Betrayal

original Art collage drawing—Rhonda Flanagan 

It’s been difficult lately to process all the betrayal. I wander around the Abandoned house trying to have hope; cleaning, salvaging what I can, trying to make it warm for the coming Winter—it’s amazing what a few blue tarps can do! I keep trying to acquire more survival skills as this nightmare continues.

I was often in plays. I loved being in plays; to act, dance, and sing. My first “best-friend” and I met in the 3rd grade, it’s been so long, so difficult to have to go back so far—layers of pain that I thought had long been over.

Me and my 1/2 brother had to walk from Kimball Street to McNulty School. It was close to a mile, we were little and always late. Winters back then consisted of snow banks from November clear through until Spring. I never wanted to be one of those older people that talked of how hard things were, but now in light of what people have done, I have to process once again so much, to make sense of my life once again today. When I say we were always late—we were ALWAYS late, so much so the “Safety Guard,” tasked with waiting until all us “walkers,” arrived had to stay out in the cold waiting for us. He was also cold, sad, and often angry. I understood, it was one of many humiliations that would start my day. 

One day after weeks of a freezing cold spell, another students mother offered us a ride. She had been asking for days. Beautiful, in her heated car, she would slowly ride by and talk to me in that gentle way “Moms” would talk to children. My mother never talked to me that way. I blamed myself and her telling me as far back as I could remember that I had ruined her life. She mostly slept in most mornings. We would make cereal, but she couldn’t be bothered with much else. 

“It will be okay,” she would say in the softest voice, by this time my little “brother,” was crying uncontrollably from the cold. He couldn’t walk anymore—he was in 2nd grade. The steep hill after the trek from Union Street was always the hardest. The cold had been brutal for days and each day I told her no, thank you. I couldn’t take a ride, but this day was like no other—I thought he would die if I didn’t get him warm. I said yes, and she opened her warm car door and we got in. I sat next to her in awe and my little brother huddled next to me and stopped crying. His little face had been beat red from crying, his little lips blue, his hands ice-cold where he wiped his face from crying and his little mittens were wet—I was scared. I knew the beating I would get would pale in comparison to what I thought might happen if I didn’t get him warm. 

We were at school within minutes, her manner soft and kind, her car warm and soothing, like a mom would be to two little kids on a cold Winter day, scared—alone. My brother stopped crying and we got out of the car. I thanked her and went to school. I knew about stranger-danger back then, but it’s not why my mother raged and beat me later for taking a ride. It was because she hated whenever anyone did anything kind for me. I knew my little brother was in danger and I had to do something. My mother would start the day on the phone and end it on the phone—“party lines,” were common and I thought when little it was all her friends she talked to convincing them that I had ruined her life. They were the same way to me, often calling me names in the same way my mother did. l thought I was so smart, they would say or they would go on about another favorite subject—my grandmother and their hatred of her. 

Fights often started over me and my grandmother not “accepting the boys!” I was never to call them “1/2 brothers,” they were my brothers! and my mother would rage for hours how “we were all the same!” There was no difference between us, even though her then boyfriend told me all the time, “Your not blood!” As a girl this was confusing and I would try extra hard to show how much I loved them, thinking that blood somehow equated with love. 

Mother hated the women at school, she said. Anything related to school she hated. “She was not a PTA mom!” she would rage. She would often have my room torn apart when I came home—I rarely studied or did school work at home because of her tirades. The library, by this time became my refuge, an early trusted friend—I read all the time. I used to think she was just living her independent life—Divorced! she’d say, as she blared her 45 records and beautiful Vinyls. Songs like D-I-V-O-R-C-E! by Tammy Wynette, because my father was so abusive, she raged and I ruined her life. I assumed this blame, excusing her for things like ripping up school papers or wrecking my neat room, or allowing other kids of her friends that came over to destroy my things—and her beatings. 

Keeping things neat, always cleaning the house, doing all the chores she demanded, allowed me to stay calm—provided some kind of routine in the midst of the constant chaotic-storm of her emotions that I tried hard to understand. “You’re just like your grandmother,” she would yell, “you like everything just so!” Miss “high and mighty!,” the crystal ashtrays would fly past my head, knives she said she loved—whatever was within reach. “The  door swings both ways—“Get Out!,” she would constantly say, but then cry uncontrollably like a child—she would need her “nerve-pills,” she said. By the time I was a teenager, her drug-induced stupor; complete. 

My mother was pregnant once again, even after she went on and on, bragging about her birth-control pills—pretty strips of pills in plastic cases with blue and pink butterfly’s. Her new boyfriend, she said, had a girlfriend that lived at the “Whore house,” on East Main Street; a big column ,cream-colored majestic building; beautiful, ornate, flowered curtains swayed in the open windows, I thought so beautiful, but my mother, always loving to fight was determined to fight with this woman he was also involved with, she called a whore—my 1/2 sister was born.

I never had money for costumes, I would go to the thrift store or pick something out at various “welfare events,” that we would go to. There would be free items like cheese, baked goods, and occasionally clothes. My costumes were a mix of made-up and just winging it by the seat of my pants. I learned young to just go with it. People often laughed, thinking it funny, often it was painful, but I learned something more valuable.

It was Thanksgiving and the play was about the dinner of the Pilgrims. My good-friend at the time that became my best-friend had her beautiful gingham dress that had pretty petticoats made special for her. The dressing room was crowded outside of the stage area where we got ready, my friend being readied by the seamstress that came with her mother to help her with the final “fittings” on her dress. I sat off in the corner watching them. It always amazed me how much they did, while I would often just sit alone.

Pilgrims came to America seeking Religious Freedom, most of them anyway—I guess others didn’t. 

According to Google: “The Pilgrims were a group of English people who came to America seeking religious freedom during the reign of King James I. After two attempts to leave England and move to Holland, a Separatist group was finally relocated to Amsterdam where they stayed for about one year.”

I had gone to the thrift store for my dress. It was a satin white with iridescent pearls, beads, and sequence. It hit just above my knee and flared out in layers of tulles, skimming my knee and cinched at the waist. It had see-through, puffed, short-sleeves that also had pearls and beads that gathered with pretty ribbons. I thought it the most beautiful dress I ever saw. I never had help with my costumes, my mother mostly refused to attend or help and I was often just allowed to wear what I came up with, today I realize so much of it amused them, but back then I was often sad about it—my dress had no pretty petticoats and that was the big deal leading up to the play date.

I laugh today, and yet with sorrow, I loved Mrs Blaine, who encouraged me to do Art after my mother refused to pay for Ballet—I wanted to be a Ballerina and loved Ballet. Mrs Blaine had something to do with allowing me to wear what I know today was a “ Communion dress,” how appropriate today as I struggle with God wondering why alumni I would have gone with to my 40th Reunion this Summer had deliberately participated in the lies that contributed to me being violently put on the street and called a Prostitute, an “incompetent whore,” mentally ill—worth nothing!

My good friend had her pretty petticoats, fancy seamstress, and her mother tend to her and dismiss me in laughter as they did through my school years. Our last get together, a “seance” that I was told to go into a darkroom and wait for ghosts, as the other girls laughed, joked, and hid. The room was a large dark foreboding room down a dark mahogany hallway—I refused to go, I was scared and had learned to be afraid of dark rooms. I had already been molested by a cousin. I didn’t trust what was going on and I was then told my pretty vintage robe that was a 1950s swing house-coat in a lovely antique cabbage rose quilt I got thrifting was ugly and old. We were no longer “best-friends!” I was told. 

Clothes were often a source of pain because mine never fit in, but I loved them in ways I couldn’t explain then. My grandmother often bought my clothes when young; beautiful, trendy ones, but as I got older my mother would fight so much with her over it she stopped. My grandmother had impeccable taste and style and I loved shopping with her, but my mother was always angry over our relationship. 

The Communion dress was one of those. The Pilgrims came seeking “Religious Freedom” and here I was in that dress. I think today God had been aware of my pain—I was a child of God and a little struggling child trying to make sense of the abuse in my life. 

According to Google: “The First Holy Communion is a Catholic ceremony, which marks a child or adult's first reception of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is an extremely important event in a Catholic family's life and is marked with celebrations, family gatherings and festive parties as well as gift-giving and special white clothes.”

I wasn’t a Catholic and had no idea what they believed as a little girl,  no idea about the pretty dress I loved, but I loved God and was told he loved me. I think today how important it was to wear that dress, know I didn’t exactly belong, bear the laughter, and all these years later know my part was to represent those misfits, rebels, and revolutionaries the Pilgrims wanted to be. Some did, like I believe I did and others succumbed to believe having fancy petticoats was what freedom was all about. I thank those that allowed me to wear that dress. I know there are some good educators out there among the many awful ones. The ones that allow a little girl to wear a beautiful dress that seems not to fit with the theme of a child’s play and yet all these years later it fit perfectly.