Shadows and Lies

Shadows and Lies

By Karen Reis

Copyright 2012 Karen Reis

Everyone wants something from Carrie. Her stepmother Nancy wants to control her, her birth mother Barbara wants her forgiveness, and Sean – well Sean just wants her – in his arms and in his life. In the shadows behind them stands Carrie’s father. All four of them have secrets; all four of them live a lie. Carrie’s father is different though. He doesn’t want anything from her. He’s never wanted anything to do with her. But Carrie wants something from him. She wants answers, she wants accountability, and maybe, just maybe, she wants a little bit of revenge.

Dear Dad,

I remember when I first became fixated on my fingernails. I was four or so, you and Barbara were divorced by then, and Nona was looking after me while you worked and my sisters were in school. I used to take kid scissors and cut my nails off – pretty harmless stuff I guess. But when you married our stepmother, and the abuse started, it was a pretty easy jump from scissors to teeth; from wonder at being able to cut a piece of my body off without pain, to ripping flesh and nail from my body for the express purpose of creating pain.

Do you remember how Nancy used to yell at me for biting my fingernails like I did? Like I still do? For tearing my nail down to the quick and beyond? For pealing back the skin around my nails till the flesh is red and puffy and painful? For picking and picking till blood is drawn, and pain radiates up my throbbing fingers so that it is hard to move them, to grab anything? Do you remember how Nancy used to make fun of me in front of people – other children, other adults, for biting my nails?

Did you notice how ashamed I was of my hands even while I couldn’t seem to stop mutilating them?

Do you remember when I started doing the same to my toenails, and then the soles of my feet? Do you remember how you grounded me for doing that, how Nancy threatened dire punishment, and you asked me how I could do such things to my body? I used to tell you I had no idea why I did such things, and I really didn’t, not at the time, but now I can tell you that I did it because it gave me satisfaction and control and relief, and I did it because I had no idea that the same feelings could be achieved with razor blades slicing across my arms and legs.

I did it – I do it – because Nancy was abusing us, my sisters and I, and I did it because the pain she caused was so great I needed a distraction, a way of blocking the emotional pain with the physical. I was sick, and our home was sick, and our stepmother was sick, but you never noticed, or if you did, you never questioned, you never spoke up, and you never protected.

And I hate you for that.

With much confusion,

Your Daughter

I remember standing outside the building of my very first crummy apartment, staring up at the boring brown stucco exterior with its chipped white wooden trim, ugly green door with the number 2011 stenciled onto it with white spray paint, and I couldn’t help but think that it was perfectly wonderful. It was just a little studio apartment, unfurnished and unglamorous in the extreme, but to me it was paradise and freedom; freedom from my stepmother with her suffocating pessimism and unbalanced demands, freedom from her temper tantrums and guilt trips, and freedom from my father’s unending silence.

I spent a lot of time on my own as a child, sometimes in the backyard or in my room, sometimes on the roof, just to get away from the insanity that was my home. I had a lot of time to think things through up on our roof in the fresh desert air, and being a logically minded person, I formulated a plan to escape at the ripe old age of 14. I got a job in high school and I saved every penny I made during those three years. I bought a car after graduation, a funky little blue Chevy that I probably shouldn’t have purchased because I didn’t know anything about cars and hadn’t had much help in picking a good used one out, but it ran, mostly, and it let me get back and forth to work. It also smelled perpetually of overripe bananas, a fact which was odd but thankfully not unpleasant. I saved some more money till I had a nice little cushion and then some, and at the first opportunity I had I left all the craziness behind.

I frowned at that memory as I stood outside my new apartment. God, but that had been a truly wonderful conversation with my parents, telling them that I was moving out. I had been so happy, so bright with pride that I was going to be going out on my own, and I mistakenly thought that my parents would be happy for me too.

“You want to move out?” was the first thing my stepmother had asked, her tone rising in shock and anger with every word. “Where do you think you’re moving out to?”

I took a deep breath for courage, suddenly realizing that this was not going to go well. “Well,” I said tentatively. “I’ve been looking around, and-”

“You’re moving in with that damned Judy Sutherland, aren’t you?” my stepmother demanded, jumping to her feet.

Judy was a friend of mine who was in her sixties. She had four grown children of her own and seven grandchildren. Judy and I had met at church when I was still a kid, and she quickly came to understand how our family dynamic worked. I was about 14 or 15 the first time Judy really talked to me. My stepmother and I were at Judy’s house for a luncheon, where I discovered what an ingenious contraption an apple corer is, and while my stepmother was off talking somewhere not near me, Judy asked me, “Do you love Nancy?”

That was my stepmom’s name, Nancy.

I shifted uncomfortably, looked around to make doubly sure Nancy was nowhere within hearing distance of us, and answered as truthfully, and as diplomatically, as I knew how.

“I… don’t hate her,” I said cautiously and slowly, and Judy had nodded as if she really understood what I was and was not saying.

Judy didn’t say much else about the subject that day, but from then on she became my anchor and my best friend. I was a teenager, and it might seem odd to some that I would make friends with a woman her age, and maybe it was. It was a friendship based on need though. I needed kindness and stability and an adult who would listen to me without jumping down my throat, and Judy liked me because I made her laugh and feel appreciated, a feeling she didn’t always get from her own married children anymore. We became close, and she was like a mother to me in all the ways that Nancy never would be, and never could be.

Nancy was bitterly jealous of my relationship with Judy, and was constantly badmouthing the older woman in front of me. The idea that I would leave home to live with Judy made Nancy livid and she ripped into me without mercy. My dad and older sisters were sitting there in the living room too, my sisters watching silently with wide eyes, not daring to speak up lest Nancy turn her wrath upon them.

Interestingly enough, they had gone through a similar drama when they had moved out a few years back. For some reason, one that I still cannot fathom, they came back to live with Dad and Nancy when times got economically hard for them. I’ve always wanted to ask why they came back because we have other family that they could’ve gone to live with until things got better for them. But then I guess you could also ask, comparatively speaking, why an abused wife, after having left her violent husband, will sometimes go back to him.

I guess it’s because she hopes that things will get better. And because she loves him, in a twisted sort of way. It’s not very logical, but then, abuse is not logical, under any of its guises.

I had already decided that I was never coming back, and neither was I going to sit there and let Nancy begin once more to disparage Judy, so I jumped up from my seat, turned my back on Nancy and began to leave the room. It was only as Nancy was about to explode over my perceived insult of walking away from her that my father turned to Nancy and finally spoke up.

“Now, dear, don’t be so harsh,” he said mildly to Nancy. “Let’s talk about this.” Nancy hushed up for the moment only because she knew that he was going to call me back into the room, not because he was going to tell her to take her controlling self and go jump in a lake.

God, he made me so mad and frustrated. Thinking about him still makes me angry today, and it makes me want to cry too. When she got going, Nancy could get vicious, but my dad never once stepped up and tried to stop her. Sometimes during her mad rages against my sisters and me, I would look at him, if he bothered to come and see what was going on, and beg him in a choked whisper, my eyes filled with tears, “Do something! Please! Stop her!”

He never did.

Dad called me back into the living room, and so I obediently came and sat back down, as did Nancy. By now, my sense of elation at my soon-to-be-achieved independence was long gone, and I was on the complete offensive. I knew that whatever was said from this point out was not going to be good. We were now in official “family meeting” mode, and that always ended in pain and tears on my and my sisters’ end.

“Where are you moving to?” my mom demanded to know.

I kept my face impassive and my eyes dead. She hated when I put on that expression, or lack thereof, since she couldn’t physically see how much she was hurting me, or how much I wished that I could burst into tears and relieve the headache building at my temples, but I refused to cry in front of her because my pride wouldn’t allow it. My lack of expression was my armor against her, and I donned it willingly, mentally damning her to hell while I kept my voice carefully modulated.

“I’ve been looking at apartments, and I’ve found a couple within my means not far from where I work,” I said evenly, my back ramrod straight and my shoulders tense. “I’m not moving in with Judy, though I don’t see how my moving in with her, a sixty plus year old grandmother would be a bad thing, especially since I’m twenty.”

Judy had no vices, and loved books and quilting. She should have been a parent’s fantasy roommate for a daughter.

“Don’t you talk back to us, you little brat!” Nancy snarled. “That woman is a menace to this family, and if she was as angelic as you make her out to be, her family wouldn’t be in the shambles that it is.”

I had no idea what Nancy was talking about. Judy’s husband had died years before, and even though her and her sons and daughters didn’t always get along, they were still close. They certainly never treated each other the way we did in our family.

“When are you planning to move out?” my dad asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.

“I’m going to go talk to the managers over at White Pine Village tomorrow,” I replied flatly.

“How could you think about moving out though? You never talked to us about this at all! How can you just leave like this?” Nancy accused, trying another tactic on me: guilt, since anger wasn’t putting me in my place.

“Your mother’s right, Carrie,” Dad nodded. “You shouldn’t have sprung this on her in this way.”

She’s not my mother, I thought nastily, but aloud I pointed out, “I told you both three months ago that I was going to start looking.” Frustration was leaking through into my voice, and I struggled to stay calm. “This is hardly news.”

“I didn’t think anything would come of it,” Nancy said blithely. “You make almost nothing at that horrible job of yours, so why don’t you want to stay here?” Nancy’s tone of voice became high and whiny. “You only pay $100 in rent per month here. That’s so much cheaper than anywhere else.”

I suppressed an eye roll. My stepmother was an unhappy woman who married a man who didn’t communicate, was stubborn, and who had had the house under a constant state of construction for over twenty years, so that it looked like crap and was the eyesore of our street. Add onto that her natural short fuse and pessimistic outlook on life, and that house had been a hell hole for most of my life. Sure, I could stay and save more money, but then I’d have to just check my sanity at the door, along with what was left of my self-esteem and backbone.

No thank you.

“Mom,” I tried to reason. “I’m twenty. You left home at nineteen and were living on your own then. Why shouldn’t I do the same?”

“Time’s were different then. The city’s not a safe place, and - it’s that damn car, isn’t it?” Nancy exclaimed, changing gears swiftly and going back to angry beast mode. “Judy gave you that check at your graduation and you used it to buy that car. You and she probably have it all planned out: the great escape! You bought that car so you could get away and now you’re leaving like a little traitor.”

Judy gave me a check for $100 dollars and told me to use it to treat myself. I had used to it help pay the registration on my car, which I paid for myself out of my own hard earned money.

“Moving out does not make me a traitor!” I yelled, completely losing hold of my temper at this latest accusation. “It just means I’m growing up. And Judy has nothing to do with any of this, so you can leave her out of this. She has been nothing but kind to you as long as we’ve known her, but all you do is talk badly about her.”

“You watch your mouth, Carrie,” Nancy threatened, standing up once more. “You may be on your way out of here, but while you live here you will speak to me with respect!”

“Go shove it,” I growled, my eyes narrowed menacingly.