Messages from the Ashes

By Wade Meadows

When Ryan Anderson was born, responses from most families would have been excitement and congratulations to the family. However, in Ryan’s case it was completely different. It was if he was born with the expectations of being a failure. In which his mother was the supreme queen to ensure it came true.

With the protection from his sister of whom he loved was often the only way of survival on a day to day basis.
With no love from a mother or father or even one word of affirmation Ryan yeaned to be loved. Then came a day after another beating Ryan ran to the woods, meeting a man with many promises. Promises that included getting his sister and himself away from the hell in which they lived in.

The love of a sister drives Ryan to do things he never could have imagined he would do. It would take a fire to break the abuse and the loss of his best friend his sister. Later finding letters in a hope chest was the messages needed to begin the next journey in Ryan’s life. The goal of learning who he was, not who he was forced to be. Anything to prove to himself he was a man. Soon walking away and becoming a Christian, but what does that mean. Join Ryan as he goes into all directions just looking for who he is, never realizing it was there in front of him all that time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796086478

Book preview

PART I

Everything Turns

to Ashes

1

The Chase

I t was a perfect day to be outside. The sun was shining, and the breeze off the lake kissed the faces of those who strolled close enough to enjoy the spring weather. Ryan’s eldest brother, Jake, was at a friend’s house down the street. Jake was ten years old and allowed to ride his bike in the neighborhood.

Jake was a skinny boy with blue eyes that matched his dented blue bike, which took him away early every morning. If the neighbors cared to, they could see the thin brown-haired boy disappear to deliver his papers at dawn each day. He was the eldest of four siblings, and he stayed away all day, every day. Most people thought that Jake took what jobs he could find to help pay the bills, like many kids from struggling families did. Little did they know of the darkness hidden behind the walls of his home that caused Jake to so desperately stay away each day.

Andrew was seven years old and shared Jake’s lanky frame and brown hair. He liked to play ball in the backyard with a neighbor buddy of his named Taylor and Taylor’s tag-along sister, Danelle.

Terresa, their sister, was the first girl in the family. Her mother had added an extra r in her name just to be unique. Terresa was five, and unlike her thin elder brothers, she was pleasantly plump, with chubby cheeks, hazel eyes, and dirty blonde hair that fell around her face in a tangled web.

Ryan was the youngest of the crew. He was only three and didn’t quite understand the world in which he lived. He knew there were rules but hadn’t yet figured out what they were or how to abide by them. He had the same brown hair of his brothers but had not outgrown his chubby stage.

The family’s property in Indiana had big apple trees and beautiful lilac bushes, and most of the backyard was blocked in by the edge of the woods. The smell of the lilacs in the air would trigger memories for years. Their backyard was long, longer than the neighbors’ yards. It led to the woods and a lightly traveled alley. It was here that the many lilac bushes lined up to reveal their beautiful flowers, broadcasting the aroma that one comes to expect from the plants.

The yard provided a nice, private place for the children to play. It was in this yard that the two older boys had built their first treehouse: loose plywood placed together by two kids attempting to find a hideaway. The symbolism of the first wall they had put up meant a lot to them, one being the accomplishment of it; another was the much more profound significance of shielding themselves from the daily battles of torment they dealt with in their home. Then came the next wall, but in this one, they had made an open space they called a window, but it wouldn’t take much of a carpenter to see that the board was broken and that they had just managed to make the hole larger. The treehouse was unique because it would only have two walls for its entire existence. The boys carved indentations into the tree trunk deep enough to make steps that led up to the two-walled treehouse they were so proud of.

The children—except for Jake, who had left hours earlier—were enjoying this idyllic day, playing a game of tag. It was Ryan’s turn to be the monster and chase the girls. He thought they had let him tag them because they were older and much faster than a three-year-old like himself. He managed to tag Danelle, who then made the monster scream and chased Terresa until she caught up with her.

The game of tag continued for several runs around the vast yard of trees and bushes. Everything was fun—until Terresa became the monster. She chased Danelle through the lilac trees, her legs pumping and moving as fast as they could. Danelle ran through the trees, moving quickly and pushing the branches out of her way, trying to escape capture.

The air was filled with the sound of laughter and glee as the children enjoyed their game. Suddenly, with a swoosh and a pop, one of the branches swung back swiftly, right into Terresa’s face. The limb knocked her down, the sounds of glee dissipating in the wind. Blood ran down her face and mixed with her mangled long blonde hair. Her right hand covered her left eye as blood streamed between the openings of her fingers. She made sounds like a hurt animal squirming in pain. Between the sound and the blood, the children panicked, and the idyllic day turned into one of horror. Coming out of his stupor of shock, Ryan panicked and ran to the house, screaming for his mom between gasping breaths.

The children’s mother, Debbie, was an average-sized woman with brown hair, hazel eyes, and often a bandanna tied across her forehead because of how hot it got in the house, even with fans on. Debbie’s day consisted of sitting on the couch, watching television, and giving orders for what she wanted. Get me a soda. Empty the ash tray. Get my lighter. Find my cigarettes." The only time she was actually up working was when she was ironing clothes for other families. She never ironed her own family’s clothes. She had a temper and little patience for children. Setting her off on a tangent was easy as she did not want her world disturbed, and she had little care for the children she had created. She opened the door to Ryan’s annoying screams and immediately slapped him across his face.

Ryan gave an outcry from the sting of the slap but tearfully mumbled, Terresa was hurt.

When his mom realized something was really wrong, she started muttering under her breath, These kids are worthless. I will beat all of them for disturbing me. She yelled at Ryan, Stay inside and don’t move so I can keep an eye on you!

As he stood at the back porch door and looked out through the screen, still holding his screams inside and worried about his sister, time stood still in Ryan’s three-year-old mind. Tears streamed down his mud-streaked face, but he quickly forgot about the slap across the face when he saw the blood gushing through his sister’s fingers. He worried that she may die.

Suddenly, as if someone had turned on a time machine, everything started happening so fast. He was picked up like a rag doll and thrown in the back seat of the car, with Terresa beside him, crying. Debbie was screaming for them to shut up or she would give them something to cry about. Dressed in ragged clothes, with streaks of dirt running down their faces from playing and crying, they tried to sit still. Andrew was told to sit in the front seat, where Debbie could keep an eye on him too.

The drive to the hospital felt like a lifetime to Ryan. He was so worried about Terresa. She always took care of him. She protected him. Now she was sitting next to him, crying, with a towel held over her eye and blood steadily running down her face. She was hardly able to take a breath because of the pain and the fright from all the blood. The blood, mixed with her tears of pain, added to Terresa’s fear of the response from a mother who would see this only as an inconvenience rather than with the seriousness that it truly warranted; it made the child quiet. Too often, Terresa had suffered the consequence of not being quiet. They approached the hospital and pulled in front of the bright red sign that read Emergency Room.

Debbie rushed Terresa in, dragging Ryan behind her. Entering the hospital room, she yelled, Sit! followed by a stern warning of consequences that streamed from her mouth.

Andrew sat beside Ryan and received the same look from their mother. They both knew that anything they said or did while in the hospital would mean trouble when they arrived home. Ryan sat in the waiting room, with tears silently streaming down his face, unsure whether he was scared more for his sister or himself. Even though they never really hung out or played together, Andrew talked to Ryan, trying to console him, telling him everything was going to be okay.

Terresa is going to be fine, he said.

Andrew never showed interest in Ryan unless it involved their mother; then he was always there to console his little brother and, at times, to even stand up to their mom. He was the only one of them who ever had the nerve to stand up to her, but he always paid dearly for his actions.

Ryan saw his dad arrive at the hospital. His father worked hard in a hot factory. He had a limited education, having completed school only to the eighth grade. This and living in a small town meant that factory work was the best job he could get, and he was thankful for it. Ryan’s dad was a large man at five-foot-ten, 330 pounds, and a size-fifty waist, a gentle man with a big heart. Today he was dressed in the dark-green uniform his job provided. He must have run straight from work as soon as he had heard as sweat was still streaming down his face. Ryan was relieved to see him. His father glanced at him as he passed on the way to meet with Debbie. The doctor came into the waiting room with news about Terresa. He explained to her parents that when the limb hit Terresa’s eye, it penetrated completely through, causing so much damage that it wasn’t salvageable. Ryan watched as his mother fell into hysterics upon hearing the news. He was used to her emotional behavior, but it was rare for him to witness her shed tears over one of her children.

A blur of activity started again. His dad explained to Ryan what had happened to Terresa’s eye. He said that the doctors needed to remove it, so he and Ryan’s mom were going to follow the ambulance to Chicago so Terresa could see a specialist. He told Ryan that he and Andrew had to wait at the hospital until their aunt came to pick them up.

Ryan watched his parents jump into their car. Still unsure of what was happening, he feared Terresa was going to die. He heard the blare of the ambulance and watched as his parents followed close behind. He wanted to be by his sister and to make things right. He was much too young to understand that no one could save her eye now. He asked himself why it couldn’t have been him who was the monster. Why couldn’t it have been me? The two boys waited until their aunt had arrived to take them to her house, where they were to stay until there was further word from their parents.

Over the next few days, Ryan and Andrew were tossed between their aunt’s house and their own. After seeing several doctors in Chicago, their parents and Terresa finally came home. Ryan was so relieved to see his sister again. Her eye looked different, but he didn’t care. He had been so scared that she had died. Now they could play and hide from their mother again.

Two nights after returning home, Ryan’s mother sat on the couch and yelled at him, Why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you stop it?

The words pierced Ryan’s heart. At only three years old, he had been told multiple times that he was unlucky because of the circumstances of his birth. His birthday was June 13, and on the year he was born, June 13 fell on a Friday. Debbie believed that this coincidence was the beginning of an omen that Ryan brought bad luck to his family and himself.

Nothing will become of you, and look at what you caused now! she told him.

Ryan was born at 8:47 a.m. on June 13, 1958, and from that moment on, his mother believed that Ryan brought misfortune to the family. No sweet words of welcome were said to him, unlike other children’s entrances to the world and to their families.

Instead, his mother looked at the nurse and said, He must be bad luck. It’s Friday the thirteenth.

Holding her child for the first time, Debbie began the process of condemning him. He was now her scapegoat, the reason all bad things occurred. She tried to say it as a joke. She may not have liked the fact that he was a boy, but she did not want anyone involved in her business. She had wanted a girl, but what arrived was a third boy. She had enough boys. She knew this one would not amount to anything because his day of birth would set the precedent for the rest of his life.

2

Decisions

T erresa wore a black patch over the missing eye. The young chubby girl whose eyes had once shone with laughter now had a distant glaze in her one eye. She did not cry, but she no longer smiled either. She had to wear a black patch for a long time. Yellow-and-green-colored fluid oozed out from the empty socket that had once held her left eye and ran down her face.

The traumatic event changed the little five-year-old girl. Her mother believed she was old enough to care for the injury by herself and, after a few days home from the hospital, decided it was a small event and just an eye. So Terresa learned how to care for the empty socket herself. She learned how to remove the patch and use a bottle of saline water to rinse out the socket and wipe it with gauze.

If she didn’t take time to properly cleanse her eye socket, it would seep, and her mom would scream, That is disgusting! You look gross! Get out of my face and take care of that!

Ryan followed his sister to her bedroom, where she removed her patch and wiped out the eye socket. Tears ran down her face, causing some of the green-and-yellow discharge to drip down with her tears. Debbie expected her small daughter to resume her duties in the household. Terresa cleaned the house, dusted, and wiped the windowsills. She stood on a chair to reach the sink to wash dishes and clothes.

Terresa was starting kindergarten one month after the accident, at the age of six. Her birthday wasn’t until December 31, so she had had to wait almost a year to start school. She wondered what the other kids were going to think. Her own mother hated to look at her, so surely, other children would be afraid or laugh and run away. The black patch would cover her eye socket for at least the first part of the school year. Ryan could already see his sister retreat into herself. She became very shy and lived in her own world. Home was not a safe place as she feared backlash from her mom. Terresa withdrew.

She continued to play with her little brother as he didn’t really give her a choice. When Ryan was four, Terresa was his sole playmate. He followed her everywhere she went. The two found her black patch to be the inspiration for several games: pirate ship, Captain Hook, one-eyed tag. Ryan covered one of his eyes to share in the experience. During a game of hide-and-seek, he learned that a big wooden door closed off the house furnace, and behind it was a good hiding place. There was just enough room behind the door for him to squeeze beside the furnace. It took Terresa a long time to find this secret place. Ryan wondered if there were mice or spiders hiding with him, but he was willing to share if it meant he could play with Terresa for a little longer.

Ryan soon realized how safe he felt in his newfound hiding place. No one ever knew he was there unless Terresa and he were playing a game of hide-and-seek and she found him. He admitted that it got quite hot when the furnace ran, but the heat and the sound were more comfort than he received in his life outside his safe haven. Sometimes he would sit there for hours, never missed by his mother. She was too involved in her soaps, and Terresa was often in her own world. He found that the less he was around, the better it was for him.

Terresa’s first day of school came, and Ryan stood at the door to watch her begin her walk to school. She was noticeably scared, looking around at every step to see if someone was going to make fun of the patch taped over her eye socket. Ryan was waiting at the door when she came home too. From a distance, he could see her wipe away tears from the cruel words the other kids had said. By the time she had arrived at the door, she tried to force a smile to protect him from her pain. She often protected him, and he tried to cheer her up. After school, they scampered to her room, and she would tell him about her day. She made it sound nice and exciting. Ryan couldn’t wait until he was able to go to school too. All too soon, Terresa had to leave their story time to start her chores.

In the beginning of spring, Terresa went to the eye doctor. He had made a glass eye that matched her eye color. He taught her how to use a small suction cup to remove the glass eye from its socket so she could clean it by putting it into a small cup overnight. The cup reminded him of the one his mother had used to put her false teeth into to soak every night. Over the next several years, Terresa would have to get the eye checked and resized as she grew.

Terresa didn’t mind Ryan watching her take out the eye or put it back in. She knew he loved her and would not be cruel. The kids at school were not as nice; even with the matching-colored eyes, they called her ugly and a freak. They reinforced Debbie’s constant barrage of words like lazy, ugly, one-eyed monster. Somehow Terresa made it through each day, but the happy child who had played monster on that fateful day was now a shy, introverted girl who rarely smiled.

While his brothers and sister went to school, Ryan stayed home with his mom. She expected him to stay in the living room, where she could keep an eye on him. It seemed odd to him that she could iron people’s clothes for money yet never ironed the family’s clothes.

One day, while he was watching TV, Ryan saw a man and his wife waving to everyone from the back seat of a car while their driver was driving them slowly through a crowd of people. Suddenly, the man fell into the woman’s lap.

A man on the TV said, The president has been shot.

His mom called someone on the phone and then told him to go to his room. He preferred his room. He was sad that the man was dead, but he would rather sit in the dark and listen by himself than be in the room with his mother. He enjoyed when he was able to hide and listen to the peace of silence. Most of the time, he just heard his mom complain about her life.

Ryan eventually realized that his mom’s moods were on a rotation. There would be weeks at a time when she was calm, but then something would set her off in a temper, and the calm was gone. She complained about the house being a mess and how the kids were no help.

On weekends, when his dad was home, Debbie would dress better than she did during the week and go visit different bars by herself. His dad was left to deal with the kids. Debbie had long dark hair but was always overweight. It was her goal to be noticed at the bars, so she dressed accordingly. She wore tight-fitting, low-cut shirts and a skirt that was a little shorter than was deemed proper. She painted her lips ruby red and styled her dark hair to be noticed. She would return late but go into a rage if the house was not cleaned as she desired.

Ryan’s mom often threatened his dad that she wasn’t going to come home at all. His dad was never afraid of his mom, but after her tirades, his dad would keep to himself. Ryan never heard him complain about his mom going out without him. He believed his dad would rather she be gone than listen to her daily complaints. She complained about their marriage and how lucky he was that she hadn’t divorced him yet. She felt entitled. She deserved so much more than he could offer. Ryan often stood next to his dad in tears because his mom had left them again. His dad consoled him, throwing him up in his arms, not knowing what to say or do. It was at times like this that Ryan retreated to his safe place and hid for hours by the furnace. Sometimes his mom would pack a bag and go to her mother’s house and not return home for days.

During one of those weekends when everyone was busy, Ryan decided to sneak a piece of hard butterscotch candy. As he pretended to clean the house, someone said something that made him laugh, which caused him to swallow the candy. It got caught in his throat, and he began to gag. His dad was vacuuming the living room when he heard one of the kids yelling for him. He ran to the bedroom to find Ryan turning blue. He grabbed his son and ran to the bathroom, where he proceeded to flip Ryan upside down. He held him by his ankle and gave him a hard smack on the back. The piece of candy finally came hurling out of Ryan’s mouth. His dad flipped him back over and hugged him tightly, but in that same motion, he laid Ryan over his knees and spanked him for taking the candy in the first place.

Debbie was raised in a small town in Indiana and was often around abusive men. Her mother, much more worried about herself than dealing with her two daughters, was married several times. Debbie was unable to cope with the many men who came in and out of her life as a result of the search for true marriage that her mother apparently yearned for. The substitute fathers who came into her life were often drunk, and some molested her. Debbie was once sent to a girls’ school to get her out of the way of her mother’s latest husband. When her real dad had heard of the girls’ school, he moved Debbie in with him and his new wife, but things weren’t much better there. If she was told to get up for school and she didn’t, she was whipped with a belt until she understood the rules. It seemed there was nowhere for her to turn that didn’t have some type of abuse. She often ran away and always ended up with men who had no respect for her.

They say that children who are brought up in such an environment will tend to lean toward the same types of relationships in their adult lives, and that was exactly what Debbie did. The first man she had married and whom she believed loved her often beat her and then took advantage of her, eventually getting her pregnant with Jake. The abuse continued, so not long after Jake was born, she packed up in the middle of the night and moved in with her now single mother.

Debbie often left Jake with her mother when she went to the bars. It didn’t take very long for her to find another man. She quickly remarried, walking right into another abusive relationship. She became pregnant with this man’s child, but he drank a lot and slapped her. She left him, never telling him she was carrying his child. Several weeks later, Debbie’s mother was at the Disabled American Veterans place, which was like a bar scene, but she was there to help the many