Hidden Inside

By Julianna Davis

This book spans decades, and tells the story of a young girl growing up in the 1970's and 80's, and her later struggles to deal with trauma unimaginable. She looked a lot like other girls her age. Inside, she held a terrible and haunting secret, too afraid to speak it out loud. Follow the tale on this roller coaster of a ride down a dark path where betrayal, wickedness and evil meet innocence, and a survivor's yearning to turn that into a way to help others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julianna Davis
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201917890

Julianna Davis

Julianna is the pseudonym of a small town girl from northern Michigan who grew up in a most dysfunctional family. Transplanted to south western Tennessee in her youth, she was faced with learning to cope and live in the nightmare that became her life. Beating the odds, she summoned the courage to survive throughout her ordeal of marriage, poverty, and childbirth as a teen, and overcame decades of trauma resulting from incest, rape, and mental and physical abuse. Using her past experiences, she channels her feelings into stories and poetry, and regards it as a form of healing. She currently resides in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and collaberates with other writers and authors, with aspirations for future writing projects.

Book preview

Dedication

This book is a twofer. It is first, in honor of my dad, whom I never knew except as an infant. He had his own story to tell, but was taken from this Earth much too soon. It is also in memory of my Grandma Otto, who was a feisty and wise woman with a heart of gold. Both of their spirits are very much alive. See you in Heaven... Love, Julie

I WANT TO THANK MY mother, children, and my lovely friend Judy Franks for the information I needed and inspiration to complete this book. Foremost, I want to thank God for allowing me to keep my sanity throughout the decades when I thought I would go absolutely mad, and directing me and staying by my side through it all.

FOR THE SAKE OF PRIVACY of some of the people named in the following stories, I have elected to call them by another name altogether, some by their choices, and some at my own discretion. The first mention of them will be noted by an an asterisk (*) beside the altered name. Those whom I elected to use their real name either have nothing to hide, or might be so crazy they just don’t care that they are named outright. If you have nothing to hide, I say come forward and confront me about it, or shut up and let the truth be told.

Foreword

I have been through many unusual, dangerous, utterly shocking, unfathomable and downright scary situations thus far in my life, and finally, I am writing the book that many people said I should. The stories contained herein are ones of innocence, despair, perverseness, violence, poverty, manipulation, and will. By miraculous miracles of God, I survived when I should have been dead several times. It is only through Him that I am alive and able to put into words my story, in the hopes that a reader might realize that inside of them is more bravery and strength than they could ever imagine. Many times, I was on the verge of broken, in body, mind and spirit, as you will read in the following pages. It is written in the Bible that God will not put more burdens on us than we can bear. I’d heard it so often at church, but throughout the decades I often struggled to carry their weight. Everything that happens to us is for a reason, possibly to teach us valuable lessons, or to allow someone else to learn something from seeing how we handle things when we are in times of crisis.

Hidden Inside

By

Julianna Davis

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - The Beginning

Chapter 2 - Becoming Aware

Chapter 3 - It Gets Worse

Chapter 4 - Meeting More Monsters

Chapter 5 - Tying the Nightmare Knot

Chapter 6 - Stuck

Chapter 7 - Sheer Despair

Chapter 8 - The Mess of my Life

Chapter 9 - Snowball Effect

Chapter 10 - So Much Chaos

Chapter 11 - A New Page

Chapter 12 - Don’t Rock the Boat

Chapter 13 - Spreading My Wings

Chapter 14 - On My Way

Chapter 1

The story of my life began on August 10, 1968, at Mercy Hospital in Cadillac, Michigan.  My given name was Julia Christine Lovell, but from the time I can first recall everyone called me Julie. I had black hair and lots of it, so much that it had to be trimmed out of my eyes at the hospital. Dad and Mom had been married for just over a year when I was born. Mom’s name was Doreen* and I was her second child, and Dad’s first. My older brother was 10 ½ month old Russell Jay, but nobody ever called him that, except when he was in trouble, so he always went by Rusty. I always thought it fit him much better, especially when he was little because his hair was reddish-brown.

When I came along, Dad was 29. His name was Lewis James, but he preferred to be called Jim. He was working a seasonal job, 16-hour days at a local Christmas tree farm. He and a brother-in-law, who worked together, were in the habit of stopping at a local bar and grill on their way home to cash paychecks and maybe drink a few beers on nights when they had gotten paid. Early on the morning of May 10, 1969, they had to wait for some period of time because there wasn’t enough cash on the premises. Dad called to tell Mom about the delay and said he was going to lie down in the car and take a nap while he waited. Before daybreak he was killed, probably instantly, when he was ejected from the car just before it landed on top of him. His unbroken glasses were found folded about 100 feet from his body. My common sense tells me if he had been wearing them at the time of the accident they would possibly have been broken and askew but still been on his face or lying on the ground somewhere, but not unbroken and folded. I don’t think Dad was driving and I have my suspicions about what really happened after they left the bar that early morning. When Dad was killed, I was nine months old, and three of his brothers were already deceased. I’ve been told by my mother and several members of Dad’s family that he was a good daddy.

My sister, Brenda Janeen, was born April 26, 1970. She was a chunky baby, almost bald, with just some white fuzz that later became blonde. Her dad Harry, an alleged town drunk, was rarely ever mentioned and to my knowledge I have never met him. Mom said I was very proud of Brenda and wanted everyone to come see my baby, even the man who read the gas meter. I don’t know if I really liked babies or if I just particularly liked my sister.

I had a habit of getting up in the middle of the night and getting into random kitchen stuff. I would pour Kool-Aid, flour, sugar, or whatever I could find in the kitchen floor and then play in it for a while, then go back to bed. I loved dill pickles and could get the whole jar out of the fridge and open it and eat pickles until someone took them away from me, day or night. I would also strip off my pajamas and diaper, make a huge mess if I had pooped during the night, then go back to bed. Mom told me many times in later years how she had to get up most mornings and clean up huge messes that I had made during the night before getting herself ready for work and us kids ready to go to the babysitter.

For the next couple of years, we spent lots of time at the homes of my maternal and paternal grandparents. Judging by pictures I’ve seen and from what little I can recall, they were both happy places to be. I have only fond memories of the times I spent at both of their homes. Dad’s parents, Grandpa and Grandma Lovell, lived in nearby Manton and had a sizable garden with a big yard. There was a huge and very fragrant lilac bush by the front door that they kept trimmed at the bottom, making room for us kids to sit underneath. Their house was a two story with the kitchen, living room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom downstairs, and one large room used as a guest room upstairs. They heated the house with a wood heater set up in the living room, which was left up year-round. It was such a cozy house, although worn in some areas, the atmosphere was always happy and calm. They had a large family that initially included 9 girls and 6 boys, of which there was one set of fraternal twins. Dad’s oldest siblings had children of all ages so there were usually kids around for us to play with, and we always had lots of fun. It was always such a treat when Grandma Lovell made us sugar sandwiches, which were made by buttering slices of white bread, sprinkling sugar on them and then folding them in half. Dad’s parents were wonderful, kind and generous people, even though they had little themselves, and treated Rusty and Brenda no different than any of their other grandchildren. 

Mom was working a good job at a vehicle part manufacturing plant, and had saved up enough money to buy a house. It was behind the Traverse City Airport, a light blue split-level on George Street, just a few miles from Grandma Otto’s. Brenda and I shared a room, Rusty had his own room, and Mom and her new husband, Floyd R. F. Long, aka Butch, had the third bedroom.  Whether or not that was just a rumor among family, I have no clue, nevertheless, they got married on July 26, 1973, three weeks before my 5th birthday.

I remember a little about the time surrounding the wedding, namely the day before and the day of. The day before the wedding we had packed up and gone to Maryland, as that’s where the wedding was to be held. An aunt of Butch’s was basically hosting the wedding and we were there early for a rehearsal. There was only one bathroom and someone wouldn’t let me in to pee so I ended up wetting myself. I recall being a little upset over that. Either before or possibly after that event, I stuck a bobby pin in an electrical outlet and got the shock of my life, which scared the heck out of me. Nobody had ever cautioned me about electricity before, but my actions didn’t have any long lasting effects that I’m aware of. I vaguely recall sightseeing at the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument on one of those days and just remember it wasn’t a very big wedding.

I was told on different occasions, of different men who were allegedly Rusty’s father. Although it has always been clear that it wasn’t my Dad, only a Genealogy test will ever fully clear up the mystery.  Mom’s version of it is that she and Butch met and she was pregnant by him before he shipped out overseas, and she married my dad shortly before Rusty was born. According to a couple of other sources within the family, Butch and Mom had met several years prior to his deployment, and maybe dated, but that she wasn’t pregnant with Butch’s baby, and named someone else as Rusty’s dad. The rest of the story followed along with what really happened as far as she and Dad marrying, his death, and her and Butch reconnecting years later. For a multitude of reasons, it is a touchy subject and one we just don’t talk about.

It was during the year I started kindergarten that I can begin to recall actual memories, albeit only a few, but my teacher at that time was not one of them. I don’t know why I can’t remember very many things from my childhood, and absolutely nothing before the year I turned 5. The few pleasant memories I have from that time mostly relate to sounds and smells, like Grandma Otto’s house on 3 Mile Road. She had several fish tanks with their continuous water filters and pumps humming and gurgling while Freddy Fender, Jose Feliciano, or Floyd Cramer records spun their melodies on her console model record player. She made the best spaghetti and grilled cheese sandwiches I had ever tasted. The sandwiches were so good because Grandma liked sauteed onions on hers and would first fry the onions and then grill the cheese sandwiches in the same skillet.

Grandma Otto’s homey 1-bedroom house was made of concrete blocks and painted a light pink outside, with knotty pine planks lining the inside walls, so there was always the underlying smell of wood as soon as you entered. It was a comforting smell to me and possibly the reason I am now such a fan of real wood furniture or really anything made of wood. Grandpa Otto, not Mom’s real father, was a wonderfully talented wood carver, and had turned the garage into his workshop. He had quite a plethora of tools, all arranged neatly with most of them labeled, on shelves and hooks lining the walls. There were prettier handmade shelves mounted throughout the living room with some of the most intricate scaled down versions of horses, wagons and trains, that he had carved and painted to look real. I don’t remember him at all because he died before I turned 5, but I’m told he loved us very much. 

For some backstory on Mom’s mother, Irene, I have to go back to when she was still a child. In that time doctors still came to your house if you were very sick. At eight years old she was stricken with polio.  Irene’s parents summoned the doctor and he came to check on her. After some examination, he told her parents that she probably wouldn’t live through the night. Of course she did, but one of her legs was affected and as she grew the leg’s growth didn’t keep up with the other. She had to have all of her shoes modified, doubling the sole of one, by a specific company in order to walk without the use of a cane. By the time I can begin to remember her, she had a slight limp and her affected leg was much stiffer than the other. It never slowed her down much because she always worked. She dropped out of school in the eighth grade so she could work and help her parents. In later years she often worked two jobs because, although Mom’s real dad worked for the railroad and made good money, he rarely spent any of it on his home or the family’s necessities.

Not long after starting kindergarten it became apparent to my teacher that I could not see well and she notified my mother that I probably needed to see an eye doctor. Of course, she was right and I got my first pair of glasses. I remember not liking them much at first but I got used to them quickly, even though I was basically labeled a nerd. I didn’t realize right away what was considered nerdy, but even after I figured it out, I really didn’t care.

There was a point a few months after moving in on George Street when Butch’s 15-year-old brother, Richard, was left to babysit us for an afternoon. He had been at the wedding and we had met him several times prior so I assume Mom trusted him. I first remember him suggesting we play hide and seek. We constructed a base in Rusty’s room out of a sheet and some chairs, which was essentially a make-shift tent. Sometime during the game, I made it to base where Richard was before Rusty or Brenda found me. Seconds after I reached base, I was shocked to realize Richard’s hand up the leg of my shorts. He didn’t penetrate me, probably because he was afraid there wasn’t enough time before he would be discovered by the other kids, but his hand was between my legs. I’m sure it was a deliberate act and not any kind of accident. Thankfully, the game ended soon after, for some reason. That was the first time I remember anything of a sexual nature being attempted on me by anyone. 

Butch had some odd quirks about him that are hard to forget. One was how much he detested black pepper. One day someone secretly put black pepper in with the salt, in the salt shaker. The shakers weren’t clear but simply labeled with a P for pepper and an S for salt. Just after sitting down for the next meal, Butch grabbed the salt shaker and shook it over his plate. He got irate when he immediately noticed pepper on his food. He then forbade us kids from eating and sent us to our rooms. We weren’t allowed to come out until someone confessed. I didn’t know anything about it and wasn’t prone to pulling pranks, and couldn’t figure out who would have done it. The next day Brenda told Mom and Butch that she had done it but that it was meant to be a joke. She was little, probably barely 4 years old, and did not yet realize how strange and mean he could be. There is also the possibility, after learning of Butch’s actions in later years, that he was the culprit and Brenda admitted to it so we wouldn’t be in trouble and would be able to eat.

On Halloween that year, all three of us kids came down with chicken pox. I guess it was bound to happen as we played together every day. We stood in the window upstairs in the living room and watched lots of dressed up kids and some parents go from house to house up and down the street, for hours. It was fairly warm for that time of the year, so we had the foyer door open and the screen door closed to keep bugs out. Someone ran up the walkway and threw a lit smoke bomb through the screen door. It burned a hole through it and the smoke bomb landed on the upper stairs, leaving a burn hole the size of a quarter and the house smelling like sulfur for weeks.

A month or so after Halloween, someone had the bright idea to put our dog, Boo, in the basement and allow her to have her puppies there. The next weeks were horrible because Butch decided that Rusty, Brenda and I should have to pick up all of the dog poop and then scrub, clean and dry the floor in the area where the dogs were, every week. So, there we were with buckets of hot soapy water and scrub brushes and towels, three kids 4-7 years old, cleaning up old and new puppy poop for what seemed like forever. It was disgusting and smelled awful and I wanted nothing more than to rub it in Butch’s face.

One morning we were having oatmeal for breakfast. For some reason, I decided that I didn’t want to finish my oatmeal and refused to eat it. Butch said it would be in the fridge, and until I ate all of it, I couldn’t have anything else to eat. I didn’t want it, especially cold, and was very stubborn so I tried to hold out for as long as I could. Lunchtime came and went and supper too, but I wouldn’t touch it. The next morning was a replay of the day before and I held my resolve through lunch, but by supper time the second day I was finally hungry enough to eat it.  

Butch had 2 daughters from a previous relationship, Jeannie* and Sherrie*. They lived in Wisconsin with their mother, and were around the same ages as Brenda and I. There were a few times they came to visit their dad, although he didn’t really spend much time with them or do anything with them. They were there during the summer, usually for about two or three weeks, and then again for a week or so at Christmas time. They seemed like nice enough girls but we had to share our room with them when they came. Their mother never sent them any warm clothes or jackets so Brenda and I usually shared our clothes with them while they were visiting. I really can’t remember much about them or interacting with them, but I have seen pictures of all of us kids taken at successive Christmases when I was 5 and 6. 

Halfway through the school year, Butch got transferred to a naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, so we moved there into a large apartment complex, and rented out our house. I only have a vague recollection of the time we lived in Norfolk. I was still in kindergarten and again don’t remember my teacher but I do remember walking down the sidewalk outside of a school (maybe ours) surrounded by a chain link fence with a girl who had really long pigtails. I think she was a classmate, and I walked with her to her grandfather’s apartment where he gave us some kind of cookies. I don’t remember how I got home, our apartment, or anything else that happened while we lived in Virginia.

After about a year, Butch’s assignment was changed again and we moved back to Traverse City. The family that was renting our house weren’t prepared to move out so we had to rent another place to live. We moved into a 4-bedroom, two-story house on Chums Corner. Brenda and I shared a room upstairs (Brenda and I always shared a room) and Mom and Butch had a room upstairs separated from our room by a bathroom. A spare room upstairs was used for storage, and Rusty’s room was at the foot of the stairs. I vaguely recall him always being creeped out by the bushes outside his window being blown by the wind, which he thought was a man with a hat on, watching him. This house had 2 bathrooms, which I had never seen before.  The front door opened into a large sunroom and the single door to the right led to a large eat-in kitchen. Rusty’s room and the stairs leading to the second floor were just off the back of the kitchen, and to the left off the kitchen was a large living room, 1/2 bath, and an open room beyond where we kept all of our toys. I remember stealing the dog's Rawhides and their dog food and eating it. I don’t remember if it was because I was hungry or not, because I was actually getting used to that, but Rusty and Brenda often joined me. We would find a place to hide and eat dry dog food, which I now find very odd.

I was in first grade at Oak Park Elementary and my teacher was Ms. Slater. She was probably in her late 50’s with short, curly, dark salt-and-pepper hair, and seemed petite. She was nice and I really liked her a lot. My best friend was Pamela and I used to go to her house after school every couple weeks. She lived in another part of town with her mother and sister, Mary. Her mother would usually come to pick me up but Mom took me to their house sometimes. I remember it being fun and I was always eager to go but can’t remember anything in particular that we did.

I guess our family must have lived on Chums Corner for about a year before we moved again. This move was to State Street, about 4 blocks from our school. This was also a two-story house, but with a rough partial basement with an opening in the back that didn’t seem quite high enough for a garage. The house had 3-bedrooms, 1 downstairs and 2 up, and a bathroom on each floor. Us kids had the upstairs rooms, both had sloping ceilings on opposite sides. The house was pale green and sat on a narrow lot close to the street, giving us a big back yard but almost no front and little side lawn.

I was walking by myself one day on the sidewalk in front of the house next door, which was on the corner of our block, when a van drove up to the stop sign in front of me. The side door slid open and a lady sitting in the back seat started asking me questions about directions. She appeared to be in her early or late 30’s. I said I didn’t know how to get anywhere and the lady just sat there silent. I stood there for a few seconds before a strange feeling came over me and I turned around and ran home.  I’m pretty sure they were about to abduct me.

Our neighborhood was full of a lot of mean kids who appeared to be in some sort of gang. We saw some of them walking around in groups beginning the day after we moved in. One afternoon a boy from this lot of kids just walked up to me asked me if I wanted a sucker. Before I could react, he reached out and put a wad of tar disguised as a Charms Blow Pop in my waist length hair and twisted it all up, and then walked off laughing. It took Mom washing my hair multiple times with a bug and tar remover made for vehicles, to get it all out. Another day, a few boys from the gang ran Rusty down and beat him up in our next-door neighbor’s front yard while we were on our way home from school. A few weeks later, 7 or 8 kids from the gang cornered Brenda in our back yard and forced her into the back of the basement to fight with an older girl from their group. They made Rusty and I stand there and watch Brenda get beat up and since they were all older and bigger, we could do nothing to help her. There were other incidents of them bullying us, trying to get money from us, or taking our bikes. They were just a bunch of little thugs that took every opportunity to make our lives miserable.

My second grade teacher was Ms. Kayle and I didn’t like her at all. She was prim and proper and seemingly unconcerned about her students. She wasn’t nice or friendly and was rather snobby, in my opinion. She was nothing like Ms. Slater, whom I adored, but I managed to make it through the school year without getting in trouble. I still got to see Ms. Slater sometimes in the hall or at lunch, and she would always ask how I was doing and seemed interested in me learning.

We continued to rent out the George Street house while living on State Street for about a year, until just a couple months before my eighth birthday. I was distraught to learn that we would soon be moving to Tennessee. I was devastated at the thought of it and didn’t want to go at all. None of us kids wanted to move to another state, although we did want to move out of that neighborhood. We were told the move was happening because of a great job opportunity with a power plant there. Two years prior, Butch had finished out the basement of our house on George Street, so it was sold, for a profit. The next thing I remember is the day we were leaving and saying goodbye to my grandparents. I had never been so sad and couldn’t stop crying. It seemed to me like the world had ended but I don’t recall if any of the rest of the family was upset or not, because I was too wrapped up in my own sorrow to notice.

We left around the middle of July, 1976. The trip to Tennessee seemed like it took forever. We rented the largest moving van that U-Haul offered. It was packed to the hilt with our belongings and Butch drove it while Mom drove our station wagon pulling a small open trailer with our bikes and a motorcycle. Us kids were in the back of the station wagon on a mattress. After just a few hours of driving, in the town of Niles, Michigan, a tire blew out on the trailer causing it to flip over and our bikes were strewn all over the road. After a couple of hours, we were back on the road for the remainder of the boring trip.

When we arrived in Savannah, Tennessee, we were dismayed to find that the house we were buying was still occupied by the Fultz family and it would be several weeks before they would have all of their things moved out. In the meantime, we had nowhere to live, so we rented a campsite at the Pickwick Landing State Park and pitched a tent. The park was only about six or seven miles from our soon-to-be new house. We camped there at Pickwick for three weeks before we were able to move into the house. It rained almost every day during those three weeks so we were unable to do much of anything outside. We usually stayed in our tent and played quiet games, but I remember being bored most of the time. It was an odd existence