Chapter 1
The Forming Years
I was a small child, only five years of age when my grandparent's took me for awhile to visit at their home, (at least this was my mother's understanding.) When the time came for me to be returned to my family, my grandparent's decided against it and kept me to raise as their own child. Little did I know until many years later after finding my biological parents, my grandparent's had kidnapped me.
There were so many times during the first year of living with them, I'd go to bed in my own bed, then wake in the morning to find myself in a different bed, in a different house completely unfamiliar to me. The last memory I have of waking up somewhere else, was at some guy's home in a different state. My grandmother explained to me that he was my Uncle Claude and during the night he needed her help. She further explained that we were on a great adventure and after she took care of him, our adventure would continue. Being a child, I accepted what she said. After a day or two, we would return back home and life would go on.
My grandmother had this thing about getting me to call her, 'mommy.' She would drill me for hours at a time asking me who she was.
"Grandma," I would say.
"No, mommy." she'd reply.
"You're not my mommy!" I would exclaim. We would do this continuously back and forth until she finally brought out a washrag and a bar of soap. She lathered the cloth up good, then asked, "who am I?"
"Grandma!" I'd reply with anger in my voice. No sooner than I had gotten the word out, she shoved the washrag violently into my mouth to the back of my throat causing it to hurt.
"Don't you dare try to bite me," she screamed.
I remember having a hard time trying to breathe and how hard I gagged. It felt as if she was trying to shove it clear down my throat. She would then proceed to scrub my mouth until my gums bled around my teeth and turned the soapy foam from the color white to pink. The look on her face was one distorted with rage and smugness. "Now, who am I?" she questioned after she removed the rag.
"Grandma," I sobbed while choking the word out through a mouthful of nasty tasting suds.
She came at me with the rag again and I hoarsely screamed out, "mommy! Mommy!"
"That's right! I'm mommy and grandpa is your daddy! Now when he gets home from work, you call him daddy, not grandpa. Also, there is no need to tell him about me washing your mouth out either. He doesn't need to be bothered with what is a mother's duties in disciplining her daughter. Do I make myself clear?"
I nodded my head as I glared at her through my tears while trying not to swallow.
She reached out and slapped me upside my head as hard as she could while screaming, "don't look at me! When you're in trouble, look at the ground! Never, ever look a person in the eye while you're being punished, look down, hang your head or otherwise they'll take it as a sign that you want to fight. Do you want to fight me?"
I looked up at her after she had told me to hang my head down, "no gr- mommy, I don't want to fight you," I sobbed.
She hit me once again upside of my head, knocking me to the floor, "I told you, don't look at me! Now go rinse your mouth out and go to your room for the rest of the day!"
I obeyed and laid on my bed sobbing until I fell asleep. Just before I did, I remember hearing the key in lock on the door. She had locked me in my room. I didn't care because I didn't want to be around her anymore.
I wanted to go home and be with my own Mommy and Daddy and my four brothers. I knew they wouldn't hurt me like this.
Just before my grandparent's had taken me, my Mother had come home from the hospital with a brand new baby sister. I wanted to know her. I'm the oldest of all of my siblings. I had missed them terribly and wasn't allowed to talk about them after being with my grandparents for the first couple of months of living with them. So, I tucked them all away in my heart and carried them there for many, many years. As I cried myself to sleep that day, my siblings also went to sleep as I clung to them in the deepest depths of me.
My grandparents had two children of their own which were my Aunt and Uncle. That same day just before dinner time, my grandmother woke me, then hissed in my ear after I sat up, "Gregory isn't your uncle, he's your brother. Eliza isn't your aunt, she's your sister. Do you understand?"
I looked down at the floor and nodded my head. This was my beginning point of being afraid of my grandmother. There were more vicious incidents to follow with her in my future.
Gregory was a teenager at the time I had come to live with them. One night while grandma and grandpa were out having dinner, Gregory attacked Elisa and had her down on the floor beating on her. I began to scream at him and pounded my little fists on his back, telling him to get off of her and quit hitting her. He back-handed me which sent me flying across the room, then went after his sister again. I kept on screaming! He jumped up and ran over to me, grabbed me, then threw me onto the sofa. From the corner of it, he latched onto the pillow that was there and held it over my face, suffocating me. All I remember was hearing Eliza screaming at him, then darkness came. When I woke, I was in my bed and grandma was sitting next to me, feeling my forehead. I was very disoriented and fell back to sleep, or what seemed like sleep to me.
The next morning after this incident, Gregory came in my room before everyone else was up and woke me. "Don't you dare say a word about last night or I will kill you the next time. Got it squirt?"
At first I didn't know what he was talking about and then it came back to me about the pillow, so I nodded my head.
"Good! Now remember- I will kill you if you tell mom and dad anything!"
I kept my word and didn't say anything, Eliza did! My grandfather cornered Gregory at the top of the stairs and knocked him clear down to the bottom, then pulled him up off of the floor and kept smashing his fist into Gregory's face all the way out the front door. I watched with fearful eyes and wondered if that would be how Gregory would kill me? I was afraid of him now. Gregory didn't come home until the next day.
Grandma had a very good and prestigious reputation within the community because she was a school teacher. It seemed like just about everyone in town had her as either their fifth grade teacher or first grade. Everyone adored her and thought she was the greatest and most wonderful teacher around. Little did they know her true hateful colors. Even her own children and husband were unaware of how she really was. She was also highly respected in the church and prided herself as being a good devote Christian woman. We attended, The First Church of Christ every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday Prayer Service, and Thursday's choir practice.
In the summer after I was six years old, my grandmother was doing the wash and noticed all kinds of slits and slashed on the bed sheets when she began to fold them. I was happily sitting on the sofa and helping her by folding the pillow cases and towels and hadn't noticed what she had until she began screaming. "Candice! What have you done here?"
I looked up with a surprised look that turned into a horrified expression when I saw her standing there glaring at me through a big slash, the sheet framing her face. "I didn't do that!" I insisted. My grandmother kept on screaming at me.
"These sheets are completely ruined! What did you use? A razor blade?"
"I didn't do it mommy… honest, I didn't!"
My grandmother dropped the sheet and ran up the stairs, then came back down with a razor blade in her hand. "I'll show you what a razor blade can do!" she screamed.
She jerked me up off of the sofa, causing the pile of towel to fall on the floor, ripped the front of my shirt open, then proceeded to slashed me four times down my chest to my navel. She slashed deep enough to draw blood and to leave scars, (which are still visible to this day,) but not deep enough to require stitches.
"This is for the four sheets I've found. If I find anymore, you will have a slash for those as well."
I prayed silently on shaky legs that she wouldn't find any other bad sheets and she didn't. I had to stand there while she looked and folded what remained in the basket, while little streams of blood ran down, staining my shorts and underwear. When she was finished, she told me to go upstairs and clean myself up, then go to my room for the rest of the day. I was crying very hard to the point of where my throat hurt from holding back the sobs, trying to do it quietly as she threatened to hit me upside of my head if I didn't shut up. When I got to my room, I grabbed my pillow and sobbed into it, "I want my Mommy and Daddy- I want them, I want them, I want them!" I fell asleep and slept all the rest of that day and night. My grandmother told my grandfather I wasn't to have supper that night because of those sheets. To this day, I still don't know for sure who slashed them and I can only speculate, but I do know, it wasn't me.
By the time I turned seven years old though, my life took on a tumultuous turn as I was sent to a children's home to live. I would be there for a couple of months, then would go back into my grandparent's care for a short time. This happened time and time again, over and over, (I lost count of how many times,) until I was nine years of age. My eighth and ninth birthdays were spent in the children's home.
The first couple of times of being sent away, I remember sitting in some lady's car and watching what little stuff I had being loaded and packed away in the back seat. I was crying and begging for a second chance for whatever it was that I was supposed to have done to be sent away like this. My grandmother told me, "now be a big girl and stop your crying. You'll be back home before you know it." Finally after the third and the following consecutive times of being sent away, I just climbed into whose ever car it was and sat quietly, looking down at the floorboard. There were no tears. By this time, I had become withdrawn due to being sedated and rarely spoke unless I was spoken to. My grandmother told that lady who was taking me away, "we think she must be slightly mentally retarded, the kind that begins to show after a person gets older because she doesn't talk anymore and her doctor has put her on medications for seizures. Please make sure they give her, her pills in the morning and at night." (I've never had a seizure in my life and I do know, I'm not mentally retarded!)
My birthday falls three weeks before Christmas and the year when I turned nine, I spent not only my birthday, but Christmas as well at the children's home. My grandmother hadn't been there to visit me like she had in the past times of me being there, so other people who were wanting to adopt children were visiting me. Some of the people were real nice, as I recall a couple of different couples had taken me to their homes to spend a night with them, then I had to go back to the children's home the next day. All I wanted was to belong to a family. My own family was no longer on my mind because of being drugged on whatever medication it was my grandmother had the doctor put me put on. The only thing I did know at that time was my heart felt so very empty and I felt so alone. That Christmas, I just sat back on the floor in the farthest corner away from everyone else and watched the other children unwrap the donated gifts.
This one little girl by the name of Kathy brought a gift over to me and sat it down on the floor in front of me. I shook my head no as I stared at the floor, "you open it Kathy, I don't want it," I told her. She insisted that I open it. I never did.
My grandmother showed up after the first of the new year and surprised me by telling me that she was taking me home with her. Just before I was ready to leave, I laid that unwrapped gift on Kathy's bed with a little note that said, 'I hope you find your family.' I had overheard her talking many times about how she hoped she would find a family who would want her. I wonder if she ever did?
Being back and living with my grandparents set me up for more abuse as my grandmother would still do things to hurt me physically, however to her, it was discipline. I don't consider slamming big heavy school books down on the top of someone's head as hard as they could be slammed would be considered discipline, but time and time again, she would corner me, usually due to my grades in school, and drive the word of education into me. The only education I got from that was, yes, it is possible for a person to see stars! I don't know how many ping pong paddles got broken on my rear end by her either. I would be bruised for weeks at a time. A lot of my so called discipline from her was due to me finding letters addressed to me from my Mother and finding pictures of my siblings within their contents. My grandmother would search my room and find my hiding spots where I had taken what rightfully belonged to me. After a few times of the sessions with the paddles, grandma took me to the doctor and had me heavily medicated. I spent a half of a school year in bed under the impression I had rheumatic fever and had to repeat the third grade again. To this day, any doctor I have seen since being on my own from the age of eighteen, hasn't found any signs of me ever having rheumatic fever as it scars the heart.
During this time of me being in bed all of the time, and us sharing the same room, Eliza, the one who had tried to protect me at various times when Gregory was ready to cut loose on me, decided she wanted to explore her little 'sister's' body and wanted little 'sister' to return the 'affection,' as she called it. Eliza was gentle in the fact that she didn't penetrate me very far with her fingers, because she enjoyed oral expression more. Somehow, I knew this was wrong. I didn't know how, but I just knew. I didn't like it and told her so, but she wouldn't leave me alone and I didn't want to say anything to grandma because I was afraid she would turn the tables and blame me, then administer her form of discipline, so this went on for a short time. Eliza made me feel loved and made me feel special by nick naming me, 'Star.' I don't know if grandma knew what was going on or not, but all at once Eliza was moved out of our bedroom to a room upstairs.
After about six months of being in bed, I was finally allowed to get up and move about the house. Grandma had a hairdresser's appointment every Saturday morning and left Gregory in charge while she was gone. Eliza usually went with her. Grandpa would get up early on the weekends and go fishing all day. So, there I am, stuck at the house with Gregory. Just like clockwork, he would pull off his belt and begin beating me with it, most times for no reason at all and he didn't care where it struck me. I'd run out of the house and down the street, then head towards the football field to hide under the bleachers. By the time grandma would get back home, I'd head back to the house, then get my bottom warmed up with the ping pong paddle until it was broken in two for leaving the house. I would tell her what Gregory did and tried to show her the marks, but she refused to listen, much less look at the welts he left. "I'm sure you did something to deserve it," she would say. The weekly beatings didn't stop until after he went away to college to become a preacher…
Things at home were less strained the following year. I was a little older and got good at hiding the letters I'd find from my mother. One Saturday morning while grandma and Eliza were at the beauty salon, and grandpa was out fishing again, the mailman delivered a package addressed to me from my mother. She had sent me my first electric toy sewing machine. I loved that little thing and was able to keep it hidden for many months.
Eventually, my grandmother found it, along with the letters. But, Without getting too angry this time, she flippantly said, "you're no better than your mother. You look like her, you act like her and you'll end up being just like her. She's a failure."
Grandma paused, then continued as her eyes rested on the toy my mother had sent me. "Now, Eliza is the one who has the world by the tail. If you think you can sew, you'll never be better than she is at that or anything else you try to do, so I wouldn't even bother trying, if I were you. " With that said, she tossed the letters she still held in her hand at me, left my room and left me standing there trying to absorb what she had just said to me.
I sat down and began to wonder about my mother. I couldn't remember what she looked like. I didn't know how she acted, but I did remember times of being with her that were pleasant times and memories. I also knew I missed her…
At church that following Sunday, grandma had me medicated to the point of where I was unable to stay awake during services. That embarrassed her to no end, but she told people that I was coming down sick again to cover up her humiliation.
When we got home, she went and retrieved a ping pong paddle. When I saw it in her hand, I just pulled out the dining room chair, bent over, placing the palms of my hands on the seat while waiting for the first blow. With each whack, the Golden Rule was being recited by her.
"Do," whack, "unto," whack, "others," whack, "as," whack, "you," whack, "would," whack, "have," whack, "others," whack, "do" whack, "unto," whack, "you," whack!
She continued to paddle me and I silent began to say a prayer through my tears, asking God to please let that paddle break!
Whack- CRACK!
"Oh thank you God!" I cried out loud.
Grandma dropped the broken paddle down on the top of the dining table, "now, sit down young lady, I want to talk to you."
This surprised me because she always sent me to my room after administering her corporal punishment.
"It's rude of you to thank God for nonsense, whatever nonsense it was, and it was rude of you to fall asleep in church today. You're a very rude child and very disrespectful. If you were speaking to a congregation, would you want them to fall asleep while you talked? I think not!" she said answering her own question. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you… now, go to your room for the rest of the day until it's time to go to evening services. You may eat your dinner after church tonight."
I was happy to be in my room. It was my fortress, my place of peace because I knew grandma wouldn't bother me there. Why did she hate me so much and why was she so mean to me? The Golden Rule ran through my mind like a buzz saw. I promised myself that day, I would never treat others like my grandmother treated me. "I will be better than you grandma," I whispered in between my sobs before I laid down and cried myself to sleep.
