Child Abuse Story From Pat

by Pat
(Atlanta, Georgia, USA)

The abuse in my home grew deeper and deeper as my paranoid father and highly co-dependent mother grew worse in their respective diseases. I did not like my father as a child, but things really began to go downhill when I became a preteen. I was critiqued, made fun of, and harangued and belittled in a kind of kangaroo court where Mom would sit and sort of dignify the proceedings. I was a good student and had political opinions (my father had TREMENDOUS political opinions; I wanted his admiration). He would hear some opinion from me that he didn't like, something that he could probably have taught me a lot about with a little bit of patience. But instead he would brood for a day or so and then blow up. I'd be forced to sit in the living room for a couple of hours and listen (and try to defend myself) as he grew angrier and angrier. He could be so furious, the veins would pop out on his forehead.

After one of these episodes I would sob on my bed for a long time. My mother would come in, rub my back to calm me down, and tell me I HAD been a smart-aleck. And, Dad DID love me. I was upsetting Dad, and she couldn't fail to support Dad. Even when he tried to choke her, maybe 8 years later, she still went back to him.

Returning to these haranguing incidents, sometimes he would become so agitated that he couldn't go to sleep (the incidents' were invariably at night) and so he'd make sure we could not either. He'd wake us up to restart the argument. These episodes were like nightmares. I knew something was wrong, but I had no idea how uneven the contests were between a 13- or 14-year-old girl and an enraged grown man. If my brother or I ever said, "It's not fair," my father would cackle and say, "Who ever promised to be fair? Life is unfair."

My mother also used to invite me into their bed--the middle--and say she would scratch my back. After a little while she'd get up to go fix breakfast. I wanted to bolt out of bed but feared my father would say something sarcastic, so I'd turn my back and go to the edge of the mattress. He would pretend to be half asleep and then run his hands in my pajamas to feel my breast. I froze as though I felt nothing and after a few minutes would get up and never say a word. I felt sure if I told my mother, she would have criticized me or scolded me for making something up.

My father was a master at ridicule--I was embarrassed by being tall, and he'd tell me I must have stepped in manure because my feet were so big. (When I was pregnant with his first GRANDCHILD, he inquired, "Who's going to make your maternity dresses, Ahab the Tentmaker?") Once when I was little he stood with his wise-acre brother in front of the fireplace (with me nearby) and said that the best way to teach a child not to trust anyone was to set them on the mantel and promise to catch them if they jumped--and then move aside and let them hit the floor. I was under 7 when he told this charmer of a story; I remember where we were living.

My mother was closer to normal, but she would not leave my father and did not protect us. My younger brother was forced to lie in bed at night and listen for my father's footsteps in case he had decided to attack Mom (I was away at college). She put a 14-year-old kid through this, and she had alternatives, including a wealthy father and a hometown to escape to. But she wouldn't. She could say terrible things too, that made my shaky self-esteem even more tenuous. She made me feel un-girlish, as though I was a failure, while she rattled off stories of dates she'd had as a teenager. (She commented once that because I was tall, and a girlfriend of mine was tall, we might be lesbians--this was in the late 1950s.) Once she and I were standing in front of a plate glass mirror, in line for a movie, and she said "Look, my ankles are thinner than yours!" She told me at least a dozen times that her dentist, during WWII, said she had such beautiful teeth he'd clean them for free if she couldn't afford it. Meantime, my teeth were quite crooked. I was humiliated about that but they never found the money to send me for orthodonture. Finally, I had my own teeth straightened when in my 40s.

My father's most dramatic attempt at violence was when he tried to kill my brother, who was only a young teen. Dad grew so furious he went to his workroom and got a monkey wrench to hit my brother in the head; luckily my brother was able to escape.

A few years later, my father threw my wedding presents on the front yard (I had recently married and was living in a small apartment). He called me at 11 at night and stood in the doorway with a shotgun while I picked the things off the lawn. It is lucky really that none of the three of us--mother, daughter, son--was killed.

I could go on and on, but couldn't we all? My father was in a mental ward twice, briefly, and my mother once. I'm very lucky that things were not as bad as they were for some people. But I feel as if my father was a wild animal, and my mother was the party who shoved me in the cage with him and locked the door. I'll never be free of it, but I have worked to recognize when spells of terror are really flashbacks. I have given up thinking much about my father, but wish I could somehow salvage my mother. I'd appreciate comments, and thank you so much for this site.

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