A Man Named Dave (24 page)

Collecting myself, I leaned over in the chair. “Yes,” I exclaimed, “an accident! I knew, I always knew you didn’t mean … to kill me.” As the words sputtered from my mouth, I could visualize the figure of a small child unconscious on the spotted kitchen floor, with blood oozing from his chest, while Mother stood above him, wiping her hands as if nothing had happened. Back then I had believed the stabbing would jolt Mother out of her vindictive madness and make her see how insane she had become. My injury would transform the evil Mother into the beautiful, loving Mommy I had prayed for. Only then could “the family” somehow reunite, like a fairy-tale ending.

Now, sitting with Mother in her dingy living room, I wondered why I was still drawn to her. Whenever I thought of Mother, I found myself constantly trying to prove that I was not the disobedient
monster child
that deserved to be
disciplined,
as Mother had drilled into my head for so many years, but that I was a human being of some self-worth. Because of my lack of self-esteem, even in foster care, I had always tried to uncover what I could do to prove myself to Mother, trying to accomplish something so phenomenal that the slate from my childhood would be wiped clean. As an adult I fully realized I was a fairly competent, independent person. I had not only gone from an almost animalistic child to a functional, married adult, an elite air crew member with the air force, but I was also the father to an incredible boy whom without a passing thought I showered with true love. I knew I had a long way to go, certainly when it came to issues of trust. The shame from my past still made me question myself. Especially in front of Mother, part of me felt that I had been the source of wrongdoing, that I was a failure. Only a wave of Mother’s magical wand of acceptance would make my self-worth flourish.

Easing back into the chair, though, I realized I was not wrong.
I had not made Mother do those things to me.
I hadn’t forced, let alone provoked her to stab me. And now, after sixteen years since the accident, Mother still could not bring herself to apologize for nearly killing me then, or for any other abuse she had inflicted on me during all those years. Mother’s statement made her look as if
she
were the victim of the situation.

The booze had not erased Mother’s memory – she knew exactly what she had done. She did not display any remorse, unless Mother’s bringing it up was her feeble way of seeking forgiveness. If that was the case, did Mother actually bear some form of guilt? Was her statement revealing a shred of affection? Did she care? If I could just strip through the layers of vengeance …

With true sincerity, I gently probed, “What happened?” But before Mother could respond, I found myself spilling over with a list of questions. “Why me? I mean, what was it that I did to make you hate me?”

“Well …” Mother cleared her throat as she raised her head. “You have to understand, ‘It’ was bad, David.” Mother’s impassive explanation hung in the air. Shaking my head, I acted as if I had not heard her. I deliberately wanted Mother to repeat herself so she knew exactly what she had just stated. With a strained exhalation, Mother restated her justification, placing a further emphasis on “It” and “David,” as if they were two separate entities. Still I was too dazed to respond. Mother’s further elaboration only confused me more. “David, ‘It’ was always trying to steal food. ‘It’ deserved to be punished. The other boys had their share of chores, too, and I would have fed ‘It’ once ‘It’ was done with the chores … but … ‘It’ was always stealing food.” Mother again gestured with a nod of her head, as if I should agree with her. “When you think about it, it’s really not that difficult to understand, David.”

For years I had believed if I ever confronted Mother as an adult, she would finally have to grasp the magnitude of the problem. I never meant to be vengeful. Part of me became concerned that the moment Mother realized the depth of her actions, she’d have a heart attack. But now Mother was carefully rationalizing her actions, guarding every word, making her treatment of “It” seem like nothing more than a parent disciplining a disobedient child; brutalizing “It” had not only been justified, but necessary.

“But why me? Was I really that bad? What did I do that was so wrong?”

“Oh, please,” Mother said. “You may not remember, but you were always getting into everything. You could never keep that yap of yours shut. From one end of the house to the other I could always hear you wailing, more than Ron and Stan. You may not remember, but you were a handful.”

Mother’s testimony made me recall when I was four and how scared I was to speak. When my two brothers and I played in our bedroom, if I became too excited, Ron would cover my mouth so my voice didn’t carry. Later on I was controlled to the point that I had to stand in front of Mother, with my chin resting on my chest, waiting for her to give me permission to speak so I could then ask her if I could go to the bathroom. More than once, with Mother towering over me, she’d contemplate aloud, “Well, I don’t know what you want from me.” Even then I felt trapped. Before I could ask her for approval, she would snap her fingers as a warning, as if I were a pet that required to be broken in. With my knees locked and my body weaving, sometimes I’d urinate on myself, which only sent Mother into a further rage.

Had that been Mother’s way of disciplining me initially? Maybe I was too much for her to handle. Mother could have as easily picked on either Ron or Stan; it didn’t really matter. Maybe Mother singled me out for something as simple as the irritating sound of my voice.

All I could do was think of Stephen. As I did, the outline of a child sprawled out on Mother’s kitchen floor in a pool of blood suddenly became my son. Seeing my reaction, Mother’s eyes flashed with pleasure. Once again I allowed her to feed off my emotions.

With my hands slid under my legs, I wanted to jump up and scream into Mother’s repulsive face,
“You twisted, sick bitch! I was a toy for you to play with! A slave at your command! You humiliated me, took away my name, and tortured me to the brink of death, because … because my voice was too loud?”

Breathing heavily, I continued to rage to myself, “Do you realize what I can do to you now, at this very moment? I could wrap my hands around that swollen neck of yours and squeeze the life out of you. Or make you suffer slowly, ever so slowly. I wouldn’t kill you right away, but I’d strip away the very essence of your being. I could do it. I actually could.” I’d kidnap Mother, take her to some dingy hotel, lock her in a room, and deprive her of all the things that sustained normal life – food, water, light, heat, sleep, contact with others; I’d make her life hell. Afterward, I could tell the police that … I just flipped out … from some sort of post-traumatic stress from my treatment as a child. For once I could throw everything away and … become like her.

A freezing sensation crept up my spine.
Oh, my God!
I warned myself. With my wrist beginning to tremble, I wondered, Am I insane? Or were my thoughts normal considering what I’d been put through? Suddenly the light dawned on me: it was the chain, the chain linking me to my mother – a person who for whatever reason had become possessed with so much rage that over time the emotion grew into a cancer, passing itself on from one generation to the next … leading to my son in a single beat of my heart; I could become the person I despised the most.

Closing my eyes, I erased the thought of revenge and flushed away any feelings of hatred that I held against Mother. I could not believe the intensity of my rage. Taking a slow, deep breath, I cleared my head before raising my face and staring into Mother’s eyes. For my own peace of mind I told myself, “I’m never gonna be like you!”

How different Mother looked to me now. To me as a child, in some ways Mommy was a princess, reminding me of Snow White. Her bright smile, her kind voice, and the way Mommy’s hair smelled when she had wrapped me in her arms when I was a preschooler. I had watched Mommy glow as she laughed, as Ron, Stan, and I vied for her attention. And now, with Mother hunched over and her hips molded to her chair, her past had caught up with her, like Father’s had years ago. Her life these days consisted of what she viewed from a television set. Her form of control was now a piece of plastic used to change channels to her world. Whatever light had kept her soul lit had been extinguished.
Mother had become her own prisoner.
Whatever harm I had just wished upon her moments ago could not compare to her self-created prison.

Mother’s change of tone brought me out of my trance. “You may not think it by looking at me, but you and I are very much from the same piece of cloth.”

I shook my head. “Excuse me?”

Mother seemed to make an effort to control her sniffling. “You think life is so easy, well …” she huffed, “before I was pregnant with Ron … I had a miscarriage.” She stopped abruptly, as if for effect. Not knowing if she was sincere or again trying to feed off a tragedy, I wasn’t sure how to react. Suddenly her face turned dark red. “You think this entire planet revolves around you! David, David, David! That’s all I’ve heard about for years was David this, David that, ‘feed the boy,’ ‘don’t punish the boy,’ every day since the day you were born!” Building up steam, Mother pointed a finger at me. “And let me tell you something else: it was those teachers, those teachers at school, butting into my affairs! It’s no one else’s damn business! What happens in someone’s house should stay in that person’s house! But I tell you what: I taught that – that hippie teacher of yours, Ms Moss, a thing or two when I had her little behind removed from the school. She was out of there so fast, you’d thought it made your head spin.

“You don’t remember,” Mother went on, “but when you were six, maybe seven, you were playing with matches one day and … you burned your arm. If I told you once,” she said, “I told you a thousand times. Anyway, one day you showed up with a few marks on your arm. And that Moss teacher of yours had the audacity to accuse me of… well, we both know what happened, don’t we?”

“
Quite well,”
I said to myself. Mother’s recollection was off by two years. I was eight when Mother held my arm over the kitchen stove. When she sent me off to school the next day, she claimed “the boy” had played with a match. Even back then, early on, everyone knew the reality of my situation. Somehow Mother must have believed she could not only hide the secret, but dispose of anyone who challenged her authority.

“And that principal of yours, Pete Hanson, calling me
every single day!
It got to the point every time the phone rang, well, I just knew who it was. I dreaded picking it up. If it wasn’t one thing it was another, saying that boy of yours did this or that. How the boy got into a fight, pulled somebody’s hair, stole food, clothes, or whatever it could get its hands on.
Every day.
Well, it just got to the point that it drives a person to drink. It wasn’t me that was after you, it was those damn teachers! Always digging, always putting their noses in other people’s business. It was them!” Mother stated as if her life depended upon it.

“You think you’re the only one with troubles!” Mother continued. “You have no idea what it’s like. It’s not easy raising four boys all alone, barely scraping by, having a husband just pick up and walk out on you. Believe me, I could tell you things about your father!”

“Don’t!” I coldly interjected. Lowering my voice, I said, “He was your husband, and you couldn’t even step into the hospital once, just once, or have the decency to mail him a card. Of all the things –”

“Well!” Mother said. “I’m not all
that
cold-hearted. He wanted me to … to take him back before he even checked into Kaiser Hospital. We even had lunch. He practically begged me.”

“You love it, don’t you?” I blurted before thinking. I was so close to the edge, just a single breath away from opening up and
really
telling Mother off, but I kept myself in check. The last thing I wanted was to get sucked into one of Mother’s games. “His name was
Stephen?
” I shook my head. “You must have known he was reaching out to you. You knew he was sick and you made him beg?”

“Oh, please! Enough with the dramatics. I told your father, and now I’m telling you: I wouldn’t have taken him back for all the tea in China. You have no idea …” Mother wandered on.

Little did Mother know, weeks before enlisting in the air force, the day I had my records sealed, my juvenile officer, Gordon Hutchenson, allowed me a few hours to read through my files, which were in two separate folders and over ten inches thick. I spent the entire day reviewing reams of county paperwork, various forms, and even scribbled legal sheets. One report claimed that after I was removed, a social worker had made several attempts to visit Mother, to the point of pleading just to have Mother open the door. All efforts by the county were met with Mother’s numerous excuses until she escalated to threats. Once, she slammed the door in the face of a social worker before laughing from the other side. Back then, as a teenager with the report in my hand, I could not believe her gall, how she seemingly got away with everything. I turned to Mr Hutchenson, asking how Mother could get off scot-free when the county should step in, rescue my brothers, and either have Mother arrested or be given some sort of psychiatric help. I wasn’t out for blood, but I felt that if everyone within social services had told me how outrageous my situation was before I was placed into foster care, my brothers wouldn’t have to live through the same hell.

Gordon had told me, “I agree with you, David, but back then in 1973 things were very different; your mother was never brought up on a single charge. We couldn’t get her on assault, willful harm against a minor, failure to provide, or, in my estimation, attempted murder. Understand, there weren’t a great deal of PCs to protect kids back then in ’73. Even now, as we enter the 1980s, there are a majority of folks who are in total denial or believe parents are doing nothing more than ‘disciplining’ their children. Believe me, this whole thing’s gonna blow up in our faces – these kids are gonna grow up, go on a rampage, wreak havoc on everything and everyone, contaminate themselves with every substance known to man, whack their kids as they were; then at the end of the day, when they face the judge, these people will either blame their deeds on society or plead that they were abused as kids, which of course made them the way they were. That’s when there’ll be an outcry from society to change the laws to protect children like you. Mark my words, it’s gonna happen. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a ways to go.”