Lifted

By Cindylou Barclay

My story is filled with broken pieces, terrible choices and ugly truths. It also has a major comeback, peace in my soul and a grace that saved my life.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: GENESIS PUBLISHING HOUSE
• Release date: Mar 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798988615491

Book preview

Home sweet home

Iwas in my classroom playing with my friend when the announcement came over the PA system: Cindylou Barclay please come down to the principal’s office. Baffled, I turned to my friend who immediately asked, Are you coming back?

Of course! I said, Why wouldn’t I?

At the door of the office I could see two women sitting looking in my direction and wondered who they were. What are they to do with me?

Cindylou, come in and have a seat, the principal said. I stared at him, wondering what was going on, as he began to explain. Cindylou, I have to tell you that you won’t be going home. These two ladies will be taking you away from your home to stay at another place for a while. Sudden tears sprang from my eyes as fear gripped me. I ran to the only human being in the world I felt I could run to — my principal — flinging my arms around him and hiding my head, wetting his suit jacket with tears.

This day marked a watershed moment for me, the beginning of a nine-year-old’s grim determination never again to trust anyone taller than herself. My heart felt torn, ragged, my uncertainty at such a high pitch that from then on I decided I would never again believe or get close to anyone. The only person in the world I could depend on was me. Fortress walls went up.

Standing in the office, my mind was racing to figure out what had brought this about. How did the two ladies know what was happening in my home? I was thinking, how did they know where I lived? Then I remembered the late-night hospital visit our family had recently. That was it! Maybe those doctors decided to report us?

This trip had been for Jason to get stitches on his forehead. My mother was in the clinic with him — she never left us alone to speak for ourselves at times like this — while my big brother Wayne and I were just sitting out in the hall with our heads down; it was very late and we were worn out. A couple of doctors walked by. One said, Look, they’re here again for something else. This family is here so much I’m getting to the point of reporting them. I was too embarrassed and frightened to look up at the doctor for fear of him talking to me, so I kept my head down.

Earlier in the evening, little Jason hadn’t been feeling well and my mother kept having to go upstairs. We lived in a townhouse at the time and she went up and down several times to deal with his crying. Then the last time she must have snapped; Jason was screaming instead of crying and the pitch of the scream brought Wayne and I to our feet. We ran up the stairs. When we tried to get Jason out of her arms, she simply lifted him over our heads and threw him down the stairs. Our little legs chased after him, but when we got to the bottom he was unconscious with blood around his head.

My mom grabbed him and we all got into the car to go to the hospital, as she rehearsed with us what we had to say if we were asked any questions.

* * *

But perhaps this wasn’t it at all? I carried feelings of guilt because I put a man in jail for molesting me. Once when I was in the farms at the back of our place picking vegetables to find food for the family, I met a girl who was my age and we began to pick the ground together. Out of nowhere a farmer came over and told us to go into his shed with him. We were afraid because we knew this was stealing, but we followed him inside, where he offered us milk and cookies, and of course I devoured them — in our house we never had enough to eat.

Then I saw my new friend on a little cot with another man I hadn’t noticed before; the farmer edged up beside me and started to feel me under my clothes.

I still had a mouthful of milk. I choked, spitting out the milk and I elbowed him hard. When I think of the size I was compared to this man, and the way he went down, I must have struck a sensitive area on his body. The way he fell, it gave me a moment to turn and push the other man, whose back was to me, with all my might. I grabbed the girl’s arm, and we both ran like the wind.

Thinking back to that day, it was miraculous to have escaped the way we did. Today, of course, I know how much more terrible for both of us things could have been. Neither the girl or I spoke, just kept running, then she turned and went in a different direction. I ran home to my room and didn’t come out.

There were issues later that evening — there always were at our place at night. I heard Wayne come into my room and say, I better stay with you tonight. I was so upset that Wayne asked what had happened; I told him everything. He asked, Have you told Mom? She’s in a bad mood, and I said, No! I was too scared to, in case she whipped me for going into the farmer’s shed. Please Wayne, I begged, Don’t tell her. But he promised he would not let her hit me. We went out. There she was in her chair, drinking. I sat down beside Wayne, and he began to tell her.

As for me, I couldn’t open my mouth; it was sealed tight and dry locked. As Wayne finished, I had my head down expecting an explosion. But there was silence. She was just looking over — I could feel the half-cocked, alcohol-tinged eyes on me. Then she came over, knelt beside me, and said in the sweetest voice I had ever heard, Princess, is what Wayne just told me the truth? I looked up, my face crumpled and full of tears and whispered, Yes, I was too scared to tell you, so I told Wayne first.

Next thing I knew the police were there, making a report. I had to go to the hospital to be examined. I never spoke. Wayne spoke for me and I would nod yes or no when appropriate. Wayne talking for me made it all seem unreal. Not something that had happened to me.

Next day I thought it would be all over. Actually, it was just the beginning. There were court dates and judges and people coming into the house like never before asking me the same questions again and again. I was perplexed and exhausted — just wanted to have it all go away. The girl in the field I never saw ever again, but I overheard the police telling my mom that her father was refusing to let her report it. My mother, on the other hand, took up this issue with a vengeance, getting involved with counselors and police, and drilling me over and over again on how much the farmer did to me, not accepting Wayne’s words, because I still refused to have the words come out of my mouth. She was dealing with her own fragmented fears and firmly believed I was hiding all he did to me because I hadn’t come to her right away.

It was a very difficult time. My walk to school was right by the farmer’s house, and one day after he got out of the police station, he was standing in his big front window and the look on his face terrified me. I bolted home, and ran into the house yelling that he was after me. That’s when they had a school bus pick me up right outside my front door. They were concerned about my testimony in court, and that if I still was not being cooperative about speaking, they would have to let the man go.

I remember clearly the day of the court case, going for the first time ever to the stores to buy a dress for the occasion, and my mother and father were there picking out the dress and getting new shoes, the ones with the heels that clicked on the sidewalk when you walked. Like tap dance shoes. I was in awe of those shoes with the heels that tapped and the new dress — not homemade! I literally danced my way into that court room, in my own little world. It subdued the fears I had of all the adults around me, and being so small, the benches so tall and the room so huge.

Then it was time for me to go up and the policeman held out the Bible and told me I was to put my hand on it and repeat after him: I swear to tell the whole truth, only the truth, so help me God! I stared at him wide-eyed. When I was told swear to tell the truth, the most comforting sense of warmth came over me. As I repeated those words, my voice was strong. Every word came out with firmness. I answered all the questions. I told the story and Wayne was not there doing it for me; he was not even in the court room. The whole story came out calmly and correctly and no one asked me to repeat myself.

It was as though I was up in the ceiling looking down at myself doing all this. I know now I was experiencing extreme disassociation. But all of a sudden there I was, back down in the room and the farmer and his wife were right in the front row. When I had completed all the questions, and was standing beside the judge, I looked over and the wife literally came off her chair towards me. The policeman held my hand and escorted me out of the court room. I was so small I couldn’t see over the wooden panels, but I could hear this woman speaking harshly at me and chairs being shoved around. I was never told the verdict, but I knew I had never seen that man again.

So standing there in the principal’s office, I had this wave of guilt come over me, and thought, Was it that? Did I cause this to happen? Yet standing in front of the three of them, I figured that couldn’t have been it, or they would have come for me before now.

* * *

My mind was still racing, trying to figure out why I was being sent away from home. Then it dawned — Yes! The situation with Wayne! Just weeks before there had been an incident at the house in the morning. I was sitting in the kitchen chair near the sink, with Mom doing her thing that she always did with my hair before school.

Wayne commented about the top of my head and why my mother was always fussing with it. Suddenly there was a scuffle behind me at the sink and my mother was stabbing my brother in the chest with a fork. Wayne ran out of the house leaving my mother standing there with the fork in her hand as she continued with my hair. As I ran all the way to school, I remember this overwhelming feeling of guilt that Wayne got abused again because of me. I always became frozen to the world when I witnessed these sorts of everyday horrors from our home life.

At school, teachers had noticed the blood on Wayne and sent him to the nurse’s station. When I got home that day nothing was ever discussed, and my mother just told me that Wayne was not going to be at the house for a while; that in the meantime I was now the eldest — by which she meant that I had the responsibilities of my brother. I just hung my head and took the younger siblings outside to play. We normally did that until they went to bed.

Much later I found out that the CAS [Children’s Aid Society] had been involved with my family for several years, with someone to help my parents. My mother was a severe alcoholic and violently abusive when she got drunk. She would have rages so bad towards us kids that each one of us was a physically and emotionally damaged child.

Once when I was very young, she spilled boiling hot milk over me and I had to go to hospital by ambulance. That would have been a reported event.

My father was a womanizer. When he came back from one of his self-centered rendezvous and found my mother had drunk the food money away instead of feeding us, he would beat her up; once I saw him hit her with a hammer and another time hold her head under hot water in the sink. Their marriage problems were caustic and the effects rolled over on to us four children in a very bad way for many years. They had been getting some sort of marital counseling which kept things calm for a time, but never reached the roots of the situation. So when the CAS contact person who was trying to work with them in counseling left, and our environment was not being checked weekly, it was only a matter of time before things escalated again.

I remember my father would come home and cook a big steak and literally sit there and have it all to himself. Here we were, hungry little children, standing watching him. How could a human being do that? He, not my mother, had control over the money to the point where he usually shopped for our food. As children we ate eggs with butter, salt and pepper. Once though — I remember it clearly — there was actually a fried chicken. Dad came through the door and put it on the table. Wayne and I dived in and took it apart; we were devouring it voraciously when my father walked back from the kitchen and was so astounded at the sight that he called my mother in and said, I’ve never seen such cannibals! They are pigs! And he left the house in disgust.

Often my brother and I would go to neighboring farm fields or into the green bins behind the grocery stores to get something to eat. Wayne would hoist me up and I would go over the top of the bins and fall on top of the garbage, then he would climb after me, and we would sit inside and eat, hidden from anyone passing by. We would eat till our bellies were full, then take what we could carry home for the rest of the family. These are my memories of family meals. Not sit-down meals as a family.

My father would go out at nights until the small hours of the morning. When my mother locked him out, he would always come to my bedroom window and get me to let him in. Often I would wake up the next day to find him beside me in the bed sleeping.

Other times my mother would force me to stay up with her, because if I was right there she figured the beating would not be so severe. I witnessed most of those horrible beatings because of my mother trying to use me as a hostage. The two toddlers were very young and Dad had already broken Wayne, who was not his biological son, down to nothing with his constant mocking, so I’m guessing I was the only one my father related to when it came to his children. And having me around to witness this was my mother’s way of getting back at him in a sick kind of way.

I remember walking home from school I would be talking to God — whom I never was told about, but I nevertheless hated! — asking for my mother not to be drinking when I got home from school. I would sneak up to the screened front door so that she didn’t see me, and check by the profile of her face if she was drunk or too far gone. She would always be sitting on her chair, and if there was a beer in hand, I knew what was in store for the rest of the day.

She drank only one kind of beer: Black Label. If I saw her drinking, I’d go around to the back door and quietly get my two younger siblings. Jason would have been five years old then and Selina would have been three. I would then take them outside to play till dark. With my father always gone, my mother was alone constantly with four children, having no source of income of her own, no money at all except a small amount for food which usually ended up spent on beer instead.

My father picked on my big brother who was physically bulky, and if Wayne cried, which he did because the teasing was so vulgar, my father would taunt him as a crybaby. ‘You’re weak. You’re too shy. Not tough enough. Not a man", and as part of his harsh belittling of my brother he would make Wayne go through the house in just his underwear, so that he could embarrass him on his size. Dad, who always kept himself in shape, liked walking around the house in his underwear, except on very rare occasions when family was visiting. When he made Wayne do it, my heart would cry inside for my brother, but I had to sit in silence and watch. I did my crying in private, silently, never allowing myself to cry out loud for fear of a beating.

Then we got a dog named Lady. She was a German Shepherd and I adored her. She was our protector, and she was so smart! When I used to have Jason and Selina outside, I dug a hole in the shed behind the house where it was quiet and safe. This hole was big enough to hold both of them, and Lady helped me with the digging. Then, when my mother was on one of her drunk days and she would come out and start yelling at us, I would grab the two younger ones and put them in the hole and tell them not to move till I came for them. Lady would stay and watch over them while I would go in to pacify and tend to my mother. It would never be long before she had passed out again, and I would go out and bring the little ones in for bed. Jason and Selina knew the hole was meant for their safety. And if either of them tried to move out, Lady would nudge them back until I came.

Once when we were outside playing, and Lady was beside me, my mother came out and shouted in a fit of anger; it was a short-lived outburst and she went back inside. But Lady started to put her mouth around my wrist. I shook her off, but she kept doing this. Every time I said no, she would do it again until I decided to allow her to guide me where she was insistent on taking me. She brought me to the hole and had me sit in it. I was so surprised. Then she went and barked at the two little ones, so I called them to come and see me, and they came running and sat in the hole with me. Suddenly my father was home and my parents began an all-out fight. Thanks to Lady we were out of the house in the back, and not near them. Lady must have heard the sound of Dad’s car in the driveway and noticed. I did not. So her German Shepherd instinct for protection had put us where I usually put the little ones. We all huddled there with Lady, listening to the screams and banging and then my father storming off in the car. We waited for silence.

We were always sworn to secrecy about what went on in our house; if we ever breathed a word to anyone about our circumstances, I couldn’t imagine the trouble we would be in. Because I just couldn’t face any more abuse, I kept my mouth shut.

When my mother told me Wayne was gone, I figured it was because he had opened his mouth and he either ran away, or something really bad had happened to him. All I knew was my big brother protector was gone and I was alone to look after the two little ones. In my loneliness I would go to my room and quietly punch myself in the stomach out of anger, cursing God. I have no idea why I’d curse him because,