Sister of Silence (2 page)

The story you are about to read took me
20 years to tell. First I had to acknowledge what had happened, and then I had to work through the effects of that realization. Some of the depictions may be difficult to read, but know that in the telling of it—and my learning from it—healing began. I hope you’ll keep that in mind as you read
Sister of Silence.

And
if you recognize something in your own life or in the life of someone you know, I hope learning
my
story will help you take action. If that happens, then I know this account will extend far beyond my words here.

It’s
been a challenging story to tell, and not one that can easily be told in a chronological way—which is something I’m much more accustomed to as a working journalist. What I discovered was that
awakening
, sometimes, comes in stages. And memories—the good ones and the painful ones—can come to the surface in bits and pieces, in different order, many times, the difficult ones having been carefully buried or transformed into something more palatable and easier to live with, hiding the truth within. So, this story is one that reads that way, from time to time, because what I share are glimpses into my life and what happened to me, but not on a nice orderly timeline.

At the end
is the Afterword, written by Kenneth V. Lanning, former Supervisory Special Agent of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. I hope you’ll take time to read it, because it contains vital information about victimization. I am honored to have his words a part of this book.

Finally,
I’m donating a percentage of my proceeds to Samantha’s Sanctuary, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation I established in 2012 to help educate and empower abused women and children. Every little bit really does help, and these survivors need all our help.

All my best,

Daleen Berry

“The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.”

—Henri Bergson

My knuckles turned white as I clenched the crib rail. I looked down at my newborn, then leaned over and lifted the sleeping bundle and held it against my breast, feeling the softness of new skin as he pulled tiny legs up against his body. The small silky head turned, and I felt the whisper of his warm breath against the pillow my neck provided.

Cradling him lovingly, I slowly walked over to the open window, held out my arms, and let go.

“You haven’t had any thoughts of harming yourself, have you? Or anyone else?”

Back in 1984, Dr. Towson had said the unthinkable so calmly, as if it were a routine question. That had to be what it was. Me, hurt my baby? What kind of a mother would do that?

My throat seemed to close up so tight
I couldn't have said the words even if I'd dared:
Actually, yes, Doctor Towson, I am afraid to venture too close to any open windows while holding a baby in my arms.

“Mrs. Leigh?”

I looked into the well-meaning eyes of my family doctor and shrugged.

“Nothing like that. No,
I’m just tired, that’s all. I feel kind of blah. You know, like a black cloud’s hanging over me. That’s all.”

Ashamed of my blatant lies, I offered
some words of truth. “I’m exhausted because my husband wants to have sex all the time. Do you think he might have an addiction?”

My doctor, fresh out of medical school, only laughed. “Men would have sex with a tree, if they could,” he said.

He continued writing in my chart, then looked up with an understanding smile, as if he hadn't just blown off my concerns about Eddie.

“I don’t really think you need an antidepressant. You just need some more help at home. Tell your husband to pitch in and give you a break now and then. Have an occasional glass of wine to help you relax. After all, you’re only twenty-two and you have four little ones to take care of, not to mention a house and a husband. It isn’t unreasonable to think you would need some help.”

As always, my smile came easily, and I nodded. “Of course that’s it. I’m sure you’re right.”

He turned toward the door, but then looked back at me. “Better yet, why don’t you hire a sitter and you and your husband go away for a long weekend?”

Then he was gone.

The last “long weekend” had led to a fourth baby
.

What if I'd told the truth? Since the birth of my first, that scene at the window had repeated itself in my mind, over and over again. The thought would come to me at the oddest moment, with such intensity I was sure I was going crazy.

What was wrong with me, that I would even consider such a thing?

The pervasive thoughts remained for many years, for the entire time my four children were too helpless to care for themselves, too innocent to protect themselves from a mother tormented by so many evil thoughts that, had she acted on them, would have instantly put an end to their lives. Yet I never told another human being about them. Ever. I was terrified of the consequences. Afraid they would lock me up in some place where medication turned the minds of crazy people to mush, leaving them defenseless against orderlies in starched coats and nurses with long needles and little pink and blue pills.

I remembered Dr. Towson’s suggestion to have a drink. But I never needed a glass of wine to get me through those mental minefields, when the wrong thought threatened to blow my world to smithereens; somehow I just did what I was supposed to, instead of killing
us all. It was at night, when my husband came to me, that I needed the alcohol to drown out what happened whenever he touched me. And it was those times, all those perverse touches that made me feel like a tiny insect caught and held fast, being squished inside a little child’s clenched fist—it was those times that drove me to stand before my baby’s crib, waging a war within not to do the unthinkable.

Some people’s problems begin with a shot of whisky or a bottle of rum. Mine began before my birth, inside a beer can. And then another. And another. After I was born, it took me about seven years to realize my father’s drinking colored our family’s life in every possible way—the beer he consumed was more important than we were. By 1972, the beer had become a dangerous tool that transformed him from a sensitive, mild-mannered man into a monster.

I was fortunate. I
witnessed it only once, in a scene that played out before me as a child. I locked it carefully away, where it stayed until it was released as a painful memory years later.

Mom had kept dinner waiting on the stove when Daddy didn’t come home. Again. I suspected she knew he was sitting at a beer joint somewhere,
since she was always calling them to track him down. So after she packed us off to bed, leaving his dinner warming on the back burner, she went to sleep herself.

The screaming woke me up.

“Get outta bed and make me sumpin’ that doesn’t taste like burnt toast!” My father’s voice came from the room next to mine.

“Dale, stop it. Please,
you’re hurting me!”

M
y mother’s cries.

Other
noises, too, sounds of moving around, but I lay petrified, eyes closed, hardly daring to breathe.

“I deserve sumpin’ better’n that crap downstairs,” Daddy yelled. “I work hard all day long and all I won’ is a halfway decent meal when I come home!”

Though terrified, I had to see what was happening. I slid from beneath the heavy blankets and quilts that Mom had piled upon me and peeked around the corner of my bedroom door. Through the darkness, I could just make out my father’s hand, buried beneath the dark silky strands of my mother’s beautiful hair, as he pulled her toward the stairway. The echo of their voices moved along with them, past the faded, peeling wallpaper and out of my sight.

I tiptoed across the old and cracked Linoleum, and watched the breath that came from my mouth turn into a delicate mist,
and slowly, stealthily, crept toward the stairwell on tiptoe, afraid a creaking floorboard would give me away. When I looked down, Mom was in front of my father, crying as he followed close behind her on the stairs, his hand clamped tightly around her arm. I don’t know what frightened me more—her crying, or the realization that she could slip and tumble down the steps any second.

When they had disappeared into the kitchen, I sat on
a step, partway down. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” I sobbed softly, my face framed between the two ancient banister dowels my tiny hands gripped, my body trembling from fear as well as the frigid night air of our uninsulated brick home.

His yelling
gradually grew softer and then stopped altogether. I could picture him sitting in the kitchen, eating whatever Mom had hastily whipped up, while she waited for him to finish so she could carry his dishes to the sink. I wanted to see for myself that she was all right, yet I was too afraid to go down the stairs. Still, I was determined not to return to my room. If he tried to hurt her again, I was going to make him stop. I didn’t know how, but I would do anything I could to protect Mom—Mom, who would hold me as I sobbed, thanks to yet another middle of the night ear infection, gently blowing her warm breath into my affected ear to ease the pain until we arrived at the hospital. At that moment I decided I would do whatever it took, even if that meant beating him off with my bare hands.

My toes turned numb as I sat there for wh
at seemed like hours before my parents came into the living room, looking like they were at someone’s funeral. Both were sad and silent as they sat on the couch together, Daddy’s arm around my mother as he tried to comfort her.

My sobs had stopped, but in their place, a few hiccups remained, and I guess that’s what caused Mom to turn in my direction.

“Daleen, what are you doing out of bed? It’s freezing in here and you’re going to be ill!” Rising, she hurried up to me, and the next thing I knew, I was clinging to her as she carried me back down the stairs.

“I want you to divorce him,” I said as my tears began flowing again. “I don’t want him to hurt you anymore.”

“Shh, there, it’s all right,” she cooed. “Your father didn’t hurt me. I’m fine.”

By then we were on the couch and I was on her lap. When she whispered my words to my father, he tried to put his arm around me but I pulled away and clung even tighter to Mom. He leaned back heavily.

“I’m so sorry, Neelad,” he whispered, using the pet name he had given me.

“There now, it’s all right. Everything’s fine now,” Mom said.

I glanced his way. In the pale living room light, he did seem different. He no longer looked mean and frightening, like he had when I first woke up. He even smiled.

“I’m sorry if I scared you, Honey. I didn’t mean to.” His words were quiet and I could smell his horrible beer breath.

I buried my face against Mom again.

“Will you be all right now? We’re coming to bed, and everything’ll be fine, I promise.” As she spoke, she brushed the hair back from my eyes. I nodded and looked into her flushed face, her own stormy blue eyes rimmed with red.

“I’m taking her back to bed, Dale,” she told my father, who rose onto unsteady feet to follow us. Upstairs, Mom tucked me in with a kiss against my forehead. “Remember, God will protect us,” she whispered against my ear.

A few minutes later I heard them get into bed. Everything grew quiet, but I lay there praying in the dark, “Please God,
” over and over again, "let her divorce him.”

Dad went to work in Washington, DC, soon afterward: I think he was ashamed of what he’d done that night. Maybe he was also afraid his drinking might lead to a repeat performance. I was happy when he left, knowing he wouldn’t hurt my mother anymore.

My prayer had been answered.

But I was nine and blissfully ignorant of how Dad’s void would be filled by someone else in my own life just four years later, a force that would change me forever.

Four years after Dad left us, I entered junior high, surrounded by unfamiliar faces now that school consolidation was becoming a national trend. Shy and subdued, I excelled academically and somehow found my place during the most difficult phase of adolescence. In my West Virginia History class, I was selected to enter the statewide Golden Horseshoe Contest. In English, I received regular praise for my essays and short stories. I was proud of my accomplishments, but not wanting to be noticed, I pretended they were no big deal.

Even t
hough I tried not to draw attention to myself, sometimes I just couldn’t help it. The following year, more than anything else, I wanted to win the county spelling bee. As the winner for my school, I would compete against students from several other schools. I grilled myself over and over again. With my parents and two sisters in the audience one spring night, I was the only student standing when the last word was given out. I spelled it correctly—becoming the county winner, taking home a $50 savings bond, and having my photo in the local newspaper.

I felt a huge sense of achievement, and realized that with hard work and enough time, anything was possible. Because it was important to me, and I had been willing to give up my free time to get it, I won.

My parents were very proud of me, but I think Dad, who drove three hours from work to be there, was the proudest. He had always corrected our misspelled words and improper grammar, he’d taught us to play Scrabble, and he’d helped instill in his daughters that nothing was impossible.

“You can succeed if you want something badly enough, and you can be whatever you want to be,” Dad told me. “Even though you’re a girl.”

Dad
was exceptional in countless ways, in spite of his many other failures—one being his drinking. It had always been the great divide between my parents, making him unreliable when it came time to send support money home. So after he moved to Martinsburg, West Virginia, an hour from his new job in Washington, DC, Mom found a job as a waitress to make ends meet. We still saw Dad, but only during a weekend here or there.

Which is how our
baby sister was born in 1976. I was twelve, Carla nine, when Jackie arrived. She was adorable and I loved her dearly, especially when she began to coo and smile at me. Carla happily gave up her position as the youngest to dote on the new baby. I helped care for little Jackie when I had to, but I didn’t spend all my free time playing with her like Carla did. I thought a baby was just a necessary nuisance, the last thing on my busy mind. I couldn’t foresee having any babies of my own for a very long time—if ever.

Sometimes after Carla and I got home from school, Mom would take us all with her on the thirty-minute drive to the restaurant. While Mom worked, we would wander around the mall, pushing Jackie in her stroller. Most of the time, unless a diaper needed changing, all I had to do was oversee my siblings.

When the mall closed and Mom was busy cleaning her section in the restaurant, she’d bring us dessert and we’d eat at one of the tables, waiting until her shift ended. Those were some of my favorite times with my mother. Sure, her job interfered with our social life and school studies, but we did what we had to do. Carla, who excelled socially but not academically, didn’t mind running around the mall playing with Jackie and meeting up with friends while
I did homework. I knew that, as the oldest, I had an obligation to make sure my mom could earn the income she desperately needed to pay the bills.