Age 4

I remember my mother running into the living room and telling us kids (my older brother and myself) to go to our rooms and stay there, that "our father was home" and we knew what that meant.



Our father, not really, only my father. Michael's father lived in town and had already re-married also.



We shared a bedroom, only because I was scared of the dark. I was scared of everything back then and rightfully so. As we ran into the bedroom and my brother shut the door behind us, Michael tells me to not cry and if I can't help it, then to cry into the pillow. We both knew what was about to happen. My father had received the divorced papers at the office, at that time of the day he was just starting his drinking, so for him to come home at that hour, we knew what was about to happen.



I was setting on the edge of the bed when I hear the door slam and my father yelling louder then I have ever heard him yell before. I jump so high off the bed that it made my brother bust out with laughter, only to have my father hit the wall open handed and yell "shut -it up in there or I'll come in there and shut you up!" I started to cry.



Michael comes and sets beside me on the bed and puts his arm around me with a whisper in my ear of "he'll be gone before long, he won't stay"but I knew he wouldn't leave, not without leaving his mark. He couldn't leave without leaving a mark or being the bully in-which he was.



We sat on that bed almost motionless, but tons of emotions are swirling the house. I hear my mother talking in her quietness, but my father keeps yelling over her words, to the point of not being able to detect what she is saying. "you bitch, you think your gonna take what is MINE! I don't fucking think so! I'll fucking kill you and those fucking kids. They won't even know you ever existed when I'm done with you!" I hear him smack her down and she hits the floor. This sound I heard so many times before, it was a sound that became so common in our house, it was like hearing the phone ring, it was just that common.



I jerked into my brother shoulder and hid my face and started to cry harder. He whispers to "please be quiet", but I have no control and I start to wet myself. This had become a habit of mine when I became scared. In fact I was a bed-wetter up until I was 10 years old, mostly at night being to scared to get up out of bed to go to the restroom.



Michael scolds me in his quiet but gentle way "Cat....he whispers...I won't let anything happen, I promise. I think he is leaving. Look. See, he is starting his car".



We creep out of our room, to see my mother setting at the kitchen table with her hand over the right side of her face. I ran up to her and she hugs me and my brother..."are you o.k. mommy?...Yes, lovie, He's gone" I stopped shaking at that very moment.



"We have to leave soon, he'll be back and we know what condition he'll be in the next time" Michael says. My mother starts packing us overnight bags. She ask Michael to call the Neighbors and Family members to let them know what was happening. The family and neighbors all knew my father and his ways. They all knew he beat my mother on a daily or nightly basis.



My father was a prominent man in our community as a Attorney, along with being the owner of the Grainary and also one of, if not THE largest farmer in the county. Owning 2700 acre farm. Not only a Alcoholic, but a workaholic and a very rich man. Back in the 1960's money talked. It didn't matter what you did, if you donated money to the Mayors campaign or walked into the neighborhood bar and bought rounds of drinks all-night to the city and county officials, well then you could beat your wife nightly with the Sheriff being called every night, but nothing ever being done about it. The Police would come to the house and ask him to step outside, maybe talk with him for awhile and then be on their way, to their cozy family with dinner on the table awaiting on their return.

On Saturday mornings we would go into town to pay bills or shop for a while. My mom would see her friends or my Dad's employee's wives. You could see the pity they had for her my mother, but my mother always held her head high and would tell us kids to smile, be polite, and kept our business to our self, almost like being the perfect family. I'm sure we looked like it from the outside looking in, but most of the town's people were on the inside and knew what my father was capable of doing to my mother or us kids. Although he never touched me, he did beat on my brothers along with my mother, but with my brothers came the time that they both turned on him one evening when he had been on a 2 day drunk and they put him into the hospital for 11 days, but by this time we had already left the house and was living elsewhere.



My father wasn't always a alcoholic, it just became that way when he acquired all of these business's. With the stress of being a owner of more then you can handle, came the problems of finding something to take his mind off the responsibilities. He worked hard at being a alcoholic, I believe he worked harder at that then he did at being a husband or father. Over time it became his DNA and it kept him alive.



As the day prolonged and we were not moving as fast as we should have been, the night and evening was on us. I remember my mother saying, "we are taking to long, Michael get off the phone. We need to leave now" I think I was the first into the car when I see the dust from the road telling us that someone was flying towards our farm at a high rate of speed. It was him. I started screaming as soon as I seen the headlights hit the front of the car.



It was like the universe feed us energy. The stress and screaming was out of control . My mother is yelling at Michael to get into the car and lock the door, she is trying to get into the car herself and lock her door, while trying to start the car and get us moving so that he couldn't try to break the windshield, that she had just had fixed the week prior or rip into the convertible lining on her Cadillac........that he never let her forget he purchased for her, but it was really bought for her because she wouldn't come back home after one of the other times he had beaten her into a coma and broke her face......literally. My mother had more titanium in her face then the space shuttle.



It all couldn't work out as planned. No, not our luck. My father jumps out of his car while still in motion and rolls into the side of the barn and finally coming to a halt. He jumps onto the hood of the car as we are moving. Each of us screaming at her to GO! She slams on her brakes bring us to a abrupt stop. He rolls off the hood onto the ground in front of her car. She won't go forward, she just stops and starts to cry, she knows he has her again. She yells at him to get away from the car through the driver side window. I being in the back seat, have my face smashed up against it yelling "daddy go away, leave mommy alone. Please daddy let us leave" he comes to my window and tells my mom through the rolled up window that she can't take me with her, then he looks into my eyes (I will never forget this) and says "daddy can't live without his baby girl, open your door sweetheart. Look, daddy got you a new kitten, open the door so I can show you" I actually stopped crying and went to unlock the door when my brother leaped over the driver side seat and stopped me. When he does, this makes my father go into a fit. My father turned into a monster, he started yelling and spit was coming out of his mouth"open the door you little Bitch! Your just like you fucking mother you idiot! open the door or I'll beat your ass when I get you out!" I have and will NEVER forget that look on his face. It was like a switch that switched him into evil, he had pure hatred in his eyes.



He started towards the barn to get a weapon no doubt to knock out the windshield again, when my mother had her opening to drive off and she did. We went to my Uncle Jessie and Aunt Jo's house, my mother knew that was the ONLY place we would be safe. My father feared my Uncle Jessie and the last time my father put my mother into the hospital my Uncle paid my dad a visit and told him that if he ever laid a hand on my mom again, the authorities would never find his body. (I can promise you that my Uncle Jessie was telling the truth when he said that to my father......my Uncle Jessie was a tumbler and the family has always swore he was involved with the underground and had connections. He was Murdered in downtown Chicago in 1980 and the murder has never been solved. He was gunned down in front of a night club on Michigan Avenue).



I went 3 years after that of not knowing or caring where my father was. I remembered the next time I seen him. I was in a parade on our town square and he showed up out of no-where. He was drunk of course and showed his ass in front of my twirling squad and was arrested.



It wasn't until I was 18 that I seen my dad again. He was sober. He and my mother tried to rekindle their relationship, but it never worked. I believe I had a little to do with their never working it out. I was older and hated him and made sure I caused enough trouble to keep him away from my mother and my brother, along with myself.



4 Years ago I received a call out of the blue from my Half brother from Florida. He and my Sister had been out of my life for 30 years without any contact, to now him calling me to tell me that our father was dying from lung cancer. At first I had no emotion, then I felt I should be there. So my husband and I jumped on a plane and flew to New York City. They (my half brother and sister) had told me that our father didn't want me there until he was close to dying, so they respected his wishes and had not contacted me until there was only hours left. I'm not really sure if that is true, other then he, my father may have not wanted time to answer the questions I had for him, like: Why haven't you been a part of my life and why haven't you contacted me except the calls maybe every 5-8 years apart along with no visits. He just may have not wanted to answer my questions or it may have been their choice to not have me there since they had all rights to the will that cut me out of to only 10 percent (what the state requires for a child, the less amount he could leave me was 10 % and they were left 45% each of a 4 million dollar estate). I'm not sure of why it had to happen like this or why they did and said a lot of what they said, but I know that when we landed my cell phone rang to hearing my sister crying and saying that he had just passed.



They (my Half-brother & sister) of course left my dad's body there at the hospital until I could get to the hospital and say my goodbyes (I So respect them for at least giving me that....NOT) but for some reason they decided to put me in a hotel (at my expense) the first night, instead of putting me and my husband in one of dad's 7-apartments or 3 houses.

No, they had something to hide before allowing me to come to his primary home. Things where very strained at first, then as days went by I let all of the past and present go. They had the same father I had, I know he was awful to their mother, who he beat for years until my father left their mother for my mother...........I believe that is why they have never accepted me to be a part of their life's, until just here recently (and I only believe they have done so because they have come to realise that I'm quite comfortable and may have something for them.....NEVER! Not even a glass of water do I have for them).

My brother who was the Chief of Police in Ft. Lauderdale Florida, until he had gotten into some trouble and was asked to leave the department, and then, and only then, he asked me if he come here to see me for a few weeks......3 to be exact....while he get his head on straight. I decided to let him come for the 3 weeks. Bad mistake. He thought I should treat him like a fucking KING and kiss his ass the whole time he was here. It came time for hm to leave, I think it was 2 days prior to him leaving when I finally blew up on him and told him what I really thought about him, my sister and how they handled my dad's affairs and the whole estate stuff. I told him I believed he and my sister kept me from coming to the house so that they had time to remove anything in the house that might show that my dad cared for me and my mother (because there wasn't one picture of me or my family, which I had sent to him every year and they kept telling me that my father hated me and my mother).

I told him that he and my sister didn't do a very good job hiding everything because I found a picture in the belongings that the hospital had dropped off, it was a picture I had NEVER seen EVER. It was a picture of my mother holding me while she sat on the hospital bed just moments after giving birth to me. Not even my mother had that picture and it was in his wallet right behind his driver license, so if my father hated me and my mother so badly, why would he have kept a picture of such magnitude. WHY? If my father loved their mother so much, where was her pictures? What I'm saying is, don't lie about things that can make or break a person to the point of a breakdown. I literally believed that my father hated us until I found that picture and then I knew, it was like my mother was working this all out from heaven and letting her little girl know that they are liars and heartless at best.

Never again. Nope! I tried to be his and her sister, almost to the point of losing myself by giving so much to have them love and accept me, but it just didn't feel right. I still believe they have hidden things from me and spent money, sold property and cashed in life insurances that did not belong to them. I'm grown now and can protect myself from them and I will do just that. I told him I will not research this matter, but feel that he should know that it still comes to me at night in my dreams. I believe that there is something here that they are not telling me or giving me, but as time goes on it will come out, I believe that. I believe in Karma and if they are smart they will come clean before Karma hurts them so badly that not even God will help.