Fear of Our Father

by Stacey Kananen

  Mom worked Monday through Friday, while he stayed home. Her presence certainly didn’t prevent him from doing whatever he wanted, but her absence made him more bold in lording his power over us kids, especially the sexual abuse, which he did behind closed doors—even if that closed door meant locking Mom out of the house while he had his way with whichever of us was unlucky enough to strike his fancy that day. No school meant he had all day to play his cat and mouse games, and we had no break all summer from his sadistic abuse until school began again in the fall.

  That gorgeous afternoon, just before my seventh birthday, Cheryl and I climbed into our father’s pickup truck when he ordered us to get in and sit down. We sat quietly as he drove to the public shoreline area of Lake Hebron.

  It wasn’t a beach as much as a pleasant, grassy break in the trees that hugged the shoreline all the way around the lake. There was no pier, just a small patch of sand at the water’s edge. Locals could drive their boats to the shore of the lake and launch from there, and picnickers would throw down their blankets on the grass and swim in the crystal clear water. About thirty feet from shore was a floating deck that experienced swimmers would use as a diving platform into water that was deep enough to be safe for diving, but not so deep that they couldn’t see the bottom.

  Father backed his truck up to the shore and curtly ordered us out. His bad back didn’t stop him from heaving the fishing boat from the back of the truck and into the water. The three of us climbed in, no one saying a word. He started the little outboard motor and steered his way to the diving platform, where he told Cheryl and me to get out. Neither of us knew how to swim, so we were very careful climbing out of the wobbly boat as we silently made our way up onto the deck. Cheryl, who was bigger than me, got out first and helped me to clamber out of the boat, up the ladder and onto the searing hot wooden platform.

  Not daring to dance our burning feet off of the hot deck, we watched, confused, as our father turned the boat around and headed back toward shore. We had no idea what was happening, and we had no reason to trust him, so fear began to set in. He shouted back to us, over the noise of the motor, “If you want to come home, make your way to shore. You’re either going to swim or you’re going to starve. Or you’re going to drown if you can’t make it.”

  Cheryl and I sat at the edge of the platform for a long while, as he waited in the truck drinking a beer and smoking a cigar, until we realized he really wasn’t coming back for us. We knew it was either sink or swim, and we had to get to shore before he left us there and went home. We knew he’d do it, too, if we took too long. Plus, we were only wearing shorts and Tshirts, and the Maine nights were cold, even in the summertime. We knew we’d end up sleeping out there, because he wouldn’t tell Mom where we were and we didn’t dare to ask anyone else for help. To ask for help, to draw attention … well, even at our tender ages, we knew better than to do that.

  We finally climbed cautiously into the cool water, clutching the ladder, hearts pounding and filled with dread—seeing the bottom far, far away—and pushed off from the deck, instinct kicking in with a furious natural impulse to dog-paddle. We learned quickly, after a few slips of our heads below the surface, how it burns to inhale water. That pain spurred us forward, our little arms and legs churning away. Cheryl would sometimes get ahead of me, but when she noticed that there was too great a distance, she would roll over on her back and float, waiting for me to catch up. She had learned that trick from watching Mom swim: when you get tired, turn over and float.

  It was a long, arduous struggle toward shore. It felt like miles away—our lungs stinging and sides aching, sheer panic moving us forward—but we eventually made our exhausted way back to the truck, only to find our father was furious.

  It was chillingly clear to me that he had been hoping we wouldn’t make it. He was mad that we were still alive! Yes, two fewer mouths to feed would sound appealing to him, and he could always say that he was trying to teach us to swim and we accidentally drowned. But did he really hate us so much that he wanted us dead?

  He hauled the boat back into the bed of the truck and slammed the door behind us after we climbed into the cab. All he said was, “Shut up. Don’t talk,” and when we got home, he simply barked, “Change your clothes.”

  Up until this event, my response to his behavior was usually fear. But it was this day, at the tender age of six, that I felt a shift. I remember feeling, for the first time, reciprocal anger and hatred for my father, and a stubborn refusal to die—a child’s equivalent of “Fuck you!” to the man who demanded obedience simply because he was bigger. “Fuck you, you can’t kill me. No matter what you throw at me, fuck you, I’m going to live.”

  By this time, he had already been tearing me apart with his sexual abuse for almost three years. The first time was on my fourth birthday, in 1970. My father sat me on his lap and introduced me to sips of beer. Then after I was drunk, he began the first in a series of cruel attacks that would continue until his disappearance and death eighteen years later, in 1988.

  There are some men who violate children by pretending it’s a game, a “fun, little secret” that they keep with their “special friends.” They rationalize it by telling themselves that they love children. There was none of that with my father.

  His attacks were brutal and painful. He wasn’t in it for the closeness, as inappropriate as even that may be. This wasn’t sex; it was violence that just happened to involve body parts that are supposed to correspond with sex. He made it clear that he owned us kids and our bodies, and whatever he wanted to do to us, no matter how excruciating, was to be tolerated and not argued with. There is no easy way to say this, but at this point he wasn’t yet raping me by entering me with his penis. He was using objects, tools, whatever was handy. “Getting me ready,” is what he called it. Ready for what, I wouldn’t know until we moved to Arkansas.

  It’s events like this that make forgiveness next to impossible. I hesitate to even tell these details because I do not wish for any of these stories to be even mildly sexual in tone, or to give anyone ideas. I do not wish for pedophiles or child molesters to read what I went through and experience even the slightest bit of arousal. This was not sex and it was by no means consensual. This was torture and there is no excuse for it, no matter how they wish to rationalize their behavior. The only glimmer of possible understanding that I can feel is to realize that a huge number of child abusers were once abused themselves, and are trying to make their experience okay by inflicting it upon someone else. They wish to release the horror of their own abuse by passing it on. All I can say is, I pray that anyone who feels the urge to do such terrible things to a child seeks and finds help before they act on those devastating and irreversibly damaging urges.

  I realize now that, as we kids were being owned and physically damaged, so were our psyches. We were taught that we were nothing but playthings to a sadist. By attacking us internally, in the guise of sexual behavior, he was reaching the core of our deepest sense of self, teaching us from the inside out that our humanity was nonexistent to him and, therefore, to us. As tiny, defenseless beings, all we could do while this giant man wielded his terrifying attacks upon us was to lie there and take the searing pain, and try not to cry or scream. To react in this way, the way the human body automatically and naturally responds to torture, only fed his creepy frenzy and made it hurt more.

  I wasn’t my father’s only prey. Rickie testified at my trial that he, too, was subject to our father’s sexual abuse. I believe him because more than once I saw my father coming out of Rickie’s bedroom fastening his pants, a move I recognized and understood.

  Cheryl would state under oath that her memories ended with being led into the bedroom and the door closing behind her—her psyche would allow her no further recollection of what may have happened to her after the door was closed. I, however, remember seeing my father fondling my older sister. Beyond that, I cannot say what happened to Cheryl behind those closed doors, and I respect her privacy eno
ugh to not speculate on her experiences with him. I can only assume they were similar to mine. We never talked about it, growing up, and once he was gone, we put our past behind us and didn’t bring it up.

  It was toward the end of our time in Monson that the family home went up in flames. I have only vague memories of the event, but Mom told me later that all of the family photos that existed, up to that point, burned with the house. Rickie was already in his late teens by this time. He testified at my trial that our father had set our house in Monson on fire and left us kids inside to die. His implication was that our father lit the house ablaze not just for insurance money, but to rid himself of his burdens. Rickie said on the witness stand, in a dull and unaffected voice, that he was the one who saved us girls. He’s the one who climbed a ladder, broke the windows, and helped us escape. He said that when he looked to see our parents sitting in the family car, watching, he saw Mom laughing.

  Cheryl also testified with her memories of that same story, but with one big difference. Cheryl remembers our parents having a fight, and Mom being severely beaten. She recalls looking out the window of the burning house and seeing our mother in the car, screaming.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Minnesota Years

  After we left Maine in the summer of 1974, we moved to Clarissa, Minnesota. My father loved not having neighbors nearby who might decide to interfere in his activities. We lived four miles from town on a ten-acre farm. That was distance enough to keep us isolated.

  We got there the summer before I started third grade, and the abuse escalated. Both my mom and brother had jobs, since Rickie had just graduated high school in Maine. He had his room, we had our room, and I don’t remember him ever, ever, being down in the living room watching TV with the family. He always went to his room as soon as he got home. He just stayed to himself.

  Cheryl and I were home during the day with my father, so we suffered the majority of his sadistic treatment. My sister, clever thing that she was, made friends quickly and was frequently able to finagle weeklong visits away from home, which left me alone. Oddly, I didn’t hold it against her, leaving me with him like that. We all sort of fended for ourselves, although even at six years old I was always concerned about protecting my mother. I took many beatings for her, over the years—as I’m sure Rickie and Cheryl did, too—and even antagonized a few to protect her. Maybe we all instinctively knew that if he killed Mom, we would be left alone with him and—even though she didn’t protect us—she was a layer of insulation between us and him. As long as she was alive, we stood a chance. Without her, we’d be dead. I always felt responsible for what was happening to my mom because my father often said I was the accident child: if I wasn’t born, they might have been divorced. Whether that was true or just his way to rip me apart, it stuck with me all my life, and I felt constant existential guilt.

  Everyone in our house was just trying to survive. We weren’t cutthroat, we didn’t throw one another under the bus, and we didn’t get somebody in trouble to see if they’d get beaten instead of us; we all just tried to stay quiet and invisible, so that maybe we’d get through the day. But while Cheryl was escaping to her friends’ houses, and I was alone with him during the week, he would try to have intercourse with me. I was too small, so he would get angry and frustrated, and just jam anything he could find into my vagina. I don’t know if he did the same things to Cheryl or not. She and I never talked about it.

  If he did not assault her, sexually, I would be very surprised, because one winter my parents were having an extremely violent, bloody fight and, because it cost too much to heat the upstairs, Cheryl and I were sleeping downstairs on cots in our parents’ bedroom. He beat Mom severely and forced her to sleep outside, in an old chicken coop that we had transformed into a playhouse (thank God it had a wood stove). At bedtime, Cheryl asked him where Mom was. He said, “She’s not here, but you can come to the bed and be the woman of the house.” Fortunately, he was too drunk that night to go any further than that. I wish I could say that my personal experience with sexual abuse ended with disgusting, smart-assed comments like that, but it did not. Because of things I was forced to do, I have been unable to swallow pills since I was in about fourth grade. And that’s all I have to say about that.

  Our father must have had some kind of power over Rickie: maybe it was, “If you fight back I’ll kill your mom and sisters.” Even though we weren’t close in the way many siblings are, I guess in our own way we were close because we looked out for one another. If one of us was getting in trouble, the other would figure out a way to end it. That’s the only kind of relationship we ever had.

  Rickie was extremely thin until he was well into adulthood. He graduated high school at about 125–130 pounds, and he’s over six feet tall. He was tall and gangly, but all muscle. He could pick up one of those big cast-iron stoves, by himself. That says a lot, because if I had my brother’s size and strength, I never would have let my father get away with what he did. I remember watching my brother carry huge tire chains into the field where a tractor was stuck and when he got there he was slapped around.

  He went to college in Wisconsin for a short time. He says he quit because my father called him and said, “Either you come home or I’m going to kill everybody.” I can see my father doing that. I really can. He played that game with all of us. “Either you stay or everybody’s dead. Someday I’m going to kill everybody.” We all heard that. We all knew that. Leading up to our first Christmas in Clarissa, Mom told me to write to Santa. Excited, I sat right down and wrote a letter. When Christmas Eve came, my father grabbed his shotgun and told me that when Santa landed he would kill him. At about 1:00 A.M., I heard gunshots. When I got up in the morning, I saw blood on the roof and in the yard. I found out later it was animal blood, and he made Rickie put it there, but I thought Santa was dead and the reindeer were killed.

  Christmas seemed to trigger him into behaving especially badly. When I was in sixth grade, and Cheryl was in eighth, we were at the dinner table and Cheryl picked up her glass to take a drink, unfortunately with her pinky in the air. She wasn’t doing it to “put on airs,” but that’s how our father saw it. He flew into a rage and decided that she was banned from the dinner table for three weeks, and she would not be allowed to celebrate Christmas. He stormed over to the Christmas tree and stomped on all of her gifts, jumping up and down on them like a child throwing a tantrum, screaming, “Oh, you think you’re better than us? You’re some princess!” I was furious that he stomped on the gift that I got for her because it wasn’t easy to come by gifts for one another.

  We didn’t have Barbies. Cheryl had a Mickey Mouse doll, with a pull string that made it talk, and I had a Donald Duck that talked, too. We had board games and books, tiddlywinks and jacks, no real toys. We had a tetherball and badminton. I think we just went through the motions. Just something to kill time—“We’re home from school. Instead of hanging out in the house, let’s go out and play badminton.” Out of sight, out of mind. Mom, Cheryl, and I would sit at the kitchen table and play board games.

  We learned from harsh experience to take care of our stuff. You didn’t leave a toy in the yard if you wanted to keep it. You didn’t leave a ball in the yard. You took care of your stuff, you put it away, and everything had a home. Your clothes were washed and dried, and when Mom came back from the Laundromat you damn well better be there to put them away or my father would get involved. The house was spotless. Mom used to wake me and Cheryl on Saturday mornings to help with the housework. My job was to dust every picture frame, and not make a noise, because if my father was sleeping you didn’t want to wake him.

  Sadly, one of the fondest memories I have of my big sister was during these Minnesota years, when I was in fifth grade. Our parents had been fighting, without respite, for days. He had beaten Mom badly, and just wouldn’t stop. Most of the time we were all able to tolerate the violence and live through it, but for some reason this time it just got to me and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was
sobbing so hard I could barely catch my breath. Cheryl scooped me up on her lap and told me that we can’t choose our parents. This is the life that they chose and we can’t change how we live. And even though the memory makes me want to cry all over again, it warms my heart to think of my sister taking care of me like that.

  It was that comment that made me change my attitude, and taught me to just suck it up and take it. Up until then, if he would beat or molest me, I would cry when he left the room, but never in front of him. When she made that statement she made me realize, “You’re right. We can either make the best of it and survive it, or just give up.”

  I learned, “It is what it is. I’ll stare at the ceiling until this is over with.” It ends quicker, by being passive. In my sister’s case, she’d let it build and keep antagonizing until he exploded on her. My sister decided to be the demonstrative one and I was the passive one in the house.

  Cheryl was always a lot stronger than I was. She, in her own feisty way, fought back against his tyranny. She found ways to get out of the house for extended periods by making friends and getting herself invited over. We didn’t have friends come to our house very often, because it was too uncomfortable. Even though I didn’t fully realize until high school that our household wasn’t like everyone else’s—we had no way of knowing that all dads weren’t like that behind closed doors—I still knew that other kids thought it was strange at our house. We didn’t have conversations about anything. We spoke only when necessary.

  On the rare occasions that either Cheryl or I could have somebody spend the night, it was awkward. My friend Karin, who grew up to be a reporter for the local newspaper, wrote an article about one of those nights after she watched my trial on television. She wrote that she didn’t remember anything in particular that was unusual about our household, except that she was uncomfortable there and that she treated me differently the next day. She says that I told her that this is why I never had friends over.