Redemption (11 page)

Miss Peanut

unior high was much better than elementary school. The area towns of Alhambra, Grantfork, and Highland came together to form a bigger campus. So instead of having fifteen kids in the class, there were one hundred—like in Kansas City. I knew how to function in a larger, noisier, and more diverse social setting. At last, I found people to talk to. And even more than that, I was the tiniest bit popular because I was good in sports. The Alhambra kids had trouble adapting to the bigger school, and they faded into the background. Some of them still hated me. But at least there were other girls and boys who thought differently.

The boy from the Mr. and Miss Peanut competition, Keith, continued to despise me. We couldn’t get away from each other because we both ran track. My feet were on fire when I ran, and I could out-race him completely by the seventh grade. He was not happy. Despite the bigger size of our junior high, it still had only a boys’ track team. The coaches left a few slots open for girls. They usually accepted four—enough to make a relay team—and those girls were often eighth graders. I had to try out for two whole weeks for that team, and I made cut after cut. With one final cut left, we were doing heats. The team already had four girls, so I figured my chances were slim to none. My only hope was sprinting. The team didn’t have a good sprinter, and I could run like lightning.

The coach was picking kids to compete against each other. He paired me and Keith in the 110-yard dash. I whupped his behind. Because of that one race, I got the spot on the team, and he didn’t. I never had a better feeling in my life. I beat Mr. Peanut, the boy who had made grades three through six pure hell for me.

In that moment, I felt completely free. I’d held on to so much hurt from elementary school, and just like that, it was gone.

That night, I couldn’t wait to tell Dad I’d made the track team. He’d been a track star at his high school. I was sure he’d be proud of me. I ran outside when I saw his bananamobile. He got out, dressed in his brown suit and wing-tip shoes.

“Guess what!” I told him everything about the tryouts, beating Keith, and most important, about the team.

He put down his briefcase. His look was stern and cold—and anything but pleased. He said, “There’s no way a girl can be on the track team.”

“But I did!” The lump in my chest dropped down to my stomach. Mom was happy for me; why wasn’t he?

“Prove it,” Dad said, loosening his tie. He drew an invisible starting line at the top of the driveway. He said we’d finish down where it ended. I stalled for a few minutes, wondering if he was serious.

My mom must’ve wondered what was going on. She came outside and told him, “Tom, this is ridiculous. She’s on the track team.”

“I’m not racing you,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether to cry or get fired up. Either reaction would get me into trouble, so I tried to stay steady. Life was always easier when I did what he said. He kept going on about how he could beat me. My mom told him more than once that he was a crazy man in a business suit.

But Dad laid down the law in our house. So he and I raced in the driveway. I beat him.

“Let’s race again,” he said.

I beat him twice.

“Again.”

We raced over and over and over until my mom turned up the volume.

“Tom, you’re drunk, and this has to stop.” She was near tears, and by this time, I was full-out crying. I had a 220-pound drunk man practically spitting at me with his last breaths.

“I could still win,” he said, even though he could barely speak, “if I didn’t have this suit on.” He headed toward the house, looking more angry than defeated. Before he got inside, he gruffly added, “A girl can never be on the track team.”

My mind raced back to Grandma Lannert’s house. In her living room, there were pictures of him in his track uniform, posing next to trophies. I wanted him to love me, and that’s why I had sought out track in the first place. If he could do it, I could do it. Then we’d have more in common. Then we’d have something worthwhile to bond over. I needed reasons for him to want me for a daughter. Plus, I thought maybe if he loved me more, he would hurt me less.

Mom wasn’t getting along great with her parents. She was starting to talk about the abuse she suffered as a child. Though my grandfather didn’t rape her, he sexually abused her nonetheless. She went to the university’s rape crisis center for help. Mom was taking care of herself first and foremost. Distancing herself from her daughters may not have been good, but at least working out her problems was a step in the right direction. She went to a counselor and even did some volunteering. I was a little resentful because she spent even more time away from us. She was trying to pull herself out of her world, a world that I lived in with her. She started worrying about the other girls in our family. She had a niece she thought might be suffering from sexual abuse, and she thought Christy might be, too. Apparently, Christy was acting out at that time, not listening to Mom and fighting with her about everything. Christy was just like that; she seemed fine to me.

All I know is that a chain of several strange events happened. I have a fuzzy memory of being alone in the backseat of a car. Grandma Paulson and Mom were in the front seat talking about me. I couldn’t tell what they were saying; I just knew it wasn’t good. Then Grandma looked at me.

“Stacey, does your daddy touch you?” Grandma yelled back at me.

I was shocked. I felt imaginary pins pricking my skin, and my back was nailed to a corner. If anything happened to me, it was my own fault, and what on earth was Grandma Paulson going to do about it anyway?

“Are you listening, child?” she asked again, her arm stretched across the front seat so she could turn her head to stare me down. “Is anybody touching you where they shouldn’t be touching you?”

“Ewww. No! My daddy would never do that!” I yelled back at her. I didn’t have words for this topic, not out loud and not even in my head. Ask any child this question point blank, and she will deny it.

She put her arm back into her lap in the front seat.

“See, Debbie, nobody’s touching Stacey.”

Shortly after that conversation, Mom loaded Christy, my cousin Candice, and me into her two-door car. She headed back to the rape crisis center. Christy, then eight, and Candice, five, were getting tested for possible sexual abuse. I remember waiting in the lobby—I spent the whole time coloring. They each went into a room where a young woman asked them a million questions. I didn’t even know what a rape crisis center was, but I knew I was bored there. Christy’s and Candice’s tests were negative. Mom didn’t have me tested because I’d already told Grandma that nothing had happened to me. Later, it came out that Candice
had
been abused, but she lied to the counselors that day because her mother had just left home, and she didn’t want to lose her father, too. But at the time, I believe the negative results made Mom feel more secure, like all of the girls must be safe.

Around the same time, my mother also confronted Dad. I overheard it.

“Do you ever do anything with Stacey?” she asked during a heated conversation.

“You’re crazy!” he yelled back at her. “You’re paranoid, too. Just because your dad abused you doesn’t mean I abuse my daughter.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” she’d say, almost shamefully.

“I’d never do that to a child, and I’d kill anyone who did,” Dad told her.

“I’m probably reading too much into it.” With that, she’d end the conversation. To her, she was just projecting—what happened to her as a girl couldn’t possibly be happening to me. She blamed her suspicions on her work at the rape crisis center, and on her own silly head for playing tricks on her.

I’d die inside during these conversations. If I spoke up, God only knew what my dad would do to me. Besides, silence was strong; telling was weak. Telling meant everyone would know my shame, so I might as well keep it quiet. Another part of me wanted to protect my mom from what was really happening. She’d be torn up if she found out the truth. She was already upset most of the time—what would she do if she knew? Family dinners were strained enough. If Mom and Dad were going at it, our food might as well have been sawdust, because we couldn’t eat it. Keeping my mouth shut was a way to keep the status quo. I didn’t want to be the one who made things worse.

Also, I saw Mom as fragile. I’ve heard that some women are warriors; Mom was definitely not one of them. She wasn’t strong enough to stand up for herself. She didn’t think she was good at anything. She was mostly fair and kind, but those are different qualities altogether. She didn’t have that certain umph some women have. She didn’t have the inner determination to stand alone. She was the type of mild-mannered woman who could only stand beside someone else who is strong.

On the other hand, my nickname was Tiger. I was supposed to be a fighter. I believed I could handle everything myself, and I didn’t assume that anyone was supposed to help me. There was no real help for me, only brief escapes when I ran track, or when I talked to Prince at his makeshift grave. Besides, if there was help for me, I didn’t deserve it. I was a bad, dirty daughter.

When I’d ask myself,
Who’s gonna help me? Who is supposed to?

The only answer was:
Daddy
.

He was my only choice. He was supposed to help me. He was supposed to protect me.

Busted

he divorce happened on June 7, 1985. By that time, I was in seventh grade, and Mom had finished school and started working as a secretary. She had a little more feistiness in her after going to the rape crisis center and after graduating with an associate’s degree. I remember her teaching me to drive a car out on those old country roads around that time. It was something really fun that she and I did together. Her parents had taught her when she was eleven or so, too. She told me she wanted me to know how to take care of myself—how to get away—if I ever needed to. She also stood up to Dad more and more often. And he would call her terrible names, from stupid whore to worthless bitch. He did that only when he was drunk. She used to just take it; the new Mom would tell him to shut up.

Dad had started his own actuary business with another man, and it wasn’t working out. We were relying on Grandma Lannert more and more, and I felt kind of poor because they were always talking about watching their money. That was the main reason Mom went to work as quickly as she did. We needed her income.

One day, Dad came home and told my mom that he wanted to quit his job with his partner. He had a job offer that would mean moving to Omaha, Nebraska. Another guy named Marvin McCandless had offered him a great job in the city, and he was going to take it.

“That means you can quit working, Debbie,” he told her, standing in the dining room.

“I like my job,” she said, her hand on her hip. “I like working. Why should I quit?”

They went back and forth for a while. Christy and I ran in and out of the backyard as their fight escalated. We didn’t want to hear it, but when a train’s about to wreck, it’s hard to look away.

He thought a woman should stay home and take care of her kids. Mom said she felt powerless when he was the sole breadwinner. She lit into him about his drinking, as usual. Then she ended her tirade with words that drove a stake through his heart.

“Not only do I want to keep my job,” she said, lowering her voice, “I want a separation.”

He cornered her in the room and drew his fist back.

She said, “Hit me if it makes you feel better. Go ahead.” She had been hit so many times by her father that she didn’t think one more pop from my dad was going to make any difference.

He didn’t hit her.

Instead, he picked up a dining room chair and threw it at the chandelier. Glass flew all over the floor, the table, even into the other rooms. The chair landed upside down on the TV. Mom bent down to start picking up the sharp shards. With each piece, she got madder and madder.

Christy and I ran into the room, and Dad yelled at us, too. He said, “Get your asses back outside.” We bawled and bawled. We knew this fight was one of their worst. We thought for sure one of those crashes was Mom getting thrown against the wall, but she looked okay. She was just shaking and crying. But she was also furious.

Her hands were filled with glass, and she threw the shards onto the floor. “You made this mess, you clean it up,” she told my father. “I’m leaving.”

He said back to her, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”

She raced upstairs and started packing. The next day, Aunt Deanna was getting married for the second time. Mom was rushing to get all of our dresses and shoes plus the other things we’d need. He followed her throughout the house, muttering all kinds of drunken mad words.

We stayed at Grandma and Grandpa Paulson’s for a few nights, maybe a week. Dad went to stay with his mother. We stayed with Mom at the house after that. When she was working, we stayed with our babysitter, Wendy.

Mom couldn’t afford the house by herself, so she started to look for an apartment in nearby Highland. Dad was going to take over the house. Meanwhile, Christy and I were sent to Grandma Lannert’s for the rest of the summer. It was a lot to keep up with.

I loved our babysitter Wendy. She was warm and kind, and she never yelled or screamed at us. On my final day with her before we were to move, she sat me down at the kitchen table. She told me she had been sexually abused when she was a kid, and she asked if the same thing was happening to me.

I said, “Yes.” I drew invisible circles on her Formica table. “Yes, it’s happening to me.” I knew I could trust her.

Wendy said she was sorry this was happening. She offered the advice, “Stand up for yourself, and don’t let anyone hurt you.”

I felt like crying. I tried to explain to her how I loved my daddy so much; I absolutely adored him. But he hurt me, and he hurt me badly. I couldn’t understand why. I couldn’t make sense of what I should be doing, or how I should be feeling.

Wendy shook her head. She said, “I know, honey. I know.”

Mom came to pick up Christy and me in the afternoon. Wendy walked out of her house with her arm around me. We stood outside when Wendy told my mother, “Tom is hurting Stacey.”

I looked down at the ground. I didn’t want to see Mom’s face.

“I will take care of it, and I will not let it happen again,” my mother said.

I was silent in the car and for the rest of the night. I was waiting for her to say something. I felt ashamed and sorry for what I had done—for the trouble I was causing. Mom didn’t mention the matter. The next day, we went to Grandma Lannert’s to stay. Mom and Dad passed each other briefly to exchange us. Mom didn’t say anything to Dad as they stood alone outside. I felt like she could have; she had the opportunity.

Instead, she just left.

How could she do that? I look back and try to understand. To this day, she says she didn’t know. She didn’t equate “Tom is hurting Stacey” with rape. She thought if something so terrible was happening to me, I would’ve told her. I believe she was dealing with her own past. She didn’t know how to confront what was going on in the present—and she just didn’t have the strength.

That night, Dad stayed at Grandma Lannert’s with us before he headed back to Alhambra.

He came after me at the one place where I had always felt safe. At Grandma’s house, it happened again.

I was heartbroken.

Not only did my mom abandon me, she was also a big liar.

My mother was working and finding her own place to live. Dad was living in Alhambra and working in St. Louis. Christy and I just laid low and enjoyed the summer with Grandma as much as we could. It was hard because we felt abandoned, confused, and angry. Why didn’t anyone want us that summer?

When school started again, they had divided their stuff, and Mom had her own place in Highland, Illinois, not far from our old house in Alhambra. Dad was living in Alhambra alone. Christy and I went to live with Mom.

Her apartment was right behind a Wal-Mart, and I started walking in and taking whatever I wanted. I wasn’t even slick about it. I was in the eighth grade, and I was untouchable. I’d steal hair barrettes and makeup. I’d slip them into my purse right in the middle of the aisle. I didn’t get caught. One of my aunts worked there, though, and she knew I was on Wal-Mart’s watch list. Mom never found out.

What got me into trouble was breaking and entering. I had been babysitting for a family nearby, and I had their house key. So one night when I knew they weren’t home, I walked in and took a shirt. They noticed immediately and called my mom.

I took stuff that wasn’t mine because I didn’t want to ask permission from anyone for anything—especially Mom. I believed deep in my heart that I was bad; so this was my way of playing the part. I also wanted attention from Dad, who loved me only half the time, and from Mom, who cared only about dating and work. I wanted Mom to step in and fix what was happening to me on the weekends I had to spend at Dad’s.

Even better, maybe I would get sent away—far away.

I did not get the reaction I had hoped for. Instead, I got yelled at.

“Why are you doing this?” Mom asked me in the car, her quiet voice fierce.

“I don’t know.” I don’t know was my standard answer.

“You know stealing is wrong; what is wrong with you?” she yelled.

“I don’t know,” I told her quietly, unable to feel anything.

On that same day, she woke me up in the middle of the night and told me to pack my bags.

“You’re going to your Dad’s, and you’re going to a psychologist.”

I wanted to go to the counselor and talk to her. But sometimes Dad would take me to the appointments, and he’d try to manipulate what I might say.

In the car outside her office, he would tell me, “Tell her how happy you are. Tell her you went to the ballgame. Don’t tell her I was drunk. Don’t tell her I yell at your sister.”

He never said the words
Don’t tell her what I do to you
because he was sober at the dropoff. He never, ever mentioned that topic unless he was drunk. But I knew what he meant.

So I never told my counselor the one thing she needed to know. I told her how hard it was for me to sleep, though. I told her about my anxiety.

After one of the sessions, my mom picked me up, and my psychologist asked to speak with her right in front of me. She told Mom that she believed I was being sexually abused.

“What? By who?” my mom asked, horrified.

“I’m not sure; someone’s boyfriend, an uncle, or her father,” the counselor said.

“But we asked her if she was being abused, and she said she wasn’t,” my mom replied.

The counselor said, “Stacey shows all of the signs of sexual abuse. All fourteen of the signs to be exact.”

Mom was quiet in the car. It took her ten minutes to find the courage to ask me, “Is someone touching you?”

I knew what she wanted to hear. My answer was, “No.”

After that conversation, I didn’t go back to that psychologist.

She kept Christy, and I went back to our old house. He didn’t have a choice but to take me. I didn’t want to live with Dad, but I didn’t want to be with her either. She didn’t love me. At that time, he might’ve hurt me, but at least he loved me. She didn’t care if I was alive or dead—she just wanted me out of her way. I wanted her to fight for me, but she didn’t even want me. That’s how I saw my mother at age thirteen.

My father abused me freely while they were getting divorced. I never knew when it was coming. The anticipation was unbearable, and the rapes were inevitable. Rather than sitting around waiting, I stayed inside the house not trying to hide from him. I hoped to control an uncontrollable situation by being available. I felt dirty and wrong. My plan would backfire when he’d wake me up in the middle of the night anyway.

Making the incidents even more unpleasant, he had ballooned up to three hundred pounds during their marriage. I didn’t even register one hundred pounds at age thirteen. The extra weight made the sex hurt even more. I’d completely leave my small body when it happened. Either I had to pretend I wasn’t there, or I had to find a way to die. The guilt I felt afterward—my shame and my belief that I had caused it—hurt me deeply all over again.

This whole time I was hateful to my mother.
Where was she?
She had moved into an apartment in Highland and was on the phone every time I stayed with her and Christy. Eventually, I moved back in with them because Dad was getting ready to move out of Alhambra, to a townhouse in Soulard, another part of St. Louis. She had a boyfriend, too, a man named Frank. He just happened to be my dad’s best friend from college. The drama was ridiculous. Dad called Mom a whore every time he’d catch her on the phone or when he dropped me off. Everything was falling apart, including me. I was a nervous wreck, and I stopped being able to sleep more than a few hours at a time. Danger was everywhere.

When Dad wasn’t bad-mouthing Mom to me, he was trying to get her back. He would call her at work and start talking about me and Christy. She’d tell him she couldn’t discuss anything with him at the office. So he’d call her at home. Most of their conversations ended with her refusing to make amends and his screaming at her. He’d tell her that only she brought out the beast in him. All of his problems were her fault, and she was just making them worse.

There were times when she felt like she should go back to Dad—for our sake. That’s exactly what her mother and father advised her to do. Dad had always put on his best act in front of his in-laws. They never saw him throw a dish or call my mom a bitch. Plus, Grandpa loved when Dad would get drunk with him at our house. When I was little, I used to look forward to going to Grandma’s with Dad because he’d act like such a gentleman there, and he’d become the perfect daddy I’d created in my dreams. Maybe that’s why they liked him so much—or either their old-fashioned patriarchal beliefs simply made them think Mom was wrong for leaving her man.

They went out on a date once during their separation, and my dad told Mom that he had stopped drinking for good. They had a nice dinner, but he was drunk by the end of it. She made sure the divorce proceeded, and it was official in November of 1985. She had turned her attentions to Frank, and that was that. Dad was nothing but pissed.

That’s why I was so relieved when he met Rosa, when I was in the eighth grade. I found out late one night. I was at his house that weekend. I waited in the upstairs family room for him to come home. I was worried because it was 11 p.m., and he wasn’t home from work. I was used to his being late—but never that late. You’d think I wouldn’t have cared what happened to him, but I did. Christy was at Mom’s.