I tell myself I wrote my memoir to help my family. The truth is I wrote it hurriedly in the form of an overview, in hopes they would recognize me, and let me in. I had not reckoned on the fear factor.

Fear according to Encarta Dictionary, is “an unpleasant feeling of anxiety or apprehension caused by the presence or anticipation of danger.”

My mother and father never beat me. Dad spanked me once when I was three. My fear was born of what I saw, heard, and felt while others were beaten, scorned, and ridiculed. That was the fear alive in me, the constant vigilance against being next. I remained in the shadows, on the shelf, out of the way, and silent. Unsure what had caused the abuse I witnessed; I did nothing, said nothing, asked nothing, and remained nothing. Invisibility and inactivity were the ultimate fortification against making mistakes.

As the years passed and the folks grew older, slower, and indifferent to us younger children, (Mother was 46 and Dad 54 when I came along) the memories of past atrocities faded and I found myself wondering why I was afraid of my mother and father. It was not an intermittent fear as when someone makes a sudden move and a person flinches. The fear ruled every aspect of my world.

My father and I parted ways at a very young age. At 13 years when he yelled at me to get the __ cat off the table, I was shocked at his voice directed at me. I went numb with fear, shame, and self-chastisement that I had done something so bad as to earn the breaking of his silence. It was several more years before he addressed me directly again.

Mother was far more intimidating. She was the one we younger ones dealt with on a daily basis. In my memory, Mother had always been angry. She cried a lot, some say every day. I remember her sitting beside the old wood stove crying when we came in from school; the gaiety of the game show “Queen for a Day” was a mournful backdrop for Mother’s silent tears. I also remember the tears cascading into the pasty bread dough as she beat out her vengeance.

            The anticipation of what would become of me should either of my parents spend their anger on me, kept me inline.

William Shakespeare said, "In time we hate that which we often fear." 

I learned to hate my parents. Not pure hate I suppose. The haunting hope that they would someday be a “Mom” and “Dad” played adversary to my hate; it remained a constant source of agitation until I made a choice to save myself. I was 44. My father was dead and I never saw my mother again. She died three years later at the age of 93.

Mother haunted me in death as she had in life. Fear of her wrath, her disgust, her judgment was, in my sister Wanda’s words, like “a thumb on me pressing, pressing me down.” My worst nightmare occurred before Mother died. The vision of her grasping leathery hands attached to my ankle pulling me through the cracked floorboards of the old house into the underbelly of hell woke me to my screams.

            I said to my concerned boyfriend, “Ma doesn’t like her kids being too happy.” That is another story entirely.

            Some have criticized my portrayal of our house on the front cover as being “haunted.” My cover creation is a representation drawn from the disheartening atmosphere and attitudes solidly in place at birth, and I am sure, before my birth. Even as I created the images for “Entombed in Silence” I stopped to feel any presence of Mother at my back, but there was none.

            Those whom I hoped would read my truth and let me in, fight ever more vengefully to shut me out. They cannot invoke their hate and fear on me. Fear does not rule me. Hate does not guide me. I am free to speak what truth is mine, especially my truth of my own mistakes and misdeeds.

            As Tacitus said,

"Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it."    

            “Entombed in Silence” is my truth. It will remain my truth. Without it, I revert to the nothingness of my own apathy towards me and you and life itself. Without truth, I return to fear and hatred, my mother’s thumb pressing down on me. There I would end.