Springle... The House

Sometime in August, 1972 we were still on summer vacation. Mom had been hanging out at the house with her current, main boyfriend, Curtis. Curtis was about ten to fifteen years younger than mom. Sometimes he brought his young son (around 4 years old), Curtis, Jr. with him. Curtis, Jr. called mom “the girl”, and he adored mom. If he had a hangnail and his dad tried to take care of it he would say “no! Let the girl do it!!” I am glad to say that Curtis, Jr. was not with his dad today. If he had been, that would have meant me keeping up with him while mom and Curtis drank and “napped” and drank. Thankfully, I could just be a kid for a while.

As usual, as the day progressed more drinkers came to the house. One of the drinkers was Larry. Larry was Uncle LaRon’s cousin. He had been an alcoholic for so long his health was starting to be adversely affected and he now walked with a cane. Larry never traveled alone as I think he could no longer drive, and was with his best buddy and constant companion, Tank. Tank’s real name was Jimmy, but nobody called him by his real name. He was called Tank because, as you could probably guess, he was the size of a tank. Tank was very good-natured and was always smiling. I liked Tank. He was a jovial drunk. Unlike Larry who had a very slimy personality. Larry presented himself as just one of the family, but he was more like a leech. He almost never contributed to the liquor being consumed. He just kind of hung around the edges and drank whatever everyone else had brought. He was the loner in his family. He was one of those kind of people that even though he was in a room full of folks he still seemed to be alone. Sort of like oil and water. They can be in the same container and never mix. Larry always seemed to be silently plotting something. Today was no different. He hung around the edges of the group of drinkers, drinking whenever no one noticed or someone said, “here have a drink.” This went on until evening.

It is now evening, and all of the drinkers have left the house except Larry, and Curtis. I understand why Curtis is still here, but Larry is a puzzle. He usually would have left when Tank left. Larry has passed out and is sprawled on the living room couch. Mom and Curtis are talking in her bedroom with the door closed. After nine o’clock Stephen and I go to bed. Around midnight I hear mom and Curtis leave. I know it is near midnight because I tend to sleep lightly when I know there are other people in the house that do not live here. When I hear the two of them leave, I check the clock in my room. I think to myself that everyone else, including Larry, must be gone because mom has never left anyone in the house that did not live there after she was gone. Well, tonight was different. As I would soon find out, Larry was still in the house. I assume mom thinks we are safe with Larry in the house because one, he is passed out drunk, two he is a “friend” of the family, and three up until now, he has never given mom any reason to distrust him.

About 10 minutes after mom and Curtis were gone, I hear someone walking in the house and it is not Stephen. Just as I was about to get up and investigate, Larry appears in my bedroom doorway. Before I could react, he has gotten in bed with me and is using his body weight to pin me down. Larry is not a big man, but he is still a man, and I am a female child. I start to struggle with him and realize he has gotten the advantage over me. I feel doomed. My mind is racing as I try to figure out how to end this situation with me winning. He is saying things like “it’s ok, I won’t hurt you.” Before I know it he has stuck his tongue in my ear. Ewwwww!!! This was a most disgusting sensation. I have no idea what he is trying to accomplish by doing this. I just know it is wrong! I am twelve years old and have never even been kissed. I have no concept that this is supposed to be sexy or anything like that. I lost it! Adrenaline hits and I start fighting and yelling for Stephen. Stephen gets up and I tell him to hurry and get the hammer. Stephen gets the hammer out of the kitchen drawer and runs to threaten Larry with it. By this time Larry realizes that he will not be able to handle both of us. While Larry is distracted trying to keep Stephen from hitting him with the hammer, he has loosened his hold on me which allows me to push him off and get out of the bed. Thank God I have adopted the habit of going to bed with my clothes on. Larry is now pretending that he is so drunk that he got lost trying to find the bathroom. I told Stephen not to hit him with the hammer. I did not want Stephen to have to go to juvenile detention for murdering a drunk. But, most importantly, I did not want to have to be the one to clean up the blood.

As Larry staggers back to the living room couch, Stephen and I have a meeting. We agree that we will not tell mom about this because we do not want her to go to jail for killing Larry, which would make us have to go to live with dad. We have chosen to keep living in our current nightmare rather than going to live in a whole different nightmare where there were regular meals, a house with no drunks, and people did not climb into your bed uninvited. It doesn’t sound like such a nightmare until the mental emotional abuse starts. This abuse could sometimes end with dad beating Stephen with little or no provocation in the name of discipline. Stephen and I are both the victims of unnecessary or inappropriate discipline; Stephen at the hands of dad and I at the hands of mom. Because Stephen is two years younger than I, I choose for us to stay where the abuse can be dealt with by me or both of us together. At dad’s we would not be able to stop the abuse.

At the end of this night, I have escaped rape, though I am left with mental emotional scars that will affect me well into my adult years. This night ends with Larry back on the couch, Stephen and I sleeping on the couch in the basement, and mom unaware of what has gone on because she chose to leave a drunk asleep on the couch with her unprotected children asleep in their beds while she gallivanted in the night with her young boyfriend. This further hammers home the idea that Stephen and I are unnecessary, unwanted distractions in mom’s life.

I prayed that night and a few weeks later Larry died. I was not the least bit surprised. I trusted that God cared about what happened to us and that this was his way of protecting us. When mom told us that Larry had died, I said “I’m glad!” She looked shocked and asked me why. That was when I told her what had happened. She asked me why I had not told her when it had happened. I then told her that I did not want her to go to jail which would mean us going to live with dad. None of what I said to her made her change any of her future actions, but at least she said that I had been right in my reasoning and if she had known what he had done, she would have killed Larry herself. It was one of the few times that I felt that possibly mom cared about us. Maybe we did have some value.