This chapter is part of the Jean case narrative series. Use the series navigation below to move through the account in order.
The Real Beatings Begin
Because I chose to disagree with her, I became the immediate target for her rage. It wasn't that the beatings had decreased at all since childhood. For me, they had gotten worse, and more frequent. But now there was a new element. It was that every beating began with and included the twisted mantra: "You're just like your father".
During this time, my mother's drinking was becoming heavier, a much more chronic problem. She had been a day-drinker for as long as I could remember, as long as I was old enough to recognize an alcholic beverage or beer versus a soda or fruit juice (or her favorite, grapefruit juice with vodka). Now, she would spend a good chunk of her welfare check on vodka and cigarettes, while telling us how hard it was for her us to support us while our father did nothing for us. If I opened my mouth, looked at her wrong, forgot to do something she asked, she come at me all hands and fists and scratching nails. As I got taller, she took to using more interesting devices to inflict punishment. A favorite became an orange strip of hotwheel track.
I wore a scar on my cheek for months after she pinned me to the floor and opened my face up with a swipe of the track. Of course, she told me it was my fault for "moving" while she was beating me. And she told me to tell her mother and the rest of the family our "cat" had done it, or else.
At about this time, my father was finally receiving normal visitation rights. The court psychologist had perfectly analyzed the situation after interviewing all the parties involved. Of course, to my mom, he was "just a quack".
His evaluation points directly at the disturbing way that we were being alienated from our father, a man with whom we had had a normal and healthy relationship before Jean abducted us.
Even this small victory for my father would be sabotaged by my mother. When the day arrived that he was finally first allowed to come see us, in a supervised visit, she did everything possible directly and overtly to ruin the day for him. She had her boyfriend "Dick", there in the kitchen. When I answered the door, my father had tears in his eyes. I was overjoyed to see him. My brother and sister just seemed afraid, as they had been programmed to be.
When I walked into the kitchen to get something to drink, my mother looked at me, drunk, with daggers in her eyes, and said "Goddamn crocodile tears. He doesn't care about any of you, he's just doing this to get at me."
What I find most interesting is the way my mother repeatedly characterized my father in ways she could understand. Since she was an uncaring, spiteful person who only valued her children as possessions and bargaining chips, she automatically assumed my father to be the same, and his motivations to be the same.
Such was not the case.
If I had known that his first visit would begin the worst years of my life, I still wouldn't have changed a thing. And it was definitely the beginning of the most abusive period of my life, not just because of the continued frequent and yet completely random physical abuse, but because of the incredible amount of emotional and purely psychological abuse she would inflict as well.
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