My dad was no better. He was married a total of thirteen times, not counting live-ins. My mom left my dad when I was eleven. When we were getting ready to leave, my dad told me if I left not to ever come back. I didn’t know why he would say something like that. I didn’t know I could have stayed with him; no one told me that till after I was grown. It was about two years before I saw him again. We were never allowed to say his name in front of my mom or she would slap the mess out of me.
For a long time I thought it was a nightmare. That anytime we would go back to my dad’s and everything would be alright. But it never happened. I started working when I was twelve at Pecos Valley Country Club. I would cover my mom’s shift on Saturday night and Sunday lunch, because usually she was hung over and couldn’t get out of bed. My dad’s last wife didn’t even know that my dad had a thirteen-year-old daughter; boy, was she was hot. Needless to say that was an unpleasant first summer; she ran a day care and she put me in it. Then I was hot. We moved to Pecos, Texas when she left him.
My abuse didn’t stop from her until I was seventeen. I got pregnant to get away from her. Every time one of her so-called boyfriends broke up with her, I knew what was coming. I was her escape goat. She would take it out on me. My mom was considered the town whore. So I was not allowed to play with the (good) girls of the town. I was not good enough. Because like mother like daughter. If the good people only knew about their own little girls. I was the only virgin in the group. This is the most I have written in one time. I have written bits and pieces, but never this much detail.
When I was in junior high, my mom said I could stay after school and help one of my friends with her posters for class counsel. When I got home she was so mad at me and asked me where I had been. I told her that she said I could stay after school and help Keema. She said she didn’t say anything like that at all. Started slapping me around until she got me in my room and knocked me down, then she grabbed me by my ears and hair, lifted me up by them and then dropped me. She busted both of my knee caps and cut back behind my ears. Nothing I ever did was good enough for her. I have been wanting to die since I was thirteen, just to escape from her. I asked god to save me over and over, but it never happened. I never understood what I did that was so bad that she would do these things to me. Then I started to believe that I deserved it. That I was nothing, that was just how things was going to be and I couldn’t do anything about it. I wish I knew then what I know now.
