by Dave Pelzer
After a few more minutes, I thought I would cough up my insides. I knew that Mother wasn’t going to give in and open the door. To survive her new game, I had to use my head. Lying on the tiled floor I stretched my body and, using my foot, I slid the bucket to the door. I did this for two reasons: I wanted the bucket as far away from me as possible, and in case Mother opened the door, I wanted her to get a snoot full of her own medicine. I curled up in the opposite corner of the bathroom, with my cleaning rag over my mouth, nose and eyes. Before covering my face, I wet the rag in the toilet. I didn’t dare turn on the water in the sink for fear of Mother hearing it. Breathing through the cloth, I watched the mist inch its way closer and closer to the floor. I felt as if I were locked in a gas chamber. Then I thought about the small heating vent on the floor by my feet. I knew it turned on and off every few minutes. I put my face next to the vent and sucked in all the air my lungs would hold. In about half an hour, Mother opened the door and told me to empty the bucket into the drain in the garage before I smelled up her house. Downstairs I coughed up blood for over an hour. Of all Mother’s punishments, I hated the gas chamber game the most.
Towards the end of the summer Mother must have become bored with finding ways to torture me around the house. One day, after I had completed all my morning chores, she sent me out to mow lawns. This wasn’t an altogether new routine. During the Easter vacation from school the spring before, Mother had sent me out to mow. She had set a quota on my earnings and ordered me to return the money to her. The quota was impossible for me to meet, so, in desperation, I once stole nine dollars from the piggy bank of a small girl who lived in our neighborhood. Within hours, the girl’s father was knocking on the front door. Of course, Mother returned the money and blamed me. After the man left, she beat me until I was black and blue. I only stole the money to try to meet her quota.
The summer mowing plan turned out no better for me than the one during Easter vacation. Going from door to door, I asked people if they cared to have their lawns mowed. No one did. My ragged clothes and my thin arms must have made me a pathetic sight. Out of sympathy, one lady gave me a lunch in a brown bag and sent me on my way. Half a block down the street a couple agreed to have me mow their lawn. When I finished, I started running back to Mother’s house, carrying the brown bag with me. I intended to hide it before I turned onto her block. I didn’t make it. Mother was out cruising in her car, and she pulled over and caught me with the bag. Before Mother screeched the station wagon to a stop, I threw my hands into the air, as if I were a criminal. I remember wishing that lady luck would be with me just one time.
Mother leaped out of the car, snatched the brown bag in one hand and punched me with the other. She then threw me into the car, and drove to the house where the lady had made the lunch for me. The woman wasn’t home. Mother was convinced that I had sneaked into the lady’s house and prepared my own lunch. I knew that to be in the possession of food was the ultimate crime. Silently, I yelled at myself for not ditching the food earlier.
Once home, the usual “ten-rounder” left me sprawled on the floor. Mother then told me to sit outside in the backyard while she took “her sons” to the zoo. The section where Mother ordered me to sit was covered with rocks about an inch in diameter. I lost circulation in much of my body, as I sat on my hands in my “prisoner of war” position. I began to give up on God. I felt that He must have hated me. What other reason could there be for a life like mine? All my efforts for mere survival seemed futile. My attempts to stay one step ahead of Mother were useless. A black shadow was always over me.
Even the sun seemed to avoid me, as it hid in a thick cloud cover that drifted overhead. I slumped my shoulders, retreating into the solitude of my dreams. I don’t know how much time had passed, but later I could hear the distinctive sound of Mother’s station wagon returning into the garage. My time sitting on the rocks was over. I wondered what Mother had planned for me next. I prayed it was not another gas chamber session. She yelled from the garage for me to follow her upstairs. She led me to the bathroom. My heart sank. I felt doomed. I began taking huge breaths of fresh air, knowing that soon I would need it.
To my surprise there wasn’t any bucket or bottles in the bathroom. “Am I off the hook?” I asked myself. This looked too easy. I timidly watched Mother as she turned the cold water tap in the bathtub fully open. I thought it was odd that she forgot to turn on the hot water as well. As the tub began to fill with cold water, Mother tore off my clothes and ordered me to get into the tub. I got into the tub and laid down. A cold fear raced throughout my body. “Lower!” Mother yelled. “Put your face in the water like this!” She then bent over, grabbed my neck with both hands and shoved my head under the water. Instinctively, I thrashed and kicked, trying desperately to force my head above the water so I could breathe. Her grip was too strong. Under the water I opened my eyes. I could see bubbles escape from my mouth and float to the surface as I tried to shout. I tried to thrust my head from side to side as I saw the bubbles becoming smaller and smaller. I began to feel weak. In a frantic effort I reached up and grabbed her shoulders. My fingers must have dug into her because Mother let go. She looked down on me, trying to get her breath. “Now keep your head below the water, or next time it will be longer!”
I submerged my head, keeping my nostrils barely above the surface of the water. I felt like an alligator in a swamp. When Mother left the bathroom, her plan became more clear to me. As I laid stretched out in the tub, the water became unbearably cold. It was as though I was in a refrigerator. I was too frightened of Mother to move, so I kept my head under the surface as ordered.
Hours passed and my skin began to wrinkle. I didn’t dare touch any part of my body to try to warm it. I did raise my head out of the water, far enough to hear better. Whenever I heard somebody walk down the hall outside the bathroom, I quietly slid my head back into the coldness.
Usually the footsteps I heard were one of my brothers going to their bedroom. Sometimes one of them came into the bathroom to use the toilet. They just glared at me, shook their heads and turned away. I tried to imagine I was in some other place, but I could not relax enough to daydream.
Before the family sat down for dinner, Mother came into the bathroom and yelled at me, telling me to get out of the bathtub and put on my clothes. I responded immediately, grabbing a towel to dry myself. “Oh, no!” she screamed. “Put your clothes on the way you are!” Without hesitating, I obeyed her command. My clothes were soaked as I ran downstairs to sit in the backyard as instructed. The sun had begun to set, but half the yard was still in direct sunlight. I tried to sit in a sunny area, but Mother ordered me into the shade. In the corner of the backyard, while sitting in my P.O.W. position, I shivered. I wanted only a few seconds of heat, but with every passing minute my chances of drying off were becoming less and less. From the upstairs window I could hear the sound of “the family” passing dishes full of food to each other. Once in a while, a burst of laughter would escape through the window. Since Father was home, I knew that whatever Mother had cooked was good. I wanted to turn my head and look up to see them eating, but I didn’t dare. I lived in a different world. I didn’t even deserve a glance at the good life.
The bathtub and the backyard treatment soon became routine. At times when I laid in the tub, my brothers brought their friends to the bathroom to look at their naked brother. Their friends often scoffed at me. “What did he do this time?” they’d ask. Most of the time my brothers just shook their heads, saying, “I don’t know.”
With the start of school in the fall, came the hope of a temporary escape from my dreary life. Our fourth-grade homeroom class had a substitute teacher for the first two weeks. They told us that our regular teacher was ill. The substitute teacher was younger than most of the other staff, and she seemed more lenient. At the end of the first week, she passed out ice cream to those students whose behavior had been good. I didn’t get any the first week, but I tried harder and received my reward at the end
of the second week. The new teacher played “pop hits” on 45-rpm records, and sang to the class. We really liked her. When Friday afternoon came, I didn’t want to leave. After all the other students had gone, she bent close to me and told me I would have to go home. She knew I was a problem child. I told her that I wanted to stay with her. She held me for a moment, then got up and played the song I liked best. After that I left. Since I was late, I ran to the house as fast as I could and raced through my chores. When I was finished, Mother sent me to the backyard to sit on the cold cement deck.
That Friday, I looked up at the thick blanket of fog covering the sun, and cried inside. The substitute teacher had been so nice to me. She treated me like a real person, not like some piece of filth lying in the gutter. As I sat outside feeling sorry for myself, I wondered where she was and what she was doing. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I had a crush on her.
I knew that I wasn’t going to be fed that night, or the next. Since Father wasn’t home, I would have a bad weekend. Sitting in the cool air in the backyard, on the steps, I could hear the sounds of Mother feeding my brothers. I didn’t care. Closing my eyes, I could see the smiling face of my new teacher. That night as I sat outside shivering, her beauty and kindness kept me warm.
By October, my morbid life was in full swing. Food was scarce at school. I was easy prey for school bullies, who beat me up at will. After school I had to run to the house and spill the contents of my stomach for Mother’s inspection. Sometimes she would have me start my chores right away. Sometimes she would fill the bathtub with water. If she was really in a good mood, she fixed up the gas mixture for me in the bathroom. If she got tired of having me around her house, she sent me out to find some mowing jobs, but not before beating me. A few times she whipped me with the dog’s chain. It was very painful, but I just gritted my teeth and took it. The worst pain was a blow to the backs of my legs with the broom handle. Sometimes blows from the broom handle would leave me on the floor, barely able to move. More than once I hobbled down the street, pushing that old wooden lawn mower, trying to earn her some money.
There finally came a time when it didn’t do me any good for Father to be home because Mother had forbidden him to see me. My hope deteriorated and I began to believe that my life would never change. I thought I would be Mother’s slave for as long as I lived. With every passing day, my willpower became weaker. I no longer dreamed of Superman or some imaginary hero who would come and rescue me. I knew that Father’s promise to take me away was a hoax. I gave up praying and thought only of living my life one day at a time.
One morning at school, I was told to report to the school nurse. She questioned me about my clothes and the various bruises that spanned the length of both my arms. At first I told her what Mother had instructed me to tell her. But as my trust in her began to grow, I told her more and more about Mother. She took notes and told me I should come to see her anytime I wanted to talk to somebody. I learned later that the nurse became interested in me because of some reports she had received from the substitute teacher, earlier in the school year.
During the last week in October, it was tradition at Mother’s house for the boys to carve designs on pumpkins. I had been denied this privilege since I was seven or eight years old. When the night came to carve the pumpkins, Mother filled the tub just as soon as I had finished my chores. Again she warned me about keeping my head under the water. As a reminder, she grabbed my neck and pushed my head under the water. Then she stormed out of the bathroom, turning the light out as she went. Looking to my left, I could see through the small bathroom window that night was beginning to fall. I passed the time by counting to myself. I started at one and stopped at one thousand. Then I started over. As the hours passed, I could feel the water slowly draining away. As the water drained, my body became colder and colder. I cupped my hands between my legs and laid the length of my body against the right side of the bathtub. I could hear the sounds of Stan’s Halloween record that Mother had bought for him several years before. Ghosts and ghouls howled, and doors creaked open. After the boys had carved their pumpkins, I could hear Mother in her soothing voice telling them a scary story. The more I heard, the more I hated each and every one of them. It was bad enough waiting like a dog out in the backyard on the rocks while they enjoyed dinner, but having to lay in the cold bathtub, shivering to keep warm while they ate popcorn and listened to Mother’s tales made me want to scream.
Mother’s tone of voice that night reminded me of the kind of Mommy I had loved so many years ago. Now, even the boys refused to acknowledge my presence in the house. I meant less to them than the spirits that howled from Stan’s record. After the boys went to bed, Mother came into the bathroom. She appeared startled to see me still laying in the bathtub. “Are you cold?” she sneered. I shivered and shook my head indicating that I was very cold. “Well, why doesn’t my precious little boy get his ass out of the bathtub and warm his hide in his father’s bed?”
I stumbled out of the tub, put on my underwear and crawled into Father’s bed, soaking the sheets with my wet body. For reasons I didn’t understand, Mother had decided to have me sleep in the master bedroom, whether Father was home or not. She slept in the upstairs bedroom with my brothers. I didn’t really care as long as I didn’t have to sleep on the army cot in the cold garage. That night Father came home, but before I could say anything to him, I fell asleep.
By Christmas, my spirit was drained. I detested being home during the two-week vacation and impatiently awaited my return to school. On Christmas Day I received a pair of roller skates. I was surprised to get anything at all, but as it turned out, the skates were not a gift given in the spirit of Christmas. The skates proved to be just another tool for Mother to get me out of the house and make me suffer. On weekends Mother made me skate outside when the other children were inside because of the chilly weather. I skated up and down the block, without even a jacket to keep me warm. I was the only child outside in the neighborhood. More than once, Tony, one of our neighbors, stepped outside to get his afternoon newspaper and saw me skating. He’d give me a cheerful smile before scurrying back inside to get away from the cold. In an effort to keep warm, I skated as fast as I could. I could see smoke rising from the chimneys of houses that had fireplaces. I wished that I could be inside, sitting by a fire. Mother had me skate for hours at a time. She called me in, only when she wanted me to complete some chores for her.
At the end of March that year, Mother went into labor while we were home from school on Easter vacation. As Father drove her to a hospital in San Francisco, I prayed that it was the real thing and not false labor. I wanted Mother out of the house so badly. I knew that with her gone, Father would feed me. I was also happy to be free from the beatings.
While Mother was in the hospital, Father let me play with my brothers. I was immediately accepted back into the fold. We played “Star Trek,” and Ron gave me the honor of playing the role of Captain Kirk. The first day Father served sandwiches for lunch and let me have seconds. When Father went to the hospital to see Mother, the four of us played across the street at the home of a neighbor named Shirley. Shirley was kind to us and treated us as though we were her own children. She kept us entertained with games like ping-pong, or just let us run wild outside. In some ways Shirley reminded me of Mom, in the early days before she started beating me.
In a few days, Mother came home. She presented the family with a new baby brother named Kevin. After a few weeks had passed, things returned to normal. Father stayed away most of the time, and I continued to be the scapegoat upon which Mother vented her frustrations.
Mother rarely spent much time with neighbors, so it was not natural for her when she and Shirley became close friends. They visited each other daily. In Shirley’s presence Mother played the role of the loving, caring parent—just as she had when she was a Cub Scout den mother. After several months, Shirley asked Mother why David was not allowed to play with the other children. She was also curious why D
avid was punished so often. Mother had a variety of excuses. David either had a cold or he was working on a school project. Eventually, she told Shirley that David was a bad boy and deserved being grounded for a long, long time.
In time, the relationship between Shirley and Mother became strained. One day, for no apparent reason, Mother broke all ties with Shirley. Shirley’s son was not allowed to play with the boys, and Mother ran around the house calling her a bitch. Even though I wasn’t allowed to play with the others, I felt a little safer when Shirley and Mother were friends.
One Sunday during the last month of summer, Mother came into the master bedroom where I had been ordered to sit on my hands in my P.O.W. position. She asked me to get up and sit on the corner of the bed. She then told me that she was tired of the life we were living. She told me she was sorry and that she wanted to make up for all the lost time. I smiled from ear to ear, as I jumped into her arms and held her tightly. As she ran her hand through my hair, I began to cry. Mother cried, too, and I began to feel that my bad times were finished. I let go of our hug and looked into Mother’s eyes. I had to know for sure. I had to hear her say it again. “Is it really over?” I asked timidly.