Sins of Our Mothers Skeletons in Our Closets

By Shana Dines

I nestled in a tomb for a womb. I was trapped, held captive, listless, apathetic, even before I was born. That's how it felt to be conceived out of deceit, lust, and sexual abuse. I walked around for quite awhile as a child and as an adult, feeling repulsive, loathsome, like a disease. I was spawned in darkness my mother's secret, vile sin. I was my mother's entrapment. She was obliviously unaware that she could get pregnant, that she could get caught. My mother was numb, robotic, trying to figure out how to get out of an impossible situation. Slivers of ice pierced my little soul. It was impossible to feel safe knowing she wanted to get rid of me, a parasite, feeding off her body. How could she convince her husband that he was the father of her baby? Her sexual addiction and perversion created this horrible predicament. She was pregnant by her fifteen year old lover, who was fatherless, with a mother that was incapable of taking care of her children, living in poverty and despair. She had to convince her husband that this child from the border of Mexico needed a chance to have a good life without letting him know that he would be taking this teenage boy to Indiana who was the father to his wife's baby. My mother was bipolar, mentally ill, a sociopath that not only got pregnant by my fifteen year old father but went on to abuse me in every way imaginable. This is my story. People have a hard time believing that women, especially mothers who are supposed to protect their children can be molesters, and pedophiles but my mother was one. I am not only telling my story for my own recovery, exposing the sins of the mothers in our family, but to help others to see that if this happened to them, they are not alone and they can recover and have healthy, reasonably happy lives and help others in their journeys to wholeness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shana Dines
• Release date: Nov 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386175186

Shana Dines

Shana Dines is an Indiana native. She has been writing most of her life but mostly has written online for approximately 6 years. She writes for Yahoo Voices, Demand Studios, Triond and Gather. She especially likes to write short stories and poetry. Most of her writing is non-fiction. She is in the process of publishing her memoirs. She is a survivor of abuse, a recovering alcoholic and most of all a mother, a wife and a grandmother. She is also an artist painting in watercolors and pastels predominately. Shana also teaches watercolors and other art mediums at the Elkhart Art League in Elkhart, Indiana. She loves people, movies, and books but not necessarily in that order. She is fascinated with what makes people tick. Why is that children can come from the same family and yet make such different choices in their lives? What makes some people good and others turn to crime and evil? These are things that she likes to write about.

Book preview

Sins of Our Mothers

Снимок5.jpg

Skeletons in Our Closets

Shana K. Dines

Dedication

I am dedicating this book to the many people that have made it a reality. I especially want to reach out to those who are victims of sexual abuse and incest. There are many of us and without those who are willing to speak the truth and share their stories victims feel alone, shamed and isolated. Telling our stories and reaching out to others take us from victims to survivors. God bless us all and those who are effected by abuse. We no longer need to stand alone.

I want to thank the many people that have made this book possible with editing, opinions and support. My husband Mike Dines and my friends in and out of recovery. I couldn't be where I am today without their love and support. Thank you to Terri Ganger, Carol Robinson, Marla Shroeder, Kathe Brunton, and Gregg Milligan who is a fellow survivor and dear friend, more brother than one of blood. Thank you too Ian Rutter, who did my book cover and is always eager to help me and other aspiring writers and is a writer himself; thank you from the bottom of my heart, my friend from across the pond! Thanks to my writer's group in Cass County Michigan for their love, support and friendship. Most of all I want to thank God for loving and guiding me in my life and recovery, even though I know I have not always been an easy or willing pupil in this journey called life.

© 2017 Shana K. Dines All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 9781539644224

ISBN-10: 1539644227

444.JPG

Introduction

I nestled in a tomb for a womb. I was trapped, held captive, listless, apathetic, even before I was born. That's how it felt to be conceived out of deceit, lust, and sexual abuse. I walked around for quite awhile as a child and as an adult, feeling repulsive, loathsome, like a disease. I was spawned in darkness my mother's secret, vile sin, my mother's entrapment. She was obliviously unaware that she could get pregnant, that she could get caught. My mother was numb, robotic, trying to figure out how to get out of an impossible situation. Slivers of ice pierced my little soul. It was impossible to feel safe knowing she wanted to get rid of me, a parasite, feeding off her body. How could she convince her husband that he was the father of her baby? Her sexual addiction and perversion created this horrible predicament. She was pregnant by her fifteen year old lover, who was fatherless, with a mother that was incapable of taking care of her children, living in poverty and despair. She had to convince her husband that this child from the border of Mexico needed a chance to have a good life without letting him know that he would be taking this teenage boy to Indiana who was the father to his wife's baby.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 High School Sweethearts 1941 to about 1947

CHAPTER 2 The Saga begin s 1948-1949 Seduction and Molestation

CHAPTER 3 Curses, Voodoo, and Witchcraft

CHAPTER 4 Early Memories in a Strange House

CHAPTER 5 Molestation Under the Guise of Caretaking

CHAPTER 6 Grandma Ada's Ignorant Beliefs

CHAPTER 7 The Many Sides of My Mother

CHAPTER 8 My Mother's Childhood History Secrets, Lies and Abuse

CHAPTER 9 Memories of Grandma Ada and Grandpa Will

CHAPTER 10 Attacked by Frosty

CHAPTER 11 Confused Identity

CHAPTER 12 Slaughterhouse Lesson

CHAPTER 13 Shannon's Accident

CHAPTER 14 Adjusting to a New not so Normal

CHAPTER 15 Parental Alienation

CHAPTER 16 Living in a Strange Land

CHAPTER 17 Terrifying Experiences and Adjustments

CHAPTER 18 No One to Turn to

CHAPTER 19 Playing Daddy

CHAPTER 20 Going back Home

CHAPTER 21 Trying to Create a Normal Family

CHAPTER 22 Who is the Crazy One?

CHAPTER 23 Grandma Saves Our Souls

CHAPTER 24 Junior High

CHAPTER 25 Betty's Obsess ion to Control

CHAPTER 26 You are going to Hell

CHAPTER 27 Holiday Traditions

CHAPTER 28 Family Vacation

CHAPTER 29 Teenage Years

CHAPTER 30 The Palm Sun day Tornado

CHAPTER 31 My First Love and more Abuse

CHAPTER 32 Rescuing Billy

CHAPTER 33 Princess o f Tides

CHAPTER 34 Restaurant Owners

CHAPTER 35 Lake Michigan

CHAPTER 36 Senior Year and Graduation

CHAPTER 37 Running Away to California

CHAPTER 38 Good Decisions, Bad Decisions

CHAPTER 39 Secrets Exposed

CHAPTER 40 Manipulation s and Lies

CHAPTER 41 Goodbye to My First Love

CHAPTER 42 Calling for Help from Betty

CHAPTER 43 Working with Mom and Dad

CHAPTER 44 Miserable Marriage and Loneliness

CHAPTER 45 Unexpected Horror a n d Death too Young

CHAPTER 46 And Baby Makes Five

CHAPTER 47 Threat of Rape

CHAPTER 48 Unraveling

CHAPTER 49 Separation and Childlike Grief

CHAPTER 50 Starting a New Life

CHAPTER 51 Suicidal Thoughts and Manipulation

CHAPTER 52 A New Life and a New Relationship

CHAPTER 53 Memories Validated

CHAPTER 54 The Confrontation

CHAPTER 55 Betty’s Letter

Epilogue

CHAPTER 1

444.JPG

High School Sweethearts

1941 to about 1947

Shannon and Betty were high school sweethearts. When we were cleaning out Shannon's house to move them in with my stepmom's daughter I found a suitcase full of memories that my mother wrote about their early lives together. It was bittersweet and innocent to read about their romance; how they started dating in their sophomore year. She included pictures and drawings that she had made. Their wedding photo was included with the dates and memories of their graduation trip to Niagara Falls. She said how important it was to chronicle lives to remember your past. She had drawn a picture of her dream house living room and profiles of her and Shannon as young lovers. Betty wrote about their first jobs, their trailer, and that they went to work at the Bomber Plant in Willow Run after they graduated from High School. It was an adventure for them, especially for her because she had never been away from her parents.

When they came back home after saving a lot of money for that time, they bought a farm and continued their married lives. Betty always suffered from depression and migraines but they soon escalated. Shannon would come home to find her passed out on the floor, but suspiciously the pots on the stove would not be overflowing or the house wouldn't be on fire because of her being incapacitated. Shannon took her to a many doctors who finally told him that her problems were not physical, but mental. They suggested that he take her to a psychiatrist because it was obvious that she was faking to get attention and needed to have psychiatric care.

CHAPTER 2

444.JPG

The Saga begin s 1948-1949

Seduction and Molestation

My mother perceived herself in love with Henry, her boy toy that she cajoled Shannon, her husband, into bringing up north from the border of Mexico. She and Shannon had gone to Brownsville, Texas for work during the winter when there were few jobs in the painting business in Indiana. According to Shannon, Betty's Hispanic hairdresser told her they could make money during Charro Days, an annual festival held there in February. They took a trailer down to Texas where my grandparents were wintering. They started a barbecue stand and sold barbecue to the citizens of Brownsville. This is about the most ridiculous story I have ever heard. It makes no sense to me but it is true. Shannon, Betty, and my grandparents rented an apartment and lived together during this time.

Shannon said my mother loved her Mexican wine and one night seduced him to cover her bloody tracks of infidelity. (With all of her psychiatric drugs, alcohol, and anorexia, not to mention her girdle-wearing to hide her pregnancy, I can't believe that I don't have two heads.) Though she loathed Shannon, she put on a dramatic performance of passion and seduction to later convince him and her parents that the baby she carried was his. He told her, For God's sake, keep the noise down! Your parents are down the hall.

Evidently, she had not been too frisky with Shannon before she got with child. It was important that her parents be let in on their wild frenetic lovemaking. That way, when she came up pregnant they would remember this incident to confirm my parentage.

A couple weeks later, Betty told him she was pregnant. My grandfather told Shannon not to bring Henry up north with them. He had heard Betty and Henry in the trailer together alone and was suspicious of what they were doing. Shannon didn't take the ominous warning seriously.

Shannon, an orphan himself, had compassion for Henry, who was barely fifteen. Henry's father died when he was only nine years old. His mother, Lucy, was pregnant with her sixth child at that time. The story, according to Lucy, was that she and my grandfather were divorced. He ran around and drank. He had no life insurance and was hit on the head with a lard bucket that fell off a conveyor belt in his father's butcher shop. He survived, but started having spells of amnesia and would wander through the streets. He was put in a mental institution where he fell out of bed, hit his head on a radiator, and died. He was only thirty-three years old. That story breaks my heart. Even sadder is that the only story I remember my father telling me about his father is of a time his father was wiping his nose with a handkerchief when they were sitting in his truck. I can picture my dad, this black-eyed, black-haired little boy, hero-worshipping his dad at that moment.

My paternal great-grandmother loathed Henry's mother. She called Lucy a puta, which means whore in Spanish. Unfortunately, she was probably right. It is hard to know exactly which stories are true. My mother would tell only stories that would make my grandma Lucy look bad. I am sure she knew that my grandmother didn't like her. My mother was always in competition with Grandma Lucy. Betty was only about ten years younger than my grandmother. They both perceived themselves to be beauty queens and the epitome of sex goddesses.

This is hysterical to me. It may not be that funny to anyone else who doesn't know my mother and grandmother. My grandmother was outspoken and vain, and had no trouble bragging about her beauty and brains. She was flamboyant, dramatic, and theatrical. My mother, on the other hand, had a lot of those characteristics, but she didn't brag on her beauty. When she was around my grandmother, she actually seemed to be a little intimidated and cowed.

Grandma Lucy told me in all seriousness one time she thought she was about as close to a saint as you could get. She smoked, overate, and was critical, mouthy, controlling, and judgmental. These were just her obvious flaws. I just looked at her blankly, trying to mask my incredulity.

I can see where my father got his grandiosity and need to be perfect; which is about as insane as anything can be.

CHAPTER 3

444.JPG

Curses, Voodoo, and Witchcraft

I was terrified when this incident happened. I was only about nine or ten years old.. When I think of the story now, I can feel myself getting hysterical, as I want to howl with laughter, not because of the circumstances, but because of my mother's reaction to it. My grandmother Lucy said that someone was jealous of her and her phenomenal beauty and had a curse put on her. Whoever this person was, had to search high and low to find a doll that was beautiful enough to represent Lucy. This person finally found a gorgeous doll with a phenomenal figure and dressed it in a red dress. The perpetrator stuck pins in it to curse her and buried it in a water pipe in Matamoras, Mexico. Lucy found someone who was able to retrieve the doll and she had the curse removed.

When my mother would repeat this story, she would snort with disdain over my grandmother's description of the world's most beautiful doll used to represent her. Of course, she couldn't do that in front of my grandmother. I still laugh when I think of my mother's snorting with disgust and contempt. The fact that my grandmother made no bones about bragging about her beauty really galled my mother. She was so jealous of her mother-in-law. The not so funny part was in realizing how ingrained the voodoo and witchcraft ran in the family.

My mother claimed that my grandmother had a curse put on my father to keep him from becoming a shrimper. Henry was going to work on a shrimp boat but he got violently seasick. It seems to me that it was more likely my mother would not have wanted him to become a shrimper because if he were working in Brownsville, he may not have come up north to work for Shannon and live with them. My grandmother, on the other hand, could have gotten him to give her his money.

Another time when I was a little girl, we were visiting Brownsville and I was lying on the couch listening to the adults talk in the kitchen. It was dark outside and I felt the heaviness in the air. The house had its own aroma. There was an indescribable heaviness in the air. The outdoors with the heavy humid air and the black resaca, across the street created a different kind of darkness. The light in the kitchen glowed yellow above the Formica-topped table. The atmosphere was eerie and ominous with all the talk of ghosts and voodoo. My grandmother told a story about a boyfriend who was helping her move into another place. He entered the house and saw the ghost of a nude woman walk down the hall. It was just the upper half of her body. He was terrified and walked right out and never went back. My grandmother never moved into that house. I lay, hushed and terrified, wishing I was home in Indiana with my grandma Ada.

When I visited Grandma Lucy as an adult, she told me my father should have been playing football and being a child, instead of getting carted off to Indiana by my mother. Betty would send baby pictures of me to Lucy, but Lucy didn't understand why, as I was no relation to her. She found out later that I was her son's bastard. I am sure that having my brother and me as her grandchildren didn't make her happy. I still remember her contempt as she snarled at me, The only thing about you that looks like your father is your eyes!

It hurt even worse seeing those same eyes that mirrored my father's and mine slash with such anger at me. Considering how I felt about my mother and how my grandma Lucy felt about my mother, it broke my heart. I wouldn't let her see my pain though, just like I would never let my father see it.

My grandmother's story on how she lost my father came out in bitter shards of glass. I can see where my father got his mean, sadistic streak. It was obvious that Lucy loathed my mother. I can't blame her, but it wasn't my fault. My grandmother said that once when my father was staying at his paternal grandmother's house, they were under quarantine. When the quarantine was over, my father didn't want to come home. He felt safe with his grandmother, especially after losing his father. By this time, Lucy had five other kids and one who died. She was angry that her ex-husband died, leaving her with no life insurance and pregnant with another child. She was a bright, proud Hispanic beauty and still very young. She wanted to have fun and, according to my mother, was a whore. Lucy would go out with her boyfriends and eat steak in Mexico and leave the little ones to fend for themselves, eating only beans and rice.

When my dad was about fourteen, he and his brother started working in a movie theatre; though they made a pittance, it allowed them to buy a little food, but it was never enough. They both ran the streets. This is where my dad met my mother and Shannon. I tried to cut my mother some slack. Maybe my father was a very macho, handsome fifteen-year-old boy. In reality, at the end of each day, Shannon said they gave what was left of the barbecue to the starving little Hispanic kids. My father was one of them. Shannon said that these kids called my mother a puta.

My mother was able to take Henry away without any resistance or protest from my grandmother. He was more than willing to go. It was an adventure to him. She probably didn't even know he was leaving with Betty and Shannon. Henry would run back and forth from his grandmother's house to his mother's house. He said his mother once threw a high heel at him as he was running down the street, probably because he was running back to his grandmother's house. I could feel the hurt in his words. In spite of my grandmother's controlling cold personality, my father loved her.

My grandmother Lucy gave me her side of the story about the relationship she had with her mother-in-law, Severa. Severa favored her son, who named his son Enrique, (Henry) after himself. When Severa's husband died, It broke her heart. She was a strong-willed little Mexican woman born in Mexico. Grandma Severa was a very religious woman and worked hard all her life. After her husband died, she was left to take in washings and tried to take care of her family. I was told by my dad's first cousin (also named Severa), who lived with her grandmother, parents, two brothers, and great Tia (Aunt) Lulu, sister to Severa, that Grandma Severa was bitter against men. They all ran after putas, according to her. She also didn't have a lot of respect for the women they chased. I just remember that I wanted to get to know her better. She looked like one of those dried apple dolls with raisins for eyes. She had white hair pulled back in a severe bun and her skin was dark and lined. Her ears had been pierced, when she was just a baby and the lobes were droopy and long. I don't remember a time when she wasn't wearing black. She was always in mourning and always seemed a little intimidating to me. The fact that our communication was very limited with her only speaking Spanish didn't help.

A horrifying story I heard from my mother, so I tell this with a grain of salt, was about Great-grandma Severa. Her son, Freddie, father to little Severa, pissed her off so much once that she hung him with a rope in the back yard. The neighbors cut him down. He went on to abuse his wife and children and to blacken his own mother's eye in the future. He also raised roosters for cockfights. He was a drunken, womanizing, sleaze bag. It is important to me to know and remember the stories about my parents because it helps to see what was normal to them. Abuse was constant and acceptable. Lack of respect for women, children, and everyone was a way of life and alcoholism was part of our families' legacies too. The women in my family were strong, survivors, but many of those characteristics were taken to extremes.

This is a story from my dad about his childhood that helps me to understand him and the way he thinks. He told me a story about one of his uncles. It was about his father's brother Eliseo, who was a handsome, green-eyed, tall man. ( He was probably tall to my father as a child. I don't think we had any tall men in our family.) He was a drunk and married a spoiled, little, rich girl. Eliseo was trying to stay sober, but something his wife did, made him get drunk. My father, as a small child, helped him stagger over a curb into the house where he died of pneumonia as a result of his drunken escapade. It was his wife's fault.

Henry's childhood was very chaotic. Another time at his grandmother Severa's house, there were two men dying at the same time. Grandma Severa was trying to take care of them all. One was his grandfather, from a heart attack, and the other was his uncle from a gunshot wound. My dad was just tall enough to look through the wrought iron bars of the footboard. I often think about how scary that must have been for him. I can't imagine how terribly cruel life was for him, his grandmother and the whole family. This might be one of the reasons that Henry spent much of his life trying to rescue alcoholics. He would give them a job, clean them up, and feed them, but when they would continue to drink, he would be infuriated. He never understood why he couldn't fix them.

One of the good things about going back to Brownsville was the competition between Grandma Lucy and my great-grandmother Severa who held the Tamale Wars. They would both make tamales for us when we came to visit. We were to judge which tamales were the best. I mentioned earlier that I was a pretty smart child. But it didn't take a rocket scientist to know I should tell both of them that their tamales were the best. In all honesty, my great-grandmother's tamales were the best. I have never eaten any tamale that compared to hers. She put three raisins in each pork tamale. I have talked to women who make tamales from different countries and I have never heard of anyone who made them like she did.

I can still smell the aromas in my grandmother's and great grandmother's houses. Whenever we returned to Texas, the scents were very familiar. I am sure it was from memories of having been there as a small child. I have photographs of me in Texas with my grandmother and some other family members. I don't look very happy, though. There is a part of me that still romanticizes my ancestral history, which goes back many generations in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas when it was still Mexico. I wish it were possible to know the history of my ancestors, to walk where they walked, and to hear their voices. Maybe on the other side that will be possible.

CHAPTER 4

444.JPG

Early Memories in a Strange House

Growing up, our living arrangements were rather strange. I remember as a very young child that there was a lot of activity always going on in our house. Betty was married to Shannon, who made Henry foreman of his company. I shared a bedroom with Henry and was always confused about who was who in the house. I slept in my baby bed next to the door under the light switch. Henry slept in a single bed across the room under the window. Sometimes I would solemnly watch him in the dark on his knees. He would kiss his crucifix. I didn't know what it was, but later realized he had been praying. It was a private ritual for him. He had been an altar boy as a child. It still makes me sad when I think of it.

In the morning when he would get ready for work, I would wake up and sit up in bed and watch him leave. My mother liked to tell the story about when he went to Brownsville, and was gone for a short time. I sat up, rubbed my eyes and sadly said, Tell her que paso mi little cabron.

That is what he would say to me in the morning when he left for work. I didn't know until later that it meant, What's the matter my little bastard?To me it was an endearment. I was less than two years old. I would ask Spanish-speaking friends what it meant when I started remembering it; they would pretend they didn't know.

Shannon was a quiet man and he was gone a lot. My mother was around, but she took me and my brother to our grandmother's house to be babysat for while she was trying to recapture her childhood. She liked to run around town with Henry. Shannon said people would tell him they saw his wife in a Cadillac with that Mexican kid. He would reply that the blonde was his wife, but the Cadillac belonged to the kid.

Henry turned sixteen the first of November and I was born on the 28th just weeks