Trigger warning - this will discuss harming children and allude to other things which might make you uncomfortable. Please do not read it if the idea might trigger trauma for you.
Years ago, I started writing an autobiography. I knew I was a difficult child to raise and wondered if maybe I had been a child onset bipolar or something (these days I really believe I was probably on “the spectrum” back when the spectrum wasn’t what it is today). I was also a very sad child and can remember watching rain run down my bedroom window as I sat on my bunkbed making up a song about being dead. My grandmother overheard it, came in and yelled at me, “We NEVER talk like that!” I was not told why, but I knew to never sing about being dead again. Anyhow, I did know my mother was told when I was five and getting ready for first grade (we didn’t have kindergarten, and I could already read) that I was hyperactive and attention deficit disordered. Pretty rare for a girl, even then. So, I titled my first attempted autobiography, “The Monster’s Confession,” with me being the “monster.” I didn’t consider myself particularly monstrous - more misunderstood. Kind of like a prettier version of Frankenstein.
So, I started with my real mother, who I personally saw as someone who was constantly exasperated by her uncontrollable, strange child. I remember walking up to her one day - I suspect it was June 11, 1974, because of what I do remember about it - it was before I started school, and I had figured out that days also had numbers but didn’t know what the number was called. I asked her what day it was, and she told me it was Tuesday. I explained that I didn’t want to know the day of the week, I wanted to know what number it was, and she told me it was eleven. I replied, “Eleven must be my lucky number, because you haven’t had to hit me once today.” I was five. I counted eleven as my lucky number for much of my life afterwards, which is why I remember the incident so well.
When I started school, I had not had much exposure to classroom learning beyond Vacation Bible School and weekly Sunday School. Our home was on 116 acres, with my only consistent companion being my younger sister. I could already read and print, so I would wander away from my desk to “help” my other classmates, something the teacher did not appreciate. My mother had told me before I started school, “When you get in trouble in school, come home and tell me and you will get a spanking. Don’t let me hear it from somebody else, or you will get it worse.” I went home every day after school and got my spanking. Every. Day.
One day I got home, we rushed out the door to do something else, and I didn’t get my spanking. I realized at dinner time that I forgot to tell my mom I had been put in the hallway again during class, and she hadn’t spanked me yet. I listened with panic to every phone call that night, slowly coming to an important realization: my first-grade teacher did not call my mother every night to tell her what a terrible day I had given her. I realized I could avoid the daily punishments by just keeping my mouth shut. When I discovered there were parent-teacher conferences, I was nearly sick when we went to the first one. I didn’t get spanked after that, either, and was very relieved. I was really surprised when, after sharing my first chapter, people began telling me my mother was abusive. I always felt sorry for her for having to raise a kid that made her so unhappy! My first attempt at the autobiography never made it to my mother’s death. I was so confused to have adults tell me my mother was not a victim of a terrible monster child. Lots of reflection after that.
I am sharing this, believe it or not, for contrast. She isn’t who told me to write an autobiography. She died when I was eight. My panicked father married the babysitter. Yeah. Literally. Granted, she was a divorced third-grade teacher. When my mom got cancer (back then they spent a lot more time in the hospital, I think - I don’t remember her being home more than once or twice between February and June, but we probably were living in the babysitter’s house by April). When I explained to one of the third-grade teachers that I left early every Friday because my grandmother and aunt were taking turns staying in our trailer taking care of us, she apparently contacted my dad and offered to take care of us instead. My mom died in early June, they were engaged in August, and married in early November. A man working a regularly changing swing shift with two little girls struggles to get good childcare.
I turned nine just before they married. I am pretty sure I wasn’t ten yet when I decided she was an absolutely terrible mother. What was worst about her behavior was that it really felt like she was bullying me - holding me by my hair and slapping me, smacking me with her paddle, then splitting my lip for crying (granted, in retrospect, it was probably not normal crying because by then I was royally angry at the whole situation). The worst thing, though, was that the whole time she did this, she would mock me, telling me how I just thought she was mean because I had a “Cinderella complex,” or telling me that bullies hurt weaker people until they stood up, because bullies are ultimately cowards. That advice did sink in over time, and though I was taught to “respect my elders,” I finally did have enough and stand up to her around age eleven. I tore everything off the kitchen counters, cursing like crazy (and only knew two or three words, so I just kept repeating them over and over). When everything was on the floor - flour, sugar, tea bags, all this mess in a pile on the kitchen floor - she said nothing, did not punish me, and began to clean it all up. I knew that she was done with me. Sadly, she moved on to my sister.
This is a quick summary so you can understand how baffled I am. About fifteen years ago, she asked if I ever considered writing an autobiography and trying to get that published. I had written two novels by then (no, I never looked for an agent yet), so had finally failed writing a book often enough to learn the pacing and storytelling required to tell a story that lasts long enough to meet the requirements of “novel” vs “novella” or even short-story or too long short-story.
When she said this, I wondered, “Do you really want me to tell the world what you are?” Does she realize the reason she has never heard from my sister again has a lot more to do with physical, emotional, and a type of emotional sexual abuse she inflicted, that was just horrible? Is she that far in denial, or has she moved to a point where she is willing to acknowledge who she is? Or does she blame all that she did on our father? on us? I have turned this question over and over in my head. I’m too polite to embarrass her and ask her if she remembers any of the incidents. I wonder how she would feel to know I have never forgotten them?
Rereading this, maybe I am also afraid to find out that she forgets, or that her own memory has rewritten them more kindly to her, condemning my sister and I as terrible, ungrateful wretches who ruined a dozen years of her life. I know in my older age that memory is malleable, and often not accurate. I also wonder - in today’s world of trigger warnings, etc., should a book like that even be written? Maybe it would be better if I pretended it were fiction, at least.
Or maybe some things are better lived and never written.