A little bit of normalcy.

[Crysimone]

When I was seven they brought my sister home. I remember being excited in some ways, because I hadn't seen her for two years, and I didn't remember her. She was 9 years old. My younger sister, Cassie, was four at the time. A police officer brought her home and asked me if he could talk to me. We went in my mom's room and he asked me if my father had ever touched me. He said that a report was taken from me when I was five saying that my father had touched me. I didn't remember. I still don't. The officer told me that my dad had done something very bad to my sister. He wouldn't tell me what. But my sister told me. Jackie told me, she told me as if it was the most normal thing ever, as if she were talking about eating a bowl of cereal, or about reading a book. She said he made her do things to him... and did things to her. She also told me that he would catch pigeons and cook them in macoroni. These things suprised and shocked me. He also forced her to go to a mentally disabled childrens school, so no one would ever believe her. The school was shut down, 1 year later for abusing the children. Now Jackie is pregnant with herpes, all alone. Her husband cheated on her and she left him. Now she lives in a shelter.

My brother Chris was sent away when I was five or six. We were playing kick the book. He would hold the book in front of his face and I would kick it. Then he was able to stop the book from hitting his face. I guess this was amusing. I held the book in front of my face and it smashed into my nose. It didn't break, but there was a lot of blood. My brother was always breaking windows and causing problems, so my mom sent him to my uncles. I remember one time, when we lived in a trailer with my mom. My brother slept on the top bunk and I slept on the bottem with my sister Cassie. One day I asked my brother Chris to play on the top bunk with him. He said I could as long as I did what he wanted. I didn't know what that meant but I did. He wanted to rub himself on me above my underwear... I didn't know if that was bad or not.

I wonder why these things never affected me. When people know about my sisters or my brother they ask me how I could be so normal. I don't know really. I guess I'm lucky. Perhaps I'm not really as normal as I'd like to think.

 

[Crysimone]

4 homes in 5 years

What's strange is I do remember my real dad taking me to kindergarten for the first day. I remember getting off the back of the bike and cuting my knee on the metal petals. Then I cried all the way back to the hospital because I wanted to go to school. I don't remember any of kindergarten. I remember first grade though. My first step-dad enrolled me. We lived in the indian house. I don't know why I called it that. Maybe because it kind of looked like an adobe if you squinted. But something happened and we moved into an apt. complex and change schools. But after too years my stepj-dad got the deal of a life-time. We were offered free rent to live in an old victorian style 1900's home. Four expansive bedrooms, large living area, two bathrooms, a huge balcony taking up most of the roof, and a large kitchen/dining area. There was also a cozy guest house out back where a woman and her son lived. All he had to do was fix it up he would even be re-embersed. I hated the new school, but loved the house. Unfortunately, my step father, who was addicted to coke and pot, never got around to it and we were booted out after a year. We had to move to another city, into another apt complex complete with a whole new school. My mom didn't work. She had never had a job. And my step-dad was a carpenter. I think we should have never moved to a new city, because my step-father became more heavily into the drugs. I remember once, when he was high I suppose, he handed me a pot seed and told me to swallow it. I didn't know what it was, being only 10, and he told me it wouldn't do anything to me. So I did, with images of watermelons exploding from my stomach.

We would go over to his friend's house almost every night. My step-dad would usually drag me along, my memory hazy on whether my mom and sisters would join. One night, I was incrediably sick, and he made me come anyway, and I threw up all over the parking lot. That was the last time I threw up, for about 4 more years. So when we got to his friends house, he made sure they blew their "cigarette" smoke on me, saying it would make me feel better. It made me sleepy, and I passed out. I think we were watching fantasia.

 

[Crysimone]

Deep depresion

Chad's dad hit him again. This time he slammed him into a wall and knocked him out. Chad was my boyfriend from the time I was 12 until I was 15 years old. I was 14 at the time.

My mother and first step father, Bill, had divorced. He couldn't handle children anymore, and he tried to get her to get rid of us. I remember this, because she told us a week after he left, when she was drunk. She said it was because we were so horrible that no one wanted her. Well a year later she was married again. This time to French. I don't know why he wanted to be called this, but this is what he insisted upon. He was a horrible drunk, who would beat me 3 times a week. He liked to sit around in his briefs and watch movies with us. Sometimes he would tell us to go outside so he could watch his private movies.

One night he beat us, me mostly, in a drunken rage. My brother Christopher was visiting from our uncles and my step-father was blocking the door, announcing the only way my mother's children would make it out of the house was in body bags. So my brother and I escaped out the back door, running to my friend's house to call the police. They arrived and took my step-father to jail. This wasn't the first time the cops were called, but the first time he was charged, so they gave him community service. He chose to do it at East Mesa Baptist Church, or as I like to call it, HELL. Here is the reason I no longer believe in god. So, we went. We continued going, because they had a food drive, and because French became "saved" and forced us to become too.

Chad was scared to go home and I was scared for him. Cassie convince me to let him stay in our house. We let him crawl in my bedroom, through the window. My sister and I slept on my bed, and he slept on the floor. Well, we were supposed to wake him up early, so no one would find out, but I found a different awakening. My mother, kicking me and screaming at the top of her lungs about what a whore I am. She made Chad leave and then French came in and screamed at me. I don't remember if he hit me or not, but I'm pretty sure he did. Then my mom made me clean everything, saying how horrible I am. She was still mad about how I had my other guy friend in the house the other day. This was different though, the other guy friend just wanted to come in for a drink. They chose and unfortunate time to come home. The best was yet to come, though.

That sunday, before church, I was told to go to my pastors office. He began by asking how I was and if I knew why I was there. I had a suspicion, but I said nothing. He handed me a couple pamphlets, stuff about saving myself and pregnancy. Then became the lecture of a life-time. I was told that I was now tainted because I had lain with a person of the opposite sex and now I must pray for forgiveness. I was shocked, in tears telling how I was laying ont he bed with my sister and he was on the floor. That he was being abused by his father. He would hear none of it. I was, of course, in the wrong. My parents come first. I must care for them and should have blah blah blah. I stopped listening, staring with a vacant expression on my face.

I had already learned that just nodding at staring at someone with empty eyes can end things a bit easier. No fighting, less crying. I had been doing this since I was seven. I had lost all hope at this point, I wanted to die, there was nothing left. I would dream of horrible things happening to me and people around me. After French would hurt me, I would think about shoving a knife deep into their flesh and watching them bleed. I hated everyone. I was broken.

I promised him I would never do it again. I loved my parents and god and the church. I was grounded for three months and told I was never to talk to Chad again. His parents hated me, too, and he was forbidden to talk to me. Strangely, our relationship taught me a few things, and it's final end woke me up out of my endless depression.

 

[Crysimone]

Chad broke up with me a week before Christmas, when I was 15. I don't know why I was so distraught, he was always cheating on me. I had solid proof, his sisters were both witnesses and so was my sister. Funny how people who are supposed to care for you will allow something to happen behind your back without telling you for lengthy periods of time. So him not wanting me shouldn't have mattered, yet I felt broken. I would wait outside just to see him. I wouldn't go out with my friends or family anymore.

Then, the best possible thing happened for me. French blew up and the police were called again. He was dragged off to jail again, and my mother was finger printed this time, because this was happening way too much. This must have woken her up, because by morning we had moved into our long-lost aunts home. This was the family of my father, my real father...

I had never met them, and most of them were quite friendly. The only reason they too us in, though, was because they felt guilty because of what their brother did to my sister. One of them, my aunt Sue, was still in contact with my father William. Apparently, in his letters, he informed her that my sister and I had visited him frequently in prison. His version was something like this: "Terri[me] and Cassie visit me time to time. Ronnita[my mother] has passed away from cancer and Jackie is now pregnant[at the time she wasn't] and a prostitute".

My father is a pathological liar. His family and my mother's were neighbors and she used to play with his sister Amy, my favorite aunt. She didn't really know my father very well, having never really talked to each other that much. His brothers hated my mom, and even fed crushed glass and ground hamburger to my mothers puppy, when she was about 12. They found it amusing when the little dog died, very painfully. My mother had a boyfriend named Gilbert. She and he are married now, how they got back together can be left for another day. But, he got her pregnant when he was 20 and she was 16. His parents decided that he didn't need a baby and sent him to college in another state, leaving her unwed, with a"bastard", as they called it. My father started in on my mother, telling her that he had cancer and so he was going to die. He said he would marry her, to give the little tyke or tykette a name so my mother and her child wouldn't be looked down upon, in their somewhat small town. Pretty noble, or so my mother thought. He would carry around an acordian folder with his all important "medical" files. When my mother married him, she looked through that folder and its contents included Mcdonalds reciepts, news paper ads and pieces of trash. He lied about EVERYTHING. He also never had a job. My mother was continuelly abused by him and molested. She had to sleep on a chair with a knife to protect herself from him. By 23 she had 4 small children. So, to support herself, she recently told me, she prostituted herself and stripped. Ashamed by this, she began to take drugs. My mom has had a very hard life. I hated her through out childhood, though, not understanding. I was pretty selfish, I can admit.

We moved out of my aunts house into a two bedroom apt. My mom was kind of seeing at indian man, and considering seeing French. Chris was living on his own, when he asked my mom to move back in. Then he ran into some people he never met before, his father's parents.

I still wonder why they got him in contact with his father, it seems so hypocritical to me. Sometimes I wish they never had, then maybe my brother might have had a chance, but then I consider the alternative, moving back in with French. I pick the latter.