Stereotypes are a convenience. When someone says “an old farmer” in a book I picture a gray haired man, sun and age wrinkled. well tanned in dusty overalls, maybe sitting on his trusty John Deere. When someone says “baby of the family” one may see temper tantrums and tears and everybody placating a small tyrant or at least everyone cherishing and making a fuss over “the baby.”
Stereotypes are not real life. There are ‘farmers” who look like business men and there are youngest children who are not “spoiled.” And there are large families who are not cohesive groups, everyone looking after everyone else, laughter and singing, and sociable unto themselves.
I was born the twentieth child (and that is not even clear according to my birth record in Brocton, NY) I grew up knowing my rank as the twentieth child only to discover I may have been the 21st live birth of my mother and suddenly feeling displaced. Add to that a news article that came to light when I was in my fifties proclaiming my sister Valerie as the twentieth child. Still, I was the baby of the family and carried the burden as best I could.
The first few years held some good and some bad. Some of the bad I do not recall. My sister Rozzella was tasked with my care as next in line to receive one of Mother’s babies. She would have been thirteen. Most people would agree, far too young for motherhood but I had formed a bond with her. She told me in 2006 my crib was placed in the only space available, a far corner closet in the girls room where they could hear the mice all night long. she remembers thinking what a horrible place to put a baby. And my mother in 1995 proudly bragged to me that she had never had to hold me since I was 2 weeks old for my bottle was always propped on a pillow. She said it in a huff because I was holding my five month old beloved granddaughter to give her a bottle. It was truly unnecessary in her eyes, but perhaps she had never felt what I felt when I held a baby, especially my own and my children’s.
In a hard worked farm family a new mouth to feed might be a novelty for a little while but soon to become just another mouth to feed. I am pretty certain Mother resented having yet another girl when more boys were what were needed and wanted. True to her word I have no memory of her ever holding me and through the years no feeling of bonding. She was always a stranger to me in many ways.
Dad liked me, perhaps even loved me when I was very small. After working in the fields all day he would bounce me on his foot and sing ditties to me and we would laugh and snuggle and he was just wonderful. That all ended when I was 3 1/2. But there was more to it than the event of his vicious spanking, there was a running feud over the management of the children. There were not enough boys and far too many girls and Dad said the girls needed to stay in the house and learn the girlie things, cooking, sewing, cleaning etc. and the boys were to work the farm. Ma revolted and said the girls could work the farm with the boys so she sent the older ones out to the fields. Dad got mad. Ma got mad. At some point they agreed the boys would be under Dad’s management and the girls were mother’s property.
Around the same time there was a 4-H meeting at the house and Dad was minding me and Valerie and gave us some chocolate milk. Ma came out and had a fit over the big glasses of milk right before bedtime and words were said. All I remember was Ma telling Dad to leave the girls alone. perhaps there was more to it that chocolate milk, but I do not remember any time in my childhood when they were at all nice to each other.
Then one night (Sheila bragged in 1989 about instigating it) I ran downstairs and gleefully planted a second goodnight kiss on my loving, wonderful father’s cheek and he instantly flipped me over his knee and spanked me very hard. “you’re too old for this sort of stuff,” is what I remember him saying. I cried all the way up the stairs walking between my siblings standing there watching my walk of shame and hurt. No one offered comfort. My heart was broken.
My relationship with my father ended at that time. He did not speak to me nor acknowledge my presence. I was cut off with a razor sharp knife and i missed him every day though he was right there in the house.
In 2006 I asked my sister Charlene why she hated me. She told me, in mournful soft tones, that she hated me because Dad played with me and all she got was kicked out of the way. I imagine jealousy is what got me spanked, and jealousy is what set me apart and alone when I crawled into bed crying and shattered with no person lending comfort. I was 3 1/2 and lonely. It was a short step to becoming completely vulnerable to sexual abuse.
I won’t go into too much detail. But I am trying to set the stage. It was sometime in the wintry months everyone was inside, the living room was full of my siblings and Mother nd Father sat at the dining table reading. I was carrying my NYC Doll (each of the girls got a doll from NYC) by the hair and the body fell to the floor. I began to cry. One of my older brothers came over smiling and said if I stopped crying we would play a game together, just the two of us.
I felt great happiness. I stopped crying and he took my hand. I remember feeling so proud that my brother liked me and wanted to play a game with only me. Individual attention was rare. I remember passing through the dining room; Ma looked up at us and smiled. I wonder to this day if she knew what was happening, or if she was just relieved to have the child attended to with no effort from her. I walked on, hand in hand with my big brother, through the kitchen, through the pantry, up the stairwell and into his bedroom still smiling and happy.
Little girls wore dresses mostly back then. Mine was blue. My brother reached under my dress and pulled my panties down all the time coaxing and comforting and smiling. He laid down and pulled me on top of him and put something between my legs. My mind must have shut it out then because the next thing I remember was being nudged out the door and hearing the door latch fall back into place.
Laundry hung in the upstairs hallway drying on lines as it always did in winter. I stood there for what seems like eternity between the sheets with the scent of laundry soap in my nostrils. I could neither move forward or backward. I could not move at all. I had a terrible secret that I could tell no one and I stood very much alone except for my brother who was now behind the closed door.
This is how sexual abuse happens in large and small families. I have been told it could not have happened, someone would have known. Maybe somebody did know. The youngest 6 girls in the family were molested by an older brother. Some of us by more than one. Of course someone knew, some of the same girls were there in the house that day who had already been molested.
The truth may be that we do not want to know. One of my elder sisters once told me that sexual abuse and incest in families has always gone on and it can never be stopped. Can that be true? My heart broke when I heard those words, but I fail to see how it can be eliminated.
My brothers were broken too. No, it does not excuse them, but it does explain things about them and their own plight in a family of fear and savage beatings where no love ever touched the floors and walls let alone the children and only the echoing silence to keep us company.
The three sisters who had helped care for me left home between age 3-5, Wanda, Ardys, Rozzella. The next older sister, Sharon left after a violent scene with Ma when she was sixteen and I eight. But she often chased me away from her because Ma used her for a punching bag and Sharon told me to stay away or I might get what she got. So at five I was pretty much on my own to fend for myself against horrible odds. The sexual abuse continued for years and Charlene used me for a punching bag. Well, if Ma could have one, she could too. But the meals came regular and there were clean clothes and a roof and heat in winter and rules to follow and Ma and Dad sitting in creepy silence at the kitchen table. We called it the cold war. They never spoke to each other or any of us unless a need arose or company came. Then we could all pretend to be normal for a while until we sadly watched the car going out the drive and all went quiet and we retreated into our separate corners like fighters in a ring. We waited for the next bell to come to life.
The Road Forward 