Surviving My Family, Part Three

The war really escalated closer to the year he died. It got worse because I’d actually had the chance to go and spend the night with friends whose families weren’t some nightmare from Hell. I realized it wasn’t me or Mom and it just flat out wasn’t normal to live as we did. I hated him even more for that. I hated him with every fiber of my body for denying me the happy childhood so many of my friends had. I hated him because me knowing better meant I had to do what I could to shelter those friends who were going through it, too, as best as a kid could. Even if it just meant I let them hide out in our garage until shit blew over, I had to do it because I could save them that one little shred of dignity and give them half a clue that not everyone in the world was a raging prick.

I also hated him to the depths of my soul because I discovered it wasn’t just the immediate family he was abusing. Oh, no. That wasn’t good enough for “good ol’ J.C.”. He went after my younger nieces, too. I came in from outside one day and caught him with my niece in his lap and his hand in her panties. I froze. I took a deep breath and told her in a very hard voice “Go upstairs and play and don’t come down until I say to. No matter what, you stay up there until I say. Go.” She looked scared and bolted for the stairs at the front of the house. It was his turn to freeze. He sat there, not knowing what to do and fully aware that I was old enough to know for sure what he was doing was wrong.  I went over to the counter and I pulled his 13 inch chef’s knife from the block and buried about 2 inches of that blade into the wooden lazy Susan in the middle of the table. It hit with a bang that made him literally flinch and almost fall out of his chair. I leaned in with my teeth bared at him and I remember how it seemed my voice growled up from my chest like an animal. I told him. “Old man, if I EVER see that shit again, I will cut the damned thing off! Understand?!” Sometimes I didn’t really know where the words came from. They were old words, almost alien in my mouth, not words a little girl should know how to twist just so. He made to open his mouth to yell at me and my hand flicked back to that knife handle and just rested there. “Do… you… understand?” The growl was deeper, softer. But he looked more scared than before and he nodded. “Good. Now, LEAVE. I don’t care where you go, but don’t come back until you know for sure Mom’s home.”

After that, I had to go up and calm my niece down. I had to explain to her the terrible thing that had been done and why it was wrong. I had to explain to her that when he said “You’re Pepaw’s good little angel, such a pretty girl.” It did NOT make it okay and that what he was doing was NOT what a loving grandfather should be doing. I also had to tell her why we couldn’t tell Mom. Again, ME. A KID. And people spent the next 20 or so years wondering why I was so pissed off? Hmmmm. I can’t imagine why…. And I couldn’t say a fucking thing because I didn’t want my mother in jail for murder.

From that point on, I watched him like a hawk when he was home. I finagled to make it so the girls weren’t around when he was home from the rig and Mom wouldn’t be there. I played sick if I had to, anything to make it impossible for him to be alone with them. I had no idea if he’d gone after any of the boys like that. If he had, he’d probably terrified them to silence. I did notice that the one nephew who lived with us briefly seemed nervous when the old man was home and tended to stick close to me, somehow knowing the shit wouldn’t dare try anything with me there. I don’t know if he was just scared because J.C. was big and imposing or because he’d done something to him when I wasn’t around.  I never did find out. That poor kid was so messed up in the end that he got arrested and tried to hang himself in his cell. Unfortunately, he didn’t succeed. That probably would have been kinder because he did irreparable damage to his brain that night and never got to really grow up and have even half a shot at a decent life.

It was during this part of my life that I figured out alcohol and drugs could make me forget for a while and a very destructive cycle began. When I didn’t have to protect anybody, I was finding ways to drink or get high, often both at the same time. It’s amazing how easy it is for a kid to get booze and pills in a trashy industrial town, especially a smart one with a mind trained to deviousness from underhanded warfare with her own father. It’s amazing how easy it was to hide, too. Again, being smart helped. Very few people knew where I vanished to on the weekends. Those who did know also thought that snitching on me would unleash on them the insane girl who wasn’t afraid to have a gun put to her head. Yes, that happened one night at a party. Some punk pulled a gun on me for calling him out for the wussy, girl punching jerk he was. I leaned my head into the barrel, looked right up into his eyes and said, “Go ahead, champ. Do me a favor and end my fucking misery.” He backpedaled like I was a rattlesnake. They knew I’d already died when I was seven and come back, so I was unafraid of dying. To them, that was insanity of the highest degree, extremely dangerous and it scared them shitless. Everybody in the room looked like they were trying to climb walls to get away from me. I could have said “BOO!” and they probably would have pissed their pants. Instead I headed out on my own for a nice long walk to sober up.

(TO BE CONTINUED)