My Mom Lied
The following material is part of an effort to give a voice to clients that have a story to tell. The content is of each client’s choosing and recounts a personal experience. It is my sincere hope that the weight of each piece, once borne alone, often in secrecy and shame, can, when shared, become easier to bear. The stories that chain us to our past can instead become the very fabric that binds us to each other. I am grateful for each client that has chosen to contribute time to this project.
It was a wickedly beautiful day on June 25, 1979. The scent of Lillies of the Valley came wafting through my open window. While ‘sinfully’ enjoying Judy Blume’s novel, “Forever “, I paused every once in a while to take breaks to observe the rainbow of Hollyhocks dancing outside of my bedroom window. My blissful day was shattered by the bristling words obnoxiously spewed by my dad, “I’m ‘GONNA KILL YOU!”.
I’d heard this before, but not accompanied by the sound of a 12-guage shotgun being loaded. I recognized the mechanistic sound from my hunting with my dad and brothers. Although my sight was obstructed by an adjoining wall, I could see in my mind what was taking place: His small, dark, hairy fingers lifting the brass-capped, red, plastic shells, the diameter of a cigar and length of a ‘D’ battery, from the rectangular prism of an ammunition box. With years of expertise as a hunter and a WWII Vet, sliding each shell into the entry hole of the magazine, he rhythmically loaded each at an even and swift pace. The sound was very faint: shhh, tap, shhh tap, shh tap. Then As I heard the familiar metal-on-metal ‘click’ of the pump, I heard my mom bellow, “DON’T!”
No fear, anxiety or hesitation swept over me as I sprung from my blissful state, into what would be to most people, a horrifying nightmare. As I quickly peered into my parents’ sun-infused bedroom, I witnessed my father with the gun stock against his shoulder, and the barrel connecting directly to my mom’s head. As I watched silently, It occurred to me, “Why doesn’t she duck?” There was not grief, sadness nor even shock; only the urge to help. I bolted out of the door, and ran to a neighbor’s house that, at the time, I was house-sitting, called the police and said, “My dad has a shotgun held to my mom’s head”, and furnished the address.
I returned home and hid under the protective massive dense broom-type boughs of a Blue Spruce Tree reaching 80 feet tall, dwarfing the single-story house. It could have easily adorned the Whitehouse Lawn as a Christmas tree. Its boughs touched the ground, offered complete privacy, and encircled a cave-like dwelling with the trunk as the main support post. Its branches formed a rotunda so tall it was as if I were inside a fresh pine-scented circus tent. It was located fifteen feet outside my parents’ bedroom window, so I could monitor the situation secretively. Everything was still and quiet, as if the house had been vacant.
When the police pulled the squad car up the gravel drive, I ran to the back of the house and snuck through the basement, clandestinely climbed the steps, and waited in the kitchen for the knock which boomed with authority. “Ma’am”, the officer said as my mom opened the door, “We had a call that there has been a disturbance at this address, do you know anything about this?” I peered into the family room, and saw the officer standing at the threshold of the door, my mom standing in front of him, and my dad by her side. She replied, “No, sir”. The officer peered into the house and found no reason to believe there had been a disturbance. He replied, “Well, if you come across any information, be sure to call me”. She took his card and said, “Thank you, officer”, and closed the door.
An unseen but very real piece of me broke off that day. I gave up hope of any type of normalcy, and learned that whatever I did, whatever I said, and whatever I didn’t do, didn’t matter. My mom lied. This wasn’t the first time. I felt dejected, stumped as to why she would do such a thing. I was alone, felt lost, hated, eviscerated and lower than low. I risked all to try to assure her safety, and she lied with conviction and grace to the officer. It makes me queasy just thinking about it. How could she be so heartless and disconnected? How could my dad, a supposed human being have such control over her and me? How could he treat us like this, and then act like it never happened as he did always? How could she not understand her own children well enough to do something about the brutal lives we were leading? Did she not know that we would grow up to be maladjusted adults? When was this going to end?
Maybe with me. If I couldn’t do anything about it, maybe I should just give up on life as a whole—there I’d find the peace in the moments I had before this all started. Maybe I should take the sharpest knife in the cupboard and slash my wrists and plunge it in my heart to finish the job. I understood with perfect clarity that courageous, selfless acts, no matter how well-intended or plentiful they are, don’t matter. I also learned that the bullies at school, and my brothers were right: I was scum, fat, thunder-thighed, and a zit-faced loser. I deserved to be punched as my brothers did to me, and I deserved any harsh words coming at me I was useless. By the age of 14 I knew what Hell was because I’d been through it. The only problem was I didn’t want any more of it, and I would have been condemned to it for eternity if I’d chosen to take my life.
This incident is indelible. Decades later, I remember it like it was yesterday. If I could go back and shine a light on the situation, I would have still done the same, but called from a neighbor’s house who could hear first-hand what had happened, and offered some type of protection for me and the rest of my siblings. As I was waiting under the spruce, I thought of walking up to the door with the police officer, and confronting my parents if they had denied; but I believe this would have been a short-term solution, as I felt if my dad knew I had called, at best, he would have beaten me, and at worst, he would have turned the gun on me.
