The Bad Lady (Novel) (19 page)

When they had found out that an ice cream truck employee had molested me, my grandparents had been altogether aghast. And had said that, they did not blame my mother for what she had done to Nancy Sutcliffe, running her over in cold blood.

My grandparents did not believe in murder. No. Not at all. They were actually strongly opposed to it unless the killings took place during war. Nevertheless, in this particular instance, they had stated that they understood wholeheartedly how me being sexually abused could have set my mother off. It was obvious that they missed her very much, and wished that, when she was alive, they had reconciled with my mom.

Whether or not my religious grandparents knew about the bad lady, I could not say for sure. They hinted that they knew my mother had another side to her personality, a darker more controversial side. Thus far, however, that was all they did, was hint at it.

In my mind, I think they had full knowledge of the bad lady‘s existence, and probably had had that knowledge for a while. Yet, for whatever reason, my grandpa Barry, and, even more so, my grandma Nadine did not care to discuss the matter. It almost seemed as if they were afraid to resurrect the dead.

One day, I had overheard them in the barn where we kept the chickens, talking about how my mom had run Nancy down and how she had stolen the cop’s service revolver and had gone ‘Rambo’ on the Good Humor truck.

My grandfather had looked at my grandmother and in a rather depleted, sorrowful voice, he had uttered, “Nadine, you realize if Bridgette had been in her right mind that would have never occurred.”

“I agree,” my grandmother had said, in an equally somber tone.

“We should have kept in touch with her.”

“You’re right Barry, we should have.”

“If we did, maybe we could have convinced Bridgette to get some help.”

“Maybe. We’ll never know now.”

At the time, I wasn’t sure whether they had been referring to the bad lady, my mother’s addiction to heroin, or perhaps both.

Again, I could not help but wonder whether the influence the heroin had had on my mom‘s mind, might have had something to do with the creation of the bad lady. That maybe the powerful illegal narcotic may have polluted her thinking.

Anyway, as much as I appreciated my grandparents taking me in, I missed my mother a lot, and as the years passed, I would think about her quite often. I guess you could say, ever since she had been shot to death, a part of me had died along with her. As if a vital piece of my soul had drifted up, with her spirit, into the clouds of the afterworld.

It is my opinion that when a child loses a parent that they are close to, whether through death or as a result of other circumstances, that child will always feel a kind of silent emptiness deep within. And the agony of losing that close relative will never completely subside.

***

At my grandparent’s request, from the age of thirteen to about sixteen, I had gone to see a psychiatrist, and had learned a lot about myself, particularly how I had in no way enticed Nancy Sutcliffe to abuse me.

No.

My psychiatrist had taught me that Nancy Sutcliffe, being the adult, had been the one who had clearly violated the boundaries of suitable behavior. Me, being the child, I had nothing to do with what had transpired in the summer of 1998.

As I’ve gotten older, I had begun to understand how Nancy’s inappropriate actions had left me with a profound emotional scar. As much as I am attracted to members of the opposite sex, especially from a physical standpoint, I have an exceedingly hard time trusting them.

In fact, because of Nancy, you could even say sometimes I view females as having secret hidden agendas, evil motives. Unparticular I frequently feel this way about older women, about many of the teachers I’ve had, and many of the random older women I have met through my daily travels. Mostly I have this warped attitude toward females who are very polite to me, the way Nancy had been.

The unusual thing about this is this problematic issue with trust is buried so far down in my subconscious, that, in terms of me wanting to change this irrational stance, I am virtually powerless.

But I am trying.

Believe me; I am desperately trying to change this attitude and learn how to trust.

Shame is another thing I have had to try to overcome. Or maybe I should say it is the main thing that, as the years have passed; I have had to somehow attempt to erase from my psyche.

You see, when I was that ten-year old boy who had been sexually intimate with an adult, I felt no shame. No. When you are that young and innocent, you do not know what shame is. Therefore, you do not experience it. At least not on a conscious level the way you feel shame when you are older, and more educated as far as what society defines as unacceptable conduct.

“So Billy,” my psychiatrist Dr. Frederick Sedevic had said to me during one of our sessions at his office in downtown Indianapolis, “you think the shame you feel stems from the fact that you, being a male, should be able to easily shrug off what had happened to you? Because you weren’t, quote on quote, violated the way a male pedophile might violate a female child through the act of penetration?”

“Sort of,” I had replied. “I mean, most people, when they think of child sexual abuse, automatically get an image in their mind of a perverted man either fondling or outright raping a girl. Or a perverted man doing that to a helpless boy. You hardly ever hear about a woman taking advantage of a male child. And if you do hear about it, it seems like most people either don’t believe that abuse really took place, or they don’t take it seriously.” During this specific session, I had been more open regarding my feelings than I had been during most of my prior sessions.

“And you’re saying,” Dr. Sedevic interrupted, “that you don’t think most people consider you as much of a victim, because your abuser was a female?”

I nodded. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“By why Billy, why do you feel that way?”

“I don’t know. I just do.”

“It doesn’t make any difference whether your abuser was a man or a woman,” my psychiatrist assured me. “Abuse is abuse. What that woman Nancy Sutcliffe did to you inside that ice cream truck was, on her part, a shameful act. And just because at the time you didn’t know it was wrong, or because maybe, on some level, you might have enjoyed the experience, doesn’t take away the fact that she never should have put you, a naïve child, in that kind of compromising position to begin with.”

I had also informed my shrink that some of my shame, I believed, stemmed from me thinking that I never should have told my mother about the abuse. That had I been mentally strong enough to keep the secret to myself, my mom would have still been alive.

“You can’t keep blaming yourself for that either,” Dr. Sedevic added. “A ten-year old cannot be held accountable for the events that unfold as a result of something so reprehensible such as this.”

He had given me a minute to collect my thoughts.

“Yeah,” I finally said. “That makes sense.” That was my response. Yet, as I said those words, I had broken down, into loud, uncontrollable sobbing. In fact, I had sounded like the whining baby that I feared I might always be. Someone who might never be able to get past, not only what had happened to me inside that stupid lewd ice cream truck, but also the death of my mother. That’s right; a part of me felt that it was my fault that she had died.

“Billy?”

“What?”

“Are you listening to me,” Dr. Sedevic questioned, in an urgent, yet proffessional tone.

“Yes. I’m listening.”

“You did not have a hand in your mother’s death.”

“I know,” I said, still extremely choked up.

“No. I don’t think you do know.”

“I miss her doc. I still miss her everyday. I don’t know how to stop the pain. Every so often, I still see my mother in my dreams. But when I try to reach out to her to tell her that I’m sorry, that’s when she suddenly disappears, and then I see the bad lady at the funeral, lying in the coffin, clutching the red rose . . . Then I always wake up!”

At that instant, Dr. Sedevic, who was tall, about six-feet-four, with a grayish-brown beard and scholarly-looking spectacles, had to come over to the couch and shake me. My body had seemed to go into a state of convulsions.

“Billy,” he said. “Calm down. You will always miss your mother. As a small child, she was the only caretaker you ever had. She was all you ever knew . . . But you need to move on. To think you had something to do with her death is paranoia, borderline delusional. It’s not reality. Do you understand me? It’s not reality at all.”

I continued to sob. “Doc, I just wish I could bring her back.”

“Well, you can’t bring her back.”

“I still hear her talking to me,” I added. “I mean, sometimes. Not always.”

I heard my psychiatrist scribble notes down in his notepad.

“Is your mother the only one who tries to communicate with you, or does the bad lady speak as well?”

“Only my mom.”

“And why do you think that is?”

“Because,” I answered honestly. “I think my mother went to Heaven, and that the bad lady went to that other place.”

“Other place?” my shrink inquired skeptically.

“Hell. I think the bad lady went to Hell.”

“Hmn.” As he contemplated, Dr. Sedevic let loose a long, heavy sigh. The more information I revealed, the faster his pen moved across the pages of his notebook. During this session, he must have written a thousand word essay.

“Doc, I’m not kidding. I know the bad lady got cast down into the shadowy underworld.”

“What makes you so sure about that?”

“Because sometimes I can hear her mournful cry.”

He flipped to yet another page. “Mournful cry?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Like Satan is punishing her relentlessly.”

“Why Billy, that’s a very morbid picture you’re painting.”

“It is,” I concurred. “No doubt.” More tears leaked from my distressed eyes.

“And how does this make you feel, knowing that the bad lady might be suffering such a horrific fate?”

“It hurts. Because even though she might have been crazy, I don’t think, she deserves to be in Hell. The bad lady always cared about my well-being. Everything she did, she did for me.”

“She loved you, Billy. There seems to be no doubt about that. I’m sure she loved you just as much as your mother did.”

“Right.”

“So do you forgive her?”

I did not say anything.

“Billy, do you forgive her?”

“Yes,” I finally admitted. “I forgave my mother’s alter ego a long time ago.”

***

A few minutes later I uttered, “Oh my God, she keeps shooting her.”

“Who?” Dr. Sedevic asked, while stifling a startled cough.

“The bad lady. She keeps shooting Nancy Sutcliffe in the head.”

“I’m confused, Billy. Describe the scenario.”

“She has Nancy tied up in a chair, in a small dimly-lit room. Nancy is blindfolded and there is black electrical tape over her mouth. The bad lady keeps putting bullets in Nancy’s brain, over and over again. Boom! Bang! Boom! Boom! Bang! Boom! She’s relentless. Doc, I can’t take it! It’s like a disturbing scene from a horror movie that won’t shut off.”

“Why do you think she keeps shooting Nancy Sutcliffe in the head?”

“Because,” I responded, raising my voice. “Even in death the bad lady won’t let go of her hatred.”

My shrink fell silent.

“Dr. Sedevic, will I also go crazy?”

“No.”

“How do I stop these nightmares? Is there a way? I just want to be normal like everyone else.”

“You will be normal again, Billy. Soon. You just have to give it time. These things, as they say, don’t happen over night. You’ll just have to be patient.”

PART THIRTEEN

FATHER

CHAPTER 25

Regarding my long lost father, me, now at age twenty, a second year student at Indiana State University, I had finally made the decision that I would try to track him down.

Before going to the extreme of hiring a private investigator, a month ago, on the internet, I had looked up the name Hugh Sandusky in a Chicago phone book, but could not find him.

Frustrated, I assumed that my biological father no longer resided in that city. Nevertheless, I knew he had to be out there, in the country, somewhere. I could feel it deep down in my heart that he was still alive, probably working at some nine to five job, possibly even married with children.

Strange, if he had kids, I had been thinking, technically those people would be my siblings.

Then, a week later, I got lucky.

I found him on Facebook. Hugh Sandusky lived in Missouri, in a town called Kirkland, which was situated west of the Mississippi River. I googled the town and had discovered that it was an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis. According to his Facebook profile, my biological father was in fact married.

Now you might be asking yourself how is it that I knew this was the right Hugh Sandusky. Answer, because after my mother had died, I had uncovered pictures of my biological father, of him and my mom at the crowded cigarette-smoky nightclub in Cleveland where they had met. Plus, on Facebook, there were only two Hugh Sandusky’s listed.

Staring at my keyboard in my college dormitory, late one night when my roommate Jason Reddington, a party animal, had passed out drunk in the bed beside me, I was scared. Somehow, in the face of such intense uncertainty, I had to summon the courage to send my dad a friend request.

On the cluttered night table beside me, there were a couple of cans of Keystone Light. They were Jason’s beers, of course. Anyway, needing something to relax my nerves, I popped one of the warm cans open and took a quick swig.

Then, as I was preparing to send the friend request, I suddenly yanked my hands back from the computer keys. I did not know why I was so damn nervous.

This man who I wanted to send the friend request to was my own flesh and blood.

There should be no reason for me to be nervous.