Chapter 5

“Sue’s parents had died in a car crash when she was only ten. One night about four years later, her blood and semen from five young men dried on her body and stained her ripped dress. As her oldest cousin withdrew from her battered body, he moaned euphorically and lit a cigar. The hours of crying and trying to shout for help had made her throat too raw to scream again. None of the boys were close enough to grab her as she jumped out of the van and sprinted to the house barefoot.

She ran to her grandmother’s bedroom, but instead of receiving any comfort or compassion, the girl was assaulted again. The nearly deaf old woman had great difficulty understanding Sue’s words, then couldn’t believe her three perfect grandsons or their two handsome young friends would hurt anyone, let alone rape the teen girl for hours. When she noticed the dried semen on her granddaughter’s face, she called her a slut, a whore, and worse; then slapped her and demanded she get out of the house. She fled the boys, who were walking in the front door smiling. She escaped through the back door still barefoot. She ran and ran, propelled by fear and adrenaline, until her bloody toes couldn’t go any farther.

The girl used a garden hose to wash up, then hid out in a garage, intermittently sleeping and crying. The next night she stole a pair of boots from a back porch and some new clothes from a clothesline. She trudged half a mile to the truck stop, then reluctantly let a stinky and overweight truck driver screw her for just a meal and a ride out of town. Sex with three other strangers finished paying for her trip across the country. Her daughter Erin, who she gave away as a baby, was conceived that week. My mother Sue never spoke to her family again. She wouldn’t tell me where they lived or where my older half-sister was, if she even knew.

When Mom met him a few months after Erin was born, my father John was 23 and she had just turned 15. After living and sleeping together for half a year, he made her a fake ID so she could marry him. You can see her big pregnancy bump in the wedding photos, since I was in her belly at the time. Mom often complained that my Dad repeatedly told her, “My job is making money. Your job is sex and taking care of the brat. Do your job.” I was ‘the brat.’ On the few nights when she wouldn’t ‘do her job’, he held her down and fucked her as she cried.

She put up with it until they divorced, and she married a guy even worse. Roger was a Vietnam War veteran with shellshock, or what they call PTSD now. He screamed a lot and spanked my bare butt with a leather belt anytime I did something even slightly wrong. I was only seven or eight. He also beat Mom several times when he was drunk. Luckily he didn’t get her pregnant, and only gave her a lot of bruises.