My father was the kind of man they make movies about. Not good movies with happy endings. The kind of man you hope you never meet and really hope your mother never met.
I remember covering my ears at night to hide the sounds of my daddy beating my mommy. I remember hiding in my closet under clothes so he couldn't find me. I remember all of us outside in the yard watching the smoke roll out of the window from the bedroom where my daddy lay sleeping and hoping he would die, but fearing it at the same time. Die Daddy Die, please don't die Daddy, don't die. Unfortunately for 2 more women he didn't die that night. That night the neighbor pulled his drunk unconscious body from the burning house.
Daddy stopped drinking after that night but he didn't get nicer. Now we had no reason to blame the horror on. He was mean because he liked it. He would beat us all for no reason, except me, I wanted the beating like my sisters and brothers got but he used me in a different way. If you were as good as your sister Julie here you wouldn't have gotten whipped just now he would say. He would take me to our restaurant for ice cream and tell me I was his favorite. I didn't want that. I didn't want the resentment that I felt from my brothers and sisters and I didn't like the fear his words left in my heart. My mother feared it also. She feared his favoring me more then his beating the others. In the middle of the night she fled.
After our beatings for chasing my mother away we all played in the park nursing our wounds. I hadn't even escaped this time. A cab pulled up and my mother called for us to run to the cab as fast as we could and we escaped to my grandparents, his family with the clothes on our backs.
My grandparents, sweet and nice farmers from the old country took us all in without question in the middle of the night. Weary and scared we slept. I don't know what time it was when my Daddy burst in the door with his shotgun. He stormed up stairs and grabbed my mother and started beating her to death. He pulled her down the steep staircase with all of us kids screaming and my brothers trying to stop him from killing my mother. My grandfather, his father, got out his shotgun and told Dad to leave before he was forced to shoot him, my father left.
He never talked to his parents ever again. I never talked to him again until I was 14. 9 years. 9 happy years. We felt like we had escaped the boogie man. The sun rose and shone on us and my mother bloomed. She never married again.
Daddy did though. 3 more times. Each time putting his new wife and kids through hell. Each going though much as we had but it sounds like as he got older it was more cruel and sadistic then actual beatings. He had his 4rd wife committed and stole her fortune. He molested my step-sister. The fear my mother worried about for me played out on my sister and she bears the scars. My last step mother was the nicest lady. I didn't know about her until my Daddy got ill. Lung cancer. Fitting I thought and I remember thinking, he will now suffer as much as he has made others suffer. This lady was so nice. She was surprised to learn of us as most of what my Daddy had told her was a lie. My Aunt told her about us.
When my Daddy died I wanted to go to the funeral. Why? To make sure the devil was really gone, because he wouldn't go to his parents funeral and I didn't want to be any thing like my father. To find out answers to my questions but it was too late.
My father hadn't even told my new step mother his real name or nationality. He said he was a Polish Jew because she was. How did you meet my Dad I asked? Oh she said, still mourning him. He was so nice. I called his rental service to rent a house for a friend, We hit it right off and talked for 2 hours. With a sad heart I knew my father in that 2 hours had managed to find outevery thing he needed to know to scam this nice lady. The very next day he sent her roses and asked her to lunch. Shortly after they were married and shortly after that he had her sign over her 100 year old house to him. My step mother tried to warn her, my step sister tried to warn her but my Dad answered every fear with calm answers.
Shortly after they got married he got cancer. Not soon enough as she still managed to lose everything to this man. The estate when he died ended up in court for years as all the children and step children, minus my Mothers children fought tooth and nail for every penny they felt they had coming to them. I was so grateful to have escaped this man I wouldn't fight for a dime. My mother would have approved.
It is my wonderful mother and my evil father that helped to shape the person that I am today, I am grateful in a way to the both of them. Thanks to my mother I have a great sense of humor, good common sense, smart in my own way, and from my father a belief that evil does exist. a cynical nature that stands me well, and a gratitude for not being like him at all. Everything has a purpose in life.
You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.
Vernon Howard
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