Chapter 1

ONE OF MY EARLIEST memories is when I was two years old, and my stepfather, Richard, pressed a gun against my head.

            “If you tell your mother, I will kill you,” he told me.

            I looked down at the ground. My throat was dry, and my hands were shaking badly. I whimpered that I wouldn’t tell a soul. I had no doubt in my mind that he would kill me if I even hinted at what he was doing to me. Just his presence frightened me because he was a tall, imposing man.

            My stepfather was a big brute of a man who had immigrated from Nicaragua. He had met my mother when I was a couple of years old, after my father had left us. And some time after that, he moved in with my brother and me. Ever since I could remember, my stepfather was constantly angry and would lash out at my mother at the smallest provocation. I would be forced to watch helplessly as he hit and beat her. As for me, he would never hurt me in front of her. Oh no, he was too smart for that, but when my mother wasn’t there – either working, shopping or doing errands – he would put his hands all over me, feeling my body, in between my legs… Sometimes, he would put me in the basement of our townhouse, leaving me there with the lights off, which seemed like forever. Time moved by so slowly. I would just sit still on the top step, too afraid to go down for fear that monsters were there and would devour me. I would cry silently, waiting for the door to finally open. It was horrid. Even today, I hate basements and am too scared to go in one alone.

            My stepfather’s favorite pastime was to molest me, only at the time, I didn’t have a word for it. Nobody had ever explained what “bad touch” meant. Instinctively, I knew it was bad, but I didn’t have the right vocabulary to express myself. I was too young. He would call me over to his large, black armchair, where he would force me to sit on his lap. I was too young to understand what he was even doing or why. I just knew what he did, and how it made me feel. All I could do was just close my eyes and bear it, praying that it would stop. I was so scared of him and what he might do to me. Every time I sat on his lap, I wondered if he would end up killing me.

            The only positive in my life was my Uncle Michael, who was in his early thirties and, unlike my mother, was really fun to be around. He was handsome and tall, a total hippie, always wearing bell-bottom jeans, and had big, bushy hair. I really loved him, and I knew he really cared for me. It was the only love I ever really felt at that time—or really until I was an adult. Whenever he came over, he always gave me lots of hugs. He was a comforting presence, and I always looked forward to when he would come over to babysit me. When he was around, I always knew that I was going to be safe, and he didn’t seem to mind entertaining me even though I was just a girl. I remember him hugging me and telling me he loved me lots.

            Then, one day, he committed suicide. I would later learn that he had shot himself in the head because his girlfriend had had an abortion. My mother cried a lot back then, but I was too young to understand what death was. I just remember at times I would wait for him to come over again, and that never happened.

            My mother had pictures which she kept in an old shoebox in the closet. I asked her when I was much older if she had a picture of my father. She said she didn’t because my stepfather had cut my father out of every picture. I don’t know if that’s true because sometimes she lies about things like that, but I wouldn’t have put it past Richard.

            I have no memories of my biological father, who, my mother tells me, had a severe drinking problem. I cannot recall what he looks like. I know I have his features because I don’t have my mother’s. Apparently, he was sweet and kind when he wasn’t drunk—but those times were rare. She mentioned that he had a beautiful singing voice, and apparently, he sang as well as opera singers. Although that could also be complete bullshit. She only mentioned him when he was long gone and dead. My father was born in Trois-Rivieres, a small city on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, across from the city of Becancour, in Quebec. My mother got together with him while she was living in Windsor, Ontario, where my brother and I were born, but they parted ways shortly after. We moved to London, Ontario, which is where I grew up. I never saw my father again. He completely abandoned us. He never came to visit, never made a phone call, never sent so much as a birthday card. My mother never mentioned him, and I never asked about him. Finally, she randomly mentioned my father in a phone call we had when I was in my 50s. She told me he had moved back to Trois-Riviers, because he missed his two other kids, whom he had before my brother and I were born. She said he couldn’t stop crying at times because he missed them so much and longed to return to them. I don’t know why a mother would share that information with a child whose father abandoned them, even if it was true. All I heard was that he chose his other kids over us and just never wanted anything to do with us again. He missed them, not us. I would have preferred going through the rest of my life never hearing that. Two weeks later, another story she told me was that he hadn’t moved all that far away after all—in fact, he might’ve been only a few blocks away, and I might have even passed him on the street and not known it. I tried not to let any of this information hurt me, but, of course, when the alternative was a child molester, it’s hard not to feel resentment. Maybe she was just trying to hurt me by saying these things? I really don’t know. I don’t know what story to believe when my mother is telling me anything. However, I would have taken an alcoholic over my stepfather molesting me, any day of the week. Before hearing those two scenarios of what supposedly happened to my father, I had always been more mad than sad about his disappearance. I just always assumed he was a deadbeat. I have never had any desire to reach out to him. I figured that if he wanted to be part of our life, he would have been, but since he never cared about us, I didn’t see any reason to care about him. Maybe I have a little bit of that coldness my mother always had. I guess I learned something from her. On the other hand, would she have told me if he had ever reached out? I don’t know the answer and probably never will.

            My brother once told me that he remembered the day that our father left, even though I have no recollection of the event. My brother said he vividly remembered our father left to go to the store, and he simply never returned. I don’t know if my mother knew he wasn’t coming back, or if she had been privy to the information that my brother wasn’t.

            I was born on Friday the 13th, 1970. I spent one month in an incubator and went home when I was 5 pounds and 11 ounces. My brother and I are Irish twins—meaning my brother is slightly older, but we were born less than 12 months apart.

I sometimes wonder what my parents’ relationship was like back then. I can only imagine, but having two young kids so close together must have been a strain on their relationship. I have no idea whether we contributed to their break-up. I know they weren’t married because I have my mother’s last name. I didn’t even know my father’s name for the longest time, and it was, in fact, my Aunt Rose, my mother’s older sister, who eventually told me. My mother has never said one word to me about anything that transpired between her and my father. I can only recall the apartment where we lived from what my brother shared with me. He said that I wet the bed a lot at night, upsetting our mother. She called me good for nothing and stupid as she tore off my pyjamas. Even in nursery school, I wet the bed when they put me down for a nap.

Originally, my family on my mother’s side is from Europe. I had a great-aunt and great-uncle who lived in Belgium. My great-uncle worked in one of the finest hotels in Belgium and fooled around with a lot of women there. When my great-aunt found out, she threatened to leave him, but he said that if she stayed, he would give her whatever she wanted and would ensure she had a great life. She agreed to stick with him, which is how she ended up travelling the world. Afterwards, remarkably, they somehow rekindled their love and became a real family unit again. However, unfortunately, this love story does not have a happy ending. As they grew older, my great-uncle began to suffer from Alzheimer’s and one day strangled my great-aunt in her bed. After that, he was put in a mental institution where he lived out the rest of his life.

I had another great-aunt and uncle, also from Belgium, who owned a small store back in the Old Country. During the German occupation of Belgium, my aunt went upstairs while my great-uncle minded the store. She heard some shooting, and when she went downstairs, she saw that her husband had been shot to death. It was a chaotic time, and she was unable to find out who had killed him: if it had been the Nazis, the mafia, robbers, or somebody else entirely.

My grandmother was named Olga, and she was born in 1928 in Hungary but moved to Belgium during the Second World War. When Germany invaded, my grandmother changed her last name. My grandmother passed away in the 90s, and when my grandfather passed away, my aunt and mother were cleaning out their house in Toronto and found a bunch of different passports under different last names in their attic. How they came into her hands and the lengths they must have gone through to get them is anybody’s guess.

When Belgium surrendered to the Germans, my grandfather, who was part of the Belgian army, was forced to fight for the Germans. I can only imagine the grisly situation he was put in, forced to kill Allied troops and what it must have done to his psyche. Eventually, he was captured as a prisoner of war by the Americans and was released after the war ended. My aunt did mention once that the Americans treated him well as a POW.

In 1947, he married my grandmother, like he had said he would do before the war. Soon afterwards, they applied to immigrate to two places: Venezuela and Canada. They first got a visa to Venezuela, but held out to get into Canada, which they eventually did. It’s strange to think that I might have had a completely different life had I grown up in Venezuela.

In 1957, my grandparents sailed from Belgium on the Arosa Star, a first-rate cruise ship, in cabin 422, and arrived in Montreal on June 25th. There, they took a CN Rail overnight to Toronto, where they started their new life. My grandfather became quite successful and wealthy. He was no-nonsense, while my grandmother was a softer, gentler soul who doted on her grandchildren. Growing up, my mother seemed, for whatever reason, to take the brunt of my grandfather’s abuse, who would beat her to a pulp—to the point where she would be forced to take two or three days off of school because she was so badly bruised that she could hardly move. Whether it was trauma from the war, or perhaps my grandfather was just a mean old man, he would fly off the handle at any provocation. If my mother was listening to a radio station that my grandfather deemed inappropriate, or if she came home late, or did the slightest thing wrong, she would be beaten. Why did he focus on my mother and not her brother or sister? I asked my aunt a couple of times, but she never had an answer. My only thought was perhaps my mother reminded him of his own mother. The only thing for certain was my grandfather ruled the household with an iron fist. He always got his way, and nobody dared question him.

I only saw this side of my grandfather once, when I asked him about his experience in the war: A dark look came over his face, and for a moment, I thought he was going to slap my face. My grandmother realized what I had asked and quickly stepped between him and I. She said something to him in one of her languages because she could actually speak six different languages. She sternly waved her finger close to his face with a raised voice. Although I couldn’t understand what was being said, I’m almost certain she warned him not to put a finger on me. Thankfully, he calmed down and told me not to ever mention the War again. I never dared ask him anything after that. 

My mother and I would occasionally drive to Toronto for Thanksgiving and Christmas to see my grandparents. My grandmother was the complete opposite of my grandfather. She taught me to cook and bake. The first thing she taught me to make was pancakes; however, when I needed to add more flour, I accidentally added a cup of sugar, and she did not correct me. Instead, she smiled and said I was doing it perfectly. After the pancakes were done, she was a good sport about eating one, even with all that sugar! She only admitted my mistake when I was much older. She said I seemed so happy to just be making pancakes with her that she didn’t have the heart to tell me the mishap I had made. Today, I still enjoy cooking and now I’m quite good at it. (I have since learned the difference between sugar and flour!) I think I owe my skills to her because she was patient and let me make mistakes. She didn’t call me stupid or yell at me like my mother would have done. She was always gentle with me, and I really loved her.

I think my mother tried her best, but she wasn’t the kind of person who exuded love. In fact, she was generally a cold person, a lot like my grandfather. She would never hug me or tell me she loved me. I have no memories of anything like that. Much later in life, she had two more children, both boys. It was obvious to me she loved them, but for some reason it just felt like she resented me. I always felt like she regretted having my oldest brother, myself and my younger sister. Perhaps she didn’t want anything to remind her of her past with our fathers. Maybe when she looked at all of us, that’s all she could see. Like a great many things, I will never know. I believe she keeps her feelings inside because of all she’s gone through. I don’t doubt that she cared for me a little, but she couldn’t even show that—I’m not sure she knew how. I know she had her hands full with work, her abusive husband, and the stress that comes with running a household, but she would never make an effort to come to any of my school functions or support or encourage me. She was also constantly critical of me, commenting on my appearance or being disappointed at my spelling or arithmetic. Mathematics was always my worst subject. One night, as she was trying to explain my homework to me at the kitchen table, but, of course I didn’t understand it, so she started yelling, calling me stupid, and threw my books in the oven. I felt like something was wrong with me as I sat there with tears streaming down my face. Even to this day, she criticizes me for the smallest thing, and at times, our relationship is strained. She never makes me feel good about myself. She “jokes” about me being fat if I want seconds at the table, even going as far as blowing up her cheeks with air, imitating a pig, and then laughing. If I go to the salon, she twists her face, looks at me, and says she doesn’t like the colour of my hair; it doesn’t suit my skin, and I look “washed out”. If I tell her about a conversation I had with someone, she tells me I said the wrong thing and that what she would have said would have been better. No matter what I do or share with her, I can’t win.

While I was under her roof, my mother’s behavior became increasingly erratic. I can’t really say what was going on with her at the time, because I don’t really know, and don’t remember, but she was under a lot of stress and pressure. On February 7th, 1974, she called family services, requesting that they remove my brother and me from her care for fear that she would harm us. My brother was five years old, and I was four. When the police arrived to investigate, they found my mother throwing my brother across the room into the wall. She refused to keep us. The police took us away immediately and placed us in a foster home. This would be the first time we were placed in foster care, but certainly not the last. In March, the Society received a three-month temporary wardship. However, my mother wasn’t charged with abuse and was granted day visits. When she saw us, she would take us to different places, and she said I was hard to handle during visits. After the temporary wardship, another two months of temporary wardship were granted with the understanding that my brother and I would return for a trial basis.

When we returned home, soon after, my older brother was sent away to live with my Aunt Rose, and her husband, for a while, but time just went on, and he just never returned. He went on to have a completely different life from mine, and as a result, I never reconnected with my brother, and over time, we simply grew apart. Even to this day, we rarely talk. I will say, I do know he’s struggling with his own demons just from brief phone conversations I’ve had with him. For most of our chats, he was extremely intoxicated. My Aunt Rose once told me, while we were doing dishes, that Robert had told her about some things that happened when he lived with mother and me. I asked her what he said, and very quietly she said, “I cannot tell you, but it wasn’t good”. I’ve never asked my brother about this or what he remembers. All I know is that when I’ve spoken to him on the phone, he’s been mean and sounds like he hates me. I wish it weren’t this way because I would like my brother back. I still remember the good times: the summer vacations at my aunt’s house with him, riding bikes, getting into poison ivy, and using calamine lotion to stop the itching. But those days no longer exist. I fear the next time we see each other again, it will likely be when one of us is in a casket.

My Aunt Rose shared several interesting things about the family because it was important to her that I have some knowledge of family history. She wrote to me by snail mail because she preferred it over email. It was more personal, she believed. And she’s right because I still have those cherished letters. I wrote her back every single time and I know that made her happy. After I received the last letter she sent, within days, she had MAID performed, which in Canada is a legal suicide assisted program the government offers. There was no phone call from her, letting me know that her appointment with death had arrived. She never shared with me what day it was booked for. I just knew she simply couldn’t take the pain anymore and didn’t want to live so doped up she didn’t know who she was. I also knew my uncle treated her like shit for years. He was a very strange man. He had some perverted fascination with grabbing men he knew in the crotch. He did this to my brother as well while growing up. I saw this behavior more than once when I would go for a summer vacation. For the most part, my aunt just would turn a blind eye to his bullshit. I think she did that so she didn’t have to admit her marriage to him was complete fiasco. As sick as she was in her final days, he wouldn’t even sit with her or comfort her when she was bedridden and screaming the entire house down in pain. He sat in a different room, ignoring her. When her last birthday came around, he didn’t even get her flowers or her favorite cake. Instead, he gave her a birthday card that wished her “many more”, knowing this birthday was her final one. What an asshole! Sometimes he would leave and go to the golf course to play around. When she phoned me and told me what he had done, my heart broke for her. She was so hurt that she said she just wanted to die. If there’s something I can relate to, it’s disappointment, hurt, and feeling alone. They were married for 50 years, and in the end, he just wanted to get rid of her. For her birthday, I made sure to send a stunning bouquet of purple flowers with baby’s breath and a letter thanking her for the beautiful summers while growing up. I made sure I was very specific in my letter to her, so she knew what it all meant to me. I wanted her to know I was paying attention to all the times we shared. I reminded her of our wilderness walks, picking wild blueberries at a gigantic hill, all the town folk would call Webs Hill. It was named that because the family who lived in the huge house beside the hill had the last name Webster. It was a massive hill that took many hours to explore.

On long weekends, the much older kids would have bonfires and drink lots of alcohol on that hill, which meant the next day, my aunt would let me pull a wagon so I could collect all the empties and cash them in at the local store to buy candy. Other days, my aunt and I would walk to a natural spring water well, and we would bring a plastic cup so we would share a cup. I believed it was magical water because that’s the story she sold to my little ears. My aunt also taught me how to work in a garden, planting and retrieving the goods. When she was canning in the kitchen, she made sure I was paying attention, going over every detail as I stood on the chair so I could see the whole process. She said I needed to know how to take care of myself in case there was another war. Sometimes we would pick apples from her trees and make pies, other days she showed me how to hang laundry outside after my chores.

When she checked on my chores, I would follow beside her. She always made it fun, running her finger across surfaces, seemingly amazed at my skill, saying things like “wow” and “I couldn’t have done it better myself”. She always made sure to compliment me. After that, we would walk down to the beach, swim and eat our packed lunch. I loved swimming, and I stayed in the bay until my lips turned blue. We stayed for hours, sometimes walking back home on the railroad tracks. She would tell me the name of every flower and bird that flew by. My Aunt Rose made everything we did seem special. And it was.

It was tough being abandoned by my father and losing my brother. My early years were filled with loneliness. I wondered if I had done something wrong or if there was another reason my brother or my father didn’t care about me. Of course, now I realize that my brother probably had the same feelings, but as a little girl, I didn’t understand why we had to live separately. I, however, hold no such grace for my father, who made a conscious choice every day to stay away. That’s what I had learned to believe.

One day, my mother phoned me up and told me that my father, who was fifteen years older than my mother, was dead. I had learned to question everything my mother said, so I began to press her. She admitted that nobody from my father’s side had told her.

“So how do you know he is dead?”

She just deflected the question.

“Under what circumstances had he died?”

Again, she didn’t know.

As usual, she didn’t say anything when I called her out on it. I do know I have a half-brother and sister living somewhere in Montreal, because my Aunt Rose told me, but I have never spoken to them. I don’t even have the slightest idea how to find them. I assume they speak French, I do not. Even if somehow we found each other, I wouldn’t know what to say to them. We wouldn’t have anything in common.

My aunt also told me there was a book written about our family. It was written a very long time ago, before I was born. I got excited when she told me this because I wanted to learn more about our family, but she laughed when I asked. She told me everything that was written was complete and utter bullshit. She said her aunt, who wrote it, was crazy and made everything up, and that it was written in French. Unfortunately, my aunt couldn’t remember the name of the book, so I have no way of locating it.

 In 1978, my mother and stepfather had a daughter. I was eight years old at the time. I thought perhaps that my stepfather might be too preoccupied with his daughter to pay much attention to me, but I was wrong. He was just as mean and cruel as before, and I continued to suffer at my stepfather’s hands, emotionally, physically, and sexually. The only difference was, perhaps, that my mother was more distant and absent than before as she tried to care for her newborn. I never got to know my younger sister very well, and still, we only see each other once in a blue moon.

            Life went on for a while with my abusive stepfather until my mother eventually kicked him out in 1979. I tend to believe that Children’s Aid helped my mother reach that decision. Not surprisingly, my behavior instantly improved with him out of the house—although I’m not sure my mother noticed. She was too preoccupied. This reprieve didn’t last long, however. Soon after, Richard still managed to hang around the four-plex we were renting, a menacing presence that wouldn’t go away. I can recall a day I was sitting at the kitchen table, and he stepped up on a chair in order to reach the ceiling. With the lighter, he was burning black circles on the ceiling. After about ten circles were made, he stepped off the chair and looked up, admiring what he had done. He asked me how it looked. I didn’t say anything. Being the nut that he was, he told me he thought it looked cool, and that if the entire ceiling was done, it would be amazing. Sometimes, my mother – I guess not having any other option – would drop me off with my stepfather so he could watch me as she went to work or did errands. It was terrifying being alone with him in his basement suite, being at his mercy. There, he would continue to molest me, threatening me if I said anything to my mother. It was a never-ending story with him. I was starting to feel very angry inside and I would continue to act out.

During one of the visits to his basement suite, he got into yet another screaming fight with my mother. My mother tried to get away, but he was too big and powerful, and ended up shoving her into the bathroom, where he threw a dead bird at her before slamming the door shut. I don’t recall how he got the bird—whether he found it in the yard somewhere, or he had caught it in his hand and killed it. (I wouldn’t put it past him to have killed the bird himself). But regardless, that scene stuck with me as menacing, something only a psychotic killer would do—Hannibal Lecter’s origin story or something along those lines.

When I was in elementary school, I became increasingly agitated and even occasionally violent. I had held on to my feelings for so long—those years of abuse and neglect were taking their toll on me, and I couldn’t hold them in any longer. At home, violence and screaming were what I knew, and if I wasn’t getting yelled at, I was just ignored. I didn’t know which one was worse. I just remember often wishing I had a father, a real one, a nice one.

Many years later, when I was thirty-six, I finally got the courage to request my records from the government. But even after the file arrived, I held onto the brown envelope for three more years before opening it. I wasn’t sure if I should read it, and I don’t know if I would feel better after reading it. I remember some things mentioned in the file, but not all of them. It was sad for me to know, as a little girl, I would approach strange men and ask them if they were my father. I don’t remember doing that, but I’m not surprised.

In 1980, I was 10 years old. At school, I was awkward and didn’t have many friends. As a little girl, I felt very alone. But at the end of the week, I would walk down to play at Sunday School, which I enjoyed because I got to play with other kids, and it got me out of the house.

I remember one Sunday in particular. I came home from Sunday school, and I guess my room wasn’t clean enough. That was all it took for my mother to burst into another fit of rage. My mother beat the shit out of me. I collapsed to the floor, not even trying to defend myself. I didn’t cry. I didn’t move. I just lay there, totally numb to the whole experience as my mother brought her fists down on me. While she hit me, she started to mock me and yelled, “Where’s your God now?”

Some time and perspective helped me understand why my mother was the way she was. Her own upbringing was incredibly difficult, as I have mentioned, which made her cold and standoffish. Perhaps my grandmother was too afraid to say anything to my grandfather when he beat my mother. When I became a mother, I found it very difficult to think that a mother wouldn’t do anything to protect their children. I do know that the way my grandfather’s physical abuse has a lot to do with what my mother became and how she herself struggled with her own anger issues. When she was growing up, nobody really said anything about parents leaving bruises on their kids. It was simply the way it was. At times, when she has shared what she went through with her father, I could see how hurt she was. Her voice trembled, and her eyes watered. She has never forgiven him. To compound that, she was a single mother in a time when it was looked down upon and having to constantly work and provide took an emotional toll. She had no one to talk to and certainly no one whom she could rely on.

I remember another time, something set my mother off again. I don’t remember what it was – perhaps it wasn’t anything at all – but she came at me with a thick wooden soup spoon when I entered the apartment. She swung it hard, and when she hit my leg, the spoon cracked. I remember the thud more than the pain—the shocking sound of wood meeting flesh. There were many times she would hit me for insignificant reasons, and after numerous assaults from her, I was so sad about my life, I no longer cared and just lay there not moving or screaming anymore when she would hit me. She often hit me until she lost her breath.

When she finally walked away, the mark on my leg was deep purple, almost black. It covered most of the top part of my leg, from knee to hip.  Days passed, and the color changed to dark shades of green and yellow, but it never fully disappeared. In fact, I still have the bruise from it to this day. If I look closely, I can still see a faint shadow of it.

At school, some of the teachers noticed that I often showed up with bruises. Once they contacted the authorities, who spoke with my mother. My mother initially told them I had a “blood problem”, which resulted in me bruising easily. My family doctor initially backed my mother up, so the authorities dropped the investigation, but later, my doctor admitted that the bruising would have required being hit with significant force. I’m not sure why my doctor went along with my mother’s story, only that it was a different time, when what happened at home was kept private. On another occasion, I was catching salamanders by the river, and I went through thick brush to get home. I was so excited I had caught a few, and wanted to show them to my mother, but when I got home, she saw my hair, which really pissed her off. She screamed at me, dragged me to the kitchen, and violently yanked my head every which way. She then reached for a dull pair of scissors and chopped off my beautiful, long hair. I didn’t realize I had accidentally gotten burrs in my hair. I don’t know if Child Services did a home visit after that, but I do know that for a short time, my mother’s new favorite punishment for me was to stand facing the wall, with toes and nose touching the wall, while my arms were raised straight up, over my head for an hour. It was definitely painful to stand like that. For the entire hour, she would belittle me by telling me I was good for nothing. Standing like that one time was my punishment for wearing my “special coat” to school. It was supposed to be worn only for certain occasions, but when my mother wasn’t looking, I snuck out of the house and went to school in it. I was just excited to have a new coat, and I really wanted to wear it. The other kids at school always had nice clothes, and I wanted to look pretty too. I believed she would never find out, but that day at school when the bell rang, everybody lined up in a single file, waiting for the teacher to open the door. Just my luck, the local news station showed up and filmed all of us as we entered the school. That evening, just past 6 p.m., I heard my mother scream a swear word as she watched the news, obviously seeing me on TV, standing in line with my “special coat”.

One day, a neighborhood kid suggested we all play spin-the-bottle. There were about 5-6 of us who used to play together often. The game was played at my house because my mother was at work and would be gone for a while. But that’s not what happened. So here we were, everyone in the living room sitting on the carpet, when we all heard the knob on the front door turn and the sound of someone entering. It was my mother. We all ran into the bathroom to hide. While I was in there, I could hear my mother, clear as day, yell, “What the fuck?” when she entered the living room. She was obviously wondering why clothes were scattered all over the floor. She opened the bathroom door to find all of us hiding, half-dressed. We were all pretty young and didn’t understand that the game we were playing was for adults. We didn’t even know about kissing, let alone hanky-panky. We just laughed when the bottle stopped spinning. All we knew was that it was hilarious when someone had to take a sock or shirt off. But my mother seriously lost her shit. I never saw my friends run so fast out the front door! When they were gone, she swore up and down that I was grounded for eternity.

Sometimes my mother would sit outside with the lady next door, named Cindy, blabbing about all I had done and how I was nothing but trouble. I would be indoors but I could hear what they were saying. My mother was good at making me feel awful about myself.

 During that year, a file was opened again because my mother told Children’s Aid that I had behavioral problems. My mother told them I was very distraught, upset, and angry with her because I had no father. My teacher described me as having very little self-control and would often get into fist fights with other students if they made fun of my family. I don’t remember much of this, but it was in my file, so I suppose some of what was written was true. The other kids all had mothers and fathers at home, as well as siblings. Later that year, my mother kicked me out, and for a short time, I was placed into foster care again.

Sometimes she would speak to the case worker and admit she had often hit me for insignificant reasons, but nothing happened to her when she admitted that. By the end of the year, I returned home again. At that time, my Aunt Rose, who was still raising my brother, offered to raise me too, but my mother said no. By God, I wished my mother had said yes. I think we would have both been better off if I had gone to live with my Aunt Rose.

In 1981, my mother left me with Cindy’s son, who was supposed to babysit me. I can’t remember where my mother went that night; maybe she just didn’t want to be around me. Steven must have been about fourteen or fifteen at the time. He was supposed to watch me, make sure I was safe. But instead, after I had gone to bed, he crept into my room. I could see his big shadow in the darkness as he slowly came closer. He sat on the edge of the bed, slipped his hands under the covers and into my pyjama bottoms. I was too frightened to move, so I just lay there, hoping that he would stop. I didn’t understand why Steven had his hand down my pants, but I knew it was wrong.

The next day, I told my mother. My mother didn’t say anything to me at the time. She got up from the table, picked up the phone on the wall and called Cindy and Steven over. I froze. What was going on? Why was my mother doing this? She was supposed to protect me, but here she was forcing me to face my abuser. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Cindy knocked softly on the door. My mother rose from the chair to answer it. Cindy entered, and Steven came in behind her. My mother made us all sit down around the table. I sat there, confused, scared, and embarrassed, staring at the linoleum floor. I couldn’t look Steven in the eyes.

My mother crossed her arms and leaned back. “Say it,” she said coldly. “Say in front of them, what you told me.”

I tried, but I couldn’t. My throat closed up and my eyes stung. I didn’t speak a word. That silence, my fear, was taken as evidence that I was lying. I wanted to turn to my mother… To ask her why she was doing this? Why was she putting me through this torture?

I think my mother told Cindy and Steven what I had told her. I’m not sure, because it is all a blur. My mother and Cindy then rose to their feet and started to yell at me.

“You fucking liar! How dare you make up such stories!”

I wanted to disappear into that chair, to sink through the floor and vanish. Neither of them even bothered to ask Steven one question about what I had said.

After Cindy and Steven left, I went to my room, where I burst into tears. I felt like I had been violated twice: once by Steven, but just as bad was the betrayal by my own mother, who refused to believe me, but, at the same time, my mother allowed Cindy to belittle me, which has been something I’ve never forgotten. I don’t know why I expected my mother to come to my defense. I should never have thought it would ever change with her. I regretted saying anything, and my mother hated me for speaking up. And, still to this day, when I have spoken to my mother in random phone calls, she actually has the audacity to give me an update on Steven’s life and how he’s doing great and married with a little girl of his own. It made me sick to my stomach hearing about him. Sometimes I wonder if she says things just to hurt me.

                After that day, I never told my mother anything of consequence until I was an adult. I decided it was better to suffer in silence than endure that humiliation again. If someone could have peeked inside of me, they would have seen a lost child screaming for help. Sometimes, especially when you are younger, it’s the silence that sinks in—the kind that tells you your voice doesn’t matter. I never ever thought about telling her about the abuse I suffered at the hands of my stepfather. I didn’t think it would go over well for me if I did. The relationship between my mother and me got worse, and I began to suffer from a nervous condition, which manifested itself in a quickly spreading rash that would itch in stressful situations. Things got progressively worse, and I began running away, and before the end of the year, I was placed in foster care.