Memories fade in and out. Did these things really happen? I can't focus on some of them, make them more clear...if I stare long enough at these pieces of film, played in my head, with my eyes closed, maybe they will show me some truth?
I am 4, perhaps? Living in Toronto with my mom and dad. My memories are brief and limited. Pressing buttons in the high rise apartment building elevator. Sledding down the hill into the parking lot. That was smart on my parents part. I slid under a parked car and skinned my nose. Learning French in Pre-K, the song Frère Jacques. This is pretty much it for my memories of this time. I don't know why we moved from Michigan to Toronto, but apparently the marriage didn't survive the experience.
We moved back to Michigan. My mother, brother and I moved into our grandparent's home, my mother's childhood home. It was just your average small town on the outskirts of Detroit, back then. Middle class folks. Regular people. I remember the twin brothers that lived at the end of the street. A little girl's name that I played with, Tina. Her older brother was a little mean. He was a big kid so he could be. My brother getting in trouble in Kindergarten for writing with his left hand and being forced to learn to write with his right hand. (That explains his penmanship, today.) I remember some neighbor kid showing me his penis. He was older, too.
Why am I paranoid about protecting my daughters, nowadays? My husband thinks I'm silly for this. He's not a girl, though. He doesn't even have a clue as to how easy it is for a little girl to be manipulated into silence. The shame of being exposed to something dirty by someone who lives across the street from you. "Oh, but we teach them better...things like this weren't discussed back then." Tell that to the millions of children who are molested every single day, today. I'm paranoid. I'm ok with that. The only option is to let one of my daughters get hurt and I get thrown in jail for murder. I honestly couldn't say that it would even make it to the police station to file a report if I ever found out someone did something to one of my girls. A rage buried deep inside me, locked up like a monster of epic proportions, would arise. Legally insane-hell yes. That would be my defense. Don't say I didn't warn you. I know what I am capable of. Any child who has ever been abused knows what I am talking about. Physical, sexual, mental, verbal...they're all the same. Some just leave scars on the outside.
One day, I was outside, playing, a older teen or man came up to me and asked me to go with him. I went. I honestly do not remember anything other than he said he'd take me to the Rexall's drug store up on the main street. I remember finding myself there and he left me. I was crying. He left me in there before buying what I had picked out. Why did he take me there? Did he touch me? I don't remember. I was 5, maybe. All I know is I was scared, having to walk across this main street by myself. A nice lady saw me crying and helped me. When I got home, my mother was mad. We were late, we had to go to Challenge Church.
The hot, black, dotted vinyl fabric of my mother's Pinto burned the back of my legs. I was still crying about the loss of my treat from the drug store as we drove over toward Detroit to help rebuild a decrepit, old church and turn it into a place for recovering addicts to go to for help. This is where my mother met husband #2-David. Who goes looking for a boyfriend/husband in a group of recovering addicts? Co-dependents do, I suppose! Apparently that means my mother. The adult me would never be friends with my mother. Or knowing me, I would, for a couple of years until I got sick of being sucked into her friendship chaos because I am probably co-dependent, myself.
Marriage #2 to David killed all my childhood innocence as to how great life was when you live with your grandparents and there is no screaming or fighting in a home. I don't remember David being mean to me or my brother. I do remember one time when we lived in an apartment in Taylor (yeah, those old crack head ones on Eurkea that were tore down years ago) and we had a puppy. A black lab puppy. David got mad at it for something and threw it out the door and it slammed into the hallway wall, crying. I sat out in the hallway with him, trying to soothe him. Poor baby. You never had a chance, either. Same shitty luck of the draw.
Soon after marriage to David my mother ended up pregnant (or was it before? I'll let my sisters do the math. Don't feel bad. That's how it was with each of her first born to each husband.) We needed more room as she was pregnant with twins and we then moved to Dearborn, off Southfield Freeway and Oakwood, to a cruddy, cheap, rental home. This is where my brother and I ended up in the same grade. I don't know the back story, I just like to say it's because he's not as smart as me. I honestly think it had to do with his Kindergarten skills and the move from Toronto. We started first grade (separate classes) together here. We weren't in this house very long. Shortly after having the twins, we all of a sudden were packed up one snowy night and my mom and her 4 children were moving to Carleton, MI. Without the stepfather.
I guess she really does find love in all the wrong places.
