The Knowing: Awake in the Dark (5 page)

I couldn’t have known that my mother was trying to protect me from information she felt I shouldn’t have. Years later, she would tell me that she didn’t acknowledge how strong the Clairs were within me because my
knowing
and comments made her uncomfortable.

Around this same time, I began to see
pictures
or visions behind my eyes—or at least that was the best way I knew how to describe them. Receiving pictures was like participating in and observing a 3-dimensional movie simultaneously. My
pictures
brought insight and ambiguity, puzzles and explanation and, ultimately, they molded who I would become.

When the
pictures
came, I was held captive, like a genie in a bottle.
Pictures
happened spontaneously and could show anything.  Seconds before they began, everything stopped. Sight, sound, and senses were suspended in the present moment and a channel opened through which the images entered.  The experience was not like a seizure that paralyzes but rather it was a shift in attention. While observing the
pictures,
I experienced fully the feelings, thoughts, smells, sounds, and senses of the people I saw, creating an inner knowing although I was a mere observer.

I called this “
pictures”
behind my eyes, but others might say “prophetic visions” or “psychic visions” to describe the same thing. I didn’t know why I received
pictures
about some things and not others.

After we moved from Angie’s neighborhood, I was still angry at my mother. It was Saturday morning and the sun was beginning to warm the chilly morning air. I sat perched on the cold cement steps that led to the second floor where we lived. Bent nearly in half, my cheeks planted firmly between my scabby kneecaps, I peered down between the steps and let a long tendril of spit slowly drip onto a delicate spider web that hung there. The vision began.

Two women were sitting at a kitchen table talking and smoking cigarettes.

Their cigarettes dangled with ash, their breath hot with coffee, and their hearts were heavy with judgment.  As this scene became clear to me, it was like I was an invisible ghost floating in the room and I knew what they felt and thought—like we were all connected—like we were one.

“Can you believe it!?” exclaimed the first woman. “She is barely twenty one, not married, and on her second baby!”

Somehow, I knew this woman’s name was Tanya. She wore cutoff jeans whose fuzzy trimmed threads circled her perfectly smooth and lightly tanned thighs.  She had a longish face that reminded me of a horse.

“My god,” Tanya snorted, “My brothers would kill me!” she leaned her slender body forward and widened her pale brown eyes to exaggerate her point. “I mean they would kill me after they killed him of course.”

Unfolding her long legs, she pushed back from the table.  She then made her way to the sink, and poured the coffee down the drain.  The small, dingy kitchen had sticky counters stacked with dirty dishes.

Holly, the other woman at the round table, lifted a cigarette to her lips, pulled hard, and blew smoke towards the ceiling as she considered her response. “She has always been trash,” Holly commented.  “Always will be, I guess.”

Holly was petite with delicate features and had the exotic look of a beauty queen.  She wore a homemade halter-top in the shape of a kerchief that was tied so tightly at her neck and back that it burrowed into her soft skin, leaving deep marks from the weight of her surprisingly large bosoms.

“I mean,” Holly continued, “I didn’t even have sex until I was nineteen and even then Billy and I had already been together, what, two years?” Holly held up her tiny hand and showed two fingers, a testament to her virtue. Crushing out her cigarette, she leaned back.

 At that moment, I felt, her sweaty shoulder stick to the plastic chair. 

She took a sip of coffee that was now cold, made a face and glanced proudly into her living room.  A tattered green floral couch and cheap knickknacks with dust covered neglect filled the room. 

Holly was lying about her sexual past.  She told the truth about her relationship with Billy, but she had omitted the fact that she lost her virginity at age fourteen in a dark musty room to someone else, which no one knew about, including Billy. We all have our secrets.

 As the women continued to gossip, I knew they were talking about me, and although they were not my friends, I knew they were from somewhere in my life that was waiting. I lost all sense of time as the 3-D movie unfolded in my mind. I accepted what I saw without question or judgment. I didn’t fully grasp the meaning of what I had witnessed and, like any kid I quickly dismissed the event and returned to bitter thoughts about my mother. It wasn’t long after that day when the phone calls started between my parents.   

“If you weren’t such a selfish prick,” my mother screamed into the phone, “none of this would have happened. Oh c’mon Dell,” she continued, “you don’t give a shit about these girls.”

The accusations and bitter disputes went on for months until it was decided that Isla, Maggie, and I would spend the summer with our father and his new wife, Milda. My eldest sister, Karina, whose father was from a previous marriage of our mother, did not have to go live with Dell.

After the summer passed, Isla and Maggie chose to return home while I stayed with my father.

“You’ll be sorry,” Maggie warned as she packed her suitcase. “You’re an idiot,” she spat.

But I was delighted to live with my father and practically floated on air that first week. There would be no competition for his love from my sisters. Milda had a son from a previous marriage named Dickey. He was two years older than me—the son my father always wanted. I felt no jealousy though because I was my father’s real daughter and I believed I was his favorite. But the next several years I experienced physical abuse I never knew was possible and my father did nothing to stop it or protect me from it.

Milda was short and stout with large brown eyes and black hair teased and sprayed which she wore like a helmet. She was obsessed with cleanliness. The unmistakable smell of Pine-sol on gleaming floors was what you could expect in Milda’s house. The first night as a new family, Milda prepared crispy fried chicken, mashed potatoes and homemade biscuits with gravy for dinner.  The delicious smells permeated the air and the kitchen window fogged with condensation wafting up from the stove.

I sat at the table for four feeling pride that the cheap K-mart china matched. We gathered around and passed hot plates of food to one another like a real family. Milda was radiant at the dinner table, glowing with happiness and satisfaction.

“I ain’t ever had a daughter,” she cooed “and I always wanted one.” She looked directly at me and smiled as she spoke, “I’m so glad it’s gonna be you. This weekend, we can go shopping and buy some new clothes and shoes. Would you like that, honey?”

I was so happy I could burst as I eagerly nodded my head.
Who wouldn’t be happy? This is fantastic
, I thought. I was going to be like a real princess. What my eyes saw in Milda as happiness, was actually the glow of alcohol that shone like diamonds in the sun.

We dug into our food and my father said, “This is just the best fried chicken I think I ever had.” He looked up at Milda, smiling with greasy lips, and winked.

I scooped my spoon into my mashed potatoes smothered in southern gravy wrinkling my nose as I forced myself to swallow.  Instead of using milk to thicken and sweeten the gravy, Milda had used water from the boiled potatoes. Unaccustomed to the taste of the watery soup, my displeasure was impossible to hide. I avoided the potatoes and gravy completely. As she watched me, Milda’s agitation inflated to dangerous levels. Her mood and expression changed shifting her energetic field instantly.

“What’s the matter, missy?” She hissed. “You don’t like my gravy?”

The glow was gone from her face and was replaced with a belligerent sneer and her energy frightened me.  Shaking my head back and forth I whispered, “No, ma’am.”

Leaning in toward me, she snapped, “Why not?  Is it because I don’t use milk like her highness?” she taunted, referring to my mother, whom she hated.

Her finger made a curly cue in the air as she spoke.  A clear view of Milda’s silver fillings shone in her mouth as she exaggerated the words “her highness” and the sharp smell of alcohol whooshed at me carried on her sour breath. The chair scraped loudly beneath her as Milda pushed back from the table, the color had risen in her cheeks.

Rigid with fear, my stomach clenched in response.

Milda’s face was inches from mine as she slurred, “In my house you don’t get to turn your nose up, you hear me?!”

My father and step-brother sat mute and watched the event unfold.

“But I don’t like it,” I whined, tears spilling over.

In an instant, Milda slapped the side of my head three or four times. I’d never been slapped before. Her warm palm striking my face was shocking and it took a moment to register what was happening. She grabbed a handful of my hair, snatched the spoon from my hand and began forcing mashed potatoes and gravy into my mouth.

“Open your mouth!” she screamed.

Potatoes and gravy landed with wet thumps on my bare thighs. I gagged on the food, tears, and snot and I vomited as, Milda slapped my head again and again, screaming words I could not hear. Still holding a fist full of hair, she rattled my head back and forth. I felt helpless and embarrassed.

I had no recollection of getting cleaned up and going to bed. Lying in the dark, I sucked in air and tried desperately to hold back tears. With each heartbeat the back of my head throbbed in complaint.

My father never intervened and, in my mind, there was no question that I was at fault.
Why couldn’t I just eat the gravy?
 I thought as I lay in the darkness worried and fearful of the mess I had made of things. Suddenly, harsh yellow light spilled into the room as the door opened. Milda stumbled to the bed crying openly.

“I’m so sorry honey,” she hiccupped. Her emotion rushed toward me like a giant wave. “You’re my daughter now and I’m sorry honey. I love you. I really do.”

She said all these things as she held me and we both cried and I patted her back to comfort her. I felt responsible for her tears.  Drunk and slurring, she held my face between her hands and said, “Don’t you ever spit out my food again, you hear me?  I am a right good cook and everyone likes my cooking. Everyone.”

“Ok-k-kay,” I stuttered through tears. “I won’t. I’m s-s-s-s-orry.”

A high keening whine left my throat as sobbing took hold and I bowed my head in shame. I felt awful for my behavior. The beating would be the first of physical abuse that I would endure for the next year and a half until my sister; Maggie would save me from years of beatings by bringing me home with her.

My father never spoke of the incident and acted as though nothing unusual had happened. It was one of many times I felt abandoned by him.

For the rest of his life, our father would put the woman he was married to first and his children would fit where they fit. At first, this behavior caused pain and confusion for me because I believed that I was less important to my father than the women he married. Ultimately, it was my father’s gift to me because, I had to find self-worth within, discovering that I was worth loving despite my father’s inability to show me that. I found that receiving love was a choice I could make and had nothing to do with who my father loved. It was a powerful lesson and I am a stronger woman because of it.

The following weekend, we went camping by a lake. I’d never camped before or gone anywhere overnight as a family and I was silly with excitement.

The water chilled my skin forcing goosebumps to tighten it like dried paste. I couldn’t force the grin from my face even as I danced on slippery stones slowly going deeper into the lake where I knew I shouldn’t be. I didn’t know how to swim and wore no life vest.

Shining pinpoints across the lake’s surface was the last thing I saw before I slipped beneath the water’s edge. I could no longer feel the bottom and panic seized me. Spastically my arms and legs moved in opposite directions. Murky water got colder as I sunk and the sound of water filling my ears pushed against the noise of my drumming heart.

Something seized me squeezing my ribcage. Air bubbles carrying the last of my breath shot to the surface seconds before my face erupted into the air. I sucked a mixture of water and air gagging on both.

I lay on my side in a spasm of coughing and choking. Sharp edges of tiny rocks pricked my skin while my swimsuit was tightly lodged between my buttocks.

“That’s it child, get it out,” came the unfamiliar voice of a woman whose cold, wet hand slapped my back. “You’ll be just fine,” she said.