School Daze
I was still enrolled in the AG program with the too-weird-for-words Mrs. Hice. Her spider fetish continued and even flowered that year as we made gold spider ornaments to compliment the silver one from the previous year. Michelle was still in my class and we were almost inseparable. I made a few new friends, but it was kinda hard. I was considered a nerd. And I was painfully shy.

I had a teacher named Mr. Howard who had insane amounts of nose hair protruding from both nostrils. He yelled and threw desks and preached in class. He got fired the year after I was in his room, and the last time I saw him he was running the TRAM at the NC Zoo in Asheboro.

I memorized a poem called “Sam McGee” so that our class could get an extra PE hour. I still remember bits and pieces of it. I remember see-sawing with Lisa in the backyard while I tried in commit it to memory. I found a copy of the words here.

On The Home Front
Speaking of home, things were starting to go downhill with Paul. I’m not sure of the exact timing, but somewhere in this area of time he had an accident and got a DUI. His licence was taken away and he had to do the “weekend jail” thing for a while. At first my mom told us he was working, but I eventually found out the truth. We celebrated by eating fish sticks and french fries and being silly.

We celebrated because when he was in the house, it was pretty tense. He was always mad about something and Lisa and I often found ourselves the target of his rage. He would beat us with his belt for pretty much no reason at all or simply trivial things. My mom didn’t defend us. I guess she was mentally or emotionally too weak to do anything. Maybe she didn’t want to be his target.

Paul was also making it painfully clear that his little boy, William, could do no wrong. The preferential treatment started almost with birth. The little boy he threatened to kill was now the apple of his eye. It was his little boy. And like he kept reminding me, and would for years, I was not his child. “I’m not your daddy, but you’ll treat me like I am.”

Airing Dirty Laundry
I remember that at 10 I started hanging out laundry. I did it because I wanted to be “grown up” and to help out my mom. I got stuck doing it until I left home. All of the hot, sweaty days standing barefoot in the back yard, wooden clothespins clamped to the bottom of my shirt. My mom told me that when I got older that I would hang my clothes out to dry, too, to save money on the electric bill. Mom – I don’t.

On one occasion I remember Paul and mom fighting and he called her a ‘whore’. My vocabulary was limited at that point, but through my school-bus-education I knew that was a horrible thing for him to call her. I yelled at him, “No one calls my mom a whore – Not even you!” I knew I was going to get punished, but I was so sick of seeing him run all over her. She was so fragile and weak and I didn’t want to see her hurt anymore.

I guess in a lot of ways I tried to distract him from her. I tried to channel his anger from her. It worked – a little too well. Soon I was his exclusive target. And where was my backup? Where was my protector? No where to be found.

… previous post here …