It wasn’t long after we got back to
Arkansas that the abuse started all over again.
The method wasn’t any different than before, it just took a week or two
for it to start. The first time it
happened was in the morning before school. Pat had made biscuits and gravy, a
favorite of mine. She burnt the gravy so bad that the top layer was gravy and
the rest of the pot was all burnt. When
I wouldn’t eat, I was told how fucking ungrateful I was, and I was taken into
Pat and Johnny’s room and “used” until I had to catch the bus for school. It continued again immediately after I got
off the bus from school. I never looked
anyone in the face; I always walked with my head hung low. It was kind of like a puppy that had been
beaten, if anyone came near me, I shied away and resisted their kindness. I didn’t have many friends except for one,
Riley Combs.
Riley had been a
close friend of mine when I lived in Harrison, before my parents had been
arrested. Riley’s parents would have me
over a lot and even said that they had thought about trying to adopt Amanda and
I. The thought of that was great, but
unfortunately it never materialized. I
could spend a couple hours an evening at their house, and most of the day on
Saturday, but it was back to the torture as soon as I got home. I would do anything to keep me away from that
apartment.
The only thing for
a kid to do there was an arcade at the truck stop down the street. To play games though, u needed a quarter or
two. So to get money I concocted a
scheme that was pretty sneaky, and really wrong at the same time. I got an old milk jug and carried it door to
door saying that I was from a different school and we got broken into and our
glass door broken. We were out
collecting money to fix it. Well, a lot
of people threw in a dollar, a few threw in more, and I thought I had gotten
away with the perfect crime. You never
get away with doing wrong, well I didn’t anyway, and after a couple weeks, I
ran into one of the adults who gave money, and they yelled at me pretty loudly
and I thought they were going to kill me.
I never tried that scheme again.
Desperate times
called for desperate measures and I would pray every night that I could die in
my sleep and not have to endure another day of the abuse. I even tried killing myself by putting a
hunting knife to my throat and chickening out right before I poked it far
enough to do the job. We were with Pat
and Johnny for maybe 3 or 4 more months before my Uncle and Aunt rescued us in
the night right before bedtime. There was a God I thought. Freedom again, if even for a little while.
I
didn’t know how to act for a long time. After having to go through the abuse
with Pat and Johnny, I had a routine. Wake up, eat breakfast, get abused, go to
school try not to show anyone I had troubles, get home, get abused, eat supper,
go to bed, get woke up in the middle of the night, do whatever with whoever,
then back to sleep. That was the daily
grind. Well, once back at my Uncle’s, I
had a couple of inappropriate encounters with my cousins. Thank God that they told on me because that
beating and lecture by my Uncle really saved me. The statistics show that victims of abuse
tend to become abusers, and I was so happy to have that cycle broken. It was during this stay that I met my Aunt’s
sister, Linda.
Linda stayed with
us because her husband, Richard was obsessed with her, and he was abusive. Linda loved to write poetry. One day she
showed my cousin and I her notebook. The words and the way she wrote them
really inspired me. It is because of
her, that I write. Linda has no clue
that I write or that she is the reason.
One of her poems had a line in it that sticks out to this day; I love it
when we kiss, I love when we dance, I love it when you get in my pants. It’s silly now, but that was the line that
made me think that I could put my feelings down on paper. I wouldn’t write my first poem until several
years later, but I always looked back to what and how Linda wrote. There was a really scary night at my Uncle’s
house. Richard had just caused a big
scene, and the cops were involved. After
we went to bed, I sleep walked outside and locked the door behind me. When I woke up, I was beating on the door
trying to get back into the house. Linda was sleeping on the couch, and thought
I was Richard, so it took a while for someone to answer the door. Once inside and no longer hysterical, I went
to sleep and all was well.
My Uncle and Aunt
really loved my sister and I and they did everything they could to be there for
us. We were there again for a few more
months when my sister’s biological mother entered the picture. See, Amanda was adopted. She was my mom’s
niece’s daughter, but we adopted her.
Her mother, Teresa, came to Uncle Dave’s home and tried to take Amanda,
and my Uncle and Aunt got her to leave, and thankfully she never got the guts
to come back. I got into watching
wrestling on television now too. My Uncle had it on every Saturday morning and
Sunday. I would watch it with him, and
it was something that we did. I got
hooked, and to this day, I still watch it as much as I can. It was a couple months later when my Dad had
gotten released, and he wanted us to come back to him. My Uncle drove us back to Arkansas to meet
him at that same truck stop by the apartment.
We were there, but apparently we missed him by an hour or so, because we
ended up going all the way back to Illinois to my Uncle’s house. Before we left Arkansas we made the voyage to
Little Rock to the penitentiary where my mom was in. I hated being there. You had to be searched and empty all of your
pockets, and then go into the cafeteria.
The feeling just wasn’t right. It’s never ok to see your parents behind
bars. We talked to her for a bit, then I
had an ice cream cone, it tasted horrible because it was sugar free, and then
we left. We drove all the way back to
Roxana, Illinois to my Uncle’s house. The next day, my Dad showed up to pick
Amanda and me up. Was this a new
beginning? In a word, No.
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