As a kid, I thought my siblings and I had a pretty normal life, and I believe others thought so, too. At least from the outside looking in, it seemed to be normal. My mom would beat us if we lied or lost something, but, “Didn’t all moms do this?” Since she began beating us when we were very young, it seemed normal when other adults treated us the same way. This was all we had ever known, and so we thought that every kid must have been experiencing the same things in their own homes.
After moving to the farm and developing routines, we would get beaten or punished if things didn’t go according to routine. It seemed that Fred would get the most beatings and punishments, but that was mostly due to the fact that he would talk back to the adults more frequently and the adults absolutely hated that. We were also constantly told to respect our elders, which meant we always had to abide by what the adults said. Fred sometimes would act all high and mighty around Tracy and me and tell us to respect our elders because he was a whopping 14 months older than us. It was that kind of language that landed him in harms way more often than not.
But none of us were immune to trouble. Even the smallest lie could result in a beating. Our tiny single-wide trailer wasn’t the most well-built house in the land, so things tended to break pretty easily. Once, the toilet paper holder in the kids' bathroom broke when Fred was in there and was kind of hanging on by a thread. We knew it was broken, but we were all afraid to tell our parents, so we just acted like it had never happened. Eventually, they noticed it was broken and asked who had done it. No one wanted to fess up, so we acted like we had no idea it was broken and no idea when it had happened. Because no one would take the blame or point a finger, we all received beatings with a wooden paddle. We were each hit at least 10 times on our butts. It was not the first time we had received beatings like this, which was why we all had been afraid to say anything. Unfortunately, our silence meant we all paid the price.
We went to the flea market up by our grandparents' house often in the summer months. While there, our mom would come across new paddles and would ask us which we would like best for our next round of beatings. There were plain wooden ones and wooden ones with holes. Mom liked to point out that the ones with holes would actually hurt more because they could catch wind before hitting us, so of course, no matter our preference, she would end up purchasing one of those. But she wasn't limited to paddles when beating us. She would use basically anything lying around the house if she couldn’t get to the paddle she had bought. So there were times we were beaten with a fly-swatter or belt along with our chosen wooden paddle.
One time, our mom misplaced her knitting needles and insisted one of us kids had taken them and needed to return them immediately. It turned into this frenzy, with all of us searching the house frantically to locate them so we wouldn’t get beaten, because we knew that was coming next. After searching for a while, we still hadn't located the damn needles, so we were all lined up, and we prepared to get our beatings. If we knew a beating was coming, then we might be sneaky enough to pad our pants with a shirt or something inconspicuous so it wouldn’t hurt, or at least wouldn't hurt as badly. We all got hit another 10 or so times. Shortly after receiving our beatings, we located the knitting needles, and they were exactly where Mom had left them. She never apologized for beating us, even when she had to have known she was in the wrong. That’s just the way it was in our household. You got a beating and understood that it was always your fault.
When Tracy and I were still relatively young, I’d say around 6 or 7, we were doing one of the “easy” jobs on the farm. We were holding the cows' tails so the adults doing the milking wouldn't get slapped. Suddenly, the tail Tracy was holding slipped out of her little hands and hit our “dad” in the face. He was not impressed by this so he took the tail and swatted her HARD across the face. She had a nice-sized gash across her cheek for several days and had to go to school looking like that. I don’t remember anyone asking her about that mark.
Looking back, I realize that our “dad” rarely ever beat us or made us afraid that we would get a beating for doing something wrong. He always seemed to be the more nurturing parent. However, there was one time when he got really pissed at Tracy and me. We had to have been pretty young, like 6 or 7, when we thought it would be fun to stand on the roof of his car. Apparently, this car was his pride and joy - some kind of fancy make or something - and he was NOT happy to look up and see us. He’s a big man, over 300 pounds, and we had rarely seen him move quickly. However, that day, he ran pretty fast and chased us around our trailer until he finally caught us and gave us each a good beating. Outside of that one instance, though, I don’t remember him ever being the enforcer of beatings. If he did seem unhappy with something any of us had done, he would just threaten to tell our mother. No one wanted that!
Our new "grandpa", who never even cared to learn our names, loved to beat us and took joy and pleasure in finding new ways to hurt us. He didn’t use the paddles that our parents bought. Most of the time, he would just use his own strength and force over us. I remember one specific time I was on the receiving end of his abuse - and it was not fun. Usually, it was Fred whom he targeted, because Fred would talk back to him and our new "grandma" a lot. Our "grandpa's" favorite way to punish us was to slam our heads into a cinder block wall. In this instance, I was slammed into the corner of the wall so that the sharp, protruding portion went into my head. It hurt a lot! Since I had long hair, it wasn’t noticeable, but there is still a small bump on my head from when this happened. Fred got his head slammed into the same cinder block wall or another wall countless times by this man. As we got older, our "grandpa" would try to find new ways to hurt Fred. One of the worst things he ever did was hold Fred up by his neck and choke him! Fred couldn’t really breathe, but our "grandpa" didn’t care. He was mad that, once again, Fred was mouthing off to him. After that particular incident, Fred had actual hand-prints around his neck! I don’t remember the timing of when that happened, but I think it was over a summer break. All of us kids tended to get in more trouble and fight more frequently over the longer breaks from school because we were expected to do so much more of the farm-work during these breaks.
We were constantly walking around in a state of fear, wondering what we would do wrong next to incite another round of abuse - be it physical, verbal or emotional. Looking back on all that we went through and all that had to have been apparent as abuse, it’s a wonder our school-teachers never got involved to call the authorities. I know, that today there would definitely be more questions and concerns from teachers and school staff. It just goes to show how much things have changed in the past 20 years.
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