanger them, and Mom hits me with the studded black belt until I’m covered with glowing red welts for days after.
So I tryharder to please them. I’m so hungry.
I want to die, but every day I’m still breathing. The food they bring me becomes less and less in amount and frequency. When my Daddy finally returns to my bed I’m so happy I readily service him, loving his presence, his warmth, his soft solidity, the closeness, the wayI feel so safe...
My skills improve and I not only get used to it, I
want
to do it. Because I don’t to be left alone. He can’t stay away from me very long, he says, I’m too good. He taught me so well.
Mom videos Daddy as I do the things he showed me, and then he puts me on mystomach...I wish she would stop recording, stop watching and go away. But she stays. “You’re a nasty boy, Jamie,” she says, her mouth pulled into a snarl-smile that still scares me in my dreams, her vulva wet. After Daddy comes, he takes the camera from Mom and she uses the big flashlight on me, or the whisk broom, or whatever she can get her hands on that’s shaped right.
I get used to what Daddywants, and pleasing him is second nature. And he always praises me when I’m finished. He’s as gentle as he can be, unless Mom tells him to do it harder.
The flashlight I never get used to. It hurts. They trade laughs and comments like they trade the camera. It hurts when they say those things about me, even worse than when Mom uses the flashlight.
And when he videos her burning me with her cigarette, calling me names as I scream, I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong. I’m doing what they
tell
me to do. I don’t want to, but I love them. Why does she burn me? Why doesn’t Daddy make her
stop
?!
Theyonlyever change the sheets when theywant to make a new video. Otherwise, my bed stays soiled. While Mom tucks in the nice smooth clean sheets, I huddle down on the floor as far away as the chains will let me go. I don’t want to do this. It’s the same every time, a story they have to tell over and over again. When he has all his clothes off, Daddysquats down naked beside me. “You readyto make another show with Daddy?”
“No,” I cry. “I don’t want to do the show.” I reallydon’t. Though I’ve said I’ve gotten used to it, even gotten to like it, I reallydon’t like doing these videos. I’m so mixed up inside. I want Daddy to love me, but I don’t want to do things to him, I don’t want him inside of me, and I especially don’t want Mom to do the things she does with her flashlight, belt and cigarettes.
But when Daddy smiles and kisses me, and says, “I’ll bring you mac and cheese, your favorite,” my stomach clenches and churns…I’m so
hungry
.
“How about green beans? And ding-dongs for dessert! With the creamystuff in the middle!”
So I do the shows with him. Sometimes the mac and cheese is hot and creamy, with plentyof salt and pepper. It’s so wonderful that I beg them for seconds and thirds. Other times it’s cold and tastes like it’s a few days old, but it stops the cramping in my tummy.
I’m the center of their attention a couple of times a month. Otherwise, I’m a nothing behind several locks and chains, they ignore me except to bring food now and then, and to dump my bucket into the toilet.
It takes a few more years, but I learn to stop screaming. If I stop screaming sooner, she’ll stop burning me sooner. I learn other things too. If I don’t scream, they’re not as fun to watch. They finally stop making videos when I’m eleven or twelve, when I become too skinny and weak to do what they like. I’m become so weak I don’t even care when Mommy hits and burns me. So they stop. They no longer come into my room, not even when I beg them to bring me food.
I’m in a dark forest. I can see myself, myskin reflected in the meager light. I can’t see ahead or behind me. There are no sounds in the wood, not even the howling of coyotes or the hooting of owls. I’d rather hear anything than this thickening silence.
No one is here. No one, and I’d rather have to do the videos, and I’d rather be burned with her cigarettes, than be here with only myself.
But I’m too skinnyand weak to make their friends happynow.
I’m all used up…
Theydon’t come back.
My thirteenth is my last birthday in that room. Daddy opens my door, peeks in at me for a second. I don’t notice him. I haven’t eaten…I’ve lost count after sixdays or so.
He hasn’t brought food. He doesn’t come in. He just closes the door softly.
There is no mirror in my room. I’ve never liked mirrors. I see myfather in myhair and mymother in myeyes. Now, even without a mirror I look down, and I see myself. My hair is falling out. My eyes are about to sink into mybrain. Myskin is gray. I feel so light.
The loud reports from outside my room are the last sounds that make my body jump, the last stimuli I respond to in that house. And then the house is quiet. I’ve been praying to die. I’m crying. I’m in pain. I’m unbearably thirsty. I hate the silence. It’s horrifying, the silence.
Please God, let me die
. Sleep drapes itself over me like a heavy wool blanket, and I surrender. The endless hours in that stinking bed meld together, the chains eating into the skin of my ankles forgotten.
I’m alone in this thickly wooded wilderness. The trees close in around me, as always, but the difference now is, they seem friendly, like theyfeel sorryfor me being all alone, and are bending down to tell me everything is going to be okay.
I stop being hungry. I stop being thirsty. I stop being afraid of the deafening silence. I stop being angry at Mom and Daddy for leaving me for so long without food, for not emptying mycommode so I can use it.
I stop loving Daddy. I did everything I could to let him know how much I loved him, how much I needed him.
And still, he left me.
Alone, in the dark.
I hate him…
My most recent and frequent companions come to visit, buzzing in through the slit of the open, screenless window that I once tried to crawl through to freedom…shinygreen flies that have followed my repulsive aroma for miles. As I sleep, their tiny black tongues lap at the sweat, vomit and other ungodly waste that’s leaking out of me unbidden.
I stop praying for God to come get me.
The memoryis there. It’s buried far, far below millions of gray and white molecules, beneath bundles upon bundles of nerve fibers and synapses. It’s there. But I don’t remember it right now.
I’m in a grocery store with my Mother, somewhere in Sacramento. I’m going to be five in a fewmonths, so I’m too old to ride in the baby seat. I’m a big boy now, and a good boy, for I never run off on my own when I’m shopping with my Mom. I walk beside her quietly, like the good boy I am. We get in the checkout line behind a dark haired lady dressed in a powder blue business suit and shiny patent high heels. Her black hair is piled neatly on her head. She never looks to see any of the people around her. She has a baby in her cart. He’s sitting in the baby seat like he’s supposed to be, his curly blonde hair like a halo, his soft baby legs dangling, one chubby little hand holding the railing in front of him, the other clutching a piece of Red Vine licorice. He’s looking at me, his face and hands coated in sweet, sticky licorice residue. The woman with him finally turns to face us briefly, a red vine hanging out of her mouth as well. Her sour face doesn’t match her nice clothes and pretty hair.
The little boy reaches out for me as if to say, “Come here!” And I go to him, which is something I never do. I don’t talk to strangers, no matter how old, or young, they may be. But I go to the little boy in the cart. I don’t even like Red Vine licorice, but I go to him. “You have big eyes!” I tell him, and he smiles and laughs at me. “Howold is he?” I ask his Mother.
“
Two,” the woman grunts, grabbing several more packs of Red Vines, along with a bunch of beef jerky packs. “These too,” she tells the cashier. She seems unfriendly. She won’t look at me. I glance backward to my own Mom, who smiles gently.
I turn back to the blue-eyed baby boy and he reaches for me again, the little pink bowof his mouth curling up in a smile. I shake his gooey hand, “I’m Tammy. Howdo you do?”
The baby giggles. “What’s his name, please?” I ask the woman whose eyes match his. She ignores me. My heart stings, and I look at my Mom again. She just smiles and shakes her head. I turn back when the baby babbles musically, his relatively new and unabused vocal cords manufacturing the loveliest sounds I’ve ever heard as he jabbers and coos like a magpie. “He’s so sweet!” my Mother exclaims. The baby’s Mom continues to disregard everything we say and everything her baby does.
I wish I knew what he was trying to talk to me about! I stand on tiptoe and take his sticky pink hand in my own. “You don’t say!” I gasp. “Is that right?” The more I respond to him, the more the baby loves it, filling my ears with enchanting gurgles and coos of delight.
His mother finishes paying for her groceries and says flatly, “Come on, Jamie. Let’s get out of here.”
“
Jamie? Is that his name?” I ask desperately. The darkhaired woman blinks her blue eyes rapidly at me and in her grown-up-irritated-at-annoying-child voice, says, “Yeah, Jamie… what do you care? You won’t ever see him again!” Tears crowd in my eyes as I turn back to my mother. She looks like she’s likely to say something to this rude, haughty, dark haired lady who now turns to look for the bag boy. As her attention is taken from us, I stand on tiptoe again and kiss the baby’s licorice-coated cheek. He smiles, leans down over the safety bar in front of him, and kisses my mouth.
Love’s first kisses.
Then she takes him away from me.
In the car on the way home, I cry, tears mixing with the sticky stuff on my face. “I wish I could be his friend forever,” I sniffle.
“
I know, honey,” Mom says.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget those blue eyes.
But I do…
By the next day, I stop thinking about the baby in the cart.
I forget about him for a long, long time.
But it won’t be forever…