I sent my mom to prison for child abuse when I was 12 years old. My mom was kind of a fucked up lady when I was a kid. (I'm 30 years old now). My mom was in prison for 7 years. They diagnosed her as bipolar.
She never did any lasting damage. She slapped me a bunch of times, but nothing left a mark. She would do really crazy shit though. One time in third grade, the teacher said I had said this word that meant bastard. The word was gotsen, gotson, fucking I don't know! It was something that sounded like that, and I swear I didn't say it. Here I am trying to think really fucking hard about what happened that day in the 3rd grade, and I can't even think of what word I was accused of saying. I tried googling it, too. No luck. But the teacher said I said it, that mysterious word. I think it started with g and ended with n... maybe. My 3rd grade teacher confronted me about it, and at 7 years old had no god damn idea. I remember having no idea, and there I was with casts on both legs because my Achilles tendons were too short, explaining prefixes and suffixes to my teacher before I even knew what those affixes were about. I reasoned how maybe my voice had mixed with another student's voice and somehow this word that I can't currently even google the definition of got misinterpreted but heard by the teacher. I was innocent and just trying to prove myself innocent, regardless of the rules of grammar, regardless of punctuation, and regardless of whether or not I was having a good day that particular day. I was, until this happened. And my mom found out. My teacher told her. My mom drove me home from school and yelled at me. She slammed on the breaks without warning, and I slammed my head into the dashboard. She ripped her sunglasses off and smashed them up in her hands before throwing them out the window. When we got home, my mom took a quilt she had been working on for a long time, and she stuffed it into a dirty dumpster while I watched and cried. My dad just stood there and let it happen. Things of value that were my mother's became something that represented me. And I have always been a failure, compared to everyone, and this is what I supposed I deserved.
As I got older, the further I was humiliated. Foster homes = rape and many other things I'd like to forget. The kids at school, they called me a dyke and a fag, and I didn't want to be any of those things because I thought they were bad. I didn't want to be a fuckin' gay kid because being gay was wrong, so I let drugs and crime beckon me. I liked coke, but I was a little apprehensive about heroine. I wouldn't touch heroine, but I learned a lot about coke and meth and heroine. I tried it and didn't like what meth did to me and a few friends, but coke was okay. So I sold coke to people, mostly so I could get some for myself. When I got to college, I became so very popular once people learned that I had a city connection.
There weren't any support groups, and suddenly I was being raised in an evangelical Christian religion against my Catholic upbringing and against my religious will all together. I didn't have friends except for those who were also outcasts, and we kept those relationships secret for fear of being bullied. I was living with a family I didn't know, couldn't relate to, and as far as membership went, I was just another foster kid who was owned by the state. Who would ever love me? I didn't know what to do, so I began cutting and burning myself. I burned myself with a heated iron on the small of my back, and the release of all the internal pain was almost heavenly. I wish everyone could have left me alone after that. I felt like a god, and I honored the burn wound. It felt so good to actually have a scab that would heal no matter how much I picked at it. It healed. I wanted it to heal meeting Aaron, the "son." He was supposed to teach me what was right.
The raping continued until I was 16 years old. Aaron Cordova. He's a pastor now for a Christian church (I'm being pretty damn nice here), and his parents allowed the rape, kept it secret. His parents were the foster parents of mine, of many. Right now, my ex-foster parents have young girls in their custody. I hope Aaron doesn't have access to them. As Aaron pressed his body against mine and whisper biblical nonsense into my adolescent ear Folks ask me why I don't raise hell about it. I tell them, believe in me! I will bring justice! Their names are Patricha and Gene Cordova, and they live at making a living off of young gals who can't have a say.
They have a say. I have a say, too.
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