January 14, 1978
I celebrated my first birthday by head-butting a chocolate cake. This would start my life-long love/hate relationship with chocolate.

January – August 1978
I was still an only child and a walking, talking, pampered sex goddess.

September 1978
My mom, nine months pregnant, married the baby’s father. This was her second marriage and brought about my first stepfather, Harry.

September 29, 1978
My sister, Lisa, was born.

October 1978 – March 1980
More pampers, apple juice, teething and toddling. Harry liked to put beer in my baby bottle and tell me that it was apple juice to get a laugh out of his buddies. He stopped this when I puked on him.

April 1980
My mom left Harry, Lisa and me in pursuit of a “better life”. She wanted to leave her abusive, good-for-nothing husband to go out and be happy for a change. Harry knew nothing about taking care of kids. He was too busy drinking, smoking pot, doing acid and screwing the other women in our apartment building to take care of two little girls, especially the one who wasn’t even his own.

There was a weekly poker game a few apartments down where he and his buddies would congregate, drink, smoke and gamble away their paychecks. Harry went there every Friday night with his drinking pals. He would leave Lisa and me in the apartment by ourselves so that he could participate.

This particular night, the host was very high and decided that one his fellow card players was being less than honest. An argument ensued and he pulled out a gun and shot the cheater, who died. All of the men were hauled downtown to the police station. Harry, on his way out, told one of the policemen to go get his ‘girls’ and have their grandparents, our mother’s parents, pick us up.

My first childhood memory occurs here: I was sitting in a bedroom with one of those horses that bounces on the springs. There was a hole in the side of the horse’s neck and I was pushing those little letter magnets into the hole. (The reason being that the horse would make noise when I rode it this way.) I looked over at my sister in her baby bed, and a shadow fell over me. I turned around to see a dark manly figure standing in the open door to my room, light flooding in behind him. I started to cry.

The police officer stayed with Lisa and me until our grandparents, Claud and Iris got there. They packed up a weekend’s worth of clothes and supplies and took us to their home in Climax, thirty-five minutes south of Greensboro.

Upon his release, Harry called to see if we were okay and to thank Claud and Iris. He said they could keep us for the week if they wanted. He would come by to drop off more clothes and supplies. He came by two days later and dropped those supplies for the week. We never saw him again. I’ve heard that he has a new family in Virginia somewhere. Thus our weekend with our grandparents would last for six years.

Previous post on this subject: part 1