Be Aware

Is there a certain smell that takes you back to a place and time in your childhood? Does the scent of honeysuckle remind you of carefree summer days playing outdoors with your friends? Or when you walk into a Cracker Barrel restaurant and smell pancakes cooking on the griddle, do you instantly find yourself sitting sleepy-eyed in your mom’s kitchen waiting for her to place a stack of buttery hot cakes on the table in front of you?

For me, some of the smells that trigger childhood memories are sour milk, Jungle Gardenia perfume, and Southern Comfort liqueur. When I sniff a carton of milk before I put it in my morning cereal, if by chance it has gone bad, I am suddenly forcing down clabbered chunks while my mother stands over me with a threatening fist. If I pass an elderly lady who’s wearing the same perfume Mama used to wear, or sit beside someone in a bar who’s drinking her favorite liqueur, out of nowhere I can see her face above me—all flush and gnarled in anger—as she’s forcing my head under scalding bathwater.

As much as I would love to post something funny on my blog this week, I just can’t, because  it’s Child Abuse Prevention Month. So since it’s my last post for April, and I’m an abuse survivor and the author of a book based on my story, I figured it’s as good a time as any to take off my mask of humor and do my part, however small, to bring about awareness of this armpit of all crimes.

Mind you, I’m no authority on child abuse. I only know someone personally who was abused as a child. But I am an authority on her. Her abuse was severe. Not the worst—victims of the worst abuse probably are not around to tell about it—but it was bad. On a scale of one to ten maybe a seven or an eight. I believe that gives me an insight that others may not have, and puts me in the unique position to try to help a few people. So here goes.

Once, after reading my book, someone said to me, “That’s horrible, but it was a long time ago. Stuff like that doesn’t happen anymore.”

Oh yes it does. Every ten seconds a case of child abuse is reported, which adds up to approximately three million a year. And that’s only the cases that are reported. Wonder how many go unreported, like mine.

We are doing a good job of reporting suspected abuse—better than ever before—but we have to try harder, look closer. You can forget about the abused kids telling on their abusers. It’s not going to happen. I can remember my mother and father saying that I should never tell anyone what goes on in the privacy of our home; they said it would rip our family apart. As  horrible as my life was I was still afraid to tell, afraid of what might happen to my brothers and me if I did, of what might happen to our family. You see, what an adult says translates differently in a child’s mind. For instance when my mother told me I was disgusting, ugly or dirty, what I thought was, “I am a bad seed. I deserve to be punished. I don’t deserve anything good to happen to me.”

So, it’s up to us adults to report suspected abuse. I know it’s difficult. I know you don’t want to be all up in somebody’s family business. But I’m telling you it’s the only way.

Maybe I can help. Because I was once abused I know some behavioral signs to watch for when you suspect something is not right. Some signs beyond the obvious.

In a child:

*Flinching at sudden movements

*Always looking around as if waiting for something bad to happen

*Overly compliant, passive or withdrawn

*He or she does not want to go home

*He or she rarely looks at or touches a parent

What to watch for in an adult:

*A parent shows little concern for their child’s welfare

*Blames the child for problems in school or at home

*Makes comments that the child is bad, worthless or burdensome

*Rarely looks at or touches the child

I know this is Child Abuse Prevention Month, but I feel it’s important, since there’s not a month set aside for adults who were once abused, to point out a couple of things that might help those of you who are in a relationship with an abuse survivor to better understand his or her behavior.

Our biggest struggle is with TRUST, and  that’s understandable for obvious reasons. Most of us don’t feel entirely safe in any relationship with another human being. We are always waiting for the big bad to happen. We enter into even the most casual of friendships on our own terms. We may keep you at arm’s length. Many of us prefer to be alone because it’s safer, less complicated. Some of us have numbed our feelings as a way of protecting ourselves. All of us are terrified of being hurt or betrayed.

We are not freaks, but we are damaged goods. We struggle daily with confidence. Speaking for myself, I often have mini panic attacks, usually when I’m attempting to prove myself worthy, like interviewing for a job. And even when I’m doing something as insignificant as rolling a bowling ball down the lane on league night, I sometimes hear a voice in my head telling me how worthless I am, and that I’m going to mess this up. Then I usually do. Mess it up. Gutter ball.

Some of us don’t talk about what happened when we were children because that’s what we’ve been taught to do, what’s been drilled into our heads. And because we are ashamed of it. From my own experience, I’ve found that functioning in society is more difficult once people know. Now that my book is out and my co-workers have read it, I’m ashamed to face them day after day, because I know that they know about all the degrading things I was made to do as a child, all the humiliation I suffered. Now they look at me differently. I get a lot of sympathetic stares. I hear whispers. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I sense that some of them are a bit afraid of me, that they wonder about my mental well-being.

But my biggest challenge and deepest fear concerning my abusive past is that I have yet to remember the worst of it. And I have valid reason to be afraid. Before my father was killed in a car accident, he told my best friend there were horrible parts of my childhood that I have blocked out, and he prayed I would never remember. The idea that something unthinkable is lurking in my subconscious, something my mind is afraid to acknowledge, something even worse than the hell I went through, terrifies me  to the bone.

In honor of Child Abuse Prevention Month, for a limited time the price of the e-book edition of “Call Me Tuesday” will be 99 cents.

Justice for Scarlett

Just because I’m female it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate good-looking people of both sexes. The first time I saw Scarlett, a woman who works with me, I knew I was in the presence of a truly hot specimen. Absolutely gorgeous. She’s a petite, slip of a lady, but built like a brick shit-house. Blackish-brown hair, sparkling eyes, creamy skin, a button nose, knockout smile—straight up stunning.

Before I go any further, I should probably point out that her name isn’t really Scarlett. But I’m going to call her that because I think Scarlett fits her better than her real name. And because I like that name. It’s the name of one of the most colorful characters in American literature. And I’ve always secretly wished my parents had named me Scarlett. I’m convinced if they had it would have destined me for a more exciting life.

Yes, Scarlett is indeed beautiful, but be that as it may, men don’t stop in their tracks when she walks by; in fact, they hardly even notice her at all. They did at one time. At one time they followed her around sniffing her trail like a dog sniffs out a bitch in heat. They would’ve drunk her bathwater to have had a chance with her. But these days men don’t look at Scarlett in that way because now she’s a woman “of a certain age,” and women “of a certain age” are largely ignored in our society, even by the men “of a certain age.” Deemed no longer desirable.

So one day, while I was working at my job on the dock at Macy’s, I got to thinking about Scarlett and her unappreciated beauty. I looked down the processing line through the whipping sheets of plastic, through the empty cardboard boxes flying through the air en route to the baler, all the way down to the tail of the dragon where Scarlett was busy ink-tagging a stack of clothes. There she was working away with her signature red lipstick and perfectly coiffed hair, shimmering like a gem in the midst of all the dust and chaos. Looking at her, I wondered what life would be like if our concept of beauty were to become completely reversed. What if the older you got the more desirable you became? And then it occurred to me that while this was not likely to transpire in my lifetime, let alone Scarlett’s, there was a way I could make it happen—make Scarlett beautiful and desirable once again. I could write it and then it would be, at least in a story. That’s the wonder of fiction.

When I got home, I grabbed my laptop and began typing. And when I’d finished I had given birth to this:

The Evolution of Beauty

Molly twists the sprigs of hair sprouting from the top of her otherwise bald head, as she studies the restaurant menu. She always keeps her head shaved clean, except for the few hairs on top, which she dyes a dingy gray, as a style statement. She also shaves her eyebrows so that the only hair on her face is the soft, dark shadow above her upper lip. “I’ll start out with fried mozzarella sticks,” she says to the waitress without looking up. “Then I’ll have the baby back ribs—the full rack, please—and a loaded baked potato with extra butter. And for my sides, I’ll have the mac and cheese, and the cinnamon apples. And go ahead and bring me another Heineken,” she says, finishing off the one in front of her with a loud belch. “This baby’s history.” 

Kayla, seated across from Molly at the table, closes her menu. “Sounds perfect;” she says. “I’ll have the very same, right down to the beer, except I want extra sour cream and butter with my potato. Oh, and could you bring us some more rolls?”

Molly picks up the half-empty bucket of peanuts, and shakes them. “And more of these too, please,” she says. “It’s tough staying a perfect size twenty.” She grabs the last roll from the basket and begins icing it with honey butter, eying Kayla. “Did you just have your roots grayed?”

Kayla nods, proudly. “And you plucked your eyelashes!”

Molly grins, and then takes a bite of her roll. “Okay, enough chit-chat. What’s this big thing you wanted to tell me?”

Kayla leans in. “Guess who I saw at the mall last night?”

“I don’t know. Who?”

“Guess.”

“Kaaay-laaa, just tell me already!”

“Brad, I saw Brad.”

“Brad, my ex, Brad?”

“Yep, that’s the one. And he was with someone.”

Molly’s bald eyes grow wide with interest. “Shut up!” she says, her cheeks bulging with bread. She swallows hard. “Well, what did she look like?”

“Hmmm, let me see if I can remember…” Kayla says, as she cracks open a peanut and pops it into her mouth.

“C’mon, Kay, spill! Was she thinner than me? Younger? Taller?”

“Yes. Yes. And, yes.”

Molly smiles. Her teeth are as yellow and sparse as a partially-eaten ear of corn. “Lying bitch!” she says. “You’re just trying to make me feel good.”

“I’m not lying, Molly, she’s really a dog! Long, blond hair, big lips, legs a mile long and she’s at least five years younger than you. I’m telling you, Brad definitely traded down.”

Molly springs to her feet, layers of fat cascading in front of her, and stretches both arms straight above her head. “Yes!” she yells up to heaven.” Serves the jerk right!”

Kayla jumps up too, gives Molly a double high-five. Her “butt in the front,” as she affectionately calls her low-hanging stomach pooch, scoots the table out a foot, knocking over the bucket of peanuts.

After the two of them have settled back into their chairs, Molly says, “Speaking of ugly, have you heard about the new modeling agency for…let’s see, what do they call them these days…the aesthetically challenged? I saw some of the models on TV the other day and I swear to god, Kay, my ass would make them a Sunday face. I mean, none of them were over twenty, and I’ve never seen so much smooth skin and shiny hair in my life. It was really sad.”

“Sounds like the models in my grandmother’s old magazines. They were all skinny back then, and they had big ol’ white teeth. I can’t believe people used to think that was pretty. Ugh!” She shutters. “Grandma sure is hot, though. My boyfriends are always hitting on her. God, I’d give anything for her liver spots.”

“Now, you know it takes years to develop that kind of beauty. It’s easy to look good when you’re sixty-five, but when you’re in your twenties like us, not so much.” Molly sucks the butter from her fingers and then takes a big swig of her fresh beer. “That reminds me, I’m going to have to order my desserts to go. I really hate to cut this short, but I have an appointment at 1:30 to get my teeth stained. It’s the new red wine treatment. Thought it might help me look older.”

“No problem. I’ve been meaning to schedule an appointment for myself. I heard it’s awesome.”

"Well, don’t expect to get in any time soon; they have a waiting list that stretches from hell to breakfast.”

***

 

From the short story collection, “Flashes,” by Leigh Byrne.