A Push in the Wrong Direction

By Jane Judah

A Push in the Wrong Direction was a very hard book to write. It's about the struggles in the first half of my life. If I can, I'll finish my second book about the second half of my life and share that also. Enjoy this book please.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781644683606

Book preview

1

The beginning of a book is always boring to me, especially when it is about yourself. I’ve decided that we will just have to be bored because I have spent to many years already trying to make the beginning not boring.

I was born far enough North to be called a Yankee. My brothers, Ralph and Bill, were five and three years old. I don’t know if we were living up North at the time or if we were visiting my grandparents. Dad was in the service, so we traveled around a lot. He might have even been overseas when I was born.

My first memory was at the age of three, when I became very sick. I was at a nursery for children, and I remember the lady there had to call my parents to come get me. When they arrived, I started to cry. That’s all I remember. I found out later that I had scarlet fever. It was my first recovery from near death. From what I’ve been told, I was pretty close to dying.

As I look back, I remember the many fights that Mom and Dad had. I don’t even understand why they got married. One bad fight I recall is the one that led Dad to make arrangements for Mom to get a lobotomy. What happened was only what a four- or five-year-old could remember.

There was a butcher knife and a lot of yelling. My two brothers were upstairs taking a bath, and I still don’t know where I was to begin with. I ended up in the bathtub with Ralph and Bill. Mom had picked me up and was trying to drown me under the water, and then she was going to do Ralph and Bill too, telling Dad that she was going to kill us. She had already gone at him with the knife, but he got it away from her. I guess she decided to get us kids since she couldn’t get Dad. Somebody came and took Mom away.

I can’t recall how long Mom was away, but I remember when she came home. While she was gone, I was staying at some people’s house. I don’t know if my brothers were there too or not. I know that some girl there was trying to teach me my ABCs. I must have done well with them because Dad was proud. He even held me in his lap while I said them.

The day Mom came home, boy, that was something else. She looked awful. Both her eyes were so black that I can still see them. When Dad picked me up from the people that I was staying with, he had just gotten Mom from the hospital. I saw those big black eyes and blank look. Mom didn’t seem as happy to see me, as I was to see her. All I was told for many years was that Mom had been sick, but since then she was better. I knew I had lost her forever though, and I was right.

They said things would be better, but they lied. Mom and Dad still fought. I’m not sure, but I think this is when she started drinking too much. Dad was gone a lot overseas, and Mom was drunk a lot. I think she was running around on Dad. When he was home, he would dress us kids and take us to church. We would go to church with Dad and say bye to figure why we had to go to church and Mom didn’t. There was always a fight between them about this.

My parents separated a lot. They seemed to fight a lot about who would get me. When Dad would locate where Mom and take the three of us, he would just say, Boys, get in the car. I would never go because I couldn’t figure why we weren’t all going. The only way Dad could ever get me to go was to say he was going to buy me ice cream and that we would come back later. I’ll never forget those ice creams. Sometimes I would look for Dad to find us, so I could get that ice cream.

Anyway, by the time I was six years old, they were divorced, and Ralph, Bill, me, and Mom were on a train bound for our grandparents’ trailer.

2

It wasn’t long before Mom had us a new dad. Jim was his name. He had a house in our same hometown. He also had a sixteen-year-old daughter, Sharon. She must not have been able to handle that new situation because she ran away to get married. I think it was close to a year that everything was kind of alright regarding the home life. I say alright, but I’m remembering the bad times. Sharon and my brothers use to really pick on me. What was worse was Mom and Jim never believed me that they really picked on me.

One night, I broke loose from them and went walking up town to the bar to find Mom and Jim. I knew right where to find them. As luck would have it, I saw them walking home. I just knew that I was in trouble, because it was really late, and I shouldn’t be out like that. They spotted me first and called out to me. I told them that I was not lying that I was being hurt at home, and I was going with them so I won’t get hurt.

I wish I had never said that. They started to take me with them every night then. There was one night the police came and took Jim away, and he never came back. I learned some years later that he had robbed some place. I recall now that great big house we were staying at. Who those people were I still don’t know. I didn’t like it that Jim was gone because he was the only one who took up for me. I was sadder than I remember. Then what was worse, Mom said that our father had called and was coming to get us. She sat the three of us together and asked us if we wanted to go live with him. Ralph said he would. Bill said he would. I never did answer. How come that was happening? Why couldn’t we all go home again? I was tired of that! Those were thoughts that I was having.

I had to make a plan of action. I had to make it by myself because Ralph and Bill were traitors and going away. I hated everything and everybody then. At that big house before Ralph and Bill left, I went to the attic. I looked at everybody playing out in the yard. My brothers were going to be gone, and I was scared. They always knew how to find us something to eat when we were hungry. They could even steal gloves for us in the winter. I didn’t want them to go. I also didn’t know how to tell anyone that verbally. I got into that attic window at age eight because I thought that if I jumped out, maybe they would stay. I never considered the fact that I could have died believed that I would have made it. (One more death escape).

The kids outside spotted me and came running up there. I don’t know where Sharon came from, but she was the one that talked me out of the window. I came out and lay down and covered my face because I heard someone say that I just wanted attention because they wouldn’t let me play with them. That wasn’t true, people. If any of you kids that were there are now reading this, that incident was never mentioned for years, until I mentioned it to a dear friend of mine.

Somewhere, somehow, I heard that our dad was in town, and he had his wife with him. I knew I wasn’t going because Mom told me what was going on. She had written to Dad and asked him to take the boys but not me. That’s what happened. I never saw Dad. I think that was planned because Mom didn’t want me to go. Since that night, my brothers were gone, and I didn’t remember getting to say good-bye to them at all. They were gone.

3

The next year was more sadness. Mom had a new boyfriend, Howard. She also had a new baby boy whom was Jim’s baby. His name was Jimmy. It was me, Jimmy, Howard, and Mom then. I was the babysitter while Mom and Howard went out. We had an apartment right in the middle of town.

School was terrible. I felt so scared and alone since Ralph and Bill were gone. Ralph was the one that explained to me what my grades were on my report cards. Even though he was gone, it didn’t take long for me to understand that the Us were failing. What I don’t understand, now that I’m grown, is why nobody told me I was failing or tried to find out why.

There was a man named Ed, who I think was a friend of Mom’s. He started coming around to see us a lot. Then he asked if he could take me to the toy store. He started to do this quite often. First, we would go get a steak dinner, and then off to the toy store. I mean I could get anything I wanted. I never had toys so many. I found out why he was doing this.

We went to his house one day because he forgot his money. That’s when it happened. He pulled me to him and stuck his tongue in my mouth. I thought he was going to hurt me. I still kicked and yelled to go home. He said he would take me home if I promised not to tell. I promised. He took me home, and I never told. I refused to go off with him again. Mom wanted to know why and all I said was I had all the toys I could possibly play with. This was understood, and I never saw him again.

One day I came home from school, and there was a man and woman there packing up my little brother’s clothes. They said Mom sent them to get me, but I refused to go. They did not make me. Mom didn’t come home that night.

I stayed home from school, waiting for Mom. During the day, I got hungry. There was nothing to eat, so I decided to go steal me a hotdog from the stand across the street. I put on my snowsuit and set out to do just that. It must have been around lunch time, cause as I was crouched down behind the hotdog stand to make my move, I saw my teacher in her car, and I knew she saw me. Really quickly, I grabbed my hotdog, and ran home through the alleyways.

Mom came home sometime during the night because she was there when I got up. She wrote me an excuse from school that says that I was out sick with a cold. When I got to school, I handed the note to my teacher. She just took it, and she looked at me after she read it.

During the day, we had to read something about Germany and their music then write down in our own words about what we read. I read it and started to write what I read. I was doing it the way I had been doing it in first through third grades. I tried to rearrange the words that the book said into smaller words because I didn’t know how to even pronounce the big words. Before we were finished, the teacher was walking around the room, looking at some of our work. She started to come my way, and I got scared.

I never had been talked to on a one-on-one basis with any of my teachers before. She came and took what I had written and read it. I knew she was coming, so I wrote a few of those big words to make it look good. She handed me back my paper and told me to stand up and read it to the class. I stood up and started to read. Then I came to one of those big words. I tried and I tried almost to the point of tears. Finally, she took the paper from me and said she had told us to write our own words. Did I not hear her? She really gave it to me. Her closing words were that she was sure glad I got better from my cold so fast. I said the wrong thing. I said thank you. Then it came out. She knew I wasn’t sick. She had seen me out in the snow the day before at lunch time. She let the whole class know that that was against the law, and that she could have me sent away to a school that I couldn’t even go home from and get locked in a room. Also, my mother could go to jail for writing that note which said that I was sick.

If I weren’t in front of the whole class, I would have really cried. As it was, I cried softly. She was so mean that half of the class was crying. I thought I was fixing to go to jail. The little boy sitting next to me patted me on the arm after I was allowed to sit down. She said it didn’t matter that my brothers had gone to another state to live my father. I still had to go to school. I believe, if she hadn’t scare me so badly, I would have told her that my mom was gone, and I didn’t know where she was or what to do.

That was my last day of school the rest of the year. When I got home, Mom said we were moving the next day to a big farm, and she knew that I would like it. She wrote me a note for school, telling them that we were moving and I was checking out. I was excited and told Mom that I still had time to ride my bike back to school and take my books that same day. The principal was still there and was the one that I had to give the note to. Mom said I could, and I pedaled that bike as hard as I could. I made it in time. I gave the principal my note and books, and he asked me where my mother was. I told him we were moving in the morning to where my brothers were and I could ride my bike there faster than she could walk, so that was why I went alone. He said okay, and I checked out. That teacher wasn’t going to get me after all.

4

When I got home, Mom and Howard were there getting packed. The plans had changed. We were moving to a trailer, and little Jimmy was going to be with us too.

It seems like we rode forever to get to that trailer our first nigh there. I babysat, and Mom and Howard went out. It was getting late and I couldn’t make Jimmy go to sleep, so I tried to make him a chair at the table with me while I sat there. I had a hard time tying him with diapers to the chair so he would not fall. I just got finished tying him securely when I heard the screeching of car tires. I decided that the trailer park was noisy. Much to my surprise, it was Howard. He came running in the trailer, telling me to get Jimmy and myself ready. We had to get out of there. I asked where we were going.

We got in the car so fast. I knew something was most definitely wrong. Howard finally told me. Dad was in town, and he wasn’t leaving without me. I was really confused. My dad wasn’t a bad guy, yet everyone seemed to think he was. When we got to the farm, I got to see Mom just briefly. She told me that we had to hide or else Dad was going to make me go with him. There was someone at every window with a gun or a weapon of some kind.

Then it happened. They yelled that he was there. I was to go upstairs with Jimmy and hide under the bed, and I did just that. I didn’t hear any guns go off and I didn’t hear any yelling. I decided that, if they weren’t going to really fight, I would. If anyone were to come and get me under that bed and tell me that I had to go with Dad, then I was going to yell and get a gun and start fighting. I was so tired of not being able to figure out why people lived like this.

It seemed like forever. Finally, someone yelled that it was okay. He was gone. I think that’s when my Mom got her subpoena to go to court from my father.

We stayed there for a long time. Nobody ever found us or even tried. Every day, I went walking out in the woods. Like they said, it was a farm. There was nothing there but all kinds of woods and sometimes people, sometimes just me, Mom, and Jimmy.

I don’t know how long we had been there, but again, it was time to move on. I was taken to my grandparents’ trailer early one morning. I knew that something was up because I had to put on a boy’s yellow raincoat to hide.

What happened was this. The first time Dad came to get me, he didn’t have any grounds to get me legally. He had to hire a detective or someone to do some investigating. A man took my picture late one night while I was walking my dog. I’m sure he was sent by Dad because he had on a suit and had a big camera. Why else would he want my picture? I probably looked just like one of those street kids, dirty and in rags and hungry. I also hadn’t gone back to school. That was plenty of grounds for Dad to get me.

Anyway, on the way to my grandparents’, wearing the yellow raincoat, I felt like I had done something really bad the way I was being hidden all this time. Why were they doing that anyway? I hardly ever got to see my mom.

We finally got to their trailer, and Grandpa was at work. I wished he was home. He would have stopped all that junk right now. I couldn’t wait for him to get home. I bet it would be alright then.

I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa for a while. Just how long? I can’t remember. I couldn’t even go outside unless Grandpa was home. I sat at the table with him and his beer every night. We would just sit there, and when I got to catch his