Pictures

Bent door frame

I read books, mostly fiction, about all sorts of things. A lot have to do with narcissistic abusers and their victims, recently. Sickeningly enough for my own personal entertainment. They all tell the same story about how it feels when the abuser is about to lose their temper, in some way. They describe it like an electricity in the air. They can feel it; it’s almost a tangible change in the atmosphere. Well, I don’t know if this is true, or if it just reads better but I do believe that some victims feel it coming. I never did.
Maybe it’s because I was a child or maybe it’s because I have been trained (by society and my mother) to not trust my gut instinct or intuition. By the way, that is VERY hard to change once you’ve lost trust in yourself, your ability to read the environment around you it is almost impossible to get it back. At least that’s the case for me. Either I’m irrationally scared or irrationally brave...another of my personality traits that I am working on reconstructing.
Whatever the reason, I never saw it coming. My mom’s boyfriend, whom I referred to as my step-dad even though they never got married, was unpredictable. Either he was a happy drunk that would decide I could have more freedom or privileges or he was disgusting, abusive, violent and scary. I never knew which it was going to be. I’ve heard people say, “it’s only when so-and-so drinks whiskey” or tequila or hard liquor, or whatever. I’ve heard that there’s a tipping point with some violent drunks. His seemed to have no bearing on the type of alcohol or any other factor. Of course, though, I was a child and not accustomed to monitoring someone else’s drinking habits, so maybe tequila or whiskey were his triggers. Who knows? Who cares to dissect it?
But I never saw it coming. As an allowance for a while, I would get my nails done. There was a little shop around the corner that I could walk to after school and I’d never felt so classy and grown up until that point. I loved it. Until one day, it was almost Halloween and the nail tech had just learned a new technique of building the acrylic up and basically making a “sculpture” with the material. We decided together on a spider. I can still feel the two, smooth little bumps of the spider’s body on my ring finger nails. I remember thinking how it felt like a NERD candy had been placed under my polish. As I sit here today reminiscing about it I realize just how perfectly that exemplifies my youth, innocence and naivety of that period in my life. Anyway, we decided on a beautiful, sparkly teal color and in the spirit of the holiday, the rest of my nails were left black. Completely innocent. Completely inconsequential in my mind. I practically skipped home. I honestly don’t remember if he was drinking that day, but I believe so, since the next day he was crying and laying on my floor asking both my mom and I for forgiveness.
The best description I can give for this is an explosion. He was INFURIATED that my nails were black. It didn’t occur to me that this would have been a problem. I loved those nails. I didn’t mean for them to be offensive. I still dressed up for Halloween. I still scrounged up change to go to 7-11 to buy candy and slurpees. I was just a baby trying to be a woman. I still to this day don’t know how black nails could have warranted the reaction. But it was bad. We ran from him (in the house of course) into my bedroom. He literally tore the bedroom door off the hinges and I remember my mom laying on me, and holding the door in between her and him and I was being crushed by the weight of two adults and a bedroom door on my bed. I didn’t think I was going to die but I was grateful we were on a give-able mattress and not the floor. And when he sobbed for forgiveness on my bedroom floor the next day, I lost a little more respect for my mom when she didn’t get us out of that situation, or at least call my dad and get ME out of it.
Of course he was forgiven and of course it didn’t stop and of course it progressed and got worse.
Eventually came the molestation and then even when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, that there’s no way she could keep me in that environment, with him anymore, she always turned around and went back. Well, I guess, “went back” implies that she left in the first place. She’d never leave. It wasn’t until I was in rehab at seventeen and FINALLY told someone else about him molesting me and FINALLY someone looking into it that she left. But then it became all about her. My poor mom. How rough she had it. How difficult it must have been to be the ADULT and making all the decisions.
I think I know exactly when the last spark of hope that I could be protected by her was the night that the door of her Honda Accord got hyperextended. How I lost all faith in my mother to protect me screamed at me from the bent door frame every time I got in to go to school or the store or left our house at any time by vehicle. It was never repaired and that made me disgusted in her too. At least if you’re going to PRETEND the ugliness of that night never occurred then erase all evidence. FIX THE f***ING DOOR.
It’s a shame too that I now can no longer listen to Alan Jackson’s Gone Country album. He played the tape, yes I know I’m dating myself, over and over and over that night. He sat in the dark getting drunker and drunker and drunker. I don’t know what started it, and in my mind it has NEVER ENDED.
It was a flash of anger, it was terrifying. Just the week or so before he had brought me with him to purchase the 9mm handgun that would be such a huge part of our evening. I remember seeing and wanting a precious little derringer that was chrome with a pearl handle. He would later purchase that gun for me and I still have it to this day. It’s worthless, really.
The fighting started, my mom and he had been yelling and fighting for hours, in between was that f***ing album. “She’s gone country, back to her roots, she’s gone country....” I don’t know what made us run but we did. My mom ran behind me and I got to the car first since the passenger side was closer to the door. She’s rounding the front of the car and slamming her door as he reaches mine. Then it’s there, right in my face, and right then I remember a brass coin nailed to one of the shelves in the gun shop. It looks like a coin and clearly has “KKK” on it. Even at 12, I was flabbergasted then convinced myself that 1. There’s no way they have COINS that go with their membership and 2. How could anyone be PROUD to be a member? And 3. Why would he sell a firearm to a Native American man if he’s so loyal to his “group?” Anyway, here I sit, in the passenger seat of my mom’s Honda Accord. He got to the door just as I was trying to slam the lock down, yanked it open and there it is: the 9mm hand gun. Only this time he’s not handing it to me butt first, unloaded, safety engaged for a shooting lesson. This time I’m looking at the part that will definitely kill me. As drunk and sloppy as he was only moments before he very clearly states, “get out of the car.” Then he turns the pistol to his temple, “I want you to watch me kill myself.” Repeat. Then my mom slams it into reverse and drives. The door knocks him back, I grab the door and pull and we drive to the end of our 25 yard driveway. She screams at me “why didn’t you lock the door?” And she stops just as I take a breath and realize that there are no gunshots. She stops. And my heart sinks when I realize we’re not really going, we’re not leaving tonight. No, sir. “The dogs. He’ll kill the dogs if we leave.” We pull between the shed and the haystack. Sleep in the car. Lesson number one, be faster when being chased by your mom’s boyfriend and his gun to lock the door. Lesson two, the dogs lives are more valuable than your daughter.