Just the Facts, Part 2

"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it."~Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592)

In the third grade, violence in my home escalated. My paternal grandmother was staying with us for a while...I think primarily to act as a babysitter for me. My mom must have had a job then. One of the very worst things that ever happened to me occurred then. I was out driving somewhere with my mom and we got into a traffic accident. It wasn't my mom's fault...not that that mattered much. The front of the car was kind of crunched in, as far as I can remember, and we were able to drive it home. My mom let me play in the car, since it was clearly going nowhere. I remember turning on the turn signals.

My dad came home and things went rapidly downhill. He liked to beat up people over a period of time. It could go on for hours. I think this was one of those times. My clearest memory is when the violence went outside. My father had a butcher knife and was straddled on top of my mother, who was on the ground. I was absolutely hysterical. I tried to get my grandmother to intervene, but she just sad there in the living room. It was left up to me to try to stop my father from killing my mom. I was nine. I managed to get my courage up and went outside and stood there, begging my dad to stop. He kept yelling at me to go inside. I think I did go inside for a few minutes, once again trying to enlist my grandmother's help. Nothing. I know I went out again and my dad threatened me.

Just another ptsd memory snippet. I don't remember how it all ended, but it did end. Maybe someone called the police. I know that, as I stood in the yard, I was frantically looking around at the houses surrounding us and wishing someone would call the police or come over or do something.

I spent the next 20 years of my life believing that I had been the cause. At some point in my history, I forgot about the accident and began to think that I broke the turn signals when I was playing in the car. I thought that was what had incited the violence. When I was about 30, my mom mentioned the wreck. I'm sure she would have told me sooner had I asked. It's probably a fairly common thing for family members to maintain silence with each other about violence.

My uncle came for a visit at some point...in the summer, I think. Oh, actually I think he and his wife stayed with us for a little while. I specifically remember someone going to the little convenience store about a block away and getting ice cream to make floats. While everyone was having a good old time, I somehow got the assignment (from my dad, I'm sure) to go sweep out the garage. I dutifully went out and started the work, only to be interrupted by my uncle. He sexually assaulted me in the garage. While everyone else was just a few steps away. I know I must have looked traumatized after the many sexual assaults, if anyone had really looked at me. No one ever did. My father was constantly occupied with looking at himself, like any narcissist. My mother was constantly occupied with my dad. That was more of a life or death kind of situation. I just tried to maintain the peace, whenever some small peace existed.

I remember reading "Charlotte's Web" sometime that year and, when the spider died, I began crying in school. In retrospect, I suspect the crying had less to do with the poor dead spider than the great sadness in my own life. If anyone saw me crying, no one ever mentioned it.

For right now, that's the extent of my memories of being nine. I know that I was doing well in school and I came to see it as a refuge from the madness at home. Enough dredging up the past for one day.