Читать книгу A Girl Called Karen - A true story of sex abuse and resilience - Karen McConnell - Страница 10
ОглавлениеGrandma Lucile’s father ran the country store and post office in Oregonia, Ohio (population 300). She was nineteen when she married Grandpa John, and their first child was my father. He was born in 1914 when “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was the maxim of the day. Grandpa John’s parenting was modeled on his tyrannical father’s and his Shaker-trained mother’s teachings. Though he became less repressive as the family grew, he demanded that his firstborn be a model of good behavior.
My father was a painfully shy little fellow, and his life as a first-grader was a disaster. Almost every day, he would come home from school wet and smelly, and Grandpa in despair and disgust would whip him with his leather razor strop, while Grandma would sob helplessly, “Oh John, oh John.”
Finally the terrified little boy who became my father told his parents why he wet himself at school: The older boys made fun of him when he went to the toilet, so he was too shy and ashamed to go there anymore.
As a nine-year-old, he liked to search out nests of hairless baby mice and squeeze them until the feces dropped out. Since the name of the game was to get rid of mice, not much notice was taken of this exercise in sadism.
By the time he was ten, he had learned that China was on the opposite side of the earth, and he thought it would be fast and easy to dig a hole right straight through to China. He and his little sister, Eileen, began to dig and had gotten six inches deep into their shortcut to the Orient when Eileen, who was barely six and new to the hoe, cut her foot, and the two kids tore across the pasture field to the house for first aid. Both were shrieking – she because it hurt, he because he always cried at the sight of blood.
Considering his blood terror, it was amazing that, upon his parents’ prompting, he chose to become a veterinarian.
The two kids never did get to China, no doubt because it proved foolhardy to give Eileen a hoe.
There was a time when my father was in the eighth grade that the family lived in Columbus, Ohio, for a year. He had to wash the dishes each night and would carefully pull the blinds shut so his friends couldn’t see him doing that sissy job.
Even when he went to high school, my father was bashful and withdrawn. Instead of going out into the school yard on his lunch break, he would stay in study hall reading the Congressional Record. His grades were excellent. His social graces didn’t include talking very much, and he didn’t seem interested in girls. He had the reputation of being an exceptionally well-behaved teenaged boy.
He was very much interested in sex, however. After I grew up, I found out that my Aunt Eileen had to battle her brother, my father, when she was about fourteen. They had gone on some mission on horseback in the woods and for some reason, had to get off the horses. First he tried to push her down, pointing to his bulging pants, and saying, “We could have a lot of fun.” When that didn’t work, he tried force. Fortunately she was a farm girl well muscled from heavy field work and serious basketball practice, and she fought him off. She made sure she was never alone with him again.
Then she learned from her little ten-year-old sister that their big brother was grabbing and prodding her in forbidden places, so she told their father what her brother had done. What I’ve heard is that Grandpa John explained to him, and emphasized with a bit of fisticuffs, that he would kill him if he didn’t leave those girls alone, so he left those girls alone.
My father never had a public girlfriend until he became a veterinarian. He went with a librarian for a while, and then he met my mother.
I feel that I knew my mother best. I think she was beautiful. She had a flawless complexion. People on the street would stop her and compliment her. She had dark eyes and hair, a wonderful laugh, and a lovely speaking voice.
Delivering a baby every year or two caused her circumference to fluctuate wildly. When her weight was down, she had a great figure and was well endowed, but most of my memories are of an overweight woman who had just given birth or was about to give birth. I was the oldest. Her sixth baby was just eleven years younger than I. There were also the two miscarriages to sap her energies. Yet she always had time for us.
Sally talked a lot and loudly. Maybe that was so she could be heard over the hubbub of her children. She embroidered beautifully and was an excellent seamstress. I can’t attest to the earlier years, but as I got older, I noted that none of her projects ever got completed.
For instance, two days before the annual veterinarians’ picnic, mama decided to make matching dresses for her four little girls. I still remember how cute the dresses were and how people fussed over us. What no one knew was that there were no buttons or buttonholes and there never would be.
Mama would work like a mad fool to meet a deadline, and then she’d lose interest. Even as a child, I found this irritating.
The first home that I have any memory of was a place with stairs. I remember parading around in my Aunt Mary Louise’s high heels. It was an apartment that my mama lived in, mostly alone, while my father fought in World War II.
My first really clear memories are after my father came home and we moved to the farm. We lived in a large garage that adjoined the foundation of what would become our house. My younger brother, Larry, and I were joined by a new baby, Sandra Lee. This was a good place for kids, but it must have been very difficult for my mother. The facilities were primitive. She bathed us, and presumably herself, in a big kitchen sink behind a curtain.
My father’s large-animal practice was growing, and he farmed as well. A hayride when I was a kid meant riding in a wagon on a mountain of new-cut hay, not one of those manufactured events with scattered handfuls of hay in the bottom of a wagon filled with city kids. I have good memories of long carefree days, bare feet, and tomatoes picked and eaten in the same sun-drenched outdoors.
Our next home was in the back rooms of my father’s animal hospital. After a short time there, we moved several blocks to what I’ll always remember as my childhood home. It was a big two-story gray house in a nice neighborhood. Even fifty years later, it is still a nice neighborhood, though the house seems much smaller than I remember from my childhood.
Isn’t it interesting how the palaces of our youth dwindle into cottages when we visit them as adults?
In the next few years, our family grew to six children. I was the oldest, then came Larry, Sandra, Patricia, Grace, and David. As an eighth-grade assignment, I was required to write my autobiography. I began it with the words, “There were six of us.” I concluded with the words, “Now there is one.”
My mama kept coming up with wild schemes to entertain her brood. We loved those circuses, but the neighbors must have lived in fear of the next extravaganza. One of mama’s most memorable creations was a backyard pool constructed of sawhorses, old lumber, and a tarpaulin. Mama filled it with water, and we splashed and played and got unbelievably dirty from the old black tarp.
