Jean · Beatings and Lies

Beatings and Lies

Another incident stands out that demonstrates my mother's mental illness and her inability to face facts. Throughout her life she has shown a remarkable ability to ignore any fact that doesn't coincide with her convenient beliefs. For years, she continued to repeat that my father had "screwed her out of everything" in the divorce, and that she hadn't gotten anything. That he had kept everything from us 'kids' and the reason we were on welfare was because he would not support us. When I was sixteen, my father finally let me read the court documents, start to finish.

Over the years, I had asked him repeatedly what had really happened. And for years, he told me "When you're sixteen, you can read the letters and the court papers yourself, and make up your own mind." And that at that point, I could ask him any questions I had.

I read the papers over several hours at his home as soon as I was sixteen. There was no grary area. The distribution of assets was clear, and it was right down the middle. Fifty-Fifty. Simple numbers, nowere to hide anything. Crystal clear.

This fact became an arguing and flashpoint for her violent abuse on several occasions, when in her drunken self-pity she would start that same blame-game about my father. She had made arrangements for us to see a family psychologist through the welfare department. We had gone two or three times, with no results. On the final occasion, we were discussing the situation about the divorce, about the fact that I felt my mother was intentionally lying to make my father look like "the bad guy".

I brought the copy of the divorce settlement to the counseling session. The counselor read it, then looked at Jean and said, "Jean, it looks like he's right. According to what this says, you did receive half of everything". Jean looked at me with what can only be described as a killing rage, stood up, called me a few choice names, and took my brother and sister and stormed out. The "good mother" act went out the window, there was no need to pretend to be a mature caring parent since she was never going back to that counseling office again.

She left me there, with no way home, because I had the audacity to prove she was wrong, and that she was a liar. Yet there was no satisfaction in it. Most intelligent, logical people would have said stepped back and said "You're right. This impartial person sees it the same as you do, so I guess I'm wrong and I'm sorry." Not my mother. Instead, we never went back to the counseling, because facing someone who had seen through her petty deception wasn't part of my mother's plan. And yes, I paid the price when I got home.

How the Abuser Lies to Cover up the Abuse

Later, when I was a senior in high school, my mother had backed me into the bathroom in one of her rages and was slapping and scratching at me with her usual abandon and lack of concern for what lasting harm she might cause. Most of the time, I would just try to dart past her, but this time she had me pinned in a corner. I put up an arm to stop her from hitting my face, oddly almost mirroring the same fight between her and my father in the kitchen forever ago, and when her wrist hit mine during her swing, she went from rage to insanity, shrieking "I'll kill you if you ever raise your hand to me!!!". I ducked under her swings as she went completely nuts and I ran out the bathroom door, looking over to see her turn, a terrible rage in very drunken eyes, as she tied to chase after me. Be it the drunkenness or the loss of self control, she stumbled as she came toward me and fell sideways on the bathtub.

She later showed the bruise to my Grandmother and told her that I beat her. Again, the patterns repeat themselves. Though she would forever deny ever saying this to her mother, my Uncle Tim confided in me years later that my Grandmother had told him the same thing. My Uncle and I had a close relationship during those years, as once I had a license and a car, I would often go to his house to escape my mother for a night or a weekend. Tim was wise enough to know what was what, and discreet enough to keep it to himself. And, after all, many of my mother's young conquests were his friends and he of course knew some of what had gone on with them too.

My mother's denials were characteristic of her character. Even when caught in a lie, she would deny it forever. It wouldn't matter who or what the situation, everyone else in the world was conspiring against her. They were all the liars.

Another night when we were having a particulary nasty argument, and as she circled around the kitchen table trying to corner me, I told he I was going to leave and go live at my father's, and that I was going to contact the welfare department and let them know I was no longer living there, and to stop paying her any welfare benefits for me.

She broke into a hysterical rage, and picked up the chair, and tried to charge after me, screaming "I'll fucking kill you you little bastard! I'll fucking kill you!"

When confronted about that later, it too of course never happened.

Another evening, while arguing, my friend Dave came over with his mother to pick me up. My mother thought nothing of screaming at me or taking swings at me in front of friends. Who would believe another kid? Dave had seen her attack me on several occasions, and me run out the door to avoid any more abuse. My mother was rarely discriminating as to were she hit, but she usually focused on the face, and I just wasn't willing to wear any more scars. On this evening, Dave came in, but his mother was around the corner in the hallway and out of sight as my mother raged. I saw Dave's mom standing there, and let my mother go on, because I knew that although she didn't mind acting this way in front of my friends, she tried to maintain the facade of normal motherhood in front of other adults, and claim it was all me, "the bad kid, just like his father".

When Dave's mother finally heard enough, she stepped inside and said "Let's go, you can stay at our house". My mother was visibly shaken. She was caught, acting like a crazy drunken abuser. How could she explain her way out of it?

But that very same night, no more than an hour later, while Dave and I sat on his couch watching television, my mother called Dave's mom. This was odd, because she never called Dave's mom. So I knew something was coming. It was a lengthy conversation, and when it was over, Dave's mother walked into the living room and in with dire seriousness asked me "Chris, have you ever hit your mother?"

I was shocked. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what had just happened. Dave literally fell off the couch, laughing. I looked at his mother and told her, "I have never laid a hand on my mother in my life. Please don't tell me she says that I have."

She told me that my mother had just told her on the phone that she could no longer control me, that I was much bigger than her now, and that I "beat her up" all the time.

Dave told his mother that he had seen my mother beat the shit out of me on several occasions. His mother obviously believed us, because it was never mentioned again. But any misconceptions I had about my relationship with my mother and what she was capable of were gone. I called her the next day and confronted her about what she had said. She denied it. She said I was crazy. She said Dave's mother was crazy, she never said any such thing. I could have arranged to bring the two of them together, but I'd gone that route before. When faced with facts that disproved what she said, like Dave's mother looking her in the eye and saying "yes, you did say that ", she would just say "Fuck you, you're crazy " and walk away. It had happened in the psychologists office,, it would happen again, so there was no point. But at least I knew without any doubt anymore that she was capable of such selfish, vile, calculated acts. There was no gray area, no reasonable excuse. When caught being abusive, her response was to blame the abused. Any way she could. The only benefit to her from trying to make me out to be a "mother beater" was to save face for herself with a woman she didn't even know. To get in the first punch, so to speak, so that when I told others about her abuse, she could say I was the one doing it. That I was the liar. This patter with Jean was going on long before I ever knew it, and it never changed.

I never went home after that. I packed a bag of clothes and hitchiked to California. I had no idea were I was going, no idea were I would live. But anything, even complete uncertainty, was better than the abuse and the environment she was creating.

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