I’ve talked about Mom dying, and the mental hospital, meeting DH, and getting diagnosed with PTSD, but except for Mom dying, this is perhaps the most important event of my youth.
My dad was out of town somewhere. He went out of town on business once or twice a year. He’d go to Detroit (he was an SAE fellow), he’d go to D.C. sometimes, and he almost always went to NY. He’d do all of this in a week or two of travel each year and stay home the rest of the time. This happened when I was in 6th grade, so I would have been around 11.
Sometimes I stayed at school, sometimes at the housekeeper’s, but this time we stayed at my house.
It was summer, hot.
First there was the orange juice. We made it in the blender from frozen concentrate. The OJ got left out. I got yelled at for doing that, but remember saying I hadn’t done it.
Then there was something else I supposedly did. I don’t have a clue what it was this time, but remember being indignant that I was being blamed, when I hadn’t done it.
The housekeeper went on a beer run.
Her daughter started in. I don’t remember if she was chasing me around the house spraying me with Right Guard or flipping me off or just chasing me to beat me up, or what. She did all of those things at various times, not continually; I don’t remember what precipitated this.
I’d had ENOUGH!
I said, “If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to jump off the balcony.”
She said,”Go ahead, I dare you.”
So I did!
Now if I had really been suicidal, I would have jumped through the plate glass table onto the concrete patio beneath. I didn’t. I jumped off the balcony onto the moss edging the lawn. I must have screamed on the way down, because the neighbors came out on their balcony to see what had happened Was I all right?
The housekeeper’s daughter said, “Yes.”
Of course, when the housekeeper came home, I caught hell. I got screamed at about how stupid I was. Why would I do such a thing? I’d have to go to the doctor, etc.
The next day I was taken to the doctor. Somehow, the doctor got me away from the housekeeper, and although I don’t remember it distinctly, I wouldn’t have thought it was a big deal anyway. He asked me WHY I’d jumped off the balcony?
I said,”If I broke a bone, Daddy would come home.” which was true enough, but as I hadn’t broken a bone, and as far as I knew Dad never knew about this, it was just one more futile act on my part.
Unknown to me, my doctor DID take it seriously. He called Dad after he got back from his trip and said, “What happens in your home is your business, but when your daughter is trying to break her bones because of what’s happening, it becomes MY business. You have a problem.”
My brother telling him he should fire the housekeeper hadn’t worked. Telling me I could fire the housekeeper hadn’t worked (she knew about it and terrorized me). Trying to record what happened for just one day (I was going to borrow the neighbor’s tape recorder and tape it) hadn’t worked. Telling people hadn’t worked. Lying hadn’t worked, telling the truth hadn’t worked.
Nothing had gotten Dad or anyone else to see that I was living in hell. I was convinced she was right. I was a horrible human being, Dad was ashamed of me, disgusted with me, didn’t want to live with me, etc.
That phone call did work. It took him a year of watching and listening and evaluating what he heard and saw, but a year later, he fired her.
The day he fired her the daughter and I had fought about what TV show got watched on my TV. And there was something about some photos she had left in my room. She kept coming in my room and I kept trying to get her to go AWAY, but she’d find another reason to come in, again….so we fought and fought.
Eventually, Dad told the housekeeper to go. The daughter (I think) had to get one more lick in, or something, anyway, they didn’t go quickly, and Dad said, “Don’t come back after Saturday.”
And the world stopped, at least for me.
I remember very little else of the next day or two: going to my first period class the next day, all smiles and telling my friend Gemi how wonderful it was, the housekeeper was going! I remember going and staying (by arrangement) with a neighbor and the housekeeper coming and demanding that I come home. The neighbor quietly and firmly saying, “Her father thought it would be easier for you to get your things together and it would be easier for the girls if they aren’t together just now, as they haven’t been getting along….” and the housekeeper WENT AWAY!
Suddenly, I was living in the Twilight Zone. I had dreamed and dreamed of this day so long so often, I just didn’t know how to act.
It took a year (or more) before I started telling Dad what it’d been like. He’d sit at the dining room table shuffling cards, his eyes tearing, “Why didn’t you tell me?” and the answer was that I thought he wouldn’t believe me, or it’d get dismissed, again. Also, I was too scared that she’d been right, that he really did think I was a disgusting, subhuman being.
He didn’t, thank God, but the scars emotional abuse leaves tend to be permanent and I still struggle with it.
I bet you wonder how people could be so blind? I sure did. In high school, I went and visited the woman who ran part of the boarding school I was in from 2nd – 5th grade. She said, “Oh yes, you’re the one who was so upset by her housekeeper. Did you ever get over that?” Yeah, right… so much for highly-paid professionals.
jkd
