Never Say Uncle: A Novel Based on a True Story

By Cherie Lewis

Cherie Lewis has created a captivating read that is a page-turner and a book that will be hard to put down. Being as intensely private as she is talented, Cherie Lewis shares her inspiring story like no one else can, giving the reader the ride of a lifetime as she desperately searches for her life's purpose. This is a story told with bravery, insight, integrity, and the unwavering desire to survive. Never Say Uncle is a novel based on a true story of never giving up and never giving in and never surrendering to the enemy within. The author takes you to the dark side, revealing how the main character, a barefooted little girl in pigtails, escapes the wrath of childhood abuse, becoming a mighty warrior battling to keep control of her life after love, loss, and heartache.

The author takes you on a journey from overcoming obstacles of being victimized to becoming a survivor from the enemy that had taken a solemn oath to keep her from harm's way.

From the very beginning, the writer shares the tale of a family of tortured souls and the brave young girl who must fight against the disloyal protector and untrustworthy guardians of her childhood, only to escape into the arms of a self-proclaimed mountain man, falling into a world of bitterness, anger, and despair as she jumps out of the frying pan and into the fire.

From the first page to the last, the author does not disappoint.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781639856084

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

About the Author

cover.jpg

Never Say Uncle

A Novel Based on a True Story

Cherie Lewis

Copyright © 2023 Cherie Lewis

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 978-1-63985-607-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63985-608-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To Beckie and Josh, the loves of my life

May the Lord watch over me and thee—while we are absent one from the other.

Prologue

I am so tired of pretending to be okay. I am not okay, and I doubt I will ever be again.

I wake up every morning with a heavy heart and a disbelief of my sad reality. Above my bed hangs a giant photograph that I took of Beckie and Josh at Lake Tahoe.

Josh is smiling with his arms wrapped around his little boy, and Beckie is waving at the camera.

The north wind is blowing, and the waves are lapping at the shoreline of the magnificent lake, with the beautiful Sierra-Nevada Mountains in the background.

It is one of the most heavenly divine photographs of three of the most exquisite human beings that I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

I gaze at the photograph, and I become overwhelmed with emotion, staring into the eyes of the people who mean the world to me, and I cry because I miss them so much.

I raise my hand to Beckie and Josh, and I whisper through my tears, I love you guys, and I can't wait to see you again.

As I snuggle deeper under the heavy blankets on my bed, I easily get lost in my thoughts that take me back to better days and happier times, reliving memories of years gone by, good and bad.

As I try to fall back to sleep, I listen for the sound of Beckie's car and Josh's truck roaring up the driveway and both of them walking into the house and saying, Hi, Mom! We're home!

My life didn't turn out the way that I thought it would.

I drive home from work every day wondering, What is my purpose? What in God's name am I doing here? Why am I here? How did I get here? Right here? Right now?

Everywhere I go and everything I do is about my purpose.

I wondered if it was possible that I had no purpose? If that were true, it would explain everything, the emptiness that I feel inside. It would explain the hopelessness that I feel every single day of my life.

They say that when you come to the end of your life, it makes you think about the beginning.

Today feels like the end.

I'm an emotional wreck as I pull my car into the garage. I feel helpless. I feel hopeless.

I am completely bankrupt, emotionally and financially.

I have expended all my energy just to survive, and I no longer have the will to live, and yet I am still here…

Heartache causes bitterness. Pain causes anger. Loneliness leads to emptiness. Standing on the threshold of life is a scary place to be. You can fall forward into the unknown, or you can fall backward into the past.

I am standing on the threshold of my life, a life that has been full of pain and great sadness.

*****

Once upon a time, there lived a little girl. She danced in the sunshine barefoot with her hair in pigtails through fields of daisies, chasing butterflies and believing that fairy tales came true.

This is my story.

Chapter One

Healing comes from stepping outside of yourself, outside of fear and sadness, opening yourself up to a generous impulse, to create the illusion of well-being.

—Unknown

Since the very beginning of my life, or as far back as I can remember, I have had a misleading perception of reality, an overly optimistic idea of what life should be.

A life full of anticipation and danger, intertwined with a driving force of spontaneous emotions, marked by fear, sadness, nightmares, and tears.

When I was a little girl, my father stimulated my clitoris for the very first time. I grew up mistaking love for sex and, worse, sex for love.

My father, a man that I should have trusted, victimized me. I was betrayed by a man who had taken a sacred vow to love and protect me and keep me from harm's way.

My father should have taught me how to ride a bike and watch out for boys. He should have loved me enough to hold me in his arms, healing my bruises and skinned knees.

From a young age, I wished for a father who would love and protect me, but as I grew up and I grew older, I wished my father out of my life.

The word father, or parent, is equivalent to a loyal protector and trustworthy guardian.

My father looked at me with lust in his eyes. It placed disgust in my heart.

I grew up thinking that my life meant nothing. That I was nothing. That I was an illusion.

I was born in the sixties when John F. Kennedy was president of the United States and said, Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, that his children would live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Buzz Aldrin Jr. became the first humans to walk on the moon. The Ford Motor Company debuted its first muscle car, the Ford Mustang, and the British boy band the Beatles released their first album, Please, Please Me.

America had a strong sense of pride and dwindling sense of innocence.

The 1960s was the decade of miniskirts and go-go boots, which preceded the decade of poodle skirts and saddle shoes from the 1950s. Girls had big hair, and boys drove fast cars.

The peace sign became a national symbol, and Woodstock hosted thousands of free-loving, long-haired hippies. The nation's motto became Drugs, Sex, and Rock 'n' Roll.

Janice Joplin sang the song Me and Bobby McGee with the lyrics Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, and Mary Jane was code for weed, hash, and marijuana.

American citizens gathered, burning their draft cards down on Main Street, marching in the town square carrying signs protesting the Vietnam War and the soldiers who were fighting in it.

The American soldiers in charge of million-dollar equipment were coming home from Vietnam and couldn't get a job. No one would hire them.

People were spitting on the US soldiers and calling them baby killers.

The country's pride and innocence was in ruins.

I was born in September to second-generation German immigrants who had settled in the farmlands of the Midwest, the state of Iowa, the Heartland.

I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck three times, and I came into the world a bright shade of blue.

I gasped and fought to take my first breath of air, and when I began to cry in the delivery room, the doctor handed me to the nurse and shouted, We've got us a fighter here! and the nurse looked at the doctor and hollered, You mean a survivor!

The doctor nodded and turned to Mother, giving her a wink.

I was born the first daughter, the second child (well, the second daughter and the third child if you count the illegitimate child that Mother had given up for adoption when she became pregnant by a boy that she knew in high school). My brother, MJ, was born, the first and only son.

Two younger sisters followed after me. Mother gave birth to five children before she was twenty-one years old. She never graduated from high school.

Nor did Father, I discovered years later.

In April, Mother met Father at a roller-skating rink on a blind date, both claiming that it was love at first sight. Father was nineteen, and Mother was sixteen.

Father said that he knew Mother was the right girl for him when he went to hug her goodbye and she blushed when she farted; it made him love her even more!

When Father told mother good night, he conflated beautiful with honey, and it came out bunny, which was a term of endearment he used all the days of her life.

Mother had met father two months after her return from the girls' home, where she had been sent by her parents to deliver her baby and then give it up for adoption.

It was a home for unwed mothers to live out the remainder of their pregnancies, and on February 19, just a few hours after she was born, Mother gave up her beautiful baby girl that she had fondly named Julie Ann. Mother held the newborn in her arms until the nurse came and took the tiny infant away.

Soon after they met, Mother had confided in Father the story of Julie Ann. They chose to keep it a secret, a secret that only they shared. Mother's family knew but no one else.

In July, at a small church ceremony in Mason City, Iowa, Mother married Father and one year later, my brother MJ was born. Mother and Father planned on having a large family and fourteen months later, I was born. One year and five days later, Mother gave birth to my sister Dee.

In January, Mother and Father boarded a plane from Coulter, Iowa, to Concord, California, fleeing their childhood hometown in search of a better life with only nine dollars in their pocket.

Family and friends thought that Mother and Father appeared to be running from something as they relocated to another state fifteen hundred miles away, leaving behind their three young children.

Three months later, my grandmother boarded a train with me and my brother and my tiny infant sister. California was where dreams come true, and a year later, my little sister Annie was born.

Years later, my younger sisters were upstairs in our childhood home, rifling through Mother's cedar chest. It was there they found and read Mother's high school diary.

The story of Julie Ann was written in that diary. If not for my sisters snooping, that painful secret would have lain hidden forever in the aching heart of Mother.

All my life, until my sisters found Mother's diary, I thought that I was the oldest girl in the family. Father made me feel important by constantly referring to me as the battery that kept the family going.

Father grew angry when Mother's illegitimate child with her high school sweetheart became the family discussion over dinner one night.

Mother was angry with my sisters for snooping through her belongings, her past, something that she seemed so ashamed of.

I raised my hand at the dinner table and suggested that we try and find Julie Ann and tell her that she was loved and that she had this whole other family, a brother and three sisters, a birth mother, and father, a step.

Father immediately shot down my suggestion, while Mother hung her head in sadness and shame.

I dreamed about Julie Ann and wondered what she was like. I dreamed about the color of her hair and the color of her eyes. I wondered if she was short or tall, fat or skinny, but what I mostly dreamed about was meeting her, hugging her, and calling her my sister.

I wondered if Julie Ann knew about me. Did she look like me? Did Julie Ann know she had been given up for adoption? I wondered if the family who had adopted her loved her, guided her, and protected her. Had she ever been harmed, battered, or beaten?

It would be traumatic enough to discover that you had been given up for adoption but then to spend your whole life searching for your birth mother, birth father, and siblings? How painful!

I wondered what Julie Ann would think about her birth mother and the dysfunctional, disgraceful, backstabbing family that she had miraculously escaped from growing up in.

I wished that I had been the baby who had been given up for adoption. I wished that I were the kid who had been given to a loving family.

I wanted to find my sister. I wanted to know her, love her, be her friend. I wanted to be in her life, and I wanted her to be in mine.

I wanted Julie Ann. I needed Julie Ann, and I promised myself that I would stop at nothing in my quest to find Julie Ann.

*****

Father was a big man, standing over six feet tall. He had dark hair and dark eyes, and his hands were the size of baseball gloves. A size 13 ring would fit only halfway down his little finger. He picked two of us kids up on one thumb and the other two kids on the other thumb, and he walked around the house with us kids dangling from his giant thumbs.

Father was employed at a silica sand plant as a professional welder, welding con-beam steel on high-rise buildings and tunnels under the bay. Father was an operating engineer, driving heavy equipment, digging boat marinas, and building highways, bridges, and golf courses.

I could hear him pound his feet on the driveway every evening when he came home from work. It was his way of shaking the sand from his dirty boots and another way of letting us know that the giant fucker was home.

Father said the N word a lot, sounding like he had been abused, beaten, or raped by a person of a different creed, color, or race, and I fucking hated it.

His racist comments made me sick to my stomach, and they made me wonder, what was it about the color of someone else's skin that made him so prejudiced?

When one of us kids got into trouble, Father used a piece of conveyor belt that he had brought home from the sand plant to beat us kids with. It was wide at one end and razor thin at the other. He kept the belt in his workbench, in the family room.

Father's rule was, When one of you does something wrong or gets into trouble, you're all gonna get it! He would line the four of us up, look us in the eye, and ask, Which one of you did it? I would start to tremble and cry.

Eventually, one of us kids would raise our hand, and that would be the kid he sent over to the workbench to fetch and bring him the Almighty Belt.

When the giant of a man whom we called Father had us good and scared, he would turn us around, and with our backs to him execution-style, he would whip the hell out of all of us.

The piece of conveyor belt stung, and it left bruises and welts across our backs and legs, so much so that when I took a bath at night, the skin on my legs peeled open like ripe peaches blanched in hot, scalding water.

My siblings and I learned over the years not to tell on each other. We vowed to protect each other. We had a code of silence between us never to be broken. We had each other's backs straight up, no questions asked.

Father always said, Remember who you are, but he always made me want to forget.

Mother was a tiny woman, standing five feet, two inches tall. She was as beautiful as anything you had ever seen. She raised us kids with a firm hand, confident in the loyal support that she received from the giant German man she was married to.

Mother constantly hollered at us kids, saying that she couldn't wait for us to grow up and move away from home so she could have peace in her life.

I eventually understood why.

Our first home was a modest three-bedroom house, which sat on the corner of Meadow Lane and Sunshine Drive. It was a Tudor-style home with oak floors and a fireplace. It was painted dark brown with light-yellow trim, and the roof leaked. I referred to it as the Old Brown Cow.

My brother had his own bedroom, and my sisters and I shared a room. My little sister Annie and I shared a double bed, while my sister Dee slept in a twin bed.

I held a saucepan on my tummy at night, catching the rain that dripped through the slats on the ceiling. When the pan was full, I carried it to the bathroom and dumped the rainwater into the toilet. The blankets on my bed were soaking wet by morning.

In March, Mother and Father held a viewing party, inviting all their friends and neighbors to the house to watch the new TV game show, Jeopardy!

Father's friend PJ sat on the sofa in the living room, holding a saucepan in each hand, catching the rainwater as it dripped through the ceiling.

Mother was always doing nice things to our bedroom, with pretty curtains and fancy wallpaper. Hard work for Mother was nothing. She loved it.

I hung posters on my bedroom wall of Diana Ross and the Supremes, a poster of the most recent teenage heartthrob David Cassidy, along with posters of baby kittens dangling from tree branches captioned Hang in there, baby!

I had a red transistor radio next to my bed with an alarm clock set to play music at any given hour, seven days a week.

I was seven years old when I joined the Girl Scouts of America, beginning as a Brownie. I was proud to wear the uniform, which was a brown knee-length linen dress with a bright-orange necktie, a dark-brown belt, dark-brown knee-high socks, dark-brown shoes, and a dark-brown beret to wear on top of my head.

I earned Brownie pins and badges by learning how to build campfires and how to survive in the wilderness, and I sold Girl Scout cookies to everyone in the neighborhood.

In October, I attended a second-grade field trip with my class to the Concord Planetarium, and it was there that I experienced something so magical and so euphoric that it changed my life forever.

As I sat in the pitch-black circular room with all my classmates, I was in awe of the billions of stars that created the constellations and the billions of years that created the universe.

I learned that a light-year was a measure of distance, not time, and I was fascinated by the astrology of the Zodiac, the Milky Way Galaxy, and the soothing voice of the narrator.

I told Mother all about my euphoric experience when I got home from school, and the very next day, she drove to Woolworth's Five & Dime and bought a cylinder full of plastic glow-in-the-dark stars, which I applied to the ceiling above my bed, creating my very own planetarium.

Mother was a stay-at-home housewife, and I often thought that she seemed lonely and sad.

Father was tall and confident and always managed to make a decent living. He provided us with nice clothes to wear and good food to eat.

It was Father who enjoyed helping us with our schoolwork in the evening, and it seemed to me there wasn't a subject that Father wasn't brilliant at. He knew about math and English, but science and geography were his favorite.

Father walked around the family room, patiently helping us where we all gathered to do our homework, while Mother worked in the kitchen doing dishes after dinner.

We had a globe, and Father pointed out where states, capitols, and countries were located, talking as if he had been to these places a million times even though he had never traveled outside the United States. He used props, along with the globe atlas, to demonstrate how the earth rotated around the sun. Father was like a professor. Who knew?

After homework was complete, Mother brought each of us a dish of ice cream. It was funny one night when my brother struggled to say butter brickle ice cream.

It's brickle, it's butter, it's brickle ice butter cream, MJ mumbled, and we all laughed.

Father had the tape-to-tape reel, recording our conversations, and it was fun to listen to MJ's voice years later. Mother didn't like the sound of her own voice and remained mostly silent. After everyone had gone to bed and the house was silent, I could hear MJ in his room, giggling.

Good night, Mother! he hollered.

Good night, son!

Good night, Father! my brother shouted.

Good night, son!

Good night, Shane! MJ screamed at the top of his lungs as the entire house burst into laughter.

The stereo system in the family room was first class, and my love for music came from the hundreds of albums that Father had collected over the years: Credence Clearwater, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Tom Jones, Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Ray Charles, and so many others. There was always music playing in our house, and I knew every song by heart.

Father played his favorite comedy albums as well: The Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say on TV by George Carlin: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits.

Father played it over and over until I had the entire album memorized. He played his Dirty Trucker albums as well, and the jokes were pretty funny even to a little girl like me.

Every evening, Tommy, the family bird, would join in the family activities. He was a beautiful light-blue parakeet, and he would whistle and say, Whatcha doin' and pretty bird.

We all loved him very much.

When Father had his drinkin' buddies over in the evening, Tommy would sit on the edge of Father's glass and drink beer until he couldn't fly.

During the weekend, when Mother and Father were out of town and had left all the kids home alone, Tommy flew outside.

There were ten neighborhood kids at the house, and we were in the midst of a giant water balloon fight. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks when Tommy flew out of his cage, through the open sliding glass door, landing on the edge of the burning barrel in the backyard.

My brother walked over with his finger out, and Tommy flew over and landed on it. MJ slowly walked Tommy back inside the house and put him safely back inside of his cage.

Years later, when Tommy died, we had a funeral for him. We buried his tiny body in a small box in the backyard.

I built a cross out of sticks, and I placed it on Tommy's grave. I picked flowers, and I placed them at the foot of the cross.

I had never been to a funeral before or lost anyone that I loved. Tommy's service was beautiful, and I cried and cried. Father had tears in his eyes as well.

Father taught us how to play a game called Bird-Beast or Snake. After dinner was done and homework was complete, Father would hide a silver thimble in the family room.

My brother and sisters and I stood in the living room, while Father strategically hid the tiny thimble. When Father hollered out the word bird, it meant the thimble was hidden up high on the beams, near the ceiling. If he hollered snake, it meant the thimble was hidden on the floor. Beast meant that it was hidden somewhere in between. We all ran into the family room, hoping to be the kid who found the tiny thimble.

I loved playing Bird-Beast or Snake.

I loved to roller-skate after school every day, and so did my sisters. Our skates had metal wheels, and we went through three or four sets of wheels every year, roller-skating up and down the concrete sidewalks in our neighborhood.

I held roller-skating parties in my backyard every chance I got. Mother put potato chips in a giant Tupperware bowl, and Father installed a black fluorescent light above the sliding glass door, which made our skin look dark and showed off the bright colors of our clothes.

With the records playing and the music blasting, all the kids in the neighborhood came over to skate in my backyard. The concrete was smooth, and the pole in the center of the patio holding up the awning was fun to skate around. We skated round and round in a giant circle for hours on end, laughing, giggling, and singing to the music.

The entire neighborhood thought that my house was the greatest and that my parents were the coolest parents on the block.

Mother and Father were young and hip; they drank, cussed, and smoked, and they allowed us kids to stay up late, sometimes past midnight, playing the music as loud as we could stand it.

Growing up in the sixties was a great decade to be a kid for most kids. There were few restrictions on living your life to the fullest. You could ride your bike without wearing a helmet, and you could drink from a garden hose without dying.

Mother and Father never hesitated to leave us kids home alone on the weekends with no supervision. We rode in the front and backseat of the car without wearing seatbelts, while our parents smoked unfiltered cigarettes with the windows rolled up.

We rode in the back of open pickup beds and never flew out, and when Mother sent us kids outside to play in the morning after breakfast, she never saw us again until dinnertime.

Mother locked the doors so we couldn't come in the house and track our dirty shoes all over her freshly mopped floors.

Mother hollered that she just wanted us to stay out of her hair, and so we did.

I grew up in a neighborhood full of kids who were all the same ages as my siblings and me.

Everyone loved to play jump rope, kickball, and tetherball, and most of the neighborhood kids agreed that I was the undisputed champion of jacks and hopscotch.

Mother was a fine homemaker and known to be the queen of her castle. She was very loyal, very strong, and very determined, which proved that she was a hard worker and dedicated.

She cleaned the house, pulled the weeds, mowed the lawn, did the laundry, and cooked all the meals. She looked after her children, and she went to great lengths to pay enormous attention to the giant German man whom she was married to.

Mother set the example for my life, and while she may have thought she was the queen of her castle, to me, she was nothing more than Cinderella in the cinders.

In the summertime, Mother made us take naps in the afternoon. I pretended to be asleep when she walked into the room, putting our clean clothes away with her fingertips lightly touching and making clicking sounds on the bottom of the wooden dresser-drawers.

I rarely fell asleep during naptime. Instead, I lay awake making wishes on my ceiling full of stars, daydreaming of a better life, of better parents.

I dreamed about where I would be in ten years, twenty years. What would I be doing? What kind of job would I have? Would I be happy?

But most of all, I dreamed about what it would be like to have love in my heart. I dreamed about finding solitude. I dreamed about world peace. I dreamed about what it would be like to die and be reborn into a different family.

I wondered if death was painful. Was it lonely? Was it permanent?

Mother kept the blinds on the bedroom windows closed, creating a sullen darkness, rudely mocking the way that I felt inside…but every now and then, a ray of sunlight showed through the crevices of the old wooden shutters, reminding me that where there was light, there was hope.

At night, after everyone had gone to bed, I could hear Mother and Father in their bedroom saying the Lord's Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil: For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

I listened as I could hear them saying the Lord's Prayer. I learned it word for word. I found it to be the most beautiful thing that I had ever heard. I found it strange that Father made it a point to say that prayer every night with Mother, his wife, the mother of his children.

A prayer so powerful, so prestigious, so godly. Was it just me, or was Father the biggest hypocrite on the face of the earth?

*****

Boot and Petunia were Mother and Father's best friends. They were the first two people in California to help Mother and Father, lending them a few dollars and assisting Father in finding a job and a place to live.

Boot and Petunia, with their daughter Maria, lived several miles away, and we spent many weekends at their house.

MJ, Dee, Annie, Maria, and I slept in sleeping bags on the floor in the spare bedroom, while Father and Boot enjoyed their cocktails in the evening.

I learned how to properly bartend by filling their glass with lots of liquor and lots of ice. Bourbon and water for Father and a Manhattan for Boot.

Just a little tittle, they called it.

Father handed me his empty glass and hollered, Fix Daddy another tittle!

I hate the word Daddy.

I mistakenly thought that if Father stayed good and drunk, then all of us kids could do whatever we wanted. I hoped that Father wouldn't holler at us, spank us, or be mean to us.

I mixed Father's drinks strong, praying that he would pass out before he could bring harm to any of us kids. I mixed Boot's drinks strong as well, hoping that he would keep Father in line.

All of us kids played outside until dark, and we ran around the neighborhood with the local neighborhood kids playing kickball, jump rope, and hide-and-go-seek.

When we heard Father's loud whistle, it meant come home. Immediately.

It was late in the evening when Father came into Boot and Petunia's spare bedroom to tell all of us kids good night. The shadow of his giant frame filled the doorway as he came stumbling in.

Father got down on the floor beside each one of us and said this prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep… I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die, before I wake… I pray the Lord my soul to take. If I should live, another day… I pray to God, to guide my way. Good night and God bless us all. Amen.

Father made the rounds, saying the prayer with each and every one of us. When it came my turn to say the prayer, Father knelt down beside me, and with the heavy smell of whiskey on his breath, he leaned in close, and he whispered in my ear.

As soon as Father began saying the prayer, his hands would quietly slip into my sleeping bag, and as he nuzzled my neck and fumbled with my panties, his giant fingers would find their way into my tiny vagina. He moved his fingers in and out of me until I became wet.

I lay as still as a tree, keeping my eyes tightly closed and my fists tightly clenched, terrified of what would follow.

I struggled as I whispered the words to the bedtime prayer, shamefully aroused while at the same time sick and nauseated by the sound of his voice and the smell of his breath.

Through silent tears and clenched teeth, I whispered the words to the bedtime prayer as his fingers continued in and out and his breathing grew heavy and thick.

Father mumbled and slurred every word, demanding that I say the prayer over from the beginning, becoming frustrated with my resistance to cooperate.

You're not saying it right! he shouted in a raspy voice, growing angry as I struggled to move away from him. I was defiant as I twisted and turned, but in my sleeping bag, I was trapped.

Father made me feel dirty and full of shame. I was paralyzed by fear from my non-protector and untrustworthy guardian.

I thought about the words to the prayer: If I should die, before I wake. I prayed at that moment that was my only option.

Father attempted to shake me into his reality, scolding me and buying himself more time to continue with his sexual gratification.

Father was methodical about grooming me and preparing me, he claimed, for what boys would do to me someday.

His inconceivable actions were abhorrent. His unforgivable behavior had no conscience.

You could hear a pin drop as Father moved around the room, slowly unzipping every child's sleeping bag. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, Help us! Please! Somebody help us! But I never did. And so the prayer continued for years and years.

While all of this was going on…where the fuck was Mother? Did she not know that her drunken husband was in a bedroom full of little children doing God knows what?

The smell of stale whiskey and heavy breathing, it haunts me.

Father took showers with us kids. One at a time, he had us get into the shower with him and wash our hair and bodies. After he got me all soaped up, he picked me up and held me underneath the showerhead, spreading my tiny legs open so the water could rinse me off. Father's motto was Cleanliness was next to Godliness. What the fuck?

Father's sister Iris died when she was twelve years old from a deadly heart infection caused by rheumatic fever and the severe symptoms of strep throat.

She died on Father's fifth birthday in 1944.

I suffered from strep throat and high fevers when I was eight years old. I suffered from swollen tonsils, sore throats, severe coughing, and high fevers that surpassed 104 degrees.

Mother had Father stay home with me while she ran to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription of penicillin.

As I lay on the couch in the living room beneath several heavy blankets, Father was so scared due to the traumatic events that had occurred during his childhood, he claimed, that he had to lie on the couch with me because he didn't want me to die from strep throat like his sister Iris had.

Father lay on the couch behind me in a spooning position, while I watched cartoons on our black-and-white television, which had rabbit ears, only got three channels, and sat on a wooden shelf in the corner of the living room.

Shortly after Mother had gone to the drug store, Father began reaching under the blankets, fumbling with his fingers underneath my nightgown and underpants.

Promise me you'll never share our secret with anyone, Father whispered as he fingered me repeatedly for the entire hour that Mother was gone.

Father looked like the kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar when Mother arrived home and walked through the door.

Father jumped up from the sofa like a cat on a hot tin roof, and with a wave of a hand to Mother and a blow of a kiss to me, he fled the crime scene on a dead run and never looked back.

I felt helpless as I lay suffering in silence with a high fever from the infectious white spots that engulfed my tonsils. I felt hopeless as I lay weeping, suffering in silence from a neglectful mother who looked the other way and from a repulsive father who should have been put in prison and the key thrown away.

There were signs that Mother already knew what Father was up to, especially on one occasion, when her family called from Iowa. Mother told Father to pick up the extension line in her bedroom so that he could be part of the long-distance conversation, and when he did, all Mother could hear in the telephone was his heavy breathing.

Father's breathing was so loud she could barely hear over it.

Mother quietly laid her phone receiver down on the kitchen table and tiptoed lightly over to the master bedroom.

When she peered in through the doorway, there was Father holding my little sister on his lap and fondling her with his hands up under her dress.

Mother walked back to the kitchen and went right back to her long-distance conversation. She did absolutely nothing to stop Father. She said absolutely nothing to him.

Turns out, Mother and Father had a code of silence between them as well. They had each other's backs, straight up, no questions asked.

Father called me and my brother and my two younger sisters into Mother and Father's bedroom one night. He told us to gather around closely and that he had something very important to show us. I stood next to Father, wondering what it was that was so important.

MJ, Dee, Annie, and I stood huddled together in our pajamas as Father stood before us in his tighty-whitey underwear and his dingy white T-shirt.

With the bedroom lights on bright so that all of us kids could clearly see, the perverted exhibitionist dropped his underwear and showed us the stitches on his ball sack.

Father had gone to the doctor's office after work that afternoon and had a vasectomy.

The three of us girls gasped in horror, while MJ began laughing hysterically at the size of Father's enormous penis and the size of his extremely swollen black-and-blue testicles.

I felt faint.

Father held his purple penis and scarlet scrotum in his hands, rolling them around and showing us where the incisions were made and the stitches were sewn.

Where the fuck was Mother?

Two weeks later, it was late in the evening when Mother was in the kitchen doing dishes after everyone had gone to bed.

Honey, come quick! Father hollered from the master bedroom.

What the hell's going on in here? Mother screamed.

I shit the bed! See! Look! Father laughed, as he pulled back the blankets, and there on the sheets was a big mess of diarrhea.

Oh my god! Mother hollered, disgusted at the horrible mess, which she would have to clean, and the loads of laundry she would have to do before she could call an end to her very long day.

Twenty minutes later, Father was lying in my bed with me—not lying on the bed next to me, lying in bed with me. I clenched my fists and lay stiff as a tree.

While Mother was in the master bedroom putting clean sheets on her bed, Father was busy crawling into my bed.

He must have assumed that my little sisters were sound asleep when he strategically pulled his hard penis out of his now clean underwear and he slipped it inside the leg hole of my underpants, rubbing it against me until I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Help me! Help me! Somebody help me!

What the hell's going on in here? Mother hollered as she came running in.

He. Won't. Stop. I. Can't. Take. It. Any. More… I mumbled.

What the fuck's the matter with you? Mother demanded.

I never got a chance to answer, because as Mother flung the door open, Father jumped up and, like a bolt of lightning, ran from my bedroom covering his erect penis with both hands.

What's the matter with you? Huh? Answer me. What the hell's the matter with you? Mother shouted.

I turned away from her piercing glare, all the while trembling and holding back tears. I was paralyzed by fear, holding my breath and unable to speak.

No words would come as Mother stared at me with pity in her eyes and humiliation on her face.

Go to sleep! she shouted. You're drivin' me fuckin' nuts!

Mother had appeared at the doorway of my bedroom like a superhero, just like I had always hoped that she would, but her reaction was far from what I prayed it would be.

Instead, she turned off the light and stomped out of my bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

I rolled over in my bed, and I pulled the blankets up over my head, and I whispered, God help me… God help us all.

Chapter Two

True strength is delicate.

—Louise Nevelson

I've kept a daily journal since I was eleven years old. My journals are filled with detailed events from one end of the spectrum to the other. I've made notations about everything from anguish and despair to the simple joys of listening to my favorite song on the radio.

Each journal entry concludes with a sordid thought, an unreliable hope, a fictitious dream, or a horrific nightmare. The words in my journals upset me, and they make me sick.

I have enormous tendencies toward narcissistic and masochistic thoughts and behavior based on guilt and shame. I love myself as much as I hate myself. I can't tell where normal begins and insanity ends. I've told everyone that keeping a diary was a wonderful and glorious thing, but reading back through mine convinced me otherwise.

My journal entries have been the catalyst to charting and navigating the journey of my entire life.

My journals are filled with incidents that did happen, that might happen, that could have happened, that should have happened, and that will never happen.

I hate the person that I have become.

Mother and Father drove to town one afternoon, leaving us kids home alone to play card games on the floor in the back bedroom. My brother had two of his closest friends over.

We sat on the floor playing cards and laughing at my brother's funny jokes in the dim light of the back bedroom, while the rest of the house was dark and quiet.

Mother claimed that the house stayed cooler in the summertime if we kept all the drapes and curtains closed, so we did.

Suddenly, we heard strange voices and a loud commotion in the backyard. I told everyone to remain quiet and stay seated on the floor, while I tiptoed through the living room to see where the voices were coming from.

I walked toward the heavy drapes in the family room to where I could hear the sliding glass door opening behind them. I stood frozen in my tracks as a hand reached in and pulled back the heavy drapery.

The next thing I saw, only inches from my face, was the barrel of a .38-caliber revolver in the hands of a uniformed police officer.

His eyes grew wide with unexpected astonishment as he walked into the house and came face to face with a little barefooted girl wearing a summer dress and pigtails.

He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

Who else is in the house? he shouted with saliva flying from his mouth, erratically waving his gun back and forth.

No one, I whispered.

His hands shook as he waved his pistol in a circular motion, trying to figure out where the hell he was and what the hell was going on.

I said, who else is in the house? he demanded, continuing into my family home.

I tiptoed backward with my hands held high in the air as he slowly walked toward me, pointing the gun only inches from my face.

I held my breath trembling with fear, and though no words would come out of my mouth, pee was running down my leg.

For several minutes, the police officer glared at me before finally putting his gun back inside his holster.

We got the wrong house! he hollered to his partner who was roaming around in the backyard.

I waited until I heard the door close behind him before falling to the floor and sobbing. My brother and his friends tiptoed out to where I was curled up on the floor in the fetal position.

MJ put his arms around me and helped me to stand.

I was shaking uncontrollably, and I couldn't stop crying. My sisters took me, arm in arm, and walked me to my bedroom, and they closed the door.

A cop had made a mistake. He had the wrong house. I had a .38 special pointed directly at my forehead. But he didn't pull the trigger.

The only thing more dangerous than a loaded gun…is the person holding it!

I was nine years old when the BART rapid-transit was completed. It was a modern-day subway train, which went from Concord to San Francisco through a tunnel under the bay.

My friends and I hopped the train for thirty-five cents every afternoon, and we rode the BART Train all day, having fun while losing track of time.

It was dark when I walked home from the train station, and when I walked into the house in the evening, I was surprised that no one asked where I had been all day. Or did I realize what time it was? Or did I know how late it was? No one had noticed that I was gone, and no one had noticed that I was home.

I had fun walking to the mall with several of the neighborhood kids, two miles across town. We went to the Saturday Matinee for twenty-five cents, which is where I saw the movie American Graffiti seven times.

The mall had an indoor ice-skating rink, where we went every Friday night, ice-skating for hours on end. I fell down, and MJ skated over my hand, nearly cutting off all my fingers.

A half a mile down the road was an indoor roller-skating rink, where we skated under a giant disco ball, learning to do the hokey-pokey.

You put your right foot in… / You put your right foot out… / You do the hokey-pokey, / and you turn yourself about—that's what it's all about!

At the Sun Valley Mall, my friends Deana, Lisa, Carol, and I, along with my sister Dee, shopped at JC Penny for school clothes, and when I say shopped, I mean, we stole stuff.

We stole shorts, tops, jeans, and bras. We stole perfume, stationery, and candles.

I somehow managed to get my stolen items home without getting caught and stashed them inside a suitcase, which I had stored at the top of my closet.

I would have gotten away with the crime if not for my little sister Annie, who suspected foul play from the second I walked through the door. Annie immediately reported it to Mother.

The law was called, and a juvenile probation officer was sent to the house.

I sat on the sofa crying, as the words to the song I fought the law and the law won! played over and over in my head.

I begged and pleaded for the uniformed police officer to forgive my criminal behavior, and I promised that I would never steal anything ever again.

After two hours of listening to the dark-haired cop recite several cases of theft, grand theft, grand larceny, and two cases of intentional homicide, all of us were eventually let off the proverbial hook.

I fought the law and the law won! I whispered.

I was relieved my outlaw days were behind me, knowing that two encounters with the law were more than enough for me. I wanted nothing more to do with the cops, their badges, their guns, or the juvenile probation officers ever again.

During the dog days of summer, Mother paid us kids fifty cents to pull weeds in her flowerbeds, and at one o'clock in the afternoon, she let us walk down the street to the Meadow Homes Community Pool.

It was the same pool where MJ, Dee, Annie, and I had taken swimming lessons years earlier and now where we swam every day until the pool closed at 6:00 p.m.

Mother gave us an extra dime to buy an ice cream cone, and as we stood in line with all the neighborhood kids, waiting for the pool to open, MJ had fun being the entertainment.

Kids waved their beach towels at my brother as he charged them like a bull, pawing the ground and running as fast as he could and ducking and diving underneath their towels.

MJ made everyone laugh when he ran into the brick wall, ramming his head as hard as he could and then shaking it off as though it hadn't hurt or fazed him.

My brother was funny like a comedian, and he loved the attention, which his sense of humor brought to all the kids standing barefooted on the hot cobblestone pavement.

When the pool opened and we paid our way inside, we went to the locker room and changed out of our clothes and into our swimsuits. Bathing caps and showers were required.

I slipped into my string bikini, and I tucked my long hair up inside of my bathing cap.

I knew better than to dive into the shallow end of the pool, but I dove in anyway, skinning my face from my forehead to my chin and, fortunately, not injuring my spine or breaking my neck.

However, my brother was not so lucky. MJ dove off the diving board, attempting to do a cutaway dive, and slit his forehead wide open on the edge of the diving board.

With blood running profusely out of his head, he was quickly rescued from the pool by one of the lifeguards and taken to the hospital for stitches. My brother later claimed that he was just showing off for the cute, busty brunette girl, who was lying on a beach towel nearby. Oh, MJ!

Mother and Father took us kids to the Fremont Drags and Raceway every weekend to watch the jet-fueled cars race against one another.

The funny cars were jacked up in the rear and painted bright colors. The Mongoose and the Snake were the two to watch out for because they were archrivals, competing for the title in the quarter-mile run.

The dragsters had slick tires, and the smell of jet fuel filled the stands. MJ was a big fan of Big Daddy Don Garlitz, asking for his autograph and getting to ride in Mr. Garlitz's dragster, as the pit crew pushed it toward the sidelines after Big Daddy had won the race.

It was late into the night before we left the raceway, feeling exhilarated and exhausted all at the same time.

Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday, and eating turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy was, to me, the best meal in the world.

While Mother prepared the turkey and homemade stuffing, Father rolled out homemade crust, making three large pumpkin pies.

The house was filled with the aroma of the family feast, and while the meal cooked, MJ, Dee, Annie, and I played board games.

In the Game of Life, you drove a car, got married, and had children. As the journey of your life played out, I prayed that I would land on the space that gave me the option of being a doctor or a lawyer in order to earn the highest salary. I definitely did not want to land on the spot where I would have to be a teacher, a maid, or a housewife, earning little money or no money at all.

Father cut down a live spruce tree every year for Christmas, and Mother decorated it with blue bulbs, silver tinsel, and blue lights. I never got excited about Christmas.

Granted, there were gifts under the tree wrapped in pretty holiday paper and shiny bows, and the