EIGHTH GRADE - by: Linda Law
It was eighth grade catholic school, and my sis was at another school. I was eleven years old, and mom had promised that next year when I was in high school I could go to the public school near our house. I couldn’t wait! First thing every morning I rode the bus to school, and then we had to attend mass in class groups, and then the school day began. School work was easy for me for some reason that I didn’t understand, but it was a gift I was told by the nuns. What they didn’t know was that it was truly a gift because homework and study at home was like a mortal sin according to dad. School is for study and homework, and home is for home things. Simple as that. I was not allowed to do homework at home, so that meant doing it on the bus before and after school, or whenever I could find extra time during the day to write my reports or read the assignments. I didn’t mind studying because it helped me to escape into another world….one that was filled with fantasy about travel and places to see one day; different cultures and imagine being someone else….anyone but me.
During the day, some of the girls would play games, and we’d take turns being The Virgin Mary, the mother of God. I loved being Mary, and I would wrap my navy sweater around my head and tie it under my chin like a veil or scarf. Without laughing or acting silly, I’d be serious and try to look like the Madonna statue in the schools main corridor. Another girl would lend me her sweater, roll it into a ball, and that would be the Baby Jesus. Other girls would be St. Joseph, and other saints, and we would do the Nativity scene, pretending that Jesus was being born. We did it over and over…day after day, switching turns as to who would be the Madonna; but I liked being her most of all, although I didn’t mind being King Herrod because he was mean and bossy; it was like having a chance to raise my voice and not be so mousy. One day Sister Julia came by and asked us “what are you girls doing?” and we all were excited and said, “We are playing the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus.” Sister Julia told us that we were being sacrilegious. We didn’t know quite what that meant, but we figured it wasn’t good since she made me take the sweater off my head, and she threw the baby Jesus sweater to the other girl and told us all to march against the building. We got our hands swatted with a ruler and told that we would have to write a Composition of three pages, “I will never be sacrilegious again” and Sister Julia said that we could not compare notes or there would be further punishment. Oh yes…. We also had to recite The Hail Mary prayer ten times, and The Our Father prayer ten times as a penance. Golly, we thought we were being good so it was not something any of us understood as being “bad.” One thing was for certain, when we grew up…we would be different!
Today had been difficult, what with punishment at school, then it was always tough after school, because I had to be on the alert at all times. There was no way I could just play and gossip with the other girls while we waited for the school bus, I had to find places to hide….so I stayed in the classroom, offering to clean the blackboards, or sweeping up, or whatever the nun had for me to do….anything to keep from waiting outdoors. There was usually a 45 minute wait for our bus, and when it did pull into the lot, I would run so I could be first on, and that way I could choose the seat as close to the back as possible, and stretch out, so that I wouldn’t be seen through the windows. The kids didn’t know why I did this, and they thought I was just strange, or being bossy since I was one of the older kids. Soon the bus was filled with noisy kids and the bus driver drove off. I was feeling good because several kids had already been let off at their stops, so that meant the coast must be clear. Suddenly, the bus came to a full stop, and the door opened, and instead of kids getting off….my dad stepped inside. He stood at the front of the bus, looked around, and then the bus driver hollered out my name…. and the kids started pointing to me as I laid on the floor of the bus…pretending that I had dropped something. I stood up, grabbed my things, and stepped off the bus. This wasn’t the first time, but this time it was different, or at least I thought it would be.
Dad told the bus driver that it was an emergency. Mom had been in a terrible accident and was in the hospital, and she was asking for me….so dad hurried to get me, because …. Of course… mother was in serious condition. A part of me didn’t want mom to be sick and hurt, but another part of me prayed that she was in the hospital and that we would go straight there, and that I would be safe. I climbed into the fancy new car; daddy always had a fancy car, and I scooted so close to the edge of the seat that my right leg was lodged between the seat and the door…that’s how close I was to the door. I held on to my book satchel, filled with books and paper that I knew I couldn’t use at home; but it was a habit to carry it, and sometimes I could sneak some reading when dad wasn’t home. My blue sweater was wrapped around my waist, since it was still warm outside. I hated wearing those ugly brown and white saddle oxfords, and mom always got me socks that were too tight, so they crawled inside my shoes and I’d have to bend over and pull them out several times during the day. My body was skinny, almost anorexic, no matter how much I ate…because I was hungry all the time, and would eat whatever I could, never quite filling that empty hole inside myself. I didn’t grow up to be tall, but in those days I was considered tall, but I suppose I stopped growing about that time. My eyes are large and hazel in color, but sometimes they get very green, or very brown, depending on my clothing or my mood. Funny, I don’t understand how the color of eyes can change, but they do; but the color of my skin was always pale and chalky, or at least that’s what everyone told me back then. Anyway, right now nothing mattered except that mom was dying in the hospital, and I was praying that we could get there fast; while I also thought about what would happen to us if mom did die…..God help us!
As we drove through town, and passed the familiar places, I knew… I knew…. Soon we crossed the railroad tracks, and headed south….soon we were behind the old insane asylum … the nut house is what the kids called it…. And my blood began to run cold as ice. In all the years of being beaten and abused, I had long ago, if ever…stopped trying to fight back.. I found a way to escape emotionally, and I didn’t know it at the time, but God was reinforcing me with strength to survive. Today somehow was different, and I couldn’t quite pinpoint why it would be different. Earlier during the week I had thought about all of these terrible things, and how one day I would grow up and be able to escape, to run away, and someone would take me in, and I would have a normal happy life….I knew I wouldn’t be able to have a child hood again, but I could dream couldn’t I? One of the things that kept coming back to me repeatedly during the week was that I kept telling myself that this was a helpless situation. I couldn’t tell anyone or he would kill my mother and sister, and I knew he meant it…he was a violent man when he was drunk, and I had seen things that I pray no one will ever have to see in their own life. He had threatened to kill me so many times, and although I was afraid…truly afraid…. The fear had turned to numbness after awhile, and this was the most important part of all… He couldn’t kill me…. I was already dead…. Oh…I was breathing, but I was eleven years old, and I was dead inside…. There was no life before, during, and after. So, I figured, there was no reason to be afraid anymore. The most painful part however, was the way he described how he would kill my mother and sister. I knew he would do it too.
“I know the perfect tree…it’s tall and thick, and so isolated from humanity, that only the wild animals can find you.” He said, “I’ll tie your mother to the tree, spread eagle style”, although I didn’t know what that meant, I knew it had to be cruel. He said, I’ll tie your sister to another tree close by, and I will skin your sister alive, while you and your precious mother watch…and he would smile as he held up his hunting knife, making sure that I saw how sharp the blade was. He would run it against my face and neck, and smile as he talked. He did that a lot of times, but he never cut me. His eyes would seem to vacate into blackness, as if he were not even in the present, and then he would describe to me how he would take the skin off my baby sister and throw it to the animals. Mom and I would watch, and we would be helpless. After he killed my sister, he would then skin mother alive, also in front of me…. And I would have no one to blame but myself. This torture and these deaths would be my fault, and then he would laugh loud and say…. “Do you understand why you have to keep this secret?” I would always say, “Yes, sir, I understand.”
The dirt road behind the nuthouse winded deep into an abandoned pasture. He slowed the car, then stopped completely. He talked awhile, like it was just another outing between normal dad and daughter; but then he began pulling me toward him…and although I tried to hang tough, he was strong, and he realized that I was being stronger than usual. During the preceding minutes I had already observed the car interior, looked for a weapon, anything to protect myself with, and all I saw was an empty glass coca-cola bottle. Without drawing attention, I tried to grab it and place it in my right hand so that I could have control of it, use it to protect myself, although I didn’t give thought to where I’d run to, or if I’d even be able to find my way back to civilization. When he jerked my face with his calloused hands, I hit him in the face as hard as I could…but all it did was split his lip….and I knew he was already furious…more dangerous than ever. He pulled my hair so hard I thought it would fall out, and he slapped me over and over with open hand, and soon I felt the blood pouring onto my white cotton school blouse. Stupid thoughts came to me…like, will mom be able to get this blouse clean again? I didn’t even know if I’d survive this day at all, and here I was wondering about the stupid blouse being blood stained. He ripped the blouse off of me, and I saw a button pop onto the ground, as he had already come around to the passenger side and opened the door. He pulled me outside, and began to beat me with his fists and hands, and he kicked me several times. I fell to the ground, and even though I tried to hit him back, it was as if I had made him go berserk instead of getting him to stop.
There is no way I can tell you how long we were out there in the wilderness, but the last I remember is that he rolled up his big hand into a large fist, and he punched me in the face … as always…I prayed for that punch into darkness. Most times I had found ways to escape emotionally, and I had a magic power that would lift me overhead so that I didn’t hurt, couldn’t feel, but I could see what was happening, and that was somehow worse…because I could never stop the torture and the pain… and…most often, I could not recall anything later. To this day, I can remember most everything “before” and “after” but not “during”….and for that, I am so grateful. I believe that blankness is what keeps me alive, and what gives me the strength to overcome things in life. How I am able to survive most anything is what I call this gift of blankness. To place myself elsewhere, and although my body receives the bruises and pain, my subconscious does not allow it to enter completely….as if….it happened to that pathetic, weak little creature….and not to me.
The sun was going down, although it wasn’t dark yet, and I found myself on the dirt ground, with my blouse bloody and raggedy, my skirt was pulled down to my ankles, and those stupid socks weren’t even on my feet anymore… I looked around for them, and one was in one shoe, while the other was near my face. I grabbed my sweater and wiped myself all over, wiped the blood from my face and legs and began to pull myself together as best I could. My books were scattered and not in the satchel, and some of the papers were torn in half and littered all over the ground. I knew he had gone into some sort of rampage and had purposely done that to my books and homework, but that was the least of my problems right now. I gathered everything and stuffed them in the satchel, I pulled my hair back behind my ears, and it felt gummy and filthy, but when I looked at my hands I knew what it was. I stunk, bad…. It was human feces and urine all over my hair and parts of my body. The sweater was matted with the disgusting feces, and I knew I would have to leave it out here. I worried what mom would say about having to buy a new sweater for school. As I got back into the car, I took a glimpse of myself in the side mirror, and wanted to scream…but I couldn’t. My face was filthy, hair matted and I looked as if I had been beaten, which of course I had.
Sitting in the car in the drive back to town, I kept my head down the entire way, fear of someone seeing me, embarrassed more what I was feeling however. Instead of him taking me home, he dropped me off near town, at a public bus stop. He threw me a dollar bill, and my books, and I stood there staring at him, as he drove away. What was I going to do? I looked around, and saw a gas station, so I walked across the street, went into the ladies room, washed up as best I could, although I couldn’t get my hair clean with the goopy soap they had…besides I had nothing to dry it with, so I used toilet paper to wipe through it, hoping it would be cleaner than before and not so stinky. I washed my face over and over and washed my legs and arms and dried myself with toilet paper. Later, I walked back across the street, caught a bus and just moved like a zombie. In those days, the colored people had to sit in the rear of the bus, but I wanted to sit back there too. There was only one black man back there, and there were two white men in the front section. I sat in the center of the bus…but the black man looked over at me, and I swear to you…it was as if I were seeing the face of God before me! He smiled at me, and reached over and said, “I’m so sorry you’ve been hurt…but God loves you, so don’t forget that ever!” He knew he could get into trouble for speaking to me, so I just smiled back and said, “thank you” and then hugged my satchel as close to me as I could. I was thankful that the bus was near empty, that it was getting dark, and that I would be home soon.
