But if it hadn’t been for Mama’s hard work, we would have been on welfare and would most likely have lived in the projects. We had some cousins on Daddy’s side that lived in the projects, and to me it wasn’t so bad. They had playgrounds, recreation centers, and all their houses were made of brick. As a child I always dreamed of living in a brick house, and it didn’t matter where it was.
Daddy’s beatings caused me to retreat into my own silent world, which was probably worse than the physical scars. Sure I spoke, but only when I wasn’t worried about how I should act or what I should say.
In my silence I lived in a make-believe world that provided me great comfort. In this world I lived in a brick house and had a mommy and daddy who loved each other and me deeply and dearly. It was a home where I got a hug and kiss from both of my parents as I headed off to school carrying a leather book satchel, a Jetsons lunchbox filled with my grandma’s German chocolate cake, fried chicken tucked neatly between two pieces of light bread, and a thermos filled with ice-cold chocolate milk.
Inside my head, I had a life filled with friends who took pride in our friendship and who would pick me first for sandlot football and dodgeball despite my size.
I retreated as often as possible, because I knew what was waiting when I returned to the real world. Daddy’s abuse sent me the chilling warning that the world wouldn’t take too kindly to a sissy boy whom even a father couldn’t love. When I look back, I realize my childhood was stolen just as it was getting started.
The dual beatings of my mother and me became commonplace, with lapses occurring if we stayed away at Grandma’s for a couple of days. Daddy would come to Grandma’s and beg both her and Mama to change their minds and give him one more chance. When we would return, Daddy would become briefly what he should have been all along—a good husband and a good father.
When he was being responsible and generous, he would pile us all in the family station wagon and take us out for a drive to the Dairy Freeze in Granite Mountain for hamburgers and chocolate ice-cream cones. The hamburgers were five for a dollar, and sometimes Daddy would buy an order of french fries for my sisters and me to share. We would leave the drive-in and go to the Little Rock Airport and watch the planes take off and land. He could also be generous around the holidays, especially Christmas. My sisters and I would really clean up with toys and clothes. Of course, his kindness never lasted long. Looking back, I realize his generosity was dependent on how much he was working or how much he was drinking.
GROWING UP I LOVED THE HOLIDAYS, which meant family gatherings at my Grandma’s, where I knew I would get an extra dose of love, like an extra Christmas present under the tree. My extended family knew what I was going through with Daddy and wanted to make sure I knew I was loved.
Even though she had over twenty grandkids, my Grandma always managed to put a silver dollar in my hand when nobody was looking. A deeply religious woman, Grandma made the best German chocolate cake in the world. Grandma’s house was the place the family would also gather to greet our relatives from Michigan who often drove for days to see us during the summer. Those visits were cause for Grandma and Mama to cook big meals for everyone, and top it all off with watermelon and homemade ice cream. Grandma would allow my sisters, cousins, and me to take turns cranking the ingredients together in a wooden bucket. Grandma convinced us that our help made the ice cream taste better than store-bought ice cream any day.
During the holidays I knew there’d be a chance I would get a chance to spend some time with my Aunt Gee. She always made me feel like she was so happy to see me. Aunt Gee made me feel like I was the only little boy in the world and would smother me with hugs and kisses just like Grandma would smother her chicken with rich gravy. In many ways, Aunt Gee was and has remained a second mother to me. One of my few childhood memories before entering the first grade is of a toy doctor’s set that Aunt Gee bought me when I was about fours years old. She’d given it to me one Christmas and I paraded around my Grandma’s house with the black bag like I was on my way to perform surgery. Aunt Gee’s husband, my Uncle Charles, was in the Air Force, and so she didn’t always live in Little Rock or nearby where I could visit them often. When I was in the sixth grade, Uncle Charles was stationed in Spain for three years. I thought I was going to die and cried for days when I found out it would be a long time before I could see my favorite aunt, uncle, and cousins. Aunt Gee had four boys, and I always felt like Kennie, Charles Jr., Tony, and Carlos were more like brothers than cousins to me. Of course, we argued and teased each other, but never for long.
My mother’s older brother, Uncle James, also treated me like I was one of his boys. He’s a handsome man with a contagious smile and an infectious laugh. When he walked into Grandma’s house he was like fireworks exploding on a summer night, and that made me very happy. Uncle James would look at me, smile, and say, “Come here, boy,” and I would race into his large arms, where he would pick me up and twirl me around until I was so dizzy I couldn’t stand up. I knew Uncle James was different from my daddy because I never saw him hit or talk ugly to his wife, Aunt Hattie. He always went to church with his family, and to his children’s sporting events. At times he was just like a big kid who loved his mother and sisters dearly.
There was one thing I hated about the holidays: They ended, and I knew I would have to return home to Daddy.
AROUND AGE TWELVE, most of the boys I knew were interested in liking girls and making the junior high football team. Football and girls were on my mind too, but so were death and going to heaven. I had heard, and Lord only knows where, that if a child died before age twelve, he or she would go straight to heaven. No questions asked. And even though I didn’t know much about heaven, I knew it had to be better than the terror I faced daily at 520 East Twenty-first Street.
My main concern about heaven was that my mother and grandmother might not be there right away. Somebody had to stay and look after my sisters, which now included the addition of my new baby sister, Jan. When Mama was pregnant, I prayed for a little brother who might make life easier, and I would no longer be the only boy in a house full of women. I didn’t count Daddy, since he was now staying away from home more than usual. I wasn’t completely disappointed that I had a new baby sister, though, because I felt a special bond with Jan.
I had another fear about going to heaven, which was never having the chance to go out with Rose Crater, the first girl who made my heart rattle with adolescent romantic thoughts every time I saw her. Rose was a beautiful, butter-colored girl. One spring day I saw her crossing the street in front of Booker Junior High, and I could feel excitement swell inside my stomach. I knew who she was because she was the daughter of A. C. Crater Sr., the head football coach at Booker. Her mother was a secretary at Carver Elementary, and the Crater family was considered middle class. She had an older brother, A. C. Jr., who was smart and an athlete. Rose was one of two seventh-graders on the varsity cheerleading squad, and she had no earthly idea that I existed. But I thought maybe if I died it would be big news because I was so young, and she might wonder who I was. On the other hand, I’d never get to see her again. It was my first love affair, and I was in conflict.
My fascination with death had begun around age eight, with the deaths of President Kennedy; Miss Whitfield, my favorite Sunday School teacher, who had died of breast cancer before she turned thirty; and Mr. Joseph P. Nunn, a family friend with a beautiful singing voice who lived next door to Grandma with his wife and three children—Joe Jr., Rita, and Gary, who was one of my first childhood friends. I couldn’t understand why three people who were loved by so many could die so young.
I had strange notions about life and God. One of the strangest had to do with the power of words. I was convinced that at the beginning of your life you were given a set number of words to utter and when you used them up you died.
I figured that the President, Miss Whitfield, and Mr. Nunn had died so young because they had used all their words. I knew Miss Whitfield talked a lot i
n Sunday School and also sometimes did the announcements and the welcome at church. The times I had seen the President on television he was always talking, and Mr. Nunn loved to talk not only to adults but to children as well, and he sang solos almost every Sunday at church. Words were powerful, I thought, and must be used wisely.
I remember weeks after Mr. Nunn’s sudden death from a heart attack, I was silent, speaking only when I absolutely had to. Even when I had to speak, I would count the number of words in my head and eliminate those words that were not necessary. I would look at my mother and sisters in disbelief when they would talk needlessly. Didn’t they know what I knew? I didn’t want to tell them, because they might tell Daddy. The more he talked, the better. I silently wished he was close to his limit. I hoped that his cussing and name-calling counted double or maybe even triple against his limit.
A few months before my twelfth birthday, I decided death was better than my life with Daddy, and I began to talk excessively. I would read books out loud, even though I was so proud of the fact that I had learned to read silently before anyone in my class. My constant jabbering got me in trouble not only at home but at school as well.
On my twelfth birthday, I was terribly sad when the day ended and I was still in the land of the living. My family didn’t understand why I was so sad, since birthdays in our home had always been joyous events. I didn’t tell anyone why I was brokenhearted; I felt empowered by my secret knowledge about God, words, and death.
A couple of weeks later, something happened that made me happy I’d stayed around. God gave me a miracle.
Daddy was out of work, and his drinking had increased so much that Mama had to hire a baby-sitter even when he was home. She was still working two jobs and taking classes at Capital City Business College, and was unaware that I was now getting a daily beating for no apparent reason. Sometimes Daddy would look at me in disgust and say, “Go in there and get my belt, you little sissy,” or “Go get a switch so I can tear your ass up. Make sure you get a strong one.” Outside of the family no one really knew the degree of the abuse except our baby-sitter, Marilyn Jean Morris, whom we called Jean.
Jean was our “play” cousin. Our families had known each other since the first day we moved into the neighborhood in 1962. Her family lived upstairs from the neighborhood grocery store, right across the street from my grandmother’s house on Twentieth and Commerce. Jean and her sisters, Gail, Terrie, and Rose, along with her brothers, Richard and Winston, became so close to our family that we just started telling everybody that we were cousins.
Jean was a beautiful chocolate-brown girl with thick long black hair. She was in the tenth grade and was one of the first girls from our neighborhood to make the Bear Kitten Drill Team at Horace Mann High School. Most of the girls on the drill team and the cheerleaders at Horace Mann came from Granite Heights, a middle-class enclave where my crush Rose Crater lived.
Some evenings I would sit on the front steps of our house and wait for Jean to walk past after drill team practice in blue gym shorts, a white blouse, and white majorette boots, with purple and gold pom-poms bouncing as she strutted down the block like she was leading a parade.
One evening while Jean was in the kitchen cleaning, with me close underfoot, Daddy called from the living room for me to bring him some cold water. Jean silently reached into the high cabinet and pulled down a purple aluminum tumbler Mama had gotten with Top Value stamps saved from her weekly trips to Safeway Grocery.
We looked in the freezer for ice, but the trays had not been filled, so Jean and I ran the tap water for several minutes until it turned ice cold, or at least it felt ice cold to me. With the tumbler filled to the top, and fully aware I had already taken too long, I raced from the kitchen to Daddy’s permanent spot on the sofa.
After a few gulps, that look I had seen more times than I wanted to remember crossed his face.
“This water isn’t cold,” he said. “Didn’t I tell your dumb ass that I wanted cold water?”
I nodded in dismay and told Daddy how Jean and I had made sure the water was cold. Then I wondered, What did I say that for?
“What did I say, you little sissy?” he yelled.
“Huh?” I responded.
“Huh … hell. Don’t you think I know the difference between cold water and shit from the tap? The water isn’t cold,” he said as he dumped the remaining water on me and my white undershirt. The water certainly felt cold to me.
“You are going to do what I say if it kills you. Your little narrow ass thinks you so goddamn smart. Go get my strap,” he demanded.
I didn’t move fast enough for Daddy, and he suddenly grabbed me and started hitting me with his huge bare hands. When I started to cry, his hands seemed to strike with a more powerful force. He was beating me like he was fighting for his life with someone his own size. When he got tired of using his hands, he reached for an old extension cord he’d always used to threaten me with but had never used in the past. Mama didn’t even know he had the extension cord and thought he used only switches or his belt when he whipped me.
He then told me to drop my pants. I was screaming, because I knew the extension cord would hurt more than his regular belt or a switch.
“And take off that underwear, too,” he yelled.
When I had followed his orders, he grabbed me by my head and forced my small head between his huge thighs, tightened them like a vise so that I couldn’t move and could barely breathe as he beat my naked bottom with the electrical cord. When he tired, he howled at me to stop crying and to pull up my pants and take my ass to bed. I raced toward my bedroom, nearly falling on my face as I struggled to get away from Daddy and pull up my pants and underwear.
Moments later, as I sat on my bed holding tight to a pillow like it could protect me, I heard the front door slam. I looked out the window and saw Daddy jump into his car and drive off in the direction of his favorite liquor store on Main Street.
Jean walked into the room with a towel and rubbing alcohol. She told me to lie on my stomach and she would make me feel better. When she saw my backside, she said, “Oh my God!”
I jumped up and raced into the bathroom, and Jean followed. I gazed into the mirror and saw my battered behind looking a raw pink color, and I started to cry again.
“Come here, Lynn. Let me put some of this on you,” Jean said.
I asked Jean if the alcohol would make the welts and pink color go away, and she smiled sweetly and nodded. When she swabbed the cold liquid on my fresh wounds, I started to cry uncontrollably. I could hear my sisters, Anita and Shane, outside the bathroom urging me to stop crying. They always surrounded me with a tender protectiveness when I got a whipping for no reason. Jean promised to make Kool-Aid popsicles, one of my favorite treats, if I stopped crying, but I didn’t want any kind of popsicles, homemade or store-bought.
I wanted my mother to come home and hug me and tell me everything would be all right, that it would be okay for me to use up all my words and die. I wanted her to tell me that she and my sisters would be just fine, that God in all His grace would understand that I was a little bit over the age limit but he would still allow me a place in heaven. I wondered what I could have possibly done to deserve the constant beatings.
When Jean finished putting the alcohol on my bottom, she instructed me to go and put on clean underwear. That’s when I noticed my underwear was covered with several spots of blood. As I gazed at my stained underwear, thinking I needed to hide them from Mama, Jean said something that would change my life; words that would release Daddy’s power over me.
“Lynn, don’t worry about Uncle Ben. He will get his someday,” she said. “You know, maybe he’s not even your real daddy,” she added, looking directly into my eyes like she was trying to convey some special secret to me.
What was Jean talking about? Of course he was my real daddy. He was the only daddy I’d ever known. I couldn’t remember a day of my young life when he hadn’t been there. Besides, if he wasn’t my real daddy, t
hen who was? Was it somebody I knew?
Through my sniffles I asked Jean what she meant. Jean said confidently that no father would treat a son the way Ben treated me, and that she had a cousin whose stepfather treated him the same way.
Such a thought had never crossed my mind. It was simply too incredible to be true. I was wondering how I could find out if Jean was right without asking my mother and risking another whipping, when the picture of Mama’s gray cardboard box entered my mind. The box housed all of our family’s important papers and was hidden in Mama’s closet.
I told Jean about the box, and minutes later I found myself on her narrow shoulders, reaching for it amid Mama’s shoes and hatboxes. My sisters were on lookout, instructed by Jean and me to holler if they saw Daddy’s car or Mama coming home. When I located the box I grabbed it too quickly, and in my nervous excitement I fell from Jean’s shoulder to the floor. The box flew from my hands and crashed down beside me.
I quickly started rummaging through the stack of papers, looking for my birth certificate, a piece of paper that I’d never seen. Whenever our school requested birth certificates, Mama always delivered them personally. I didn’t know what the record of my birth looked like.
I asked Jean if she knew, and she told me she thought it was on black paper. Jean grabbed a stack of papers and was opening them up one by one and then carefully closing them back. All I saw were papers with names of insurance companies printed on them and layaway receipts, but nothing on black paper. When we reached the bottom of the box, I suddenly saw a black piece of paper covered with white ink.
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted Page 3