Pain, Pain, Pain....... Still so Much Pain

By Ann See Roy

"I found myself asking as a child and as a grownup, What is happiness? I did not know that there could be so much sadness and unhappiness in anyones life. So many times I would ask myself, is this a dream? Does a father suppose to treat his family like this? Money was not a problem.
We, as an African American family was not lacking in this capacity not at all. We went to church every Sunday, but were cursed out before we went, by daddy, who would hit the top of the bedroom doors as hard as he could with his fist, and say, get your black asses up. He was a so-called diligent church worker.
We were an upper middle-class family that lived in this big house. We live better than most of or the average Caucasian family. We had cattle, horses, chickens, goats, lambs, pigs, and cotton fields, and property. He was the general labor foreman over the rest of the foremen, at a giant petrochemical company as a contractor as far as I remember. This was in the late 1950s through about the mid or late 1970s.
Why was my, my sisters, my brother, and mothers lives so miserable and horrible? We also had cars, trucks, and some money. What was or went wrong? My father was not a drunk, not on narcotics, and not a gambler.
I invite you to read this story and you may see why there was so much Pain and still so much pain. The pain was through almost my entire life."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453538517

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

His and Their Abusiveness

I grew up in a small town in Texas. I was always told how black and ugly I was as a child (by my father), and do you know what, my husband tells me the same thing even today (even though, now, I know that it is not true).

My father would beat my mother. He would stay out all night at least five to six nights a week. They were married for twenty-three years. Out of those twenty-three years, he treated her with respect and with love only in the first year of their marriage (per my mother). He gave her VD (venereal diseases) and told her that he had picked up something too heavy, strained, and had gotten an infection from doing that.

He had fathered at least eight children (I don’t know exactly how many) through other women while married to my mother. He also was having an affair with one of the students in my PE class while I was in the tenth grade. (I didn’t know at the time.) She used to always ask my sister and me about him during PE.

He also had a confrontation (they had weapons) with another man, Tommy, about a sixteen-year-old female, who they were both having an affair with while he was married to my mother. He and my grandfather, Thomas, discussed the situation in the presence of my mom. They bragged about the situation, talking and saying how much more of a man my father was than the other man and being a much better person for the sixteen-year-old.

My father, Rodney, also took a prostitute by the name of Hellene to be his woman. He did claim a two or three children by her too. (She did have a total of five kids at that time). She would call our home all time of night, and he would talk to her. I remember one night, in particular. I got up to get water or use the restroom, and he was kneeling on his knees in some white jockey shorts and talking to her on the telephone in the dark. He and my mother argued about this, but to no avail.

He was a very cold, rude, hateful, obnoxious, abusive, and evil man. Six of us sisters (who lived in the same household) and my mother were at church one Sunday. After services ended, we were waiting outside at the concession stand, where the church would sell refreshments every Sunday following the service. My sister, Barbrea, asked him to buy her an ice-cream cone. He told her, Hell, no. A few minutes later, he bought one of his girlfriends, Martha, a soda pop.

He would keep my sister and me out of school to pick and chop cotton. I was about eight years old when I started to do this. We never received even one dime for doing this (picking the cotton or any of the chores). We didn’t need the money. He was the foreman on his job, and then he was promoted to general labor foreman. He also had two trucks traveling to his work site. He had fifteen men riding on one truck and ten men riding on the other. These men on one of the trucks paid him $15 weekly and those on the other truck paid $10 weekly. He also made the driver of one of his trucks (he drove the other one) pay a weekly fee.

My sister, Glodene, and I had to take turns to get up at three in the morning to prepare his lunch and breakfast. We started that at the young ages of about nine and ten and a half. When we began participating in sports, we also had to cook supper in the morning before we left for school.

One of my father’s brothers, Darnelle, treated his wife similar to the way that my father treated my mother. He had affairs, also. He even tried to romance my mother. He is a coldhearted individual. I remember when my aunt died of cancer, he had his girlfriend at the house, preparing food. My aunt hadn’t even been buried yet. He had a child by this woman before the death of my aunt. He even had affairs with cows. I guess this situation began when he was younger; one of his chores was to milk them. I don’t know if he still continues this act, but he did become a college graduate and a teacher.

My grandfather, Thomas, (my father’s dad) had many affairs. Almost everyone in the family knew about his weekly Tuesday night outing to prayer meeting and then to his after meeting fling. He is now deceased. He caught on fire by burning trash (supposedly). My aunt, my father’s sister, found him on the doorsteps. He died the next day.

It was suspected that he had set himself on fire due to the fact that everyone (immediate family members) had to hide all of his guns and other guns that had been in the home because he had been treating to commit suicide. There was also a gas can located at the scene. It was also rumored because of IRS debts.

I guess my father inherited his evilness and everything else from his father, Thomas. My father’s women, or whatever you want to call them, would go to his office, and he would give them money on payday per his coworkers. Another teenager that he had an affair with was forging my sister’s name, Glodene, on checks that she had stolen from him.

My mother, Gladiola, had her own vehicle. My sisters and I would have to wash and wax all of the vehicles. We had to feed the cows, pigs, lambs, goats, horses, and chickens. Whenever any of these animals would escape outside of the fence, we would have to chase them down and put them back in. My brother could not do any of these chores because he suffered with asthma. This would bring on his attacks.

We would also have to pick pecans in the wintertime. We would have to go back in the tree bottom to pick these. My father would whip the trees with a pole, and then my sisters and I would have to pick them up.

We had a very big yard that covered several acres. We had a push mower and a riding lawn mower. My father would be on the riding lawn mower and my sisters would have to use the push mower to mow the yard.

I picked cotton from the time I was eight years old until the time I was fourteen years old. During this time, my father gave us a goal or limit of about hundred pounds or more daily. One day, we were helping another family to finish picking their field of cotton. So the kids started to play and have fun, and my sisters joined in. Well, they didn’t meet their goal for that day. When they got home, they were beaten with a water hose. (They were only about eight and nine years of age). I know no one deserves a beating like what they got.

I picked cotton, chopped it, and fed and cared for these animals until I was fourteen years of age. My two sisters, Barbrea and Debrene, and I picked cotton in about a twenty-four-mile area radius. We even pulled it (the entire bow). Some of the stalks were so tall that you could not see the person on the row next to you. There were snakes coming out of holes from the ground and also locusts that were the size of an eight- or nine-year-old’s hand.

My brother ran away from home several times for being beaten with a water hose or a rope. Once he was beaten because he let the cow trough or bucket overflow with water. My father would tell him how sorry he was that he couldn’t do anything, even though my brother was an honor student and also an excellent athlete. My father continually told him that he would never amount to be anything after he had received an academic scholarship and athletic scholarship to a predominately white Christian college.

Black as a tar baby, Rodney, my father, would describe three of my sisters as pink ass lips, old black Shea, and Poe ass and me as black and ugly. He constantly walked around the house in his jockey shorts.

One day, I remember his wanting to jump on my mother, and I and my other five sisters did not let him. We had gotten older. I can’t remember who produced the knife, but my mother ended with it; they were wrestling, and she actually whipped his behind. He kicked a hole in the wall, trying to get loose. After the fight was over, he did manage to sneak up behind her and snatched the knife when my mother’s back was turned.

As time went by and my eldest sister was a senior in high school, she began dating a guy of another race. He was a coach in the local area at a high school. They had gotten engaged to marry. We didn’t get a night’s sleep until after about six months. She broke it off with him. My father was against this completely only because he was white. His name was Taylor. He was a very nice person.

At this time, my mother had filed for divorce. We still didn’t get any sleep because my mother had moved in the bedroom with me and my elder sister. My father was in there most of the night, begging my mother. When I think of this, I remember another incident.

My father would not let us go anywhere unless my elder sister and I were chaperoned, which was not very often when we went somewhere. Well, one night, he let us go with our cousins without a complaint or chaperone. We were puzzled, but we went. When we got home, we came to know that he had beat up my mother and locked her in the bedroom. My other four sisters were in bed. One had an ax, the other one had a butchers’ knife, one had a soda pop bottle, and the other one had a club.

My elder sister tried to break down the door, but she couldn’t get in. This was the reason he had let us go out to the movies without a verbal fight. The next morning, when he did let my mother out, she had two black eyes. She told us not to say anything to my father. We obeyed.

Whenever he would get home, he would check the mileage on the car. A very gross thing that he used to do to my mom was to check her underwear after he had been out on one of his rendezvous. Also, he had a hundred-gallon tank. He would keep them filled with gas for the vehicles. When he would get mad (not angry), he would take the key from my mother. This happens most of the time.

The entire time that I can remember growing up with my dad, I can never remember a shortage of money. I only remember a complete shortage of love, the agape love. Even though he had gotten to a point where he would throw away his money, my mother was working and finally got a good job. She was paying the bills.

I remember when my brother was away in college, my father never would send him any spending money. He would always say, I ain’t sending him anything. He ain’t gonna amount to be nothing. Let him starve. She would have to sneak and send him money. My brother never knew this until about a year or two, and he is now in his forties.

Then one day, it turned dark black and then green outside. My mother was sick and almost didn’t go to work, but she decided to go. At 3:00 p.m. at school, the lights went out, and then they came back on. My sister and I had a volleyball game in Ganado. When we returned from the game that night, my cousin was waiting on us and not my mother. This was puzzling, but my sister and I didn’t say anything. We just got in the car. Instead of taking us home, my cousin took us to their house. A lot of people were there. We didn’t know what was going on. Even some of our relatives were there that lived from forty-five to fifty miles away.

A tornado had destroyed our home. Jehovah, God, had put an immediate end to all of the terrible memories of living in that beautiful (on the outside) twelve-room home with a double garage attached. (In the 1960s, this was a large home, especially for a minority family.) But the pain, pain, pain . . . still so much pain remained . . . Now, we have nowhere to live. We spent the night with my aunt, my father’s sister.

The next day, my aunt, from out of town (my mom’s sister), gave us her home to live in for as long as we needed. This home was about eight miles away in a town called Pleze, a very small town of maybe with the population of about three hundred at the time. It was a small house next door to a barroom. Well, my father didn’t want us to stay there. He wants to rent a house in another small town, even though we could live in my aunt’s house for free. A few weeks later, we found out the reason for this.

Earlier, I was telling you about my sophomore year in school and one of my classmates was always talking about him; well, we found out why. My father had been having a fling with her. She would always pass by this house every day on feet, at least two times daily. She looked like the big black grizzly. Now, I’m talking like how my father would talk about my sisters and me. This is the truth though, with very white teeth. At the same time, he was steadily sleeping with the prostitute, Hellene.

When my mother learned of this, she confronted him. Then a couple of days later, he moved out. During all of this time, various financial donations had been donated for us in the nearest town. They had been collected at banks and other places. The government had talked to my father, and plans were drawn up for building us a new home. My mother kept questioning the construction start date of the home.

My mother later learned that my father had canceled all of the plans of construction. He had also gone to the bank and withdrawn all of the money from the donations. My mother nor did any of my sisters or I received a penny from this money. At that time, my mother told him that she was going to go ahead and get the divorce, but he had already filed and was using the lawyer that she had previously filed for divorce with and dropped it several months before.

So Rodney, my father, had left us stranded with no money and not really a home of our own. He used the money that was donated to fill his entire mouth with gold teeth. He took a trip to Mexico and moved Hellene (the prostitute) in with him and took care of her and her children, and then married her.

My mother was employed as a cook at a state school. I was a senior at this time. My elder sister, Glodene, was a freshman in college. She received a loan through the junior college to be able to go there. My brother was a senior in college. Glodene was eighteen years old. I was seventeen, and we were both working the bar, which was next door to my aunt’s house.

My sister and I did this so that we could earn money to bring to school and to help my mom. My other sisters were fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, and twelve years old. They were too young to work there. I was too young, also. I didn’t sell any alcoholic beverages but sold soda pop, chips, etc. Because of us, my sister and me, other men and young guys would come just to look at us or make passes. My sister’s college friends would come quite often. The name of the place was the Playgirl Lounge.

The Playgirl Lounge was in competition with another joint that was down the street. We had taken most of the competition’s business owned by a man named Abdulla. He would always call the police department, saying there were minors down the street selling alcoholic beverages. The police never found anything when they came because it was a false alarm. In other words, Abdulla was a professional liar, drug dealer, and gambler (using cards and dice), and who knows what else.

Due to so many visits from the police, the business dropped because the customers didn’t want to deal with this. So there was very little profit after about six months. We had to deal with fights and even gun shooting and also jealous women. This was a considerable amount of stress at such a young age.

I was also involved in three car accidents, three in three weeks, and I also thought that I was expecting a child. My monthly cycle stopped. I didn’t have one for nine months. I later found out that this was all due to nerves not because I was pregnant.

CHAPTER 2

The Secret

I had one secret that I kept until I turned about thirty-eight years of age. My mother knew, but she didn’t do anything about it. I got whippings for this. It was about the hush subject—the sexual abuse. I was sexually abused by a relative in my family, to the best that I can remember, from about the age of eight or nine until I was about twelve or thirteen. I don’t know if my mother knew about this when it first started, but she did know. She would whip me for this and would say, I didn’t tell you to do that. It was a male relative living in the house with us that was doing this. Nothing at all happened to him. It was all handled as though I was the responsible and the guilty party.

Then he got to the point where he had planned to share me with one of his teenage friends that was maybe seventeen or older. This friend had gotten angry with someone on a Western movie, one day, and shot into the television set with a shotgun. He had lost one of his eyes in one of his hunting trips and severely damaged one of his arms, also. I remember being told that he was having affairs with a couple of his younger family members.

Two cousins also molested me on several occasions. We were more or less having orgies. At that time, I didn’t know what they were, but now I know. All of these were going on between the ages of eight and twelve or thirteen. It hurts so much to talk about this. At about thirty-eight years of age, I finally sought counseling.

So while we were in the town of Pleze, running the bar, I had started having sexual relations with a twenty-year-old married guy, because he had a pretty sports car. All of this time, I never knew why a female has a monthly cycle. My mother would only tell my sisters and me, during this monthly event, that we were sick. I didn’t know why this bleeding took place. I didn’t find out until maybe I was twenty-five years of age.

The secret that I had been carrying around for so many years was and still is very devastating. I told my present-day husband part of this secret on one afternoon. I knew that he would be very rude about it, and he was. This is also another story. This will be another chapter.

I then made an attempt to attend junior college. I was an honor student in high school. I got a loan from the government and started to attend the junior college. It lasted for only two months. I was so sad and very unhappy. This was in August. The tornado hit in March, four months earlier. I left the junior college in October.

CHAPTER 3

The Departure and Arrivals

I left the town. But before I left the town,