Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos (5 page)

Ginny found us when she answered one of Dad’s ads. She was a very nice, pretty girl who had a two-year-old son I’ll call Andy.
The thing I remember most about Andy was that he was a really big kid for his age. The addition of Andy to our household was very exciting to me. Until this time, whatever configuration we had of family in our house, I was always the youngest. I was Baby Lyssa. That’s why any person younger than I was a source of extreme interest and fascination.

Ginny didn’t last long in her role as nanny before she was “upgraded” to dad’s girlfriend. And from the beginning, Dad and Ginny’s relationship was passionate, both physically and emotionally. As the weeks and months passed after Ginny was hired, Dad became less frequent and less present in our lives.

During this time Dad and I took a ride in his car and he began smoking a crack pipe like it was a cigarette. Dad has since said that, at the time, he had no idea what crack was. That maybe explains why when Dad first started smoking crack (from my perspective) he never tried to hide it. He thought it was the coolest, hippest thing in the world. It wasn’t too long, however, before his new habit came to the attention of a few people who didn’t think it was quite so cool.

One day during a DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) class at school the teacher showed Tucker’s class pictures of some drug paraphernalia. When the photo of a crack pipe came up, Tucker shouted out something to the effect of, “Hey, my dad uses one of those.”

Twenty-four hours later, as the school day ended and I was standing on the second-floor balcony waiting for Dad to pick me
up, several school officials came to escort me to a nearby room, where they told me I was not going home with Dad that day. Out the window, I watched my dad storm up the front stairs of the school, absolutely furious. Even from the second floor I could hear him yelling, but the result was that I was put into a car with strangers and taken to a Child Protective Services (CPS) office to a small room with a few books, waiting for I didn’t know what.

You can imagine my fear and confusion. Here I was, an eight-year-old little girl, and all I knew was that I was being taken from my family. I didn’t understand why. I didn’t know why I had to be checked for bruises and such, or where we were going. Terror formed an icy ball deep inside me.

After everyone was done looking at me, I was again loaded into the car. Now I was told that we were going to a Taco Bell and then we’d drive all the way to the other side of the island so I could meet my new family. New family? What new family? I loved my old family! I wanted to go home to my dolls, to our house. I desperately wanted my dad.

After we stopped at the restaurant we went to a park so I could stretch my legs before the long drive ahead. They were taking me to Hilo, which was a two-and-a-half-hour drive. I think these strangers hoped I would burn off some energy at the park before the trip.

My “captors” were very careful not to leave me alone, but they made one huge mistake. In conversation, they mentioned that Tucker had also been taken from Dad but had escaped. I knew then that I had to do something, or I might never see my family
again. In my mind, these people were kidnapping me, and I was afraid Dad would be mad at me for letting them do that. So as soon as their backs were turned, I ran.

I took off and ran as hard and as fast as I could and put as much distance as I could, as quickly as possible, between those other people and me. Fortunately, I was familiar with this park, as Dad had taken me there to play a number of times. I ran to the closest highway and an older couple picked me up in their ancient pickup truck. I am forever grateful to them. I sat between them in the front seat and asked to be dropped off at a McDonald’s that I knew was up the street. They seemed happy to do so. Today I think that if anyone saw a small, panting, frightened, out-of-breath child on a street corner, they’d probably try to find out why the child was panicked. But like an answer to a prayer, a car showed up when I needed one and the driver drove me where I needed to go, no questions asked.

When I got to the McDonald’s, I placed a collect call to my dad with trembling fingers. Many of Dad’s bail clients called collect, so I knew what to do. I could hear the relief in Dad’s voice as he told me to hide somewhere close by; I would be rescued as soon as possible. I have always been small and I found a perfect hiding place under a seat and waited. And waited.

My heart was thumping in my chest so hard that I was sure it would give me away. It seemed like forever, but Ginny eventually got there. Dad was afraid the police might be looking for him so he sent Ginny instead of coming himself.

That night I was so happy to be home, surrounded by people I loved. But my happiness was not to last very long. The next morning a pounding on the door awakened me. The police were there with Child Protective Services, and I realized that they wanted Barbara, Tucker, and me to leave with them.

“Over my dead body!” Dad shouted. “If you take them now, they will come back, just as they did yesterday.”

If I ever doubted that Dad loved me, those fears were put to rest right then. Even I could see that this was a man who was doing his best to protect his family. I also have to admit that while most of my childhood memories are crystal clear, maybe because I was so traumatized by the event that here some of my memories are a bit foggy. My dad has a somewhat different recollection of the details of this time. However, the main facts remain clear to us both: CPS took me away from my family and I escaped.

On hindsight, I have to acknowledge that we were minor children living in a home where a parent was doing hard drugs. Should we have been removed from the home? It’s an interesting question. I think that what my dad needed at this time more than anything was love, guidance, and support. It was about this same time that Tony Robbins stopped asking Dad to speak at his seminars, and I know how much that news must have hurt. I’ve often thought that if Dad had someone in his life who could have been there in person to give him support and encouragement daily, that life might have turned out differently for all the members of my family.

But then again, maybe not. Maybe the wheel had turned too far and we were all on an inevitable path of implosion.

The Child Protective Services people eventually left with the police, and Dad went into the bathroom to take several deep, long drags on his crack pipe.

Several days later I was downstairs with the other kids while Dad and Ginny were upstairs in their room, as they usually were. We were all surprised when, BAM, Tawny and Pastor Jeremiah walked through our door with Bibles in hand. Tawny had also brought her daughter, Nikki, with her and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen any of them. We hadn’t been going to church recently, and Tawny and Nikki had left our family a long time ago. Now they were here like crusaders of God, as Tawny hoped Pastor Jeremiah could perform an exorcism on my dad. I think Tawny thought an exorcism would stop Dad from taking drugs, but I never knew why she chose that particular day to show up. Maybe she and Dad had been seeing each other and I didn’t know about it. If that were the case, the hair-pulling fistfight that Tawny and Ginny got into would make more sense. I also didn’t realize it then, but Dad and Tawny were still legally married. Their divorce would not be finalized until 2003.

The entire incident scared me to death. Because we hadn’t seen Tawny in a long time, her just being in our home was a shock to me. As soon as she arrived Tawny began telling Dad and Ginny where to sit for the exorcism. Barbara and Tucker laughed at this, because they thought it was hysterical that Tawny would try to tell
Dad what to do. I’m not sure what happened next, because I was swept away into a room by one of my siblings and told not to come out until someone came to get me.

After that, Dad probably sensed that officials would be back with legal documents that would force us to be taken away from him. But my dad is a smart man; he turned proactive and beat them to it. First, he purchased tickets for Barbara and Tucker to go to Alaska. Our mother was getting married again, and it was a great reason to send these two children to help her celebrate her big day. Dad then flew to Colorado and spent two weeks in his father’s tiny travel trailer getting sober.

To ensure that no one was in residence when Child Protective Services returned, if indeed they did return, I was sent to live for several weeks with Dad’s friend (and exorcist) Pastor Jeremiah. Dad has since told me that he doesn’t remember my going to stay with the pastor, but I remember it very well because it was here that I first remember no longer wanting to be the “good girl.” Until this point in my life I had always been the cooperative daughter, the kid who wanted only to please. But this family was much stricter than I was used to. I also missed my brothers and sister terribly.

Sadly, the incident with Child Protective Services had changed me. After all, I reasoned, what had being a good girl gotten me? A dysfunctional family and no friends. Running away after I had been taken was the first big defiant thing I had ever done, and I now felt a strong need to rebel, to act like my sister and brother—even my dad, for that matter.

One day I went to the grocery store with Pastor Jeremiah’s family and I had an urge to act out. Back then cigarettes were not kept inside locked shelves, and I quickly grabbed a pack of Benson & Hedges and hid it in my pant pocket until we got back to the preacher’s house. I was so excited to run down the hill near their house and smoke. This was not the first time I had smoked a cigarette—they had been introduced to me at about the same time as the pot smoking.

When I came back up the hill for dinner I was confronted about the smell of tobacco on my clothes, but I lied and said I had not smoked anything. I knew they knew I was lying, but by this time I was convinced these people were total squares. However, I was way cool, and they were just trying to stop me from having fun.

Lying is something every child tries at least once. When I discovered that no one challenged my lies to any extent, it opened a door to a new world. I could now get away with things I would never have dreamed of a few short months ago.

★

By the time I returned from Pastor Jeremiah’s to Dad and Ginny, school was out for the summer and he had moved us to another house. Ginny’s son, Andy, had not made the move, though. Because Dad was so concerned about the possibility of Child Protective Services taking his children, he and Ginny arranged for her son to live with his dad in California. I had nowhere else to go,
so I was the only child living there. Also, I was Baby Lyssa. I was Dad’s baby girl and I never went too far from him.

That summer I didn’t see much of Dad. He was either busy with his business, or busy with Ginny. I was left to pretty much fend for myself. With no one paying attention to household chores, conditions soon became so bad that there was little food, no clean clothes or dishes, and maggots flourished in the dishwasher. Yes, maggots. Dad was horrified when I pointed them out to him, and he and Ginny made a brief attempt to clean the place up.

I also did what I could to keep our home tidy, but I was still only eight. On the cleaning front I swept up what must have been thousands of maggots from that house. I remember watching them curl themselves up into the dustpan before I threw them out the back door. For meals, one dish Dad liked that I could make was scrambled eggs. I often made them for him and Ginny, but I always seemed to choose a time to cook when Dad was so high that he was uninterested in eating. There was only so much I could do, or in fact, even knew to do.

I did know, however, that life was supposed to be better. I had seen glimpses of this in the way my classmates dressed and acted. I had also overheard snatches of conversations about what life was like for them. Every human has basic survival instincts, and over the next few months mine kicked in big time. Somehow I knew that I had to eat regularly and get enough rest. But the fact that I was left to my own devices, and that it was summer and I had no friends to play with, opened the door to the next step of my descent.

★

I
t is a sad
fact that many children fall through the cracks. When it comes to abuse of any kind it is important that parents recognize signs such as lying, stealing, and a sudden drop in grades. I look closely for these signs in my children and guarantee any warning sign will not go unnoticed. I do this through supervision. Unlike my parents did with me, I know at all times where my daughters are, who they are with, and what they are watching or listening to. Close supervision also makes it hard for abusers to find vulnerable children, or for those kids to fall through the cracks.

This is more important now than ever, as kids these days are exposed to far more references to sex and drugs in music and commercials than they were even a decade ago. I do my best to protect my daughters from some of that by limiting what they
are exposed to. That’s why my ten-year-old daughter is far less comfortable about the idea of sex and drugs than the average girl her age. As an example, now that Abbie is in the fifth grade her school requires her to do her homework in an agenda planner that they hand out to students on the first day of school. On the back page of the planner is an antidrug ad. Abbie was embarrassed just to read the ad and really was shocked that the ad had the word “drug” in it.

On the other hand, Serene (the daughter I gained when I married Bo) at age seven frequently does the booty dance and has even “humped” on my youngest daughter, Madalynn. There have been times when I have had to take Abbie out of the room when Serene acts like that. Because Serene lives with her dad, much of what goes into her head is out of my control. But I do what I can and hope that my influence will have an impact on her. I love that little girl very much. I know now that many of my childhood experiences, however unpleasant, prepared me for other, more challenging experiences. That’s why I am very protective of Abbie, Serene, and Mady. In fact, I advocate for them and myself better than the best of mother bears. But when I was a child I did not have the ability to speak on my own behalf. No child does, but due to my life circumstances as a child, maybe I had even less skill in this area than other kids.