Misery Traps: The American Family

By Sharon Washington

I believe that the Family Safety Net Act could be to raising kids in America what the Civil Rights Movement is to minorities.

The legislation will mandate that every fit parent have equal access to their kids—automatic joint custody, co-parenting is insufficient—with the best interests of the child at the heart of the legislation, regardless of the status of the relationship of the parents, with primary custody initially granted to the mother. No more fathers begging to see their kids. It’s time.

The key is fit. The adults must have the capacity to parent free of drug abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse and to establish a home that is free of such maltreatment. It is time.

In addition, since America is about enterprise—working to support self and family and fulfilling dreams within the legal framework of this country—the parents and our educational institutions must model that behavior so every student steps into adulthood with a plan to support themselves, for the only way we will triumph over this nebulous future is to launch with the genuine love and support of as many friends and family we can muster together and to have the confidence from preparation to work and/or pursue dreams.

I am for kids.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646543045

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Misery Traps

The American Family

Sharon Washington

Copyright © 2020 Sharon Washington

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books, Inc.

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2020

ISBN 978-1-64654-303-8 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64654-304-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

In the Beginning

It’s Time

I Put Everyone in Danger

Hell Hath No Fury

Family Safety Net Act

Hide the Drugs in the Baby’s Diaper

Alcoholism

The Ugly Truth

The Girl Who Broke Me

The Elusive, Furtive, Coveted Creatures Called Men

The Moneyed Fight Over Kids

Locking Up the Son…or Daughter…or Mom!

Incest

Make a Baby, Pay for a Baby

A Person of Interest

The Family Safety Net Act—In Conclusion

Subsidized Housing

Women are Capable

The Family Safety Net

Fathers Asking for Help

Hope! The Magic Potion

My Career

The High School Diploma is Obsolete

My Family

The Things I am Grateful For

Prologue

I learned as a kid that it is possible to do everything right, day after day after day, a thousand times over, be the best kid, wife, husband, mother, father, boyfriend, girlfriend—fill in the blank—and still not get the results that you want. It’s called free will. People do exactly what they want, whether it is good/bad, right/wrong, moral/immoral. The only person you have any control over is you. You can’t make anybody do anything they don’t want to do. It’s life.

Or I am a Christian. Jesus didn’t say that he won’t save everybody; he said that he can’t. He gave everyone free will. So why do any of us think that we have greater powers than he? All we can do is the best we can so we can look God in the face and say, I did everything possible. It is the human condition. It is who we are.

Renee@_alexan (Twitter) said, Forgive someone who isn’t sorry and accept the apology they would not give. I say from some people, there is no apology and there never will be. I am augmenting a little bit. You cannot build your life around an apology they never give. Don’t expect it. People do things sometimes that don’t make sense—things that don’t even benefit them. Instead move on, be the best you can be, do good things, and be grateful for what you have every day. Or they win.

Kid, child, students represents either a single child or multiple siblings.

The single parent for the most part represents the mother but could be the father.

Father could designate multiple fathers representing multiple children in a home.

Some names, settings and details have been changed for privacy.

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

Angst grabbed me. I tensed up. Fear, anger, confusion coiled around my neck like a chokehold.

I had to get out of here…how could they do that to me? Where would I go? I was a good kid…I would be on the street…I didn’t know anybody…how was I going to live? All sorts of chaotic images popped in my head of me trying to live on the streets…crazy, scary stuff.

These people…in an instant, that’s who they became. These people were trying to destroy me. I was a good kid.

Then the voice said, The best revenge…

I grabbed hold of that. Revenge—yes! Yes! I hung on for dear life. That’s what they deserve—revenge! A knotty grittiness started to consume me—a hardness.

The best revenge! is to have the best life possible.

Yes! that was it!

I knew instinctively I had made it. That was the pivotal point. I would be okay. Peace washed over me. I had a plan now. I was a tenth, eleventh grader.

I was also a reader. I read lots of fiction. I do not remember reading about incest or hearing anyone talk about it. I’m not even sure I knew what incest meant. But I knew instinctively that it was wrong, that my father knew it was wrong, but he didn’t give a damn. I was not a victim. I was not a survivor because I resisted. He barely touched my body. I wasn’t groped enough to file charges. I knocked his hands away. He left me alone.

But I was also imbued with instant wisdom. You could be the best kid on the planet—I was a straight A kid, and I wasn’t trying to sneak drugs, cigarettes, or sex. I did what I was told. But it wasn’t enough for my parents to do the right thing. I did not deserve that, nor did I cause that. You cannot make people love you. I got that too. And I was on my own except for the voice. I didn’t identify the voice as God until later. My family never went to church. But the voice was clear, erudite and there for me.

I also intuitively knew that hundreds of thousands of kids succumbed. I did not. I don’t know why. I resisted, and so many kids in the same situation did not. However, I was not forced out of my home afterward. I am so very grateful for that. It was the difference between life and death. Statistics say most of the runaways are from abuse—kids who are so traumatized that they have no choice but to leave for the brutal streets or be continually abused. And nobody in the family gave a damn. Worse, the victim is often shunned by the extended family. But I knew then I had to get out of the house as soon as possible. I was a constant reminder to them of their sins. If they would do that to me, then what else would they do? Because I just didn’t survive—I made it! I had to not just help but try to save other kids, show them that they could have a good life despite their parents. I would become a teacher. I had no choice.

As one of the members at my church said, God had you go through that so you can help other kids. A pastor at a different church had a different take.

He said, Why do people blame God? Blame the devil. Blame evil.

I have never said to the few people who I talked with about the incident that I came up with this plan… Blah! Blah! Blah! because it wasn’t true. Though I didn’t know where the voice came from, I listened. The voice was clear with capital letters, end punctuation, a plan, a good plan, more than what I had at the time. I was just grateful, so very, very grateful.

What I Remember

I don’t remember much. My family was in the military. We traveled a lot. At some point, the cities were indistinguishable—streetlights and highways, bigger buildings downtown. But as a military kid, that nondistinction was normal. I didn’t know you were supposed to live someplace for an extended time and have childhood friends. I was in three high schools in three years. But I knew my mother was deeply depressed. She sat on the couch, knitted or crocheted, and drank every day. I didn’t know it was alcohol. I didn’t know anything about alcohol until I was an adult. I never smelled anything. I caught her staggering once. Didn’t know what it meant. I remember my mother saying maybe ten things total to me during my entire childhood. That’s it. That was depression. It sucks the life out of you, out of your environment like weight holding everything down. It’s living in a void of nothingness—the nothingness that sucks the life out of the adults, the kids, their childhood, out of everything.

My childhood memories are few. My first memory was being on a bicycle? My father was worried about some test he had to take—whether he would do well, be placed in a field he did not want. I was smart, I thought. I said, Just mess up the test. Something to that effect. I don’t remember his response.

I loved to read. It was my salvation. I was in some elementary school reading event. I remember vaguely being on stage. I think at the old Vet’s Memorial in Columbus, Ohio. My mother made me a beautiful blue velvet dress. I don’t remember the outcome of the contest. Thank goodness for my books.

I had three younger brothers. One Christmas, I announced that I saw Santa Claus’s boot. We sneaked downstairs. One of my brothers said he saw Santa leave. It was Christmas Eve because gifts were under the tree. I don’t remember what my brothers got or what my parents gave each other if anything. I don’t remember celebrating anybody’s birthday. I don’t remember birthday cakes (I am not saying that we did not have them) or interacting with my brothers in games or having fun, other than fighting once over who was the boss when my parents were gone. Of course, I was the boss. I never saw my mother or father smile, laugh, express joy. I just remember the emptiness of living in a void. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, but going through the motions of caretaking the body and school, eating, sleeping. And for me…reading.

I want to stress that that was okay with me until I became aware of the source of my mother’s depression, and of course, until the incident. I thought every home was like mine.

We lived in Okinawa for a minute. I remember a long flight, having a maid once where we were housed, and ocean beaches. Once back in the States, we were in Illinois. I was afraid to cross a bridge over a river to get to school. My dad walked me over in the morning, walked me back after school. Eventually I got brave and walked across the bridge all by myself. Then off to California, where my dad pointed out a ship on the beach horizon. He said it was a spy ship. The beach was beautiful and vacant. I think there were seals. I don’t remember my mother being there. There was no warm connection among us—my parents or siblings. Maybe it was just me—the oldest and the only girl. I thought that was normal.

I remember my mother straightening my hair. I remember my mother pointing out a woman to me. She said, Your dad is running around with that gray woman. I learned grey meant white. She said, Gray women have as much problems with their hair as we do.

Whatever house we lived in, it was clean and decorated (in one house, my mother made slipcovers and one room somewhere was painted yellow). We had good food—no complaints—and steady utilities. My dad at some point took a second job as a vacuum clean salesman. Somewhere a girl in a neighborhood pulled my hair. I don’t remember why. I chased her into her house. She was faster than me. I couldn’t catch her.

Then one day, while my mother knitted/crocheted on the couch, out of the blue she said, My father beat my mother. I got it. She hated him. I saw my grandparents once. The grandmother was Native American with braids down her waist. The man was a bald black man, dark. One or both grandparents were toothless. I didn’t know we were supposed to have a relationship with them, but I didn’t really want to know a man who beat my mother’s mother. I didn’t see her as a grandmother. That sort of relationship was not encouraged.

Both of my parents hated their parents. Of course, my mom hated her dad. I began to understand my mother’s despair. There are tons of research detailing the destruction from domestic violence on kids. My father hated his family because of a dispute over a will—the money went to an older male to be a doctor. I don’t remember meeting him. I met one aunt and a cousin on his side. I didn’t get that we were supposed to be a family too. My mother had a sister she called on the phone. I don’t remember seeing her.

As I alluded to, I lived in my books. I got lots of books to read as gifts. I remember getting books handed to me—don’t remember if they were wrapped. It didn’t matter. I read about pirates, mysteries, lots of books about the original colonists coming to America. Little did I know the colonists would become one of the cornerstones of my life.

The colonists? Sounds hokey. When I became a teacher in the future, I had to show the kids that their lives weren’t ruined because of their parents. I was responsible for my life in this country. I was amazed that ordinary people like me—the colonists—sometimes the poorest of the lot, gave up everything they had to come to America, and many died struggling for the dream to have the best life possible. Some were sentenced to come to America like prisoners. In America, they were responsible for their lives, not the mother, the father, the king, your auntie. If your life sucks, that is your fault. I would be a teacher because I lived in America. I could make that dream come true in this country. My family was in the military, and the military consisted of all ethnicities, and it was good. My books told me the rest. Below is an excerpt similar to what I read about colonists coming to America for a better life:

During the voyage there is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of seasickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth rot, and the like, all of which come from old and sharply-salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water, so that many die miserably…

Add to this want of provisions, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, anxiety, want, afflictions and lamentations, together with other trouble, as e.g., the lice abound so frightfully, especially on sick people, that they can be scraped off the body. The misery reaches a climax when a gale rages for two or three nights and days, so that everyone believes that the ship will go to the bottom with all human beings on board. In such a visitation the people cry and pray most piteously.

No one can have an idea of the sufferings which women in confinement have to bear with their innocent children on board these ships. Few of this class escape with their lives; many a mother is cast into the water with her child as soon as she is dead. One day, just as we had a heavy gale, a woman in our ship, who was to give birth and could not give birth under the circumstances, was pushed through a loophole (porthole) in the ship and dropped into the sea, because she was far in the rear of the ship and could not be brought forward.

Children from one to seven years rarely survive the voyage; and many a time parents are compelled to see their children miserably suffer and die from hunger, thirst, and sickness, and then to see them cast into the water. I witnessed such misery in no less than thirty-two children in our ship, all of whom were thrown into the sea. The parents grieve all the more since their children find no resting place in the earth but are devoured by the monsters of the sea. It is a notable fact that children who have not yet had the measles or smallpox generally get them on board the ship, and mostly die of them (Eyewitness to History.com, 2019)

I know that this is not back in the day, that there is a different work ethic now for some of us. But emigrant students who legally come to this country, research says, often outperform their American counterparts. That our society struggles with getting kids to schools and some adults to work—probably a characteristic of all societies of largess.

Nonetheless, I am sure that when some of the colonists arrived in America, the East Coast was probably ganged up by then—someone looked around and said, There is no king and anointed himself king. The arriving colonists looked around at the filth, the overcrowded city, extortion claims, and said, I’m out of here. I didn’t travel this far for nothing. I left this. Out of money, some of them threw Granny and the babies in a raggedy covered wagon; the rest walked to Pennsylvania, Ohio, maybe Kansas—walked! That’s how bad they wanted a better life.

I got it over and over. It was my responsibility to do well in school, stay out of jail, not pick a bum. If people left their homeland, traveled months on treacherous seas, arrived in America, chose to travel West, faced the elements to have the best life possible, I could do my bit, go to school, do well, etc. I would be a teacher because I was in America. I could make that happen. Even though I was a black kid, it never occurred to me that I could not be a teacher. The plan was doable—to get out of the house ASAP and become a teacher.

Before the incident, I was going to be a teacher, a nurse, a secretary, or airline stewardess. That’s what women did, particularly black women. I was not brave. I was not encouraged to do anything else, nor did I expect to be. But after the incident, there was purpose and urgency to become a teacher.

Later

One day, while knitting/crocheting on a couch, my mom (I was nearby reading) said out of the blue, "I gave up nursing school for this (heavy emphasis on this)." I got it, nothing personal. I was a good kid. I don’t remember being on punishment or being yelled at. I wasn’t out doing the teenage rumspringa. I did what I was told. I had a crush on a boy who didn’t know I was alive. (My adult friends said lucky me. That is where they messed up.) But we kids meant nothing to her. Being married was a disappointment. She left an abusive home married into a lifeless home. Her life brought no joy. She went through the motions of being a wife, a mother. Everyday life was torturous. Maybe that was not her intention, but that was the collateral damage she inflicted. My immediate interpretation and lesson was (you don’t have to smack me twice) that I needed to get a job, keep the job, have my own money, don’t give up on my dreams, and don’t place my entire future in the hands of any man.

As an adult black woman in the sixties, maybe her only option was if my mother did not become a nurse, nanny, teacher, or secretary, it was to marry well. She did marry relatively well, from what I know. He didn’t beat her. (I wasn’t aware of it if he were.) He worked two jobs. But my mother’s man ran around on her. The ultimate betrayal—sacrifice your life for your man, and it means nothing. This was the best she could do to compensate for a miserable childhood—living as a paltry military wife life with a meager salary (the military compensates by providing housing and a commissary) with a man who ran around on her. Somehow, I got wind of the fact that she began running around on him too. For a black woman, leaving your husband, I assume, was suicide. Her father, if he were still alive, probably would not let her in, nor did she want to go back to those hellish memories. Maybe he beat her, too, and she did not want to share that. I guess her sister had no room or money to feed us. No one did. My mother at least had the dignity of being a wife, a kept woman in the obscure sense. The comparison was always to that of white women—her gilded cage, a stay-at-home mom, not a miserly hourly paid black maid. Maybe she was doing the best she could, hanging on to life by a thread every day.

Later On

One day I saw Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea on television—the precursor to my obsession with layman science. On the show, there were human beings with defective character traits that manifested themselves into unworldly creatures. The environment became sentient and mutated to protect itself against human onslaught. Of course, there were the usual sci-fi panoply of aliens, off-world in unexplored oceans, time travel, and cyborgs. But it was new to me.

I was so captivated that I believed I visualized the first avatar. I had to just to pretend to be one of the characters on the show. I don’t remember seeing black people on the show, but that didn’t stop me. I dreamed up Carol Sue, me, disguised as a beautiful white woman with blue eyes and blond hair on the Seaview submarine, partnering with the incredibly gorgeous Lee Crane. What a hunk! We were a team. In one dream, he and I were fighting the Rockman. On another episode, the Seaview submarine surfaced. He and I were on the bridge, subsumed in the beautiful ocean panorama as beautiful as our platonic, sexless, lust-at-a-distance romance. I was naive.

The program wasn’t just science fiction to me; it was science future. There were also miraculous human cures for every physical and mental ailment, and the multiple times the Seaview crew saved the world instead of focusing on new machinations to destroy it. Of course, there were planets and civilizations yet to be discovered and explored. I knew then that our journey in this real world—mankind’s collective journey—had just begun and was far more mesmerizing than anything we had done, and that space travel was worthy of human endeavor. There was something for everyone more stimulating than just greed, power, and lust. It blew my mind is an empty metaphor. I became alive, titillated, stunned at the possibilities, and to use the cliché, the world was brand-new.

From that point on, even now, I read science. When I pass a semitruck on the open highway, each time I am amazed at the science behind a single truck driver being able to haul a semitruck filled with tons of material across the country effortlessly. I marvel at the simplicity of bird flight. I have seen my arms, my hands, my fingers for the automatous limbs they are and the magic of rotary motion that allows us to pick up a penny. Music is a gift that titillates…where? in the brain. I wonder at How are we here? and What are we? As is attributed to Einstein, everything is a miracle or nothing at all. And of the course the ubiquitous nothing from nothing is nothing. Therefore, God…

I had stars in my eyes, and still do. I watched mainly nothing on television but sci-fi for years.

I was young, just beginning to start life, and because I saw the world as a myriad of choices, and many of them good because of science, I saw a life far more intriguing than any of the usual crap that went on in my high schools: sneaking liquor, sneaking sex, stealing cigarettes. More intriguing than the fact that I had no friends at school, no extended family relationships, or even immediate family relationships. I don’t remember talking to my brothers about anything. But learning about humanity’s potential compensated for everything. I would never end up like my mother. Why should I or anyone? I wanted to live! I focused on her because she was in the house all the time, and she was female like me.

Sometime During my Tenth to Eleventh Year

I was reading, of course, laid back on a couch, a chair? My father came in. I looked up at him. He was uniformed, his military hat sideways. I was naive. I didn’t know that the sideways angle was a sign of intoxication. He came over to where I was leaned over me. Out of the blue, he reached down and touched my breast. I was fully clothed. The contact was as minimal as it could be to be considered contact. I batted his hand away just like that. It was instinct like batting away a wasp. I don’t remember reading about incest. As an adult, one of my counselors asked me, Where did I get the strength? I thought the question odd. But I have always responded that I didn’t understand why other girls old enough to know what was going on didn’t resist. Then I would turn to science, cup my hand like a cell. If you poke a cell under a microscope with a sharp instrument, it will recoil in self-defense.

I sat up, laid my book down, faced my assailant. My father looked at me for a minute with his tilted crazy hat, reached for me again. This time he never got close to my body. I batted his hand away