What most of us want is to be heard.
- Dory Previn
More than any abuse I suffered as a child, the pain my mother endured at the hands of my father is the most difficult chapter of my life for me to approach, mentally and on paper. It would hurt her terribly to have her secret revealed. Thus the question of who will ever read this must be left for another day.
My mother deserved so much better than she ever received – as a child and as a woman. Her own mother was an alcoholic; her father, whom my mother adored, left early in the marriage for his own sanity. There were six children. My mother was the second oldest and the responsibility for raising the little ones fell to her. Like so many children in alcoholic homes, she grew up fast. Her childhood was secondary to the business of caring for others.
Early photographs of my mother show a tiny, impish face that appears shy but at the same time full of a quiet joy and curiosity. She quite literally looks happy to be there. I believe my mother lost those qualities – at least in part – a long, long time ago. Today, she can still have that “happy to be here” look when surrounded by her own family – and no one is fighting.
Though I get only glimpses of her childhood from her, there is one story that, to me, seems to sum up the essence of what probably happened repeatedly throughout her life. She is about three years old. In the kitchen with her grandmother, a large, imposing Irish woman, my mother began to dance. As if a playful spirit lifted her tiny feet and legs, she bounced from one leg to the other, hands over her head. This is how I picture it. My mother described it as a “little jig” and that is what I see.
Apparently, my mother’s jig got on my great grandmother’s nerves. I don’t know if she hit her or not – those kinds of details are always edited out of my mother’s stories - but her words dealt a blow just as fierce. “Would you stop that ridiculous jumping around?” My mother never danced in the kitchen again. She was laughing when she told the story but I cringed inside, knowing the deep imprint these words must have left on her. In later pictures, the quiet joy is gone, replaced with a more serious and reserved appearance and a tiny, almost half-hearted smile. I have often said my mother is the kind of woman who would blend into the wallpaper rather than attract any attention. It is painful for me to realize she was not always that way.
My mother left the chaos of one alcoholic home for the rage and fury of another.
My father, also the second oldest of a large Irish-Catholic and alcoholic family, always seemed to have a chip on his shoulder he dared anyone to knock off. I cringe thinking of the brutal lessons he learned as a child, only to repeat them with his own family. He was not a big man but he didn’t have to be. My mother was tiny.
The images of all she endured have never left me. I spoke to her recently about it and she was shocked at how much I had seen and remembered. Children always see and rarely forget. It’s like a movie reel. To this day, I cannot watch movies with violence against women because it never seems made-up to me. It is all too real.
Some children run and hide when their mother is being beaten. Others stay and try to defend her. I never ran. I was always right there, wishing I could act but frozen with fear. I would fantasize about taking a knife and killing my father so we would be free.
As with so many abusive men, my father’s rage was always ridiculously disproportionate to the supposed offense that prompted it. A cold dinner – when he had been out drinking all night - justified a spree of destruction that left food and glass covering every inch of the kitchen. An entry in the checkbook that appeared to my father to be wrong was enough reason for him to wrap his hands around her throat and choke her until she passed out. His suspicions of her infidelity brought on the worst attacks – smashing her head into the wall or car window, kicking her down the hall as she crawled to get away and lifting her by her feet from the bed and throwing her around the room like a rag doll.
The police, called by the neighbors, would take my father outside, tell him to calm down and suggest he go for a walk. He was never arrested, never taken out of our home, despite the bruises, black eyes and destroyed kitchens. This was long before the domestic violence laws and increased awareness we have today. In the 70s, these were private matters between a husband and wife. It was not the police’s job to interfere. And although plenty of people knew, no one else intervened either. The elderly couple who babysat me and my sister knew. My mother’s friends and co-workers knew. It’s amazing the things people will allow to happen rather than get involved.
Though my father’s brutality diminished over the years, the scars left on my mother and my sister and me are permanent. From a very young age, I worried that I would be a terrible mother because of what I had witnessed. How could you learn to love when violence and insanity were all you knew? I guess you can either mimic the behavior or run from it. I chose to run.