Why Me? (5 page)

“Look what he brought you!” Mom exclaimed to me.

On the dining room table was a brand-new word processor. Immediately, I didn’t care who this “Uncle Bill” was; I was taken aback by the beautiful piece of machinery on the table.
Rachel
Emily
ran over to it, but Mom held her back. “No, sweetheart, that is for Sarah so she can do her schoolwork.”

“Thank you!” I exclaimed to Bill.

“No problem—just want to make
Mary
Nancy
’s girl’s happy!” he replied.

“Can I use it before I start my chores?” I asked my mother.

“Of course. Take your time!”

I was in heaven. Not only was my mother being kind and sweet to me, but here was this awesome word processor sitting on the table, just waiting for me to start it up and type to my heart’s content.

I sat down at the table, and
Rachel
Emily
sat next to me. I turned the word processor on, and it hummed as if to say “Hello! What do you want to write about today?” I glanced up to say thank you again to “Uncle Bill” and noticed that he was getting ready to leave.

“See you later, Bill!” I said.

“See you around, Sarah!”

My mother was waiting at the kitchen door. Before Bill walked out the door, he stopped and leaned into Mom, as if he were going to kiss her on the mouth. Mom giggled like a schoolgirl and gently shoved him away “Tomorrow,” she said quietly.

She shut the door behind him and turned around. Immediately, I could tell that the kind Mom was gone and the mother I knew was back. She crossed the kitchen in three large steps, leaned down, and got right into my face. “If you say one fucking word to your father about this, I will kill you … DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

It became clear to me what was going on. This “Uncle Bill” was more than a friend; he was obviously close to Mom in a way that she and
Dale
Richard
were close.

“Get the hell out of here and do your chores.” Mom picked up the word processor and hid it in a cabinet that
Dale
Richard
never looked in. “Did I stutter?” Mom asked. “Get off your fat ass and go do your chores!”

I got up slowly from the kitchen table and went to the front porch to put on my work boots. I was too young to fully understand what my mother was doing, but I wasn’t completely naïve, either. Obviously, Mom was doing something she shouldn’t be doing with this “Uncle Bill” or she wouldn’t have snapped the way she did and hidden my present where
Dale
Richard
couldn’t find it. But what could I do? I had been warned, and I didn’t want to get beaten, so I knew I would just keep my mouth shut.

Later that evening, the whole family was sitting at the dinner table eating a delicious meal of pork chops, corn on the cob, and salad. Mom kept glaring  across the table at me between bites. Then a strange, whirring sound came from the cabinet in which Mom had hidden the word processor.

“What the hell is that noise,
Mary
Nancy
?”
Dale
Richard
asked.

To my surprise,
Rachel
Emily
piped up and said, “That’s Sarah’s present from Uncle Bill!”

“Who the fuck is Uncle Bill?”
Dale
Richard
demanded, slamming his fork down and getting up to see my present for himself.

I looked up and had to fight to keep a grin from forming on my face. Finally, Mom was going to get caught. She was going to be in trouble, and
Dale
Richard
was going to yell at her for a change. I sat back in my chair and waited to see what Mom would do.

Mom didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, you know, Bill, the delivery man from FS Oil. He dropped that off today with the oil delivery because his daughter didn’t use it anymore. I thought Sarah might get some use out of it!”

“Oh, come on!” I thought to myself. Uncle Bill wasn’t an oil delivery guy; he had left the farmhouse earlier that day in a ratty old blue pickup truck.

Dale
Richard
opened the cabinet and took out the word processor. “This is an awfully nice thing to be giving away, don’t you think?” he asked Mom.

“I know, I couldn’t believe it either!” she exclaimed in a high-pitched voice.

Mom shot me another dirty look over the table. “Did you see that Sarah gave the horses bad hay? Buddy has had a cough for two days now. I’m going to have to call the vet.”

I looked at my mother in shock. How in the world did this go from Mom getting presents from some weird guy to a complete lie about Buddy being sick?

Dale
Richard
immediately turned on me. “You think money grows on trees, bitch? Do you have the money to pay the vet because you were too damn lazy to notice that you were giving the horses moldy hay?”

“Dad, I didn’t give the horses moldy hay! I haven’t noticed Buddy coughing.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Mom screamed over the table at me.

SMACK!
Dale
Richard
had come up behind me and whacked me in the back of the head with such force that I smacked my face against the top of the kitchen table.
Rachel
Emily
started crying, and Mom quickly ushered her out of the room.
Dale
Richard
pulled my short hair and yanked my head back. “Lie to me, will you?
Mary
Nancy
, it’s time for Sarah to write tonight!”

Writing as punishment meant staying up until the wee hours of the morning—sometimes in my room, sometimes at a tray table in the bathroom—with a pencil and a piece of paper, writing
I will not lie
over and over and over until Mom was satisfied.

Tears streamed down my face, and I wiped my nose. Then I noticed that my hand was covered in blood.

“Jesus Christ …
MARY
NANCY
!”
Dale
Richard
bellowed. Mom came storming into the kitchen.

“Clean her up, will you?”
Dale
Richard
left the room, and Mom threw a stack of napkins at me.

“Wipe your fucking nose,” Mom said, “and you’d better get started on your chores because you have a lot of writing to do.”

I rushed outside, stuffing napkins up my nose to stop the bleeding. I ran down to the horse barn and sat in the corner, sobbing and screaming into my hand. “Buddy isn’t sick! I didn’t give him bad hay!” I kept saying over and over.

Buddy came into the stall where I was sitting and crying. He looked at me with his big brown eyes. I pleaded, “You aren’t sick, are you, Buddy? I didn’t make you sick, did I?” Buddy just stood there, looking at me. I stood up and threw my arms around his neck and hugged him as tightly as I could. Buddy stood motionless, as if he knew that I needed love at that moment.

I finally got my nose to stop bleeding and walked up to the barn where the hay was kept. I turned on the light and closely inspected the hay bales. “There’s no moldy hay in here,” I said angrily to myself. Nevertheless, no one was going to believe me, and I had to finish my chores. I had a lot of writing to do. I spent the next five hours writing
I
will not lie
over and over and over until I couldn’t hold the pencil anymore.

After that, Mom introduced me to many more “uncles.” She knew that after that horrible night I would never mention a word to
Dale
Richard
about any men who came around while he was at work.
Rachel
Emily
was spared the physical abuse or any other repercussions that I received that night and was never again exposed to any of Mom’s boyfriends.  I, on the other hand, met many men in the next year. They ranged from oil delivery workers to construction workers to car dealership workers. I would accompany my mother on her “dates” so
Dale
Richard
would not become suspicious. I usually ended up sitting in the car or in another room while Mom was having fun with her boy toy of the moment.

By the time I turned thirteen, I had met nine different “uncles,” all of whom showered me with gifts. Each one was only around for about a month. But I didn’t dare speak a word about them to
Dale
Richard
, for I knew that would only lead to another beating and another long night of sitting in the bathroom writing sentences. I was focused on survival, on protecting myself from harm—and if I were to utter a word about my mother’s indiscretions to
Dale
Richard
, I would be putting my life in danger.

Chapter 6

The five-finger discount

Life was getting tougher on the farm. Mom and
Dale
Richard
were constantly stressed about money, and they took their anger out on me on a nightly basis. Some nights it was just verbal abuse and name-calling, but many nights it was punches and kicks.

Sometimes I wondered if anyone knew what was going on. I couldn’t figure out how I could go to school with bruises all over my body and cuts on my face without one person asking me what was going on. Like I would have told the truth anyway!

Once in a while, a nice lady from the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) would show up because of an anonymous tip and ask me questions about the bruises on my body, but I always lied. I knew that if I didn’t live at home, I would end up in foster care, and I did NOT want that for my life. So I would tell the DCFS lady my grand stories of falling down the stairs or getting kicked by a horse; then she would leave and I wouldn’t hear from her again.

Of course, after every DCFS visit, Mom would beat me worse than ever. “Who the fuck are you to call the authorities on me? I’ll kill you, you worthless piece of shit!” Mom’s fists would rain down on me, her boots slamming into my side, and she would pull my hair practically out of my head. No matter how many times I told her that I hadn’t called DCFS, it didn’t matter. It was an excuse for Mom to beat me.

“What can I do to make her love me?” I would think to myself as I lay in bed, shaking and trembling from my most recent beating. The answer eventually came in the form of what is sometimes called the “five-finger discount.”

It all began on a family trip to an outlet mall. Mom,
Dale
Richard
,
Rachel
Emily
, and I were walking around a store that sold everything from videos to snowshoes. I wandered away from the rest of the family to check out the new Keds shoes that were on display. I desperately wanted a pair of those shoes. Every girl in school had a pair, and I thought that if I had a pair, I just might fit in with these girls who teased me every day.

Mom walked over and said, “Forget it! There’s no way you are getting shoes that cost that much.” Her voice cut off. “Unless …”

“Unless what?” I asked, a glimmer of hope in my voice.

“Do you have your purse?”

In reply, I held up the enormous purse my mother had bought me earlier that week. It was brown, cheap fake leather, and obscenely oversized, but it was my first purse and I loved it.

“Come with me,” Mom said. She pulled a pair of Keds off the rack, double-checked the size, and then pulled me to a back corner of the store. “Open your purse,” she said. I opened my purse, and Mom shoved the shoes into it. “Now put these in there, too, and don’t act stupid.” Mom shoved two movies into my oversized purse and zipped it up.

My stomach knotted. I had just turned into a shoplifter, and my mother had taught me how to do it! Not quite knowing how to react, I tried to act nonchalant as I walked out of the store, holding my breath. I was just waiting for a store clerk to run out and grab me and take me to prison. But nothing happened. I left the store with a new pair of shoes and two new movies and nothing happened!

Mom came up to me and gave me a hug, one of the few times in my life I could remember her touching me with love. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “Wasn’t that fun?”

I nodded, overcome with mixed emotions. I knew that I had just committed a crime, but my mother was so proud of me that I overlooked the criminal aspect and just basked in this rare moment of love from Mom.

From then on, Mom was unstoppable. Every day was a new shopping trip, a new thing to steal. Some days Mom was shoving roasts into my purse, other days it was perfume or new clothes. She taught me how to check for security tags on movies and how to remove the security tags from clothes so we could get them out of department stores. I did as I was told. If Mom wanted me to steal something, I stole it. If I didn’t steal something quickly enough or I argued about it, Mom would grab me in the store, digging her fingernails into my arm, and whisper into my ear, “You either take that now, you little bitch, or I’ll call the manager over here and have you arrested for the things you already have in your purse.”

Mom always justified the shoplifting by stating how little money we had and saying that we needed these things to survive. I understood that to an extent, but Mom had me stealing so much that I soon grew tired of going to stores with her, hiding in corners, checking for security tags, and looking up at the ceiling for cameras. I thought that
Dale
Richard
would be upset about our shoplifting, but he participated at times, shoving things into my purse or my winter jacket right along with Mom. All I knew for sure was that after an especially good shoplifting experience, Mom would treat me like gold, and there would be a day of no beatings and no name-calling. So I stole what Mom told me to steal and prayed that no one saw or found out.