“You lucky you got Richie!”
It was one of those contentious family social media dialogues after the 2016 election. One of my aunts on my father’s side of the family was reveling in the election outcome and spewing nastiness about people who didn’t share her political opinions or candidate choice. I responded with respect because she was my elder, but made it clear I didn’t agree with her way of communicating…or her candidate. She flung some comments back at me, then ended it with:
“Your father would’ve straightened you out!”
I still remember sitting there as my eyes shot wide open and my blood pressure felt like it blew through the top of my skull.
On the one hand, I wasn’t surprised. That was that “family system.” Tough guys were loved. You were supposed to be a real man and not let anyone make a fool of you…Though it was fine if you took advantage of another…in fact, that was considered a good thing. It was a kind “mafia” mindset, a Slovak variation of it, of “us against the world…and f-ck the rest of the world. In fact, you make sure you get them before they get you.”
My father was the eldest son who beat up anyone who picked on his younger brothers when they were growing up. I remember him proudly sharing with me one time in my childhood about how, in his late teens, he took care of some guy who’d been harassing his younger brother. Cornered the guy in a men’s room, shoved him in the stall, stuffed his head in the toilet bowl, and flushed it. Yeah. Real man.
Afterward, he went in the Navy for four years, saw the world, then got married. From there he worked his way up into a good job, took care of his family, and was no man’s fool. He looked it all – successful “family man” …that “REAL man” in everyone’s eyes. It was just like my great-grandfather had told us as kids: “You lucky you got Richie!” It was never about how he treated his wife. It was about how he took on the world and “got them first.”
My aunt, who was married to one of his brothers, was equally tough and not a woman to be crossed. She was well-blessed with a nasty shrewish streak and the ability to fling insults or lay out curses with the best of them. Better than them, in fact. So I wasn’t that surprised at what she said.
Yet at the same time, rage exploded in me and jammed up every circuit in my brain so badly I couldn’t even respond. My head filled with so many possible answers it was like the aftermath of a chain-reaction crash on the highway — everything smashed together, piled on top of each other, and impassable. All I could do was scream in my thoughts:
*My father? My FATHER would’ve straightened me out?! My FATHER??!! You mean the man who beat up my mother, beat me, and sexually assaulted me for over two DECADES??!!! THAT man?!!! That PARAGON OF SUPPOSED VIRTUE???!!!!
I was so angry my head actually pounded. In that moment I remembered why, with the rare exception of one or two cousins, I have stayed away from everyone on that side of the family.
No, my father wouldn’t straighten me out, even if he had still been alive. And for the record, I straightened HIM out until his death!
God, I was livid!
I managed to compose myself and decided it was useless to argue with a shrew. I simply told her that our communications were done and I would not put up with her lack of respect. Then I blocked her. These days, I would have laid it all out. But, back then, I was still trying to remain quiet.
As to straightening me out — I needed to get clear on things for sure. But in a much different definition of the phrase, and for FAR DIFFERENT reasons. I needed to understand the way he had controlled us all those years. I need to UNLEARN and rid myself of all the poisonous lessons he had instilled in my mind like some parasitic malware.
And while, for the last four decades, I’d been slowly doing that — pulling open the layers of the onion to remove all of his mess, now it was time to explore the very core of him:
Who was he?….HOW did he wield such power over us and twist our brains to think HE was right?… And how exactly did he create the screwed-up family system in our house?
Why didn’t your mother….
So often people ask: Why do women stay with abusive husbands? Why don’t they leave? Or in our case, why didn’t my mother protect me?
Yes, they are valid questions. And in this Citrinitas section, I will address them…and what she was up against. She was so ill-equipped to take him on.
The bottom line was that she, even more than us, was in mortal danger at times. All those times that I listened at my bedroom wall when they fought in the bathroom, and I could hear him hitting her, I would wonder: Is this the time he kills her?
Or, in later years, I heard him knock her to the floor. My mother. The woman who gave birth to me. His wife and the mother of his children. He KNOCKED HER TO THE FLOOR!
That last one so enraged me that, despite my fear, I yelled at him to get help, which nearly got me killed. That was the time that if I’d had a weapon, I would have used it on him. It was the last straw, and it catalyzed me to get out of that house.
She would block him from hitting us, but for years, there was NO one to pull him off of her.
Maybe the best she could do was keep us all alive so we could live to see another day…and get out of that house?
The question is NOT: “Why didn’t she?”
The question IS: “WHY did he think it was okay for him to do those things to us?!”
And make no mistake…he KNEW that what he was doing was abuse. He admitted it to me on that Nova Scotia vacation trip. So WHY was THAT okay?
I want to know:
Why was it okay to break his marriage vows, and “cheat” on his wife by sexually assaulting me…his child? And it was his betrayal – of her and me. And he understood “cheating and betrayal.” He told me one time when I was about twelve that the first time men cheat, it feels like something died, but then after that it doesn’t bother you so much.
And I want to know:
Why was it okay for him to work his tail off to succeed in business, but REFUSE my pleas for him to GET HELP?
So, NO. I don’t want to hear questions about my mother. Yes, I’ll ask and answer them.
But most of all, I want answers about my father! Because the one thing I do realize these days – those snakes in all my nightmares? He was the snake.
Is it too late?
There was a book I read in the 1990s by career counselor and motivational teacher Barbara Sher:
It’s Only Too Late If You Don’t Start Now: How to Create Your Second Life at Any Age
At my most despairing times, when I thought life’s chances had passed me by, I would come back to that title. I consumed the book.
But it was her title that was like a life mantra for me, telling me over and over that NO, it’s NEVER too late.
The only thing it was too late for…that I was never ready for, and then he was too frail, was to be able to fully confront him. I did the best I could then. But the kind of confronting I would like to demand now? It is too late.
But there is a Hebrew word – Teshuvah. It is about “turning back,” returning to what is right, what is good, what is real.
I have a job to finish in this book. And to complete it, I will turn back, finish “excavating” the cesspool, and get to what is right, what is good, what is real. And go forward.
It is that same thing so many memoir books speak of, and so many spiritual guides too:
You go back to go forward.
You reframe the past, which alters the present, and changes your future.
So on to “Dad,” where “responsibility” comes home to roost…as it should.
we, girls were ten years old and giggling
in our hand-me-downs. we wanted breasts,
pretended that we had them, tissued
our undershirts. jay johnson is teaching
me to french kiss, ella bragged, who
is teaching you? how do you say; my father?
Lucille Clifton
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
Soul Mosaic 
Leave a comment