years 6-10 Gene's House

Upon moving to Havre Montana with my mom and my brother I was thrown into a whole new life. My mother had a new job where she was working at a motel as a front clerk, and then another job as a caretaker to retarded children. My brother had a new friend, Randy, who had red hair and seemed like trouble to me. I  never really cared much about him but I did like him, especially his red hair. This was my first year at a new school, the first grade, and I had to walk there all by my self. I was to walk down the alley and at the end of the alley I could see my school to the left. Directly across from the school a boy named Kelly lived in a small house with his mom and his older sister. We immediately made friends. Another girl at that school lived on the corner across from the school as well. We were all really close to each other. Janessa is my oldest girl friend. We still keep in contact, as well as Kelly and I. Janessa also had just a mother and she would often send us to the corner store which was straight past the school and across the street. She would send us to the store with money and a note telling the clerk to let us buy cigarettes for her. It was 1986. With in the first week of attending this new school and making new friends, I decided to walk to Janessa's house after school. I was only a few houses down the street from mine and across the street... but by the time I reached the end of the block, all the way past the school, 3 houses away from my own, the police stopped me and asked me what my name was. I told them and they said I needed to get home right away. My mom was afraid I had been abducted. I became fearful that I would be abducted. I was a little girl and it was widely known that little girls were prime targets for scary old men who loved to do horrible things to little girls. Little did I know that I had already experienced some of those horrible things and that they would affect the rest of my life. I had already become a victim and I didn't even have to be kidnapped, it had happened right there in my own family, behind closed doors and in the dead of night.
 

I was woke up one night to my brother who was touching my private part between my legs. He told me that it was ok and asked me if it felt good, did it tickle? I answered him, yes. I don't remember anything else. I know that I said something to my mother the next day because my sister Kilah remembers the incident well. She was in her 20's living down the street from us in an apartment building with her 3 children. She was a single mom too. By this time 3 of my sisters had children. Kelly was nowhere to me, she simply didn't exist. Kilah had 3, a boy who was a few years younger than me and 2 twin daughters that didn't really look like twins to me. Keriba had become a teenage mother while we lived in Glasgow. My mom either kicked her out or she left. I'm not sure which but we all lived in Havre. Only me and Jon lived with my mom. I remember Kieya came to our house for a visit and had brought a girl friend with her. I over heard everyone say that she was gay. I didn't know what this meant but she was a super cool girl and I adored her. Kieya was going to school in another state. She had brought her gay friend with her and she had no idea that her friend was gay. I remember this clearly because I was so confused as to why gay was such a big deal. I later learned that Kilah had a gay neighbor who worked as an EMT. She had a pair of scissors that would cut through a penny. I still have the penny. I thought she was so cool too. I can remember not liking my family, the people who were supposed to look out for me, protect me, adore me... Yet, none of them did this. I remember them talking badly about gay people and feeling hatred towards them, yet they were the coolest people I knew. I loved them. I was so confused.

My mom had a good friend named Ed Rena who rented us his small house. I loved it. It was a complete circle with an island wall right in the middle and I could walk all the way around, the bathroom had two doors, so you could virtually walk all the way through the house. I remember the noises in the ceiling and I thought they were ancient Indians who were haunting the house, they weren't going to cause us any harm, they just wanted us to know they had been there long before we had. We only spent one year in that house.
I wet the bed. I was a very deep sleeper. My mom came up with the idea that I should be woke up at least once a night and brought to the bathroom. The picture to the right is one of those nights. I had just cut my hair. It was constantly in a Mullet hairstyle because it was so thick and I rocked in bed and it would get tangled so badly. The only thing I could do was get half my hair turned into bangs, bangs which had two cowlicks on either side of my temples, which I had decided to cut off, then I proceeded to cut my bangs. Unevenly. I didn't want my picture taken of my horrible haircut, my mom was so upset and hated it, she was so embarrassed by me. She decided to get a picture of me when I was "sleep walking" which I did every night when they would get me up to use the bathroom. They would tell me endless stories of crazy things I would do in my sleep. How they would try to convince me to go outside in the snow in my pajamas, how I would bang on the cupboards, how I would seem to be awake but very much be asleep. It scared me. If I could remember events from being woken up, what was going on when I was sleeping, obviously I wasn't being protected. I became fearful of my family.

It was shortly after the touching incident that our new step dad, Gene, was introduced to us. My mom had a private wedding. I don't even recall them dating much, only that we had gone over to his house for dinner once, that he cooked. Now that was something new, a guy cooking. My mom had been the one to do everything so far, she cleaned, she cooked, she worked, she was never there yet we always had a clean house. I loved the idea of having a new dad. He also had a big belly, maybe he was just as jolly... maybe he would love me. He had two grown children. Now I had a step brother and a step sister!! Unfortunately they also had families of their own. Gene's daughter worked at the Anheuser-Busch company and got me a deck of playing cards with the Anheuser-Busch logo along with a beer bottle on the back of the cards. They came in a metal case. I was confused at the gesture, I didn't even know what to do with cards AND they had a beer bottle on them... Beer was for adults, right? So why was I given something that was obviously meant for an adult. I still have them, although the case has been dented and no longer closes, and most of the cards are probably missing... I still have it, in a zip lock baggie. I'm not sure why, as a reminder? To what? I'm not sure. She was loud and obnoxious and she scared me. Ed, his son was much nicer and I liked his wife, although she scared me a little too. It's funny how some people are naturally kind to children and some just pretend, children can always figure it out right away.
While living at that house, before Gene convinced us to move in to a new house with him, I grew. I explored the neighborhood, I explored the giant empty field across the street from us and next to my sisters apartment complex. At that complex there were several kids. Mostly boys. One boy in particular enjoyed abusing me. He would call me names, make me feel bad about myself, make fun of me for being sad or crying, yell at me, hit me, kick me and torture me, in front of my nephew and nieces. I was the oldest one out of all of them. By this time both of my sisters, Kilah and Keriba, had children. Josh was Keriba's and he was the same age as the twins. Then Caleb was older than them and I was the oldest. We were always categorized together and I hated it. I wanted so badly to be one of the sisters. I was one of the sisters so why did I always have to play with their children. I hated it.

I would rock back and forth in any stationary chair or couch. I would tuck my hands under the cushions, lean forward and flail my head backwards and bounce off the back of the couch. I would repeat this, no one could make me stop. I couldn't sit in a chair, even a car chair, with out rocking. It must have been horrifying for everyone. I remember thinking and hearing that there was something very wrong with me. Why did I do this, was it hurting my brain? Was I indeed retarded like the doctors had told my mom? She was a much older woman who had given birth to me, the risks of having a retarded child when you are much older is much higher. I must be retarded, and so it became.. poor little retarded Sarah, slower than molasses, just leave her alone, she just needs to do what she needs to do, she is retarded after all. Those are all things I heard the grown ups around me say. It was known that I was retarded in some way, some way that no one could quite figure out. I knew better... I wasn't actually retarded, I was quiet, I was shy, I had been abused, I was told not to talk about it, I had been threatened not to talk about it. I was not retarded. My mom was 42 when she had me. I made it my mission to learn as much about everything so that I could prove I was not retarded. Anything I did wrong, was because I was retarded, every accomplishment was overlooked because how could I actually have achieved it, I was retarded. I am in fact not retarded, nor have I ever been. I have an extremely high IQ, I have made the National Dean's List several times, I have been given the National Technical Honor Society award, and I have also made the honor roll several times. I have received academic scholarships and I had been accepted into multiple schools because of my ACT score and academic achievements. I am not retarded although all my young life I had been told that I was, and that I wouldn't amount to much, and that I was stupid, and that I should just shut up. No one wanted me to talk about this. I was abused. I was threatened. I was made to feel like I was wrong, all my thoughts and feelings were wrong. I am gay.
This is the house where I can first remember pretending that I was gay. I was a biker hairdresser/tattoo artist and I did just that to "my little ponies" and pretended to smoke ciggs and drink alcohol.  My mom was furious. I had so many my little ponies, and they were going to make me millions but now that chance was gone because I had cut their hair and wrote on them with pen, not unlike her marking my name and their name on the underside of their hooves though right? Fuck her. I was going to be a tough biker bitch who tattooed people and did their hair. I was going to smoke cigarets and drive a motorcycle. I wanted to be Joan Jett.
It wasn't until we moved in with Gene. I was in the 2nd grade and at a new school. I had to leave my friends and go to a school where everyone had two parents. Everyone was perfect. One boy was not. Danny. He would hit his head against the brick wall. Multiple times. He would hit it against his desk. He was moody. He was mean. He was abused also. I had to hide mine. Gene would walk by my rocking chair, because rocking in a rocking chair was much more acceptable, and he would grab my leg, right by my knee and he would squeeze, hard. Then he would move it up, trying to tickle me, saying I was boy crazy. I was indeed, not boy crazy. I did not like what boys had done to me. None of them. Not Lyle, not Jon, not that boy who lived in my sisters apt complex, and certainly not Gene. He would block me from watching my shows, squeezing my leg, moving his had farther and farther up my leg until I would scream for him to stop. Then he would, and he would walk to his chair in the back of the room and change the channel to news. I grew to hate the news.

I had to practice piano too. I was given the choice between dance class or piano lessons and because I wanted to be a ballerina I chose dance class. I was informed that I had made the wrong choice, that I would indeed start and continue piano lessons because we had a piano and we needed to get some use out of it. I loved playing the piano and I would often tap my fingers on the floor or desk in a rhythm and then I would try it out on the piano. They were songs. I enjoyed making songs. I really enjoyed rag time music. I love listening to piano music but I hated my piano teacher and I hated going to lessons and I hated recitals. I was always forgotten about. I was always last but not forgotten.. ha ha ha. I didn't laugh. I hated it. I was invisible. I wasn't good enough to be a star with her. I wasn't a natural player.. I could make my own songs but I never shared them with anyone because I always got made fun of. I hated it. My mom always had to remind her that I hadn't gone yet. I took lessons for 11 years. It happened every fucking year. I had to fake being happy that I was completely forgotten about, that my piano ability didn't surpass the one other girl my age who was also taking piano lessons from the same stay at home mother. I hated feeling inferior to Katie. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, soft spoken, and people liked her. She had not been abused, or so I assumed. She had a natural gift of piano playing. She learned faster than I did. She did not like rag time music. She played classical music. I loved to listen to her play, her lesson was sometimes before mine.

Once we moved in with Gene I thought all our worries and troubles would be gone. The house was big, it had 3 rooms upstairs, a living room, and a dining room, and a kitchen with room for a table!!! Downstairs it had a spare room which Jon dubbed his fly tying room, then under the stairs was room for the laundry stuff, the washer and dryer, and directly under the stairs was a cellar room so my mom could store her home-made jelly!! It had a dirt floor. I was convinced someone had buried someone underneath it. Past the wash-room was a large open room with built in benches along part of the corner of the room. Under the benches were storage for my many board games that we never got to play. Oh how I wanted someone to play a game with me. That room became my sanctuary, that's where we stuck the huge old tv with the pull on switch. The one with only 12 channels on a dial. We eventually got a box for it, and that was more of a pain in the butt because you had to switch the channel but then had to step back to see what was on. We eventually got a smaller tv with another dial, that was black and white, and we plugged a Nintendo into it. It was magical. Jon would actually play with me. I was actually good at something and he didn't make fun of me always. In fact he would compliment me sometimes. It made me feel good. Past the big room, there was a door, and another door that led outside. Then another door into an apartment with one bedroom. That is where Jon stayed. I remember going in there once with my mom, while he was gone. He was in High School by this time and as we entered the apartment, into the kitchen I remember the stench. There were Copenhagen containers everywhere. It smelled so gross. I remember being disappointed in him. How could he fall for something as stupid as chewing tobacco! Everyone knew that smoking and chewing were bad. I was done with him. He had been mean with me, tortured me, threw crab-apples at me, pushed my face in dirt, shot my toys with his arrows, scared me with dead dear, pinched me awake telling me the crawdads we had caught had escaped, scared me with leaches, continually threatened to drop me off at the Indian Reservations if I didn't tell him what mom had planned for his birthday, just real rotten stuff. I was done.The one good thing he did for me was help me start a bank account. A peewee penguin account. I thought it was sooooo cool. He continued to put money in there for me, probably out of guilt for touching me when I was little. Who knows.

It was that house that Gene tried to kill my mom. He was a closet alcoholic. He would be gone for weeks on the train, drinking, smoking, doing whatever he liked while we all stayed at home. My mother had started working at the Senior Center, taking care of elderly people. One elderly couple lived near the train tracks far out of town. Now there is a Walmart there. No one even remembers the incident. I do. It traumatized my mother and confused me. One day I walked back home from the bus stop and there was paper all over the windows and doors. I didn't know what to expect. As I tried to go into the house, the door flew open and I was rushed inside. Someone was out there and they were going to try to kill us all. My mother had taken care of an elderly couple who were nice enough to let a homeless man who was riding the trains, stay with them. They gave him money, cloths, food... allowed him to stay for as long as he like. He bludgeoned them to death with a hammer in their sleep. My mother found them. She immediately feared for her life and ours, she had seen the man. He turned out to be a serial killer who rode the train, striking lots of people along the trains tracks. It was awful. It made Gene upset. He thought my mom was being dramatic. He was an asshole.
Jon had a girlfriend, Cassie, his first one and his only one because he ended up marrying her too. No one liked Cassie at first. They didn't think she was the right person for him, they all thought she should be skinnier, prettier, funnier, quieter, something else but certainly not her. I loved her. She paid attention to me. She became my big sister. She was everything to me. I also didn't like her sometimes, she forced me out of my comfort zone on many occasions. She allowed me to get drunk for the first time at her and Jon's first house. She would teach me to cook, and I would help her clean. She wasn't ever the tidiest person, she'd much rather talk on the phone and all conversations with her were sooooo long. Now I don't mind them, but back then, I couldn't stand them. The only time I remember ever talking with a friend on the phone and enjoying it was in Genes house, and it was only once because I got a rash of humiliation for doing so. A fan broke once, I was sitting next to it. I didn't touch it, I didn't stick anything in it. I thought it was cool to make sounds into the fan. It was a medium sized fan that rotated. All of a sudden one of the blades broke and came flying out, almost hit me, it definitely scared me. I was blamed. I was apparently always breaking things, yes I was curious, but I never had intended to break anything with malicious intend. I was simply a child who was curious about my environment. I hated Gene and my mom for blaming me for breaking that fan. How dare they not believe me. Fuck them.

There was a girl across the street from us who was much older than me. She would often try to get me to touch her boobs, she also tried to convince me to tell my mom that Gene touched me because I would complain about how much I disliked him. He had after all made us move into the cool new house that had a magnificent back yard with lots of apple and crab-apple trees, which he cut down so he could build a huge wood shop. All but one tree. A bull-hook ran beside the house. It was a ditch that ran throughout the town, mostly under the streets. Most people were oblivious that we had a drainage ditch running through town, but right next to my house it was exposed and it was like a raging river when it was full from the rain. I would often ride the rapids, without a raft, letting the water push me along the side of my house. It was so dangerous, I can't believe I got away with it as much as I did. I had every square inch of that ditch memorized. I knew where all the chunks of concrete were, all the rocks, all the dips and curves. There was a bridge that the water would rush under and come out  on the other side and rush past some other houses across the street from us. They eventually covered that up and the only exposed bull hook, still to this day, runs right by Gene's house. I loved to catch animals and bugs there, as well as climb trees. It was an awesome house and I spent the majority of my time outside. For good reason. I didn't like Gene or my mom and I didn't like being left at home with my brother. I would dream that I was a real princess and that my real family missed me, I was kidnapped and had to be raised by this family. I hated it. I would pray for a cat every night. One day Gene came home with a cat and said it followed him home from Taco Johns. I loved that cat. I had that cat for the majority of my life, until I went to Colorado to visit my sister and I was going to be going to college soon, the cat that would disappear the entire time I was away and would come home the day I was arriving back... that cat disappeared... just ran away... I was convinced that my mother did something with the cat and wouldn't confess. I was happy with Gene for bringing the cat home. My mom hated it.

This is the house that I grew up in, where I taught myself the Phoenician Alphabet so I could write in code, taught myself how to write with my left hand, learned sign language and coward in the basement while Gene tried to strangle my mom with a telephone wire in the kitchen. I'm not sure how we got out of that situation but I know that we ran to her first husband Jon Sr. for support and comfort. This is the house that I first heard my mom have sex. This is the house that allowed me a sanctuary from my home life. I loved that house, but I hated my family. A little girl up the street from us also had a railroad family. Our "dads" worked together. Her mom was always mad. She would yell a lot. She was abusive. I often wonder what happened to Chelsea and her brother, her parents got a divorce. Mine did about a year and a half later. They moved away.

I had some serious anxiety issues. I wet the bed, I was in a whole new "class" of people, we were now "rich" and I had a mom and a dad. But I wet the bed. I also grew boobs. I remember my brother in law watched me run across the yard once and said GezUS Sarah, you should probably get a bra! But I was just a kid, and bras were for adults. Not children... Not only did I wet the bed, rock to sleep, rock in a rocking chair, constantly want to masturbate but I also had boobs, which no other kid had. I didn't even get to wear cute cotton training bras, I had to have supportive bras that old ladies would wear. I started to hate my body. I wasn't allowed to touch it and make it feel good, I wasn't allowed to like girls, I wasn't allowed to really do what I wanted, yet I was alone so much, how could I not do what I wanted? I remember having such bad anxiety that my mom would either die while away and leave me to Gene, or she would just never come back and I would have to live with someone else. By this time my sister Keriba, my absolute idol, the mom I wish i had, had moved to Colorado. I would cry the entire time my mom was gone. I didn't want to be alone so much. People scared me. Guys, men, scared me. I didn't want to be left alone with any of them. I couldn't stay the night at anyone's house because I would have panic attacks, and wet the bed. I was a total wreck. The one friend I did have that had a mom who knew about my "condition" and would keep it secret from her daughter, didn't, and I was humiliated as Shanda let me deep dark secret out, humiliating me. I will never forget sitting at Yummy Yogurt and my "girl friends" sat around me, questioning me, prodding me tell the truth, and so I did. And they laughed and criticized me. Again I was retarded, stupid, definitely not one of them. I was mortified. I walked home in tears.  I was in the 5th grade.

There was a huge dirt hill at the top of the street, down the street was Taco Johns and Yummy Yogurt, I loved that neighborhood. I would often play on the dirt hill, carving out stairs and holes to keep things inside. I remember one time standing up on that hill and screaming at the top of my lungs an extremely vulgar and expletive heavy song. I wanted someone to come out and tell me to shut up, I wanted someone to care that I knew so much about sex, I wanted someone to help me. I was literally crying out for help. No one did.
This is also the first time I remember holding a girls hand and feeling tingly and afraid that someone would see us and make fun of us. It was at school. It was not ok for girls to be together. Gay was not ok. I don't know if that other 3rd grader felt the same way, but I know what I felt and it was wonderful and awful all at the same time. She held my hand and ran with me to line up because Recess was over. I got stung by a bee as I stood in line with her and I remember thinking I was being punished by God for holding a girls hand. I refused to do it again.

 By the time Jon had graduated from High School I took over the down stairs apartment, so my mother could feel safe, I was safe. There was an argument that  I over heard as to why my doors had to be locked, why were they locked in the first place? To protect me. The only time I ever felt my mom protected me from anyone, and it was because she literally locked me away. The whole year that I lived down there, I was not allowed to cook on the stove but I did have a toaster oven and I did have a microwave and my mom did let me keep food down there. I got really fat that year. I watched a lot of TV. Beavis and Butthead, The Real World and Liquid Television. I was mesmerized by the rawness of it all. I wanted to be 16. I wanted to be free.
I still wet the bed in this house. I eventually grew out of it at about the age of 11. That's why I was able to move downstairs to the apartment. It was about that time that I got my period. I thought I was dying. It hurt so bad. It was the worst pain ever. I also had either growing pains or arthritis. My legs would hurt so bad as well as my elbows. They still do from time to time when the weather changes. I'm pretty sure it's arthritis.
We moved from Gene's house to Jon Sr.'s house. This was my brother and sister's father. My brother no longer lived with us. We lived with Gene his whole High School career.
 Once we had the memories of Gene and that house behind us, we had brighter things to look forward to at Jon Sr.'s house. My mother had once been married to this man, he was the father of my brother and sisters, maybe he could me a father to me too? He had other children, Jabes, Jase, and Cierra. We grew up together, they were my almost brothers and sister. They were cool. I thought I might have a new chance at everything, I was about to start Middle school, I had a new house, new friends, new dad... sort of. New experiences right? Right... they just weren't what I had expected...

First 5 years

Writing the story of my life so far is not easy for me. I am often overwhelmed with sadness at the things that have happened to me. As far back as I can remember I have only wanted to be loved, hugged, cuddled, complimented and looked up to. I have wanted one thing most in life. My own family.

 

My family is large. I have 4 sisters and one brother. I come from a different father. My mom came from a large family of 12 brothers and sisters. Her parents are both polish. She was the baby. My father came from a family of 3. I have no idea what nationality either of his parents are but I seem to have the impression that his mother's family came from Spain and I remember him telling me that his father's family, his real father, came from Scotland. This news came to me when I was 14 and visiting him for the first time in 9 years. I was confused, real father? So what about my last name? It turns out that his mother had been friends with a man I shall call Mr. Curry. Her husband didn't like it and when she discovered she was pregnant with her 3rd child, this time a boy, his father Mr. Shuffield denied it was his. Thus kicking them all out and leaving them for Mr. Curry to raise. So he did and he adopted my father and he gained the last name Curry. My life was a lie and now my last name was a lie. I hated it. I couldn't wait to find "the one" and get married and get rid of my lie of a name Curry. My father said that he realized this news when Mr. Shuffield passed away and he went to his funeral. He looked down on the man and saw himself. That's when he learned the truth. He told me the truth about the same age that he learned the truth. He also had mentioned that he had a sister who committed suicide at 12 or 13 years of age. He had 2 sisters left. All of them were large people. My grandmother was a large woman. She died when I was 9. That was the first contact I had with my father since he left when I was 5. A phone call, to tell me the only family member who actually loved and cared about me was dead. I felt alone.

When I think about my childhood I remember happy times. I remember the big house we lived at in Glasgow Montana. I remember it had a chain-link fence around the front yard. I remember it had two large stone flower beds off to the left side of the house, one in the front and one near the back. I remember it had apple trees on the left side as well. Small green apples grew on it and they were sour but I loved them. I remember learning how to do cartwheels off of those flower beds. I remember my mom had a large red wishing well. I remember the backyard had a Koi pond and my mom had fish inside of it. I remember there was a camper that was not on a truck and it was my play house. I remember making mud pies in there. I remember a basketball hoop on the garage in the back there, but gravel made it hard to bounce balls. Inside the house I remember a large living room with a long staircase off to the right side. To the left was my parents room and at one point my dad decided they were going to make the room larger. He removed one wall and one day while using an electric saw he cut off his pointer finger on his left side. He was a lefty so now he had to learn to write with his right. I remember it happening, being outside near him when it happened. I don't remember anything else. I remember the house had three rooms upstairs and a large hallway in-between all the rooms, like a nice sized playroom. I remember there was some attic space on the outside parts of the rooms, connecting two of the rooms. I remember I was told never to go in there, even though there were toys in there.

This is the house where I was abused my the majority of my family members. Aside from my sister Kelly and my sister Kieya. This is the house where my mom and dad met Lyle, or Al for short. I remember he seemed Mexican because of his mustache. I remember he was scary and had a knife. I remember I liked him at first and then I became very scared of him. I don't remember much about him, at all except I hate him. I was told by my oldest sister Kelly, that she once caught him on top of me, I was crying and trying to get away from him. She threatened him. She was in her 20's. At home it was my two youngest sister, Kieya and Keriba and my brother Jon. They all had a different father than me. I was the baby, literally. They were teenagers and Jon was 9. Lyle taught Jon that it was OK to use me as a sexual learning tool. It would be OK, no one would have to know. I knew. I remembered. It was not OK with me. I slept in my sister Keriba's room in a crib until I was 4. I learned how to rock myself to sleep. This is normal and totally OK, most children grow out of it when they are 3 or 4. I didn't grow out of it until I was 18 and started to sleep in a bed with someone else. I broke my crib because of the rocking. I was moved out of her room and into the open hallway upstairs to a big twin bed. I remember my sister Kieya always wanted to put pillows next to me on the floor, I couldn't understand why but she would tell me that I would often fall out of bed and land on the hard floor and she didn't want me to get hurt.
This picture on the left is of me and my sister Keriba. There is an 8 millimeter film that goes with it. In the film I am encouraged to smell a flower and then Keriba hits me on the back of the head when I do. I watched another "home movie" where someone placed the camera on a tri-pod and seems to have forgotten that it was recording. In the movie I am about 4 years old, jumping around, singing, asking questions, being a child. My mother is sitting on the floor messing with lights. Lyle is off to the right side messing with the Christmas Tree. Suddenly out of no where he backhands me and I fly backwards landing on my butt. My mom does nothing. No comforting, no standing up for me, no telling Lyle he is an asshole. Then the tell me to shut up.

I remember going to school and loving it. I remember I was excited to go. I remember Lyle having to pick me up and I was scared. I did not want to go with him. I remember getting to stay up late with my parents and watch Freddy Kruger and I also got to drink some wine cooler. I remember sneaking into their room and playing my dad's guitar. I also remember wanting a toy for Christmas and discovering this toy in my sisters closet, to which my dad replied, "oh I got that for Mariah". My niece who was 3 years older than me. I hated her and him. I was not as happy to get the toy for Christmas, but I was a little bit relieved it was all a lie. I remember going to see Santa clause one year. We went to this house, and this guy was there dressed up as Santa, with fake eyebrows, fake beard and a fake belly. I remember thinking this is not Santa, and then realizing it was all a lie. I continued to believe in Santa thinking, they are all just lying to me, if you truly believe, your dreams and wishes will come true. Wishful thinking...

I remember my parents fighting and me sitting on the couch, the same couch that I had chicken pox on, the same couch I had pneumonia on... my favorite couch in the world. I remember my dad made my mom cry and I didn't want her to cry, but I loved my dad and I did NOT want him to leave. I needed my dad. He was wonderful, and happy and always nice to me. They got a divorce anyway and he moved to Wolf Point. We stayed in a house that was too big for us. I remember going to visit him in his new house only once. I remember I got to stop at a store and pick out any toy I wanted. I picked out small plastic dinosaurs. I remember he put a movie on, the Leprechaun. I was scared of it. I remember he always asked me to walk on his back. I remember he had a big belly and he always had a full beard. I remember he reminded me of Santa Clause. I remember he only had one bed and we both had to sleep in it and I was uncomfortable with that. I remember waking up wet, and I thought my dad did it. Who knows now. I remember my mom decided we needed to move. I loved Glasgow and Johnny's Cafe and their blueberry pie. I did not want to move. On the day we were moving my neighbors asked me if I wanted to come over and play with play doh, so I did and immediately I had to leave because they were going to the store. I didn't care, I went over there anyway and played with the play doh in their porch while their father who was a cop slept on the couch in the house. That memory always makes me giggle. I also remember a neighbor who was mentally challenged who would always try to coax me into his mothers house to play with toys. He succeeded once. I got into a lot of trouble. I remember I wanted to go because my brother had destroyed some of my toys with his bee-bee gun. I remember watching Sesame Street and calling their 800 number to order the books, of course we can pay with C.O.D., I got into a lot of trouble with that too, and they eventually made it against the law to sell things to anyone who was not 18 years old. Cash On Delivery also went out of style. I remember once my brother got so angry with me that he took me outside to the side of the house and shoved my face into the dirt. I remember the taste of it, and I remember spitting out the white Styrofoam balls. I had no idea why he did it. I don't think I ever will.
One of my most traumatic memories is one that I am completely alone with and it still affects my life today. I was 4 or 5 and I had seen MTV on the big television downstairs, in fact I had snuck down there and pulled out the knob and watched the tv screen light up with wild long haired men wearing ripped up clothing and sexy girls flaunting themselves at these men. I love the music, I loved the colors and the action. I was hooked, until that one day when my sister Keriba was at home with me, babysitting me and these boys just stopped by unannounced and uninvited. I remember they just sort of walked in. Keriba seemed to know them and wanted them to leave. They wouldn't leave. They looked exactly like the guys on MTV. They got in my face and yelled at me, they scared me and when I started to cry they made fun of me scarring me even more. I remember running and hiding, they would find me, drag me out and scream at me. I would run away to a new spot where they for sure wouldn't be able to find me. They always did. I remember one of them put me up on the island counter we had in the kitchen and gave me a cookie, and then made me cry again. They tortured me for what seemed like hours, I have no idea. Keriba has no memory of this ever taking place. It terrified me, I was not only afraid of guys, but I was afraid of something I had loved, long haired 80's hair bands. I eventually grew to love them again, but I have always been terrified of the door being flung open and someone coming in to my house unannounced. I panic if I am in another room and I can hear the door open loudly, I immediately think the worst. I can be sitting in the living room right in front of the door and if it flies open suddenly, I become fearful and jump. It is something that will always haunt me. I was once sitting on the sink in the bathroom of my first place, plucking my eyebrows and the front door flung open and I fell off the sink in a panic. I was scared all over again. I hate it. I hate being scared that someone will just walk into my house unannounced and cause terror to me or my family.

Then we moved to Havre...