A Child Has No Voice

By Linda Ann

The story of a young couple's struggle to survive tough times and family dysfunction in post war Chicago, Illinois in the 1940's.
"A Child Has No Voice," is a heartbreaking true story of a 5 year olds sexual abuse when no one was watching. A true story by Linda Ann, tells of her parents struggles, their hardships, and failed attempts to make a better life for themselves and their children, failures that led to sexual abuse and at times abandonment. Both Sarah and Mario had strikes against them coming into the world. Mario lost both his parents to tuberculoses when he was age 5. He was then separated from his younger brother when put on a ship sailing from Puerto Rico to the United States by himself to go live with his uncle and jealous wife. Sarah's parents divorced when she was 9 just before her mother married her step-father. Sarah was forced to become the mother to her alcoholic mother and step-fathers six daughters.
Her step-father didn't want another man's children from a previous marriage. The kids had to go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Ann
• Release date: Dec 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301381654

Linda Ann

I live in Green Valley, AZ. I'm a retired small business owner and an advocate for children who have been sexually abused. I was inspired to write my true story, hoping to bring awareness and change to both child abandonment and child sexual abuse. My hope is that by sharing my story with young parents they will better understand the pain their choices can have on their children's lives. When a child stops smiling in the family photo's, something is wrong.

Book preview

A Child Has No Voice

Linda Ann

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Linda Ann

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 1479132934

ISBN 13: 9781479132935

Copyright Registration Number

TXU 1-822-592 Effective date August 2, 2012.

Edited by Peggy J. McGee.

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter1 You Are Not my Mother

Chapter 2 A Wedding for Two

Chapter 3 My Best Friend Teresa

Chapter 4 Grandma Wanted to Sell

Chapter 5 The Kids Have To Go

Chapter 6 Our Trip to New York

Chapter 7 Clandestine Escape to California

Chapter 8 Like Father Like Daughter

Chapter 9 Sarah Removes Rose-Colored Glasses

Chapter 10 The Hospital Release Day

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I dedicate this book to……

My parents, who in spite of all the difficulties life threw at them, forged ahead with the hope of making a better life for themselves and their family. They struggled because as they were growing up they didn’t have the wisdom from mentors or role models to teach them.

My story is true; however, most names have been changed out of respect to the innocent and some not so innocent.

I also dedicate my story to all those men, women and children who were either abandoned or sexually abused in their life. My heart goes out to each and every one of you.

Introduction

This is a true story about a child’s sexual abuse starting at age five, and my parents, who didn’t have the wisdom to protect me because their lives were in such chaos. They were too busy struggling trying to survive hard times in Post War Chicago, Illinois in the early 1940’s. Seeing bread lines was not uncommon and mob affiliations were not scoffed at like one would think.

What started out being my story of sexual abuse and abandonment ended up being a story about my parents and their struggles. I had to know where they came from in order to have forgiveness and unconditional love for them.

How does one survive being put on a ship sailing to the USA alone at the age of 5 years old because both his parents died in Puerto Rico? My father was sent to go live with his uncle and his jealous wife in Chicago. My father became the son his uncle never had and his uncle taught him everything he knew about his Chicago Diner.

After my grandfather divorced my alcoholic grandmother, my mother at the age of nine became a mother to her six half-sisters because their mother was abusive, and filled with rage.

My grandmother quickly replaced my grandfather with a new man, one who didn’t want another man’s children around. The three children from the previous marriage had to go, as if life were an etch-a-sketch, pull up the flap and you had a new slate.

My memories are those of abandonment and disappointment,

of not being protected by anyone. My parents had no role models or mentors. If they had they probably wouldn’t have answered an ad in the newspaper from a complete stranger. My mother placed me in the stranger’s home because after she divorced my father, her new husband didn’t want children and especially someone else’s. My mother’s decision to do that changed my life.

The separation from my two sisters was worse than the separation from my parents.

There are many lessons to be learned from my story, the most important one being that history sometimes repeats itself and when you try so hard to get away from your past, you end up creating that very same reality you were running from, like the chaos, the infidelity, the struggling, and last the pain of guilt. A Child Has No Voice is an accurate description of my parents when they were young and like so many others, perhaps even you.

Chapter 1

You Are Not my Mother

Have you ever asked yourself to recall your earliest recollection of life? I did and that is when my story begins.

Chicago, Illinois, the year 1949, I was three; my family and I lived in an older flat with no privacy since my eight aunts, one uncle and grandparents always lived nearby. There was never a shortage of pandemonium or people coming in and out. Everyday someone was fighting with someone. They fought like Italians minus the love for one another. These people were Irish, English, Mexican, German and a whole host of other nationalities which may have accounted for their bad tempers.

The flat was old and sparsely furnished. Relatives either lived with us or we lived with them, depending on who was more broke.

My earliest recollection of my life is when I was about three, sitting in a kitchen with a very attractive woman scurrying around trying to do something that looked very foreign to her called cooking. She wasn’t smiling; she didn’t want to be there anymore than I wanted her to be there.

Something was very clear to me, she wasn’t my mother. She was my Aunt Sylvia, my mother’s only sister from my maternal grandmother’s first husband, Daniel Botstein.

Aunt Sylvia was a very attractive shapely young woman who at a very early age learned to use her beauty to get what she wanted from men. She clearly had an air about her that was the first thing everyone noticed and what set her apart from her sisters. People were intimidated by this air that she displayed and no one wanted to make her angry. She could give a look that could turn you into dust in an instant. She was strict, direct, acted like she feared no one, and she was in the kitchen with me. Where was my mother?

I was told to eat my breakfast; I got one of her looks and found myself doing as I was instructed. Other people were seated at the table talking to one another as the back door slowly opened. A man they called Kenny was trying with great difficulty to help an old woman. Both were seen trying to get through the doorway at the same time and into the kitchen.

The old woman was bent over struggling with each short shuffle across the kitchen floor until the man finally got her to a chair where she sat down in obvious pain. You could hear a pin drop in the room. Glances were given to each other instead of using dialog. I felt fear but saw no one running to get out the door so I figured everything must be OK. Linda! Aren’t you going to give your mother a hug?

Give her a hug? I looked at Aunt Sylvia and thought to myself, is she kidding? This old lady is not my mother. Everything about this old lady scared me and Aunt Sylvia wanted me to hug her. All eyes in the room were on me and the pressure within me was building.

No one in the room was going to help me because they too were intimidated by Aunt Sylvia; everyone was. One thing for certain, they were not going to pawn off this old lady as my mother on me. Aunt Sylvia grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the old lady.

Linda, you are hurting your mother’s feelings give her a hug, go ahead.

The woman looked sad and moaned a little like she was in pain. While I felt sorry for her, I felt more sorry for myself because I was not this woman’s child and she definitely was not my mother. My mother was very pretty and young. I would know my own mother. The bent over woman reached for me to sit in her lap. I found myself silently repeating,

"She’s not my mother, she’s not my mother."

I was ready to do my final protest when suddenly our eyes met. We stared at each other for what seemed like forever when, something about her eyes started to look familiar to me. I remembered looking into those eyes; perhaps when she nursed me as an infant. Her eyes revealed to me, she really was my mother. I started to cry and we embraced each other. While sitting in her lap I suddenly felt something wet on my face. I looked up and saw her tears falling down her cheeks and onto my face.

We were interrupted by Aunt Sylvia telling me to be careful not to hurt her. I couldn’t understand why my mother looked so different. Just then I heard people in the room talking about an operation she recently had and how she was to take it easy and rest. They added she was lucky to be alive. I learned when I was older my mother had peritonitis and almost died in the hospital.

My father’s parents died from tuberculoses from working in the tobacco fields. Some say my Grandfather died first and they thought my Grandmother died soon after of a broken heart.

My father’s Uncle Eddie had a diner in Chicago and when my father grew up he worked for his uncle which is how my mother and father met. My Mom was looking for a job so she could escape the hell at home. Mom was the maid to all of her stepfather Cesar’s seven children and rescuer to her alcoholic mother.

My grandmother’s husband Cesar was away most of the time earning money as a bartender at some fancy resort so he could provide for my grandmother and her many daughters.

When my grandmother and Cesar got married, a readymade family wasn’t exactly what Cesar had in mind. In those days it was common to farm out the children from a previous marriage to relatives or institutions.

Like so many other families Cesar suggested Uncle Kenny go to military school, Aunt Sylvia go to her grandmother’s, and he decided maybe they should keep Sarah (my mother) the eldest; so she could help with the seven children he and my grandmother were already starting to have.

Sarah was told over and over how lucky she was that Cesar let her live with them. She was chosen to help out because she was such a hard worker and a big help to her mother. Grandma didn’t make Mom’s life easy by any stretch of the imagination.

My grandmother Elizabeth loved her alcohol, and she loved making fun of people including her own children. She got some weird kind of pleasure out of an onion rolling on the floor and saying, Look, there goes Sarah’s nose. Mother’s half-sisters would laugh in unison which hurt Sarah.

She found their lack of loyalty and laughter quite disappointing. They knew very well how cruel their mother could be and at the same time they were relieved the focus was on their older sister and not on them.

Grandmother was jealous of my mother, her own child. My mother took care of her half-sisters as if she were their mother because their mother was the true definition of an alcoholic, and sadly so was her husband Cesar. Together it was pretty ugly, with beatings, and screaming.

My mother at eleven years old could be seen running down the street in the middle of the night in her nightgown looking for help, looking for someone to help save her mother from Cesar’s beatings. Most times they were both intoxicated. Mom tried time and time again to pull her mother off Cesar as well.

It was no wonder my mother wanted to escape the terror in her family. Her plan was to eventually get a job so she could get away from the commotion at home. My mother wasn’t allowed to go to school because she had to take care of her half-sisters. She got as far as the third grade when her mother made her quit school, and stay home to help care for and eventually mother my grandmother’s six daughters.

When my mother turned fifteen she convinced her mother to allow her to look for a job. My mother answered an ad in the newspaper for a waitress job at a downtown diner. As it turned out, my dad’s Uncle Eddie owned the diner. This diner was two stories and once inside she could see the offices upstairs through a plate glass window and the boss could see her too.

The diner was as big as a large restaurant by today’s standards. Lots of dark wood, mirrors everywhere and there were several bar stools at the long counter. Mom went in with the newspaper want ads folded in her hand. She walked up to Mario, and told him she was inquiring about the waitress job.

What’s your name? Mario asked. My name is Sarah, she said.

Do you have any experience Sarah? he asked.

Sarah was scared to death, this being her first job inquiry.

No, but I’m a hard worker, she said convincingly. Mom knew her strengths and her weaknesses like spelling, for example.

Writing tickets in the diner would most likely