by Ingrid Ricks
“Your grandma tried to patch the holes as best as she could, but after awhile, even the patches weren’t enough. I was teased all the time and was constantly getting into fights at school because of it.”
Dad shook his head and I could tell by the look on his face that the memory still upset him.
“Let me tell you something, Ingrid. I would read these books on slavery and about how slaves were given a rundown shack and a little food in exchange for their labor. Then I would look at my dad and realize he was a slave. He worked so hard every day and all he got in exchange was barely enough to put a shack over our heads and feed us. I decided that I was going to do whatever it took to escape that life.”
Dad figured the first step to achieving greatness was to be the best at anything he did. If he was milking cows, he made sure his cows gave more milk than other cows around. If he was picking beans, he continued picking until he had out-picked everyone else around him.
“I wanted to prove to everyone I had what it took to be a winner,” he explained. “Once, I went on a Boy Scout camping trip and decided that I was going to win one of the awards they were giving out. So while the other boys played, I stayed in my tent practicing slipknots over and over. And you know what, Ingrid? I won first place. That was a valuable lesson for me. I learned that if I put my mind to something, I could succeed.”
Dad paused and his voice got hard.
“I tell you what really drove it home for me, Ingrid. One Sunday after milking cows, me and my brother Dallas changed into our nicest clothes―which weren’t very nice―and starting walking the mile to church. We’d only gone a couple of blocks when a car slowed down beside us.
“The driver rolled down his window and said, ‘Would you two boys like a ride?’ I recognized the man and the woman who sat beside him as a couple from church, and eagerly accepted their offer. Dallas and I climbed into the backseat and sat quietly, silently congratulating ourselves on our good fortune. Maybe the woman didn’t think we could hear her or maybe she meant for us to hear, but I will never forget those next few words. She glanced back at us, then turned to her husband and said in a loud whisper, ‘Just look at those poor boys. Do you think they will ever amount to anything?’
“I tell you what, Ingrid. Her words cut through me like a sharp knife. My first reaction was to climb over the seat and slug her. Instead, I sat quietly and didn’t say a word. But inside, I was burning. At that moment, I made a vow to myself. I said, ‘Lady, I’ll amount to ten times the person you are.’”
Dad’s face turned red when he told the story and my heart ached for him. I finally understood why he was always working so hard to build a successful business. I also understood why he couldn’t work for anyone else. He had been a slave the whole time he was growing up, and he was through being told what to do.
After graduating from high school, Dad said he left the farm and headed to Hollywood, where he joined a flight attendant school and hoped to land a career in the airline industry. When that didn’t pan out, he headed back to Utah and since he had nothing better to do, he decided he would do what boys his age were expected to do: go on a two-year Mormon mission. He figured it would give him time to think through what he wanted to do with his life.
Dad landed in Austria, a country he quickly fell in love with, and then quickly fell for Mom too.
“Your mom was so pretty back then, and I remember being impressed by how determined she was,” Dad said, shaking his head at the memory. “I just didn’t know she was going to turn into a dictator and slave driver. If she would have just accepted me for who I was, we wouldn’t have had any problems.”
I had seen pictures of Mom and Dad on their wedding day and had come across one of them hanging out on a beach in their swimming suits. They both looked young and happy and I thought they made a nice-looking couple. I agreed with Dad; Mom was very pretty back then. And I loved the stylish sixties clothing she wore. She looked like a completely different person in the pictures than the Mom I knew. She looked carefree and fun.
When it was my turn to talk, I mostly recounted Earl stories. Over the past year, he had taken his whole “head of the household” act to a new level. Out of the blue, he decided that pants should only be worn by him and ordered Mom to wear dresses at all times. He also insisted that she grow out her hair and continued to make her wait on him hand and foot, even though she worked full time and he didn’t have a job.
Mom did her best to comply with all of Earl’s demands. But when he started bringing home bags of frog legs and ordered her to fry them up for him, she refused.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do this,” she said, staring in disgust at the pile of rubbery limbs. “This is something I just can’t do.”
“You’ll learn to do what I tell you to do,” he fumed as he grabbed the frying pan, filled it with vegetable oil, and dumped in a pile of the legs.
A few days later, he marched into the living room for our morning scriptures with a Bible he had bookmarked.
“You should’ve seen how much he was gloating,” I fumed to Dad as we drove. “He flipped it open to the bookmarked page and started quoting some scripture about how God wanted women to obey their husbands. I thought Mom was going to explode. She didn’t say anything, but she was twisting the corner of her skirt so tight while he lectured her that it looked like it was going to snap. And her eyes were on fire.”
Though I didn’t want to admit it to Dad or anyone else, I was scared of Earl. Everything about him was creepy, and I never knew what he was going to do next.
Once, I arrived home from school and headed to our enclosed back porch to get the laundry from our dryer when I noticed a weird smell and felt something dripping on me. I looked up and saw three furry, blood-soaked rabbit skins hanging from the clothesline Mom had strung up across the back porch for drying her nylons.
For a minute I was too frozen in fear to make a sound. Connie had three pet rabbits and I was certain I was staring at their remains.
My eyes locked on Mom’s deep freezer five feet away. I moved toward it, flipped it open, and saw bloody gobs of flesh shoved inside gallon-size storage bags.
I heard footsteps and turned to see Earl standing behind me, a cruel grin plastered on his face. His grease-stained hands were covered in blood.
“Just wait until you taste it,” Earl said with a sneer, stepping closer toward me. “You’re going to love it.”
There was no way anything he killed was getting anywhere near my mouth, but Earl had such a crazy look in his eye, I didn’t dare challenge him.
“I have to do my homework,” I mumbled, pushing my way past him. I bolted to my room and hid until Mom came home from work. As soon as I heard the front door open, I ran down to greet her. Earl was right behind me.
“Hey, Mom, can I talk with you for a minute?” I pleaded. “Alone?”
Earl didn’t let Mom answer.
“Anything you need to say to your mom you can say to me too,” he said, stepping between the two of us.
“Please, Mom. Just for a few minutes.”
“Did you hear what I said!” Earl barked. “If you want to say something to your mom, you’re saying it to me too!”
Mom looked at Earl and back at me. She didn’t speak for a minute.
“I’ve had a long day and I’m tired,” she said finally. “I’m going to rest for a minute and then I need to make dinner.”
Earl flashed me a victory grin and then trailed behind Mom into the kitchen.
Mom never said anything about the bloody mess dangling from her clothesline, but she must have put her foot down with Earl because that night at dinner, she served spaghetti while Earl sawed into the undercooked blob of meat on his plate.
The next day, when Earl was off on a rare errand, I ran out to the edge of our half-acre backyard and saw that Connie’s rabbits were still there and still alive. Mom must have watched me because when I came back into the house, she tried to explain away Earl’s creepy behavior by blaming it
on the emotional trauma he had experienced while fighting in Vietnam.
I didn’t really care what made him a psycho creep. What I cared about was that Mom actually let this man come into our house and make our lives miserable. Until Earl, I didn’t know I was capable of hating anyone so much, and any association with him was more than I could stand.
When the church telephone directory arrived with my name attributed to his, I used whiteout to erase it and then wrote in my own last name over the top of it. When the mail came, I would gingerly sort through it with the top of my fingers and then carefully pick out the family mail―leaving his in the mailbox so I wouldn’t have to touch it.
Not long after the rabbit incident, I was walking by Mom’s bedroom and noticed Earl’s briefcase open on their bed. Taped to one side of it was an 8 x 10 picture of the group wedding shot Mom had forced us all to pose for.
A hot rage shot through me. For a minute, I considered ripping the picture into tiny shreds. Then I saw the blue ink pen lying next to it. I grabbed it and scribbled out the image of my face, pushing so hard I nearly poked a hole through it.
I was in the kitchen doing dishes that evening when I heard Mom’s voice yelling for me to come into the living room. I knew from the tone of her voice that something was wrong and it wasn’t hard to guess what it was.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself as I walked down the hallway and rounded the corner.
She was standing in the center of the room. Earl hovered over her, clutching the picture in his left hand.
“Did you do this?” Mom asked, spitting out her words as she motioned toward the picture. “Did you?”
Any hope I had that she would listen to my side of the story vanished. I glared at Earl, who looked like he’d just won the lottery.
Mom’s hand flew at my face, slapping it so hard I could feel her fingerprints pressing in on my cheek even after her hand had left it. She swung back and hit me again. My face was stinging. But it was nothing compared to the hurt going on inside me.
Mom had never hit anyone in the face. Ever. She had always taught us that it was the worst thing a person could do to another person. But she had done it to me―and on his behalf.
She might as well have ripped out my heart.
I glanced at Earl, whose grin was stretched so big and tight across his face I hoped it would snap in half. Then I looked at Mom and stared her straight in the eye so she could see what she had just done.
I held it together until I had made it up the splintered wooden stairs to my attic room and shoved my nightstand up against the door as a barricade. Then I grabbed my pillow from my bed, buried my still-stinging face into it, and let the sobs come.
DESPITE WHAT I CONSIDERED to be the ultimate betrayal by Mom, I still considered her a safety net because Earl seemed to know there was a line he couldn’t cross when Mom was there. When she wasn’t there, all bets were off.
To avoid being alone with him, I usually made sure I always had someplace to be after school. Sometimes I had volleyball practice or a game. But most of the time, I headed to Mr. Tabbot’s room―where I had been going for more than a year. Mr. Tabbot, my art teacher from eighth grade, was a tall, lanky man who never raised his voice or said a mean word to anyone.
One day after art class, he asked me to stay behind for a minute.
“You know I’m always here after school for an hour or so preparing for the next day,” he said gently. “Any time you want, you’re welcome to come hang out.”
From that day on, I became a regular in his class after school. We never talked much. Usually I would just do my homework while he was prepping for the next day. But I felt peaceful and safe while I was there. I hung out in his room until it was time to catch the activity bus, which put me home just after Mom.
The tension had gotten so thick between Earl and myself that I knew better than to be alone with him. Once, not long after the Family Home Evening incident, I wasn’t feeling well and had decided to take the regular bus home from school.
Earl must have watched me step off the school bus at the top of our block, because when I walked through the door and rounded the corner, he was waiting for me.
He grabbed my arm, forcing me to drop my backpack.
For a minute, I was too scared to make a sound. He was so close I could feel his hot, smelly breath on my neck, and when I looked down, I saw a black leather belt in his free hand.
“I’m going to show you who rules this house now!” he sneered, dragging me by my arm into his bedroom.
“Let go of me!” I screamed, praying in my head that my neighbors could hear. “Get away from me! Somebody help!”
Earl shoved me face first down on the bed and slammed the belt against my back. Before he could whip me a second time, I flipped my body around so I was facing him and began kicking and thrashing wildly.
“Get AWAY from me!” I screamed again, hoping my voice would carry through the thick brick walls.
Earl tried to grab hold of me again but I kicked him in the stomach and caught him off-guard. That was all I needed to break free of his grasp. I tore out of the room, swung open the door to the attic, and sprinted up the stairs. As soon as I made it into my room, I slammed my door shut, sat down, and pushed my body hard against it―extending my legs against my bed to act as a brace.
I was terrified that he would come up after me and bust through the door. But he never came. He must have been worried that someone had heard my screams, or that Mom was going to come home.
After I finished telling Dad this last story, he didn’t speak for several long minutes. His hands were gripping the steering wheel so tight it looked like the circulation was gone from them.
“So what did your mom do?” he asked finally.
“Nothing,” I answered bitterly. “I didn’t even tell her because I know she doesn’t want to hear it. She probably wouldn’t have believed me anyway. It’s like she’s not even there anymore.”
Dad was silent for a minute more before he spoke.
“Maybe I ought to just go there and kill Earl, and get rid of him once and for all.”
His eyes were hard and dark.
“What in the hell is your mom thinking?’ he added, talking more to himself than me. “We had our problems, but you know I never treated her or any of you kids like that. She thought she was doing a good thing by getting rid of me. All she did was make the worst mistake of her life.”
DAD SOMETIMES USED our time on the road to educate me on what he felt were the most important lessons in life. He taught me about the functions of a car engine and had me recite the parts of an engine to him from front to back. He also spent what seemed like endless hours talking about the one-track mind of boys and the need to stay clear of them at all costs. He warned me never to get drunk with a member of the opposite sex, telling me that if a boy could get me drunk, he could get me to do anything. He worried about me throwing my life away by getting involved with a boy, and sometimes used trick questions to test me.
“Would you have sex with a guy for a million dollars?” he asked me once.
I hesitated.
“Would you have sex with a guy for ten dollars?”
“No, of course not!" I replied, shooting him a dirty look.
“Well, we've already determined what you are,” Dad returned evenly. “Now we’re just negotiating a price.”
I didn’t know how to respond to this. He had a point. On the other hand, a million dollars was a million dollars. And Dad and I both dreamed of being rich. In fact, Dad was obsessed with it.
Ever since I could remember, Dad had talked about building a million-dollar business and had explored lots of business opportunities trying to strike gold. Before becoming a traveling salesman, he had owned a gas station, a hot dog shop, a taxicab company, and a janitorial business. He had also participated in and launched numerous multi-level marketing companies. Nothing had worked so far, but Dad was determined to succeed.
At least once a we
ek, he repeated his mantra.
“Ingrid, your daddy’s going to be a millionaire someday. What do you think of that?” To keep ourselves pumped up, Dad and I had a standing weekly date with the television series Dallas. Dad loved J.R., the main character, because he was a savvy, ruthless businessman who had millions of dollars, and also because Dad’s name, Jerry Ricks, shared the same initials.
“You know what time it is, don’t you?” Dad would say each Friday night, a few minutes before the show was to begin.
“It’s Dallas time,” I would yell back.
If we were at a motel, we kicked back on our beds, each with a can of Sugar Free Dr Pepper, and flipped on the TV. If we were spending the night in the van, we found a truck stop lounge, plopped down on one of the couches, and lost ourselves in the lives of J.R., Sue Ellen, and the rest of the Dallas gang.
Dad was determined to become as successful as J.R., and it was fun to fantasize about our life once he had finally built his multi-million dollar company and had so much money he couldn’t spend it all if he tried. Dad would still work, of course. He loved to work and would go crazy if he sat around doing nothing. But with all that money, he’d be able to afford a fancy Cadillac and a big motor home that he would travel in and use as his base instead of the old, worn-out vehicles that were constantly breaking down on us.
I decided the first thing I would do is go shopping for a house of my own. I no longer cared about being whisked away by the Osmonds, but I still had a recurring daydream about a big, beautiful house. I used to envision Connie living there with me, but now that she was gone, I decided I would invite Heidi. The house would be situated in Logan so I could still see my friends and go to the same school, but it would be located on the Hill where the rich people lived. And it would be far enough away from Earl that I’d never have to see him again.