Cathy

Cathy sits quietly at the dining room table, trying to decide whether she feels guilt or relief. Hearing her three kids crying in the distance, she has no regret for what she has done. No feelings of sorrow for what she does to them everyday. She will always try to blame her kids for all the bad misfortunes that she has brought upon her family.
         Caroline, the youngest of the three comes out of her room. Not knowing if she should expect a hug or another slap to her right cheek. Bruises are starting to show on all parts of her body. The other two, Rachel and Matthew are still too afraid and sobbing too much to come out of their rooms. Not wanting to let their mother see what kind of effect she really has on them. They don’t want to give their mother that much power. At this point the less power she has, the less the kids feel her hatred and disdain.
         Usually after Cathy’s “sessions” were done with she will hug the kids and say that she is “sorry” for the physical pain that she has just made them endure. She wants to make the kids believe that acting this way is okay. Inside the kids know all along that there is something terribly wrong with this behavior.
         Cathy calls them all back out, so she can go another round. One by one she picks at their souls with each hit that she gives. The kids try to do their best to understand why she is acting like this. No one can understand how she can say she loves her kids, and ten minutes later she’s hitting them because she had a bad day at work.  How can anyone like this possibly be human?
         Since the twins were born in 1984, it never gets better for Rachel who was born in 1981. The love between Rachel and Cathy is lost soon after 1984. Little does Cathy know the way she is treating her three kids is making them stronger as individuals both mentally and spiritually.
         The family had to move to Washington in 1993 due to a transfer with their father Fred’s job. The move left Cathy with the kids at home all day, for several weeks until the kids could make friends.
         An hour or two before Fred was supposed to get off work; Cathy goes into a very terrifying frenzy. She is throwing whatever she can find. Anything that will help subdue her rampage. Inside Rachel and Caroline’s room the three kids huddle closer together. They hear glass shatter against the wall and profanities coming from the living room. The kids no longer hear any sounds coming from their mother so they go silent as well. They hurry to get on top of the wooden bunk bed. Praying and hoping that if there is one night that they don’t get abused please God let it be this night.
         Cathy walks into the bedroom with a sinister grin on her face, as if to say, “I’m going to enjoy this.” As she is telling Matthew to get off the bed, Rachel and Caroline hold each other a little tighter. The two girls watch in shock as their mother hits Matthew at least twenty times. Caroline is now desperate to stop her before she kills him. She jumps down from the bunk bed, slaps her mother’s hand away and screams “you’re going to kill him!” Cathy lifts up her hand one more time and brings it to Caroline’s face with as much force as she can possibly put into it. This leaves Caroline with a very dark red hand mark on her left cheek. As Cathy is walking out of their room, Caroline grabs Matthew to make sure that he’s as ok as he can be after getting beaten that badly. Looking at each other he nods to give her a little reassurance that he is fine. The two sit there for the rest of the night and fall asleep holding each other.
         As time passes by, the bruises and beatings get worse and more severe. New lies are made up everyday as to why the kids have so many dark bruises on their little bodies.
         Another night in Washington Rachel stole fifty dollars out of her mom’s Aerostar van. Just as she is reaching into Cathy’s purse, her mother grabs her arm and violently pulls her out of the van.
Not caring that she is outside in front of the apartment complex, she starts slapping Rachel on the face. Once Cathy is done Rachel is left sobbing on the sidewalk. She thinks about running away, but she knows she can’t. She has to stay and be a strong older sister for the twins. If she left now they couldn’t possibly survive. She stays for them and goes back in; only to receive the worst beating she had ever gotten in her twelve years of being alive. She thought she would surely die after such brutality.
         Day after day they would endure everything with some hope that their dad would soon divorce this person that seems to be filled with so much evil. The family moves in with Fred’s parents to Central Point, OR. A job loss for Fred and an eviction out of their apartment put Cathy in the worst mood the kids have ever seen. She doesn’t get along well with the in-laws, which made things a lot more complicated then they had to be.
         After a quarrel with her father-in-law one night, she walks into the trailer where the kids are quietly watching TV. Fred is still working at his new job with Larson’s Home Furnishings. The kids look up to see their mother standing in the doorway. Judging by the look on her face, they know what’s coming next. By this point in their lives (Rachel at 14 and the twins at 11) they have developed somewhat of a “routine”. Their muscles tense up, as their mother seems to be taking turns hitting each child. They don’t know why their mother does everything that she has done. They have however found some way not to let this effect their attitudes and outlook on life. They know there are much better things waiting for them. They just want to know why it’s taking so long for those things to actually happen.
         Fifteen minutes later, their mom is still hitting them. One hard hit sends Rachel from her seat on the couch to the floor.  She lies on the floor holding her face and sobbing hysterically. Cathy walks out with a look of satisfaction on her face. The children sit there and have only one question; how can anyone abuse her three kids so much without even thinking twice about it? Isn’t she the person that is supposed to love you no matter what you do? How can the kids possibly love her when all she shows towards them is hatred? They thought a divorce would never happen.
         Fred found out she was unfaithful to him and the kids knew that this was their chance for happiness. She of course denied everything. The liar and horrible mother she had become over the years you could never believe anything she said. Whether it was “I’ve never cheated on you” or “You know I would never hit the kids”. She was a pathological liar and it only got worse with everyday that passed.
         Although Fred had known that she beat their kids, he didn’t know how severe the situation really was. Now that he found out she cheated, he had all the more reason for divorce.
         During the winter of 1995 Fred told Rachel that her present from him would be a divorce. Obviously it was good news for everyone and hopefully a wake up call for Cathy. The kids had had the happiest Christmas of their lives that year. They would finally realize what it would be like to live without getting hit everyday. They would finally be free of worrying whether or not it would be their last day to live. Of course all three kids chose to live with their dad. The twins still had to see their mother every other weekend. At the age of 11, they were too young to decide if they ever wanted to see their mother again.
         Now at the age of 29 Rachel is living with an abusive husband. With all the cruelty in her younger years, somehow the abuse from Richard is now bizarrely comforting to her. Not because she misses her mother, but because it was the only thing that had actually making her feel that it’s ok she gets treated this way. She’s older now so she doesn’t have to put up with the abuse. She needs to realize she’s not 12 anymore and she can do something about it. Nobody can help her if she doesn’t want to help herself. She has two little girls and a boy on the way. I can only pray that Rachel won’t let Richard treat their children the way she was treated.
         At the age of 26, Caroline and Matthew have gone down different paths. Matthew dropped out of high school, got his GED and tried his shot at the army. His choice of career path will certainly be something involving computers. As of right now he works in production for a company called Falcon Northwest that builds top of the line gaming computers. No one has faith in how smart he really is except for his twin sister. She has seen his outstanding ability and she knows he will do great in life. Although he has had a few relationships gone badly; he’s still young and has plenty of time to get married when he’s older. That one girl who truly does understand him will be very lucky; because I know I couldn’t have gone through everything I have without him.
         I graduated in 2003 from Crater High School, with my diploma and CIM (Certificate of Initial Mastery). Not knowing what I want to do, college is in the future but not at this moment.  Choosing the opposite of Rachel I will not put up with abuse from anyone. A marriage in 2006 only lasted 4 years as he was starting to show signs of physical, verbal and mental abuse. Unlike my sister treatment like that does not get overlooked by me. Although I have been told in the past that I do not show enough compassion, I have only one thing to say to those people. How can I show compassion and love when I received none in my younger years? It is hard to trust and love when the one that I trusted hurt me so badly. Now you put up a huge wall just to keep yourself from getting hurt again. I too have had my share of relationships, but right now there is so much more to experience in life than think about another marriage.
                   Some of my happiest memories in life were sitting in our townhouse with my brother and my dad. Although my sister was living with her boyfriend, without my mom we felt like a real family. Just knowing that I wasn’t going to get hit that day or any day after she signed the divorce papers was all I needed to make me happy.