Redemption (12 page)

For better or worse, it was just the two of us.

I finally saw his headlights beaming through the big picture window. When he walked in, he was smiling. He was the good dad, if a little boozy. I could smile because Daddy was home, with no darkness in those ocean-blue eyes. Even though I was getting big, he asked me to sit on his lap. He told me about the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.

He said she was walking across a parking lot, and he walked up to her. He asked, “You’re so beautiful, may I just know your name?” She smiled at him, and they spent the entire evening together having dinner and drinks. Dad was like a teenager in love.

My burden was lighter when he smiled like that.

Rosa looked Mexican. That surprised me, because my dad could be such a bigot. She was slightly heavy around her bosom and her butt, and she was about the same height as my mom, five feet four. But he was right: she was very pretty. She was in her early forties, and she had a daughter who was a few years older than me. I think Rosa worked in the sales department at the St. Louis branch of the
Wall Street Journal
. Whenever she was around, Dad was in a good mood. I liked her because she made the most amazing nachos, and she was nice to me.

Rosa gave him something to focus on besides his bitter divorce. When she was around, he didn’t come to me as much in the middle of the night.

What Was Killing Me

n the seventh grade, I started having abdominal pain, so my parents—who were still together at that point—took me to a gastroenterologist. No one thought to take me to a gynecologist. I would double over from the lower-gut pain during school. Sometimes, I’d have to lie down in bed. The doctor diagnosed me with lactose intolerance, but I knew for sure that milk wasn’t causing my problem. I drank the funky milk they gave me anyway, but I’d sneak regular when Mom and Dad weren’t looking. Christy saw what I did, but she didn’t tell on me. Yogurt was not causing this issue either, so I ate that, too. I knew this intuitively, but no one believed me. A few years later, they found out that I was right.

During the eighth grade, I lived with Mom in a house she rented. I had to spend every other weekend with my dad. He was now in his townhouse in Soulard, which was then a bad part of downtown St. Louis. I didn’t like going there. He kept the place filthy, and he was always drunk. Christy and I shared a bedroom there, so he would wake me up and tell me to come downstairs, where he could get me alone. Then he would take me to his bedroom.

At least I had school. It was an escape, and I loved learning. It was the one place I could focus on what I wanted and not on all the problems and complaints. I didn’t have good friends, because I couldn’t let anyone get too close to me. I had a secret I had to keep. I was always afraid someone would find out, read into the scar on my wrist, or know how bad I really was, inside and out. I could talk to all different groups of kids at school, in the lunchroom and on sports teams, but friendships couldn’t make their way over my wall. Besides, I couldn’t have invited anyone over if I had wanted to—I had two very broken homes.

Mom was wrapped up in her work and her boyfriend. She was still dealing with her own healing, too.

I thought it was strange the day that she confronted Grandma Paulson about her own abuse right in front of me. For the first time, out of the blue, Mom told her mother that her father had abused her. The memory is fuzzy, but I know I heard it, and I’ve always wondered if Mom was trying to send me some sort of secret message. Since she couldn’t speak up for me, maybe she wanted me to say something. Or maybe she wanted me to see that her mother knew, too.

Grandma wasn’t having anything to do with the conversation. She didn’t say anything at first; she just huffed. Then she said my mother’s allegations were ridiculous.

“Nothing bad ever happened to you, Debbie.” Grandma started to downplay the talk they were having. She changed the subject, like it was no big deal. My mom was nearly shaking, and we headed back home.

Grandma was in deep denial. But so were a lot of people I knew.

We spent a lot of time—too much—at Grandma Paulson’s. One night, I was staying there after my first real date. I was in the eighth grade, and I fluttered with happiness. I was thirteen, and Steve and I had walked to the movies together, holding hands. Afterward, Grandma picked me up and brought me to her house. We were in the kitchen when Grandpa told me to come sit next to him in the living room. I did, and then he put his hands down my shirt.

“My hands are cold,” the wrinkly old man said. He wasn’t as tall as he used to be, and he was thin.

I went stiff, and then I ran. My only thought was:
I’m not going through this shit again
.

As I calmed down, my body shook. I really didn’t know how I’d survive someone else touching me. And besides, who did Grandpa think he was to ruin my first date? He was ruining my whole night. I went to Grandma.

She was still in the kitchen cleaning up dishes. She said, “Honey, he just does that when he’s drunk. You stay by me.”

I didn’t leave her side the rest of the night. I didn’t sleep either. It was a really old farmhouse, and it creaked if someone sneezed. If I heard even the tiniest creak coming up those stairs toward my bedroom, then I was out the window. I had my escape all planned out. I’d just as soon kill myself jumping two stories than let another man touch me. I was ready; I left the window up.

The next morning, I was exhausted. I crept into the kitchen, scared of what might be waiting for me. Would he try it again? Would Grandma get mad? As it turned out, everything was normal. Neither one of them said a word at the kitchen table. They just went on eating their biscuits.

The next morning, I was headed to Dad’s for the weekend. I couldn’t believe I had to be there again—how could my mom let this happen to me? I didn’t want to be there, or anywhere else for that matter. The second I heard his beer can pop open—before noon—I ran upstairs to my room. It was on the third floor, and there had to be some way to escape when he walked up at night to get me. My window led to a roof with a sharp slope—jumping would be too dangerous. I tried to figure out if I could get out through the skylight, but it was too high.

I realized,
Oh shit. I’m not getting out of here
.

That’s when I started looking through his house for prescription drugs. He had nothing but bottles of beer and vodka. I did find a packet of adult-strength Dimetapp. In desperation—I wanted the abuse and my parents’ problems to end—I took the whole pack of pills over the course of several hours. There were twelve yellow tablets—add them to a glass of water, and suicide was a few sips away.

I was so wrong. TV shows didn’t show the part about pills making a person violently ill. About thirty minutes after I swallowed the handful, I started retching every five minutes. Vomit was coming out of my nose uncontrollably. Honestly, I would’ve let it go on. I could handle suffering, and I wanted something really bad to happen. But I couldn’t go through with it because Christy was with me.

She cried and asked what was wrong with me. “Please don’t let anything happen to you,” she said.

I didn’t want her freaking out, and I couldn’t die like that with her right there. So I gave in and called Poison Control. I told them I had accidentally taken four Dimetapp Extentabs. They told me to get my dad on the phone. Christy went and got him off the couch downstairs. Poison Control instructed him to take me straight to the emergency room. I got sicker and sicker the whole way there.

Everyone thought it was an accident, and I never confessed to taking the whole packet. The nurses were nice to me, and they gave me a plastic bag to hold next to my face. I had to force myself to swallow this foul-smelling black charcoal gunk. But that didn’t do any good; I threw it up instantly. Next, they pumped my stomach. It was very painful.

A psychologist did visit me in the ER, but I lied to him. I said I just got confused.

I explained, “The Dimetapp directions said to take two tablets, and they didn’t work. So I took two more.” Eventually, I upped the lie and told the doctors I had taken a total of eight.

“I didn’t read the label carefully enough,” I said, trying to hold my head up straight. “I understand now. I definitely won’t make that mistake again.”

They were convinced, and the hospital staff left me alone.

Dad was worried and very sympathetic. He’d rub my back and ask if I was okay. Back home the next day, he realized something wasn’t adding up. He sat down on my bed.

“That wasn’t an accident, was it?” He asked. “You lied to us all about it, didn’t you?”

“I guess I lied.”

He hugged me, and he said, “It’s going to get better.”

After that, he left me alone for a while. The incidents stopped, and he treated me like a daughter instead of his wife or slave. This went on for a blissful couple of months—the longest he ever went without bothering me. I was at my breaking point, and he understood that he couldn’t push me anymore. Not at that time, anyway. He also quit drinking when I was around. But I visited only every other week, so who knows if he really slowed down.

Mom never asked me a thing about it, though I think Dad told her. The Dimetapp ordeal was swept under the rug.

Once I became a preteen, my mother didn’t teach me things I should have known. The days when she’d spend hours reading books to me were long gone. As a result, she didn’t show me how to curl my hair. I learned by myself while Christy watched and gave me tips. She didn’t show me how to pluck my eyebrows or cook a chicken breast. Christy and I had to figure stuff out. She just wasn’t that kind of mom anymore.

Oddly enough, she had taught me to drive. At thirteen, I was pretty good behind the wheel. I thought it was fun to steal her Cutlass Ciera. I did it because I didn’t like her boyfriend Frank. She was getting set to move to Arizona with him, and Christy and I were supposed to come with her. At that time, Christy was living with Aunt Deanna, and I was still with Mom. We were living in our old house in Alhambra for the rest of the summer because the renters had moved out.

“It’s going to be great!” Mom said to me while I rolled my eyes. Christy hated the idea, too. In fact, I wasn’t even sure she’d actually come.

Frank called up one afternoon while Mom was out, and I picked up the phone.

He made small talk. I told him I didn’t know where Mom was. Then he said, “I can’t wait until you turn sixteen.”

I was excited at first. I thought he was going to buy me a car. “Why?” I asked.

“Your mom says I’m the best sex she’s ever had, and I can’t wait to tickle your womb.” He was slurring, and I knew that hazy male voice all too well. Frank was hitting on me—totally wasted. I was disgusted. He was nothing more than a desert rat. He was lanky with dark hair and a creepy mustache. He wasn’t old, but he was very wrinkled.

I hung up on him, and he called right back to say more dirty sex stuff. I hung up again. I slid down the wall and cried.

Another drunk bastard
, I thought. I
hated
Frank.

I took Mom’s car while she was on the phone with him. He lived in Arizona, and they blabbed constantly. Almost all the time, she was working, shopping, or talking with him. I didn’t feel big and grown up for stealing her car—it was more like,
Ha-ha, take that
. She would literally stay on the phone with him for two hours or more. She shut herself off from me. If I asked for supper, she’d just wave her hand, signaling me to get lost. I fended for myself—eating sandwiches for dinner—because she had to talk on the phone. And to whom? To a pig like Frank.

I’d steal the car to buy a can of soda even if we had a six-pack in the refrigerator.

Christy was with me one weekend—I liked weekends when she was around—and she caught me fixing to take Mom’s boxy silver car for a drive. By this time, I’d known how to drive for almost two years.

“Let me drive it,” Christy said. She was a beautiful little girl with white blond hair and big blue eyes. She could be very convincing—but not this particular time.

“Absolutely not. You’ll kill us both.” As usual, I was in charge of her. If anything happened on my watch, I’d get it.

“You have to let me drive it, or I’m telling Mom,” she said, her neck moving back and forth. I didn’t like to fight with Christy. She usually won.

I let Christy get behind the wheel of the car, even though Mom hadn’t spent as much time teaching her as she had me. After all, Christy was only eleven. I just tried to keep her off the main drag. Christy pulled the Cutlass down an old road, and then up to this farmhouse that had a semicircular driveway. The path was so open and wide, I figured she couldn’t possibly mess up.

But somehow, she really messed up.

She pulled into the huge driveway, didn’t turn the wheel hard enough, and tapped into a barn. I screamed at her to stop the car and let me drive, but she backed up and hit a different barn. I screamed again, and that just made her hit the first barn a second time. I was beyond confused at how she’d managed to hit two barns three times.

We screamed and squealed. We were probably going four miles per hour, but we might as well have been clocking sixty. We got out of Mom’s car, and there was no damage. The barns had small dents, though. I did not notice that Mom’s front license plate was lying on the ground in front of one of the barns.

I forced Christy out of the car and drove us home.

“Let’s get out of here!” I told her, and this time, she listened.

Once we got home, we agreed that we weren’t doing that again.

Then we heard a knock at the door.

It turns out that all the neighbors knew I’d been sneaking out with the car. The policeman didn’t have a tough time putting the pieces together.

The state cop arrived with the license plate in hand and asked me, “So have you been driving your mom’s car?”

Christy was shaking behind me, holding my leg. She muttered, “Nuh-uh.”

I decided right then and there that telling the truth might be the best option. “Uh-huh,” I answered.

I was a nervous wreck. Christy and I had to go to juvenile court. Dad thought it was funny, but he wasn’t there with us. Mom was, and she was not one bit amused.

When the judge was considering my punishment, Mom spoke up.

“If anyone should be punished, it should be Stacey,” she said, bitterness in her voice. “Stacey was the one who was driving, and she knew better. Christy was too little to know any better.”