Chapters Six thru Eleven

Chapters 6-11

Chapter Six

Lest you have the impression it wasn’t that bad around our house, allow me to set you straight. Although Mike and I survived our childhood and even managed to have some fun times together, our childhood was hell. We lived daily in the shadow of alcohol and drug abuse, violence and fear. I sometimes wonder how we survived it, but children are amazingly resilient, and survive we did. Children who grow up in a household like ours learn survival techniques. I became adept at reading the mood in the house by the look in my dad’s eyes, the set of his jaw, the tension in my mother’s voice. I learned that I could never be carefree; I had to be watchful. The wrong word, a carelessly uttered phrase or a cross look could invite a beating or, at the very least, a belittling tongue-lashing.

I learned to keep a secret. No one knew that my mother kept a supply of extra pillowcases in the linen closet to exchange for the bloodstained ones, evidence of our frequent bedtime bloodied noses. Mike and I knew how to hide bruises—both the physical ones and the emotional ones. We became excellent actors. The personas we presented to family and friends were so far removed from the truth we could have won Oscars for our performances.

The skill in which we absolutely excelled, however, was that of lying to ourselves. No matter what kind of hell in which a person lives, there is always someone in a greater degree of dysfunction. We could spot those who were worse off than we were at fifty paces. What a relief it was when we found someone whose abuse at home was greater than our own—we didn’t have it so bad after all. All children want to believe they are loved and accepted. It was hard for Mike and me to make ourselves believe that, but when we ran across someone whose pain was greater than our own, we could tell ourselves, “At least our mom and dad don’t do that, so they must love us.”
At times, I could convince myself that the instances of abuse were an aberration, as in: Oops, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard or That wasn’t really what I meant when I said that to you. The capacity of a child to forgive and make excuses for a parent seems limitless. Yet it doesn’t compare to the wellspring of hope that exists in the heart of a child that one day it will all be better.



Chapter Seven

It was never easy being the daughter of Cas Barnett. He was an angry man with a violent temper and when he drank, which he often did, it was worse.
He didn’t grow up easy. His life as a child was filled with evil and wicked things—people who hurt him instead of loved him, anger instead of joy, and suspicion in the place of innocence. He grew up believing he was unlovable and he spent his life confirming that.

The Bible says that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. Daddy’s heart was filled with pain and wrath. He knew little kindness and even less compassion in his childhood and as he grew into adulthood, the darkness that haunted his soul filled his heart and displaced any vestige of kindness and mercy.
He drank to dull the pain in his heart. As so often happens, he needed more and more of his drug of choice—beer—to keep the pain at bay. But when he had drunk enough to no longer feel the pain, the demons that he wrestled with his entire life were no longer constrained.

No one knows the horrors that were visited upon a small boy named Cas in the woods of Mississippi. But knowing that the future of a man is shaped by his past, it’s not hard to imagine that he must have suffered terribly at the hands of those who should have been his protectors—his mother, step-father and maternal grandmother.
Having on rare occasion glimpsed the true heart of my father, I know that he was able to hold on to a small piece of who he was meant to be. But the crushed spirit of a little boy, the product of an extra-marital affair given away to his grandmother by his own mother, was hard-pressed to hold on to any tenderness or compassion. As his world became harsher, his heart became harder until finally the only relief he could find was in inflicting that same pain on someone weaker or smaller or more innocent.
My mother was an easy target. For reasons I still don’t understand, she was drawn to men who were emotionally unavailable at best and, at worst, to those who would either abuse or abandon her. Daddy never abandoned her—at least not in the physical sense—but he was abusive to her in every other possible way. As children, it was not uncommon for my brother Mike and me to witness the two of them engaged in the most harrowing fights. They always started over something insignificant, but could rage on for hours and sometimes days.

Most of their fights eventually escalated from screaming and name-calling to physical violence. I remember Daddy pushing my mother into the wall or onto the floor. Sometimes that was enough of a show of force to satisfy his need to dominate. Those were the times when we all three—Mike, Mom and me—breathed a ragged sigh of relief and quietly hid away for the rest of the night while Daddy drank himself into a stupor until finally passing out on the floor or the couch. At other times, the yelling and pushing weren’t enough. Those were the scariest of times, when Mike and I watched in horror, unable to rescue our mother as Daddy hit or choked her until his rage was spent.

We knew better than to get in the way or to draw any attention to ourselves. That was a sure way to get a beating--although we never really had to do anything to provoke Daddy’s anger. A loud noise, a wrong word at the dinner table, being too happy—all could invite his wrath. We were lucky if all we got was a smack in the teeth by one of Daddy’s huge hands. And we knew better than to cry. That just made him madder.

We always knew when we had done something that tipped him over the edge. Once when we were only four and six-years-old, respectively, we argued over some childhood grievance, forgetting for a moment that Daddy was in the next room. I chased Mike down the hall, both of us yelling as children will do. Suddenly, Daddy was behind us in the hall, swinging wildly with his belt—buckle-end flying. Our screams of childish play turned into screams of anguish as he chased us into our bedroom at the end of the hall, pelting us with his belt all the way.

When we got into the bedroom, we were crying, begging him to stop, saying we were sorry, we could be quiet, we would stop fighting. But he slammed the door shut and yelled at us to bend over the bed. He braced his foot against the door, holding it shut while our mother pounded on the other side, screaming at him to open the door. He whipped our legs, our backs, our arms—anywhere he could reach with his belt until his rage was spent and we were bruised and bloody.

He finally threw open the door and yelled to our mother to put us to bed. We hadn’t had any dinner; she started to protest, but one look from him silenced her. She came into the room, cleaned us up, bandaged our wounds and helped us into our pajamas—all three of us crying quietly as she put us to bed. Mike and I cried ourselves to sleep.

The next morning, it was business as usual, as if nothing had happened. That “business as usual” thing was always the worst part. It made us realize how little we mattered. Daddy went to work, without a word to any of us. Mike and I gingerly dressed in long sleeves and anything else that would cover our cuts and bruises and went to school where we were both particularly quiet that day.



Chapter Eight

Certainly, there were days when it was indeed better. There were days when, for whatever reason, my father wasn’t drunk and angry. Instead, he was the “good Daddy.” I remember a football game in the parking lot of our apartment building, of all places. An asphalt parking lot wasn’t the ideal playing field for a game of football, but Mike and I were so enthralled by Daddy’s kindness and good mood that we didn’t care where we played. It could have been on a field of broken glass for all we cared. All that mattered was that we were playing a game with our dad and we were having fun.

My father had a brilliant mind, which is amazing considering the millions of brain cells he must have killed during his lifetime. Daddy was a dedicated newspaper reader. He read every single line of the paper, every single day. Sunday was the day he reveled in the luxury of reading the paper. No matter how early I awoke on Sundays, I would find him settled into his chair in the living room, hunched over the newspaper, with various sections spread out on the floor all around him. He always sat in the most peculiar way. He would settle into the chair, plant one foot on the floor and the other on the chair cushion which made that leg fold double against his chest. He would fold a section of the paper into a small rectangle, rest his arm on his knee, holding the paper in that hand and his coffee cup in the other. On Sundays, he drank coffee the way he drank beer on other days, guzzling pot after pot of black coffee as he gave himself over for the day to the reading of the newspaper.

When I got older, I would settle into the nearest chair and read parts of the paper too, just to be near him. At first, I read only what interested me, but eventually it wasn’t enough just to sit near him reading. I craved interaction with him so I began to read what he was reading. Hesitantly at first, but enthusiastically as time wore on, I began asking him questions or making comments about various articles in the paper. As with all interactions with Daddy, there were successful ones and not-so-successful ones. I learned to test the waters first before diving in headlong. I still joined him in reading the newspaper, but would only venture comments or questions when I believed my attempts would be well-received. On those occasions when he seemed receptive, I gave it a shot and sometimes I struck gold. There was no greater thrill for me than that—at those times, he was clear-headed and congenial—but best of all, he seemed to be interested in what I had to say.

Yes, there were good days with Daddy too. Although just as it was with Mom, there were not enough of them—and the darkness always came back to claim his soul as well.




Chapter Nine


Daddy’s explosive, irrational temper ruled our lives. We lived in a constant state of nervousness because it was impossible to know from one moment to the next what might set him off. Mike used to chew his fingernails until they bled—small wonder. I tried to be invisible. Well, that’s not quite right—I tried to be invisible and perfect at the same time. Somehow, I thought if I could be perfect enough, it would make everything better.

I was the perfect student. I made straight A’s, always did my homework and volunteered for extra projects. My teachers loved me, and I loved them. Even in elementary school, I understood that my teachers saw something of worth in me; they saw me as special. And I so wanted to be special. Every child wants to be special, to be valued for who they are, simply to be loved with no conditions. It seemed that I could never work hard enough or be perfect enough to gain the favor of my parents, so I worked to gain the attention of my teachers.

Mike gained the attention of his teachers, as well, but in a different way. He was always in trouble, never could sit still and was constantly in the principal’s office. My mother got phone calls from the school on a regular basis regarding my brother. He was the “problem child.” We know now that Mike suffered from ADHD. In the sixties when we were in grade school, no one had ever heard of a learning disability called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Or if they had, they certainly lent no credence to it. It was difficult enough to be a child from an abusive home, but to be saddled with ADHD on top of that made Mike’s school-life an additional hell. At least for me, school was an escape. Mike had no escape.

By nature, both of us are extroverts—outgoing, friendly, always looking to make yet another friend. But our home life, coupled with the fact that we moved from city to city on an average of one to two times a year, turned Mike and me into shy children with few friends. But we always had each other. I was Mike’s defender and caretaker at home; he was mine at school. Pity the poor child who had the audacity to tease me or make me cry at school. I can still picture the fire in Mike’s eyes and his windmilling arms as he came running to my rescue. All the rage that was trapped inside of him came pouring out onto the child who had hurt his sister. He might not be able to do anything to stop our dad from hurting me, but he could avenge me on the schoolyard.

Consequently, Mike had quite the reputation for fighting, and his reputation seemed to follow him wherever he went. One night, our parents arranged for us to stay with a neighbor family while they went out. This particular family had three boys—very rowdy boys. As the night progressed, the boys’ “play-fighting” with Mike slowly but surely turned into real fighting. Both of the parents just stood by watching as all four boys tussled, wrestled and rolled around the living room floor. Mike would sometimes end up on the bottom of the pile and I would see that familiar wild look in his eyes as he put everything he had into struggling back to the top of the pile. This went on for a long time and it seemed that everyone except for Mike and me were getting a great deal of enjoyment out of it. It was obvious to me that these people spent way too much time watching wrestling matches on television. Mike and I were no strangers to wrestling--our dad was quite a fan as well. I assume that’s where Mike got some of the moves he used that night. It was also obvious to me that Mike wasn’t enjoying this private home version of wrestling nearly as much as our neighbors were. Mike got more and more frustrated, and I was the only one in that room who knew what was about to happen. The windmill arms were about to fly into action.

I stood there trapped in indecision. I was torn between doing something—anything—to stop this craziness, or letting it continue to its inevitable end when Mike would give those three mean little boys and their wrestling-loving parents what they deserved. Finally, common sense won me over and I realized that if Mike beat up the neighbors, there would be hell to pay when we got home.

My dilemma then was what to do to stop the fighting. I had to think fast; Mike was dangerously close to exploding into windmill mode. I decided there was only one option open to me. I opened my mouth and let loose with an eardrum-shattering scream that, judging from their hunched-over posture and the shocked looks on their faces, apparently reverberated up and down the spines of our two adult hosts.. I screamed until I ran out of breath. As I paused momentarily to draw in a breath, I looked around the room and it was as if everyone and everything was frozen in place. All eyes were turned on me. No one moved—we all just stood staring at each other. I looked at Mike and could tell that my scream had scared him out of windmill mode. The three neighbor boys from hell were all paralyzed in place and had evidently forgotten all about their little wrestling match. Their arms hung loosely at their sides as they looked from me to their parents and back to me again. I knew another scream would not be necessary.

Suddenly, the neighbor mom found her voice. “What in the world is the matter with you?” she asked me, in a voice that said she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. Uh-oh, clearly I had not thought this all the way through. I had to think fast.
“My stomach hurts really bad,” I blurted

”Bad enough to make you scream like that?” Her tone told me that she wasn’t buying it.

What could I do except start crying my eyes out? I could tell she was completely at a loss then. No one had moved yet from their previously frozen-in-place stance. We were all still standing there, eyeballing each other. And I was crying for all I was worth. I just kept it up until finally the mom told her boys to go get in bed and told Mike he could go lay down on the loveseat. My wailing settled down into sniffling as soon as I realized the crisis had been averted. I was happy to curl up on the sofa (as she suggested) until my mom and dad got there.

When our parents came to pick us up, Mike was sleeping soundly, curled up on the loveseat and I was pretending to sleep—lying there with my eyes slitted down almost shut, just to make sure no more shenanigans started up again. I heard Neighbor Mom tell my mom something about me having a stomachache, but that it didn’t seem to last long. No kidding, I thought to myself, just long enough for you to get your hooligans away from my brother!




Chapter Ten


For the first three years of my life, I didn’t live with my mom and dad. It gets a little complicated here, so I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible. My mother was married for the first time in December of 1956 to my biological father. They were both very young—she was just shy of her eighteenth birthday and he was only a few years older. My father was a Navy man and as soon as the wedding was over, he and my mother moved to California where he was stationed. Within nine months, my mother had boarded a bus bound for Texas where my grandparents lived. She was six months pregnant with me at the time and had already decided her marriage was over.

I was born in December of 1957. Mom and I lived with her parents at their farm outside of a tiny Texas Panhandle town. I was the first grandchild, so when I started talking, I began calling my grandparents by the names which all the grandchildren born after me would know them—Gommy and Bert. Gommy was my attempt at Grandmommy, and Bert, well that was actually my granddad’s name and I have no idea why I called him Bert instead of some mangled version of Granddaddy.


Mom divorced my father as soon as the state of Texas would allow her to. Their divorce was final in June of 1958. By that time, she had already set her sights on another young man and was pregnant with my sister Kathy. However, by the time she knew she was pregnant, her latest knight in shining armor had been shipped overseas by the Navy. Mom told a much different story of what transpired next than the story Kathy’s dad told her when she found him. She says she wrote him of her condition and that he never responded, except to have his sister come to Mom’s house and retrieve the things he had left there, including a ring. Kathy’s dad’s story is very different, but in one way both stories are identical—Mom was on her own with this baby. There would be no marriage to Kathy’s dad.

Things were much different back in the fifties and an unwed mother was not looked upon very kindly. That’s what I’ve been told, anyway. So, a plan was devised in which Mom and her parents would move to Clovis, New Mexico and live there until my mother delivered her baby. A lawyer was consulted and an adoption was set in motion. My sister was born in January of 1959 and within hours of being born, she was in the loving arms of her new adoptive parents.


At some point during this time, my mother met and began dating the man who would become her second husband—the man whom I would grow to know as my Daddy. They married in March of 1959, a short six weeks after my sister was born and given up for adoption. Back to Texas we all went, Mom and Dad to their new home together and me to live with Gommy and Bert. I lived with them at their farm until I was three years old when, as family lore tells it, my new Daddy insisted to my mother that it was high time I come live with them.


While I was living with Gommy and Bert, Mom and Dad had another child, my brother Mike. Mike was born in May of 1960 and sometime after I turned three in December of that year, I went to live with Mom and Dad. The story I was always told about my departure from the farm was that I hid in the closet, crying and begging to stay with Gommy and Bert. I have often wondered how different my life might have been had I not been forced to come out of that closet and made to go home with Mom and Dad. I guess it was a good thing, though, because who would have been the designated mother had I not been there?


So it was that our twisted little family nucleus was formed. Mike and I never knew that we had a sister out there somewhere. It was always just the two of us against the world.




Chapter Eleven



Gommy and Bert’s little farm wasn’t much to look at, at least not by the time I came around. In fact, I don’t think it was even their farm—it belonged to my great-grandparents, who lived there as well. But with two sets of grandparents who loved us (well, make that one and a half, my great-granddad was always kind of scary and distant) and land to roam, a swimming hole and a barn full of ancient treasures, it was nirvana to Mike and me. We loved going to the farm. The land in the Panhandle of Texas is so flat that you can see for miles across the prairie. So it was that when our car rounded a bend in the road about half the distance between town and the farm, if we squinted our eyes just right and stared at the right spot, we could spot the little farm house where we could escape the brutal reality of our lives for a brief period. Mike and I competed to see who could spot the farm first and the winner was the first one to sing out, “I SEE THE FA-ARM, I SEE THE FA-ARM.” Then the other would join in the chorus and we would merrily sing-song that one glorious phrase the rest of the way. If Mom and Dad got tired of hearing it and hushed us, we would sing-song it in a whisper, soft as possible, but we never stopped singing it until our car actually pulled in to the dirt driveway in front of the farm house.

Mike and I lived to go to the farm. At the farm, there was no screaming, no angry outbursts, no beatings, none of the fear that ruled our everyday lives. Instead we had grandparents who doted on us and the freedom to be children. My great-grandmother, Myrnie (again with the first names! I don’t know why we eschewed the traditional grandparent names, opting instead to call them by their first names) was always awake before dawn. When Mike and I crawled from our pallets made from quilts laid on the floor in the front room, our first stop was always the kitchen where Myrnie was taking orders for breakfast. It never mattered how many of us were there in the little farmhouse, Myrnie cooked individually for each person at breakfast. We wolfed down our breakfast and got dressed to go outside to do what kids do – play. That’s what we did all day, with no fear of retribution, no reticence, just full-speed-ahead, uninhibited play. It was glorious.

I think it may have been at the farm where I perfected my mud pie recipe. I made the best mud pies in Texas—just the right amount of Texas Panhandle dirt with just enough water to get the perfect consistency. Then the finishing touch, always one or two mint leaves to grace the middle of the pie. If there had been a mud-pie-making contest at the county fair, I would have taken first place every time. I’m sure of it. I would spend all morning slaving over my mud pies, finishing them just in time to serve a piece of mud pie to Mike before we were called in for lunch. He always obediently ate the slice of mud pie I gave him, never complaining once. I still marvel at that. Come to think of it, maybe that spray of chemicals from his chemical set actually did have some effect on him after all.

Lunch and dinner at the farm were always grand events with bowls and platters of delicious vegetables and meat covering the table from one end to the other. Unlike breakfast, when everyone ate separately as they straggled into the kitchen with sleep still in their eyes, we all sat together at lunch and dinner and ate as a family. I remember a lot of happy conversation and laughter, everyone eating until they were way too full. No one rushed away from the table after eating. We all sat “for a spell” enjoying each other’s company and catching up on the day’s events or the latest gossip.

Mike and I never wanted to leave once we were at the farm. It was the closest we ever came to knowing what “normal” felt like and we liked it. We could run around screaming like banshees (as long as we were outside, of course—we knew better than to try that inside), we could laugh out loud, we could even get mad at each other and have arguments like regular kids—all without fear of retribution. Our visits to the farm gave us the freedom, even if only for a short time, to know what it was like to be normal kids. We soaked it up while we were there, and then spent the rest of the time wishing that the life we lived with Mom and Dad would magically become normal.