Momma after the marriage

Momma and I came crawling home from school when I was in high school with cramps. We both had severe cramps that day. I don’t remember why she picked me up, she didn’t have the car and we walked and would lie on people’s front lawns when the pain got to be too much.

Towards the last years of our life as a family, daddy would break into the house when we weren’t there and steal family photos. He would come by, momma would call the police then he would disappear.

Momma was the one who came to my Forensic tournaments, daddy never came to one tournament. It was momma who used to hear me practicing my speeches. Even when daddy was still in the house momma was the one who used to listen to my stories. The first time I tried to write a novel when I was 13, every time I wrote a page I would read it to her. Momma would listen to Boi play his trumpet. She found the strength to be a mother to all of us, when daddy didn’t want to be a father.

It was hard for her leaving daddy, she had been a housewife her whole life, and she had five children, Boi and I were in high school, but we were still in the house. She was a fabric that was tearing, but she wouldn’t let us go, she held onto us with a tenacity, she loved us with every fiber of her being, even though she was harsh, she never mistreated us.

Daddy had many affairs besides this one, it hurt momma and she felt like a fool, staying in the marriage. A woman would call the house, and tell momma to let daddy go. I never forgot that daddy didn’t want to leave he wanted his cake and to eat it too.

Momma had put up with so much already. Towards the end of the marriage daddy couldn’t wait to leave the house, momma put a lock on the garage door, and daddy got his table saw and sawed the lock off, so he could leave.

After they divorced momma was trying to get us help, we lived in Mama Tana’s trailer for awhile when 1422 our house was lost. Momma didn’t stay with the house like so many other women.

I couldn’t imagine what putting up with a husband for so many years who beat you and then having to leave him, having his five children, raising them and then being punched in the face.

I know this is why momma really started drinking to numb the hole daddy had blown into her heart. Because it bled every day and daddy bought a sports car, with the money his parents had loaned him when he got divorced to start a business. Momma was taking the bus, and daddy would purposely drive past her to humiliate her, sometimes with a woman, sometimes by himself. I saw what daddy did to her.

Years later it hurt her that we all talked to daddy as if nothing had happened. Daddy never apologized to momma for all of the pain he had caused her. He told her he still loved her years later. But he never apologized.

I remember when daddy and momma would fight then he would say to her, “Give me a rabbit”, she would give him her hand. Daddy used to buy her clothes all of the time whenever he got an account, and silver bracelets from Liberty House, when there was a Liberty House.

Momma wasn’t the villain she was a young woman with five children, trying with her life’s blood to keep a marriage together. Mama Tana used to tell her to stay in the marriage. I think she thought daddy would change. Mama Tana suffered so much without a husband. But momma suffered so much with one.

I remember having two parents in a car, momma and daddy talking in the front seat when we went to the movies, or to the grocery store, or to Sanger to visit daddy’s parents.

Momma was more closed up then, about things, she was brave, she didn’t cry much, but she did fight back, and demand small things like milk or eggs for the family. She used to say, “Daddy didn’t work”.

Momma tried to work in the IRS once nights but daddy got so jealous. Then daddy said she was lazy and didn’t work like other wives.

Momma drank a lot after the marriage when I was in the Army and my little sisters wanted me to come home. But I was pig-headed and I didn’t hear their cries for help, I wanted to finish my training.

Momma was a survivor and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from so much abuse. So, if momma drank it wasn’t her fault. It was hard, she would want to drive when she had already been drinking, and if I didn’t let her pass she would begin to slap me. She would demand the car keys. She would say things that weren’t nice to me, but it was the alcohol talking. When momma was sober, she wasn’t that abusive. She was angry and hurt, her humanity was crushed. That is not an easy thing to live with.

Momma eventually got us an apartment to live in. She never left the girls even when her boyfriend Auggie wanted her to run off with him. I never suffered as much as momma.

Momma and I used to get applications, back when they were paper. Momma would drive us from store to store I would get off and ask for two applications. We tried to work for David and Sons and in the Winery, but they never hired us, they never even called us back. We worked for a temp service and began working at Dole in Kerman. We hated working for Dole working on the assembly line with the prunes for 8 hours. It wasn't how I imagined my life, my hands stained with fruit. But I was the oldest, Boi was already in college. Jimmy was in the Air Force. Misi was in high school.

At night, a couple of times a week momma would work with Moe at Volume Services selling refreshments for big events at the Selland Arena.

Momma was trying to transition to a life of a divorced woman, she didn’t receive alimony or even child support. But God had his eye on momma, on all of us. I never forgot what momma suffered despite what she thought. Momma was the one who paid attention to me when I was younger, until she wasn’t able to anymore.

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“He heals the brokenhearted

And binds up their wounds.”

(Psalm 147:3)