My 8 year old self/1973

On Saturday mornings before Bugs Bunny there was a short cartoon called “Schoolhouse Rock” that showcased grammar, math, and history. When you are only 8 this is as good as it gets watching the little girl with white hair singing a “Noun is a Person, Place or Thing.” It was my favorite Schoolhouse Rock episode. It was a moment of peace. ______________________________________________________ I dragged my 8 year old self out of the house my legs trembled as I escaped across the front lawn to the neighbor’s front door. Momma was being beaten, again. I knew no other way to help her than to beg the man who lived in the next house to tell my daddy to stop. I wanted him to tear daddy’s fists from momma’s face. As I ran over to the next house, I left the door open, I didn’t think of shutting the door, like I was supposed to, there wasn’t time. But momma was screaming, my heart pushed me through the door past the yard. I banged fiercely forgetting about being polite, like momma had always taught me. My brown eyes were violated with tears already. With a child’s voice, supplication cut awkwardly through my throat, to form the sobs, “Please come, just come, my daddy’s hitting my momma! My daddy’s hitting my momma!” Without thinking, I grabbed my neighbor’s strong hand, and pulled him into my chaotic world. Your being a man will stop him, the logic of being only 8 years old.

I hadn’t realized the intrusion into this man’s life. He only saw an innocent child dirty with tears at his door. He used to race across the yard with me, this time he followed me with reluctance, still he came. I used to tell myself he would end the violence by his presence. This is the way it worked with bugs, the larger bug swallowed the smaller one. I pulled his beautiful hand into the war with me, as if to say, “Back me up”. Steve was an angel, in those moments.

“But don’t hurt my daddy when you do it”. As I crossed the boundaries between our yards, my beating heart pleaded for mercy, “Don’t hurt my daddy” "But take his fists from my momma’s face.

I’m asking for God. But I only brought a man with me. I’m asking a man to do God’s job. How fast does my heart beat when this happens? He didn’t know. Yet, I asked for a stranger’s help, to intervene, like I did a few weeks ago. It happened when daddy’s teeth were like a shark’s. The fire in his voice was like a dragon’s. He started all the time, with a word, calling momma that word, she wouldn’t want us to say ever.

There was a look in his eye that warned me, hell was going to be broken all over the kitchen or whatever room he was in the house. There was a skinny frightened feeling inside of me, a quiet sobbing voice that had no expression. I don’t remember praying that this violence would end, it was survived like a war, I only knew to run out of the house and bring the cavalry back.

These battles between momma and daddy cost everyone in the family. My younger brother Jimmy thought he had swallowed an eraser and stopped eating for weeks. The doctor gave him an x-ray, discerning it was psychosomatic, when you are a small child, you don’t know the difference between really swallowing an eraser, or only believing you have swallowed an eraser. He only knew food couldn’t pass through because of the eraser.

On the 4th of July, I stopped walking. I couldn’t walk that morning, and that was it. It was too painful for me to use my legs, so I refused to walk. There was no reason, I hadn’t fallen down from roller skating, hadn’t crashed my bicycle, there were no injuries, or bruises on my legs. Daddy hadn’t whipped me lately and never on my legs, just on my behind. Momma had to carry me to the bathroom and sit me on the toilet. When it was dusk, she sat me on the steps in front of our house that 4th of July. I deliberately burned my leg with the sparkler in my hand enticed by the broken pieces of flame dancing on the sparkler I pressed it against my skin.

My younger sister Mo-Mo as we called her always hid in the closet, until the screaming subsided. She’d close her eyes shut, and hide her head deep inside her lap. I know I found her in the closet one day after a fight.

The baby Missy would cry the way small children do, bawled at the top of her lungs. Boi, who was the oldest, would put his skinny body in between momma and daddy. It must have been God that kept him from really getting hurt he was only 9 years old, when I was 8.

These were reasons, I ran to get our neighbor Steve. He had a purple heart when he fought in Vietnam, and took care of his elderly mother Margie. Only Margie hadn’t had her stroke yet. Whenever he was home, he would follow me to the assailant’s house, my house. I never knew how daddy knew that Steve was at the front door, that part was a blur. But daddy would greet Steve coldly.

Steve would ask almost apologetically, “Is everything alright?”

Daddy stood at the doorway, with an irate tone “Get the hell off of my property!”

I wanted to tell him that I brought Steve here to stop him from hitting momma so the police wouldn’t have to come. Except I was taught never to talk back to my parents, when daddy was like this, it was enough that I ran to get our neighbor. Neither of my parents would tolerate mouthy children. When he became abusive my momma no longer had her spirited voice. The only one who had a voice at that time was my daddy and he used it like a tyrant. There was a tornado in his soul. We were all whipped into the black cyclone of his madness. There were reasons why they argued, when your 8 it feels like a battleground, living in a mine field, never knowing when you are going to be blown up. Steve must have understood that. He used to wear a green army jacket in the winter. I had built it up in my mind that he would protect us.

I should have let Jesus protect me, yes, we were Catholics, but what are Catholics? I never knew Jesus as a Catholic. I was in catechism, learned about the trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Church never taught me to really embrace Jesus as the only One who would protect me when I was so scared that I couldn’t even walk. The catechism teachers never told me that the Holy Spirit would speak to me in my heart. I believed I was on my own, to cope with the vicious bickering of my parents. They left me to my own devises, so Jimmy swallowed an eraser, I stopped walking and Moe hid in the closet until the storm passed. The priest never told us that Jesus would walk through the storm with us, that He would never leave nor forsake us, even if my earthly daddy eventually would.

I didn’t know that Steve would eventually marry and divorce. But he would leave. I don’t know why it mattered, he could never get daddy to stop hitting momma, when daddy told me to get in the house, behind the door he slammed, he would begin to hit momma if he wasn’t finished hitting her. My flight to the neighbor’s house was only an interruption, an insignificant pause in our lives.

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“Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them for such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven”

(Matthew 19:14)

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