Are You My Father?

by Margo Walter

  ***

  Doctors came and went out of the new house. Business associates met, discussed, and made decisions. And there were the hospitals. My stepfather had two major operations, chemotherapy, seizures, and physical therapy. It all happened, and most of the time, I felt like a spectator looking in. I hovered like a seagull watching from above and witnessed all the chaos. I do remember those moments vividly, and if I shut my eyes, the events unfold over and over again.

  One very rainy afternoon in that rental house, which we were supposed to call home, I purposefully hid in the bathroom not far from my stepfather’s bed. I tried to eavesdrop on what his friend, Dr. Hartman, was telling him, and I heard, “It won’t be long now, Al.” I forgot his name was Al. In fact, rarely did my mother call him anything. I did not call him Dad since I found out he was my stepfather. Maybe I should have called him Al. Whatever! The doctor just told him that he did not have to wait much longer. What did that mean? I found out three years later, on the anniversary of his death. My stepfather went in and out of hospice four times. Finally, his doctor friend gave him enough morphine to put him to sleep permanently. Now-a-days they call it a “mercy-killing” or “suicide assistance.” At the time it did not seem right. No one criticized the decision or objected to its execution.

  ***

  After our family converted to Catholicism, there were some major changes which continued after our move away from the beach house. There were no choices, no options, when it came to my future. I was forced into the parochial school, left my friends at public school, and embraced all the new changes as best as I could.

  My two years at the local parochial school were a total immersion into Catholicism, and I learned that some people do have strict routines and often, there was no flexibility. Every morning my classmates met in the chapel to participate in morning prayers before class began. Every Wednesday there was a full mass before going to our classroom. Saturday mornings were reserved for catechism, sort of the Catholic Sunday School. Part of me embraced these expectations because there were not any routines in our chaotic family. There was no school bus, which meant one of my parents would have to drive me to and from school. My stepfather usually took the morning shuttle, and my mother would pick me up at the end of the day. The rides to school were typically quiet, and my mother was episodically late for pickups. I continued to do well scholastically and did enjoy all the fanfare of First Communion, May Day, and the other religious holidays.

  ***

  “Hold on to your bootstraps, Janet, things are really going to hit the fan.”

  “It is best for you if you get out of the family for awhile, Janet, and I cannot really handle you the way things are.” My mother was preparing me for the near future, and I did not see it. She was talking about sending me away, far away. “What did I do to deserve this? Being a tween is not always easy, but am I that bad?”

  Fast forward to eighth grade and the Catholic boarding school where I would live for the next year. It is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, near Asheville, North Carolina, about an eight-hour drive from our home.

  I hated it. Being the perfectionist that life demanded, I received two distinguished awards from that school that indeed indicated an internal conflict. I was given a trophy for the highest grade average in religious studies and a certificate for getting the most demerits any student had ever acquired. The habit of running away was present in boarding school, and quite compulsively, I would leave the school grounds and walk to the nearest town of Asheville. It was unquestionably an excellent way to accumulate demerits and be grounded in detention during any free or play times.

  It was during the fall term when the leaves were on the ground, and there was a cold front that moved us indoors. With a group of girls, I was watching the infamous parade on television when John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in broad daylight. The entire tragedy was broadcast live, and everyone sat in horror as the future of the country changed forever. My classmates were crying, and I felt like crying. Almost everyone remembers where they were the moment that assassination took place. It was three days before my birthday, and I still feel guilty for thinking that the timing was bad, as it would make people sad on my birthday. Being entirely self-centered, like most young teens, the question was how could it happen on that particular weekend? No one would want to sing a birthday song, and the total focus would be on the President of the United States and not me. However, it was Christmas of that year that propelled me into a new road to life.

  ***

  The table was set for seven. There were cloth napkins on the table and seven cereal bowls. I sat down and began to pour my muesli wondering if I should wait for everyone else to sit down. Edward started eating. This was supposed to be my stepfather’s last Christmas (dying from cancer), which was why everyone was at the table.

  I was sent an airline ticket at my boarding school in North Carolina, and Mother Superior took me to the airport. Her words of wisdom were to pray, and everything would work out as God was the director. I had no idea what she was talking about. I flew down to Key West by myself to meet the rest of the family. It was my first flight, and it was terrifying. Children traveling alone on airplanes are treated very nicely, which made the trip seem a little like an adventure. I got to meet the pilot, got a unique airline pin, and sat right up front near the cabin. I just did not realize what the destination would look like. My boarding school experience for the past five months had been stormy, to say the least. The trip would be a piece of cake and definitely a vacation for me, or so I thought. I needed a break from the controlling nuns, and they certainly needed a break from me. As I was on my flight, I remembered my last caper at boarding school. I had always wondered if the nuns shaved their heads. It had been rumored that there was not one hair on the sisters’ heads. On a routine Friday night my roommate and I noticed a large cardboard box in the hallway right down from Sister Monica’s bedroom. We decided to cut peepholes in the cardboard, hide in the box for the night, and witness firsthand the nun going to the bathroom without her habit. Two surprises! Sister Monica had a head full of hair, and she knew we were there the entire evening. More demerits.

  ***

  Back to the “last” Christmas. My mother had called this family gathering to stay at a rented house on the water somewhere in the Florida Keys. It had a dock, a boat, and a gorgeous view of the open sea. You could see fishing trawlers on the horizon and large yachts with extended outriggers and hanging nets. The holiday visit included the guest of honor, my stepfather, his first wife, Mrs. Williams #1, and a daughter, Cynthia, by his first marriage. She was the same age as me. All our immediate family was in attendance. Two Mrs. Williams? This certainly made for an exciting breakfast.

  Mrs. Williams #1 sat down and placed a handgun, a real loaded gun, above her coffee cup. Nobody said anything. The revolver looked like something on the TV show Lone Ranger. I found out later that she just liked to have it at all meals and she took it back to her bedroom during the day and night. Was she going to kill us or was she that paranoid? I did find out after that pilgrimage that she had some “issues” that caused her behavior. And who doesn’t?

  My stepfather’s other daughter, older than me by two weeks, is everything that I am not. Cynthia is two feet taller (slight exaggeration), has perfect skin, perfect teeth, and is very artistic with her watercolors and oil paints. She has not a humorous bone in her body and enjoys anything inactive, like reading or sleeping. Mrs. Williams #1 had obviously had a role with this teen who needed severe revision. I could not stand her even before she said “hello.” I had to find a way to avoid her for the next four weeks that everyone spent together waiting for the stepfather to die.

  Finding an escape from that crazy family reunion was difficult. My older brother came to the rescue. He liked to take the boat out and go fishing. I tagged along and not only learned about boats and fishing but also bonded with my older brother
in a unique way that was not conditional on anything or anyone.

  ***

  It was not the last Christmas “goodbye” that it was supposed to be because my stepfather lived another eighteen months. After returning to boarding school, things went from bad to worse for me. I had discovered boys but was too fat and too ugly to do anything about it. Besides, it was an all-girls school. I waited for the telephone call from my mother that my stepfather had died. There were very few phone calls from home, and most were to remind me that the school was costly, so I had better do better and shape up. I was shaping up by getting fatter and fatter, bordering on obesity. Eating was a way to get comfort, feel good, and be sociable. There was no beach, no sand dunes and it was not a place where you learned to spread your wings and fly. The weight gain was judged as disgusting by my mother who was totally immersed in her husband’s illness. Being fat and being obsessed with body image would be an issue for the rest of my journey through life.

  ***

  Al’s cancer ate away slowly at his brain, and some major decisions were made which affected everybody in the family. He requested to die at home, so our house became a morgue. There was no TV, no radio, and no family. I came home from a Catholic boarding school, and the doctors continued to come and go, stay, and leave.

  ***

  I might have forgotten to tell you about my first Sunday School before Catholicism. That being a critical point in my life, I want you to see the course that my spiritual road followed. Before my forced conversion to be Catholic, I would go with the Pierces every Sunday and attend their Presbyterian Church. It was another outing that I looked forward to because I could get dressed up and be with my favorite family, my only functional family. I did own a few frilly dresses, and fancy pointed shiny black shoes that were uncomfortable to wear. I would have preferred jeans and a T-shirt, but no one was asking me. It did not matter, and every Sunday I anticipated a car horn blowing for me to join the back seat of my best friend’s station wagon. I really did not know how to pray and would just pretend that pointing my fingers up to the church ceiling meant something.

  However, with the onset of cancer, it was my stepfather who had a spiritual awakening. Everything changed. Now we were expected to go to church every Sunday, as a family. I was given no choice in the matter. I did make friends with a few of the nuns that first year, which was opposite to what my future boarding school experience would be. In fact, in sixth grade, I decided it would be cool to become a nun, somebody’s sister. This fantasy lasted that entire year. The family was totally engulfed in the Catholic rituals, rules, and routines. I already mentioned my First Communion, and it did get lots of attention. My parents took us all out to lunch at the local diner after the ceremony. We sat up on stools, and I remember spinning my stool and laughing. I do not know what was funny, but everyone was laughing. I wish that day could have gone on forever.

  During my three years in a parochial school, I continued to excel academically, but I know why. It was expected, and I still had that unrealistic goal to be perfect. Getting good grades was one way to continue to get approval, to get attention, and to manipulate the rules. In fact, I never got less than an “A” until graduate school. My college “B” occurred when I was hospitalized, and I sent my daughter to tape the classes that I could not attend. My default mode was “it’s always someone else’s fault.”

  My spiritual journey continued through Catholic school, and I seriously considered wearing the “habit” as a great way to hide from life. I even went with the nuns to a retreat in Richmond. Tables exhibited all the different religious orders you could join, and some were even cloistered. What a great word and a fascinating concept! This idea would pass.

  ***

  How a family handles death is quite impressive. It seems the more dysfunctional a family is with living issues, the more dysfunctional that family will be with dying issues, such as last rites, funerals, grief, monetary estates, and secrets. My stepfather was murdered or was the beneficiary of mercy killing.

  Bedridden after his second brain tumor surgery, he begged my mother to put him out of his misery. She could not or would not do it. He slipped in and out of coma for several days, and finally the doctor, who happened to be a friend of the family, gave him a fatal shot of morphine. It was finally over. I was shipped off to the beach for the day. My mother asked a friend to drive me to the beach where I grew up and just leave me there until she could pick me up. The Pierces were out of town, and it was very lonely. My best buddy, Duke, had died, so I walked the beach and sat alone in the dunes most of the afternoon. The July sun was unusually warm that day, and there was nothing to drink. This was poor planning by my mother or whoever was in charge. Before the final morphine shot, everyone was given a turn to say goodbye and told to give him a kiss. I felt like I was kissing a total stranger, but I wanted to be there when he died. After all, he was the only father that I had ever known. He was not my “real” father, and maybe that is why mother did not want me around. In any case, as I was walking along the surf, I actually looked at the ocean and asked God to make things better. I had no idea who God was, but I needed help, and I wanted to believe in someone. In fact, it was that day that the family roles changed forever.

  ***

  Hunter and Lynn have hardly been mentioned, but they were my younger brother and sister. Correction! My half brother and half sister. Since they were raised and cared for by the housekeeper, Carrie, and quite a bit younger than me, those two were not really a part of my life until the sexual abuse started. I began finding ways to make sure they were never alone with Johnny. To this day I feel incredibly guilty for not telling someone what was going on in the basement. Carrie knew, and she tried to shield the children and protect them, but Johnny’s alcoholism got the best of her too. When we moved away from the beach, Johnny and Carrie did not move with us, and that was a good thing and a bad thing. Carrie was the only “mother,” except for Mrs. Pierce, that I had ever had. I missed her. She was loving, caring, and did the best she could with two raving alcoholics in the same house, the madam of the house in complete denial, and the kids trying to raise themselves. One time, when I did try to tell my mother what was going on, she laughed and told me I always did have a good imagination. “Go make your bed!”

  What were the consequences of this abuse on my younger sister and brother? There are many books on this subject, but their futures were undoubtedly affected. Lynn would never be able to trust or associate with any person of color. All the counseling, hypnosis, and psychiatric treatment did not change this reaction or help her to face the fears of her childhood.

  Hunter was an entirely different story. By age eighteen, he was hooked up with Scientology. Kidnapping him and doing systematic deprogramming did not pull him away from his new life, which was founded by Ron Hubbard. Financial ruin, a failed marriage, and the inability to stay in college were part of his adolescence and young adult history. Hunter left our family and never looked back. He had little or no relationship with our mother and had little interaction with his father. Can childhood abuse cause these reactions? Absolutely. I witnessed it firsthand.

  ***

  Let’s go back to my adolescence. When I enquired about my stepfather’s funeral, there were no tears, nor a sad face. I had discovered, on my own, that my stepfather was not a liar, nor a bad person. He was an extremely sick man, psychologically, emotionally, and physically. Years later, I would learn that alcoholism is a disease of the brain which has no cure and affects the entire family. Overnight, after he died, I became the de facto parent in the family and was given the responsibility at age thirteen of keeping Hunter and Lynn safe, happy, and out of trouble. It was a tall order. How do you learn to fly in one night?

  I had never seen a dead person before. There were lots of people at the funeral, and most of them were complete strangers, except for the Pierces without their kids. I knew a couple of my stepfather’s business associates. H
e looked like a wax figure in a museum, except he was lying down and was cold as an ice cube. How do I know? I touched his forehead. Not many people knew that he had on a wig, but I kept that information to myself. I was worried that someone might lift it and mess it up. My job, as always, was to take care of Hunter and Lynn. “Don’t let them go to the funeral!” was my plea to my mother. They were only eight and six years old, respectively, and asked too many questions that I could not answer. Hunter wanted to touch his father, and Lynn was afraid to go anywhere near the casket. Lynn was crying, afraid to even look at what was going to happen next. That made it very tricky. I had to stretch my hands in opposite directions, so everyone stayed happy. It was a funeral, and yet, the family rule was to remain happy.

  ***

  Significant change marked the next five years. I lived in five different houses in Virginia, Florida, and finally Switzerland. My mother was trying the geographical cure, looking for men and love in all the new or all the wrong places. Since she always took “her” with her, there were no new long-term personal commitments for my mother or the family. Actually, things got worse for me. As they say, it is not the destination but the journey along the way that deserves attention.

  We stayed in that depressing rental home for two years. Not only was it not on the beach, but it sat on a wooded lot with so many trees that the sun never reached the house or the yard. It had dead vines growing on several sides of the house, and it was the place where he died. No sunlight outside and lots of unpacked boxes inside. Fortunately, my mother was building a new home on the river and we just had to wait for completion. By ninth grade we had moved into the new house and were working on a new start for our family.