Chapter 8 The Monster
I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become. -Carl Jung
He liked to get me into a corner with my back against the wall. The corner in the dining room by the basement door worked the best. This way, it was a small area and a tighter fit for me. I was powerless against him. He was in control and that’s how he liked it. He would place his fist so it barely touched my nose and punch at my face over and over again until I was a heaving, sobbing, terrified mess. I couldn’t move for fear of being actually punched. He would tell me over and over again how he’s the boss. He then asked me how I liked it. I was silent except for the sobbing. He loved the control he had and the fear I openly displayed. He did so much damage to me without leaving a mark. I always felt like I had been beaten to a pulp, but I had not one bruise to show for it.
Dominance was his game. He let Kimmie and me know we were taking up precious space in his home, not to mention taking up my mother’s time. The Monster didn’t torture Kimmie with these kind of beatings; however, her story is her own to share if she decides. I’ll never know what I did or didn’t do to trigger his attacks. They always happened when my mother wasn’t around. For some reason, the Monster was threatened by Kimmie and me, although we were only 6 and 9 years old when he married my mother. When he was finished with the punching, I would run to the woods behind our home or my bedroom closet until after dark or until my mother came home. I attempted to stay away from him. I tried to be a good kid. But none of this mattered. If The Monster saw an opportunity, he took it. He loved making me afraid and keeping me in my place.
The Monster Arrives
When I was in third grade, my mother met The Monster. The Monster came with a son. Monster Jr. was a few months younger than I was. If you lined up all the sleazebags my mother dated, The Monster was the worst of the worst. The cream of the crop, so to speak. They married just one year after they met, when I was nine years old. I was in fourth grade. I had to go to a new school because we were moving into a different house with The Monster. A big, blue house in Warwick, RI. Until then, we had lived in Coventry, RI. Warwick was clearly a step down in class. But my mother didn’t see it that way.
My mother was enamored. Completely and totally engrossed in this man. She asked Kimmie and I what we thought of him. We both told her we were afraid of him. She laughed. For the wedding, Kimmie and I each got a new dress and shoes. I loved the dress and shoes, but I hated that my mother and The Monster were getting married. I didn’t want to move into the bigger house in a new town. I don’t recall specific details about the move itself or the wedding, but I do recall the overwhelming sense of dread. For the next five years that she was with The Monster, she would laugh off a lot, but I know she cried regularly when she was alone because I learned to listen. The Monster hurt her in every possible way.
The three years my mother was single were scary, lonely, and difficult, but they had become familiar, albeit dysfunctional. I didn’t realize those years would look like child’s play in comparison to the five that would follow. Five years with The Monster reigning over us all. Five years of utter hell in which my mother would leave The Monster five times.
The Making of a Monster
My mother is 5’10” tall and The Monster was shorter by quite a bit. I mentioned this to my mother once. She told me it’s all the same when you’re lying down. Jesus Christ. The Monster was short, stocky, and almost bald with piercing blue eyes. He was viewed as attractive by others, probably because he was confident to the point of arrogance. He was a shoe salesman and loved to flirt with women. Even as young as I was, I understood his flirtations when we visited him at the store or went places with him. I would observe him as being engaging, funny, and entertaining to people in public. The Monster was good at being a shoe salesman. Letting his hands linger on a woman’s foot for that extra couple of seconds while peering into her eyes as he complimented her was the key to excellent sales. At home, however, he was a different person entirely.
The Monster was an egomaniac. Narcissistic. A complete asshole. He was a semi-professional opera singer with a Napoleon complex. He was always trying to prove to everyone how wonderful he was. He was completely self- absorbed. He scared the shit out of me, although at my young age I couldn’t put it into words except that I was afraid of him.
As a kid I enjoyed my freedom because being home wasn’t an environment I felt comfortable in. There were times that I was out on the street because as kids we were gone from breakfast to dusk. There were also times we were kicked out of the house. Telling you now that I grew up on the streets sounds horrific, and it could have been, but for the most part it was a safe place. We remained in our neighborhood, which was pretty large. We typically didn’t venture more than a couple miles from the house. We were never homeless. We were just being displaced for a time. I never spent a night on the streets, but I was always looking for options in the event Kimmie and I needed to run away.
The Big Blue House of Terror
The big, blue house The Monster bought with the help of the money my mother made off of selling our little house had a front porch. Nobody sat on that porch. It was just there for looks. When you walked into the house, you were in a small front room with wood floors. My mother’s sewing machine was prominent here. To the left was a door to the basement. The basement was a scary place.
Like many houses in New England, this one was built on a stone foundation. The basement stairs were steep, rickety, and open. I hated being in the basement. It felt like something out of the horror movies I hadn’t even seen yet. I avoided going down there as much as possible, although I admit to having a morbid curiosity about it. I always tried to be brave for Kimmie and wanted to protect her, but I won’t lie. I was scared being down there. I’m surprised he didn’t send us there more often than he did. He must not have sensed my fear.
The washer and dryer were located in the main room of the basement, which was lit by bare bulbs swinging from the low ceiling. The basement was partitioned by walls, and some of it you couldn’t stand upright in due to the boulders jutting out, acting as the floor and part of the walls. It was wet in the basement–some places more than others. The floor that wasn’t made of rock was poured concrete and everything seemed uneven. The “rooms” that were walled off you couldn’t stand in–they became more a crawl space and weren’t good for storage because it was always damp. Thick plastic sheets hung on some of the walls, creating a creepy barrier.
The front room led to the living room with hardwood floors, where the couch, coffee table, and TV were. The music room was located behind the living room. It housed my mother’s piano and several phonographs. Some used albums, others used cylinders. The Monster loved his Victrolas and played them often, singing along loudly. We were not allowed to touch them. They played loud, scratchy opera. There were so many singers, but the opera singer that The Monster played the most was Luciano Pavarotti. My mother was a trained soprano, so she often sang with him. He sang publicly as often as possible. He loved being in front of people and he was very good at it. So was my mother. They made beautiful music together. Listening to the opera and listening to them sing along was transformational. Such a horrible man making something so beautiful felt confusing to me, but I loved music and opera.
Once I stayed home sick and was lying on the couch in the living room. I felt sick and ran through the music room to throw up, but I didn’t make it and puked in the middle of the precious room. The Monster screamed at me and made me clean up my own vomit while I sobbed, trying not to throw up more. He refused to let Kimmie help me and enjoyed watching me suffer.
Straight ahead of the music room was the dining room, which–oddly–was carpeted, and through the dining room was the galley kitchen–also carpeted-- that ran the length of the music room and dining room. The carpet was a nondescript amalgam of blues and grays. The tightly woven carpet that hides almost everything. Even blood. There was also a door to the outside on the back wall of the dining room, and on the front wall was the entrance to the stairs going up–directly on top of the basement stairs that went down.
The stairs and upstairs hallway were carpeted, but the bedrooms had hardwood floors. Upstairs, there was a small bedroom immediately to the right, and the master bedroom was straight ahead. The windows of these rooms were connected by the roof of the downstairs porch. Down the hallway was a bathroom and two more bedrooms, one to the right and one to the left. Monster Jr. got the small bedroom and Kimmie and I had the rooms at the end of the short hallway–now having bedrooms of our own.
Kimmie’s bedroom was painted blue and had an enormous walk-in closet that was nearly the size of a room in and of itself. My bedroom had flower wallpaper, and the only closet was a 3’ X 2’ door that led to a space under the eaves.
The house had a detached two-car garage off to the side. The yard was a good size, and there was a little patch of woods behind it. Just enough to feel like I was off the beaten path. We would escape into that little patch of woods and hide there. I had grown up loving the woods and feeling safe in their embrace, and I treasured the time we could hide here. Monster Jr. would try to get us to play Truth or Dare and Spin the Bottle, but Kimmie and I weren’t interested. Mostly we wanted to just get away from The Monster.
The neighborhood was predominantly Portuguese. Many of the kids my age had parents who didn’t speak English. There was a store down the street called Bettez (Bad-eez) and was on Bettez Street. It was locally owned by one of these families. The store owner was a big, heavyset man with a strong accent. We would walk there nearly every day. If we had change, we could buy penny candy. There were aisles with huge, round, open bins of candy, and you could grab what you wanted. All of the candy was a penny each, so having a dime seemed like a lot of money. We loved going there. It got us out of the house.
Power and Control
The Monster was a control freak. He would call my mother while he was at work. If Kimmie and I were home, he’d ask where we were and if she was spending time with us. He didn’t want our mother mingling with others, including her own children. When he was home, if he was with my mother upstairs, we had to be downstairs and vice versa. If we were all downstairs, we had to be in a different room. He cut my mother off from everyone and everything except church or music events, but that was because he sang and she accompanied him on the piano or organ. They would sing and play at churches and weddings. Anywhere they could. After a short time, he started kicking us out of the house. He wanted us around as little as possible.
The Monster was not a touchy person. He didn’t hug or show any affection. The only time he touched me was when he was being sexually abusive. He wanted to see if my breasts were changing, and he told me that I would have a great ass. He never kissed me on the mouth, which I was grateful for, but he did like to put my hand on his cock outside of his pants. He wanted to show me how big it was and let me know that someday I would feel it inside of me. I wasn’t afraid of sex because I had seen so much of it between my mother’s boyfriends and her books on sex. But I was terrified of The Monster. I knew sex was enjoyable because I saw that it was, but I wanted nothing to do with it or him. By this time I was only 10 years old. I was always alone when he approached me sexually. It didn’t happen often, but The Monster was good at capitalizing on any opportunity.
Becoming A Warrior Princess
There have been very few times in my life I have wanted to become violent towards someone. To harm someone just because I wanted to harm them. The Monster is that person for me. I have no interest in knowing how he and Junior are, where they are, or what happened to them. Although I haven’t lived in New England in decades, I fear what would happen if I saw them in person. Because of my experience with The Monster, I know there is darkness within me well hidden. Instead of focusing on that, I made the choice to take my life in a different direction. I chose to foster the love. But the darkness is there just the same. Hiding and lurking in the shadows.
Triumph with Love
I have struggled with my love of music. It speaks to my soul in a way you can only understand if you also have a soul whose language is music. Opera is the genre I have wrestled with the most. How something so beautiful could come from someone so horrible. How could The Monster produce a sound worthy of accolades? Opera calls to me, but I ignore the siren sound. I have never attended an opera and I do not know their stories. I have wanted to get dressed up and attend, but I haven’t. I’m afraid it would unleash a well of emotion that I am reluctant to undam. I am afraid to be thankful to the worst person I know for something I love. Therapy helped me to deal with this.
LEARN AND GROW
• Find boundaries even in what you love, they may be your sanity
• It’s OK to have an appreciation for something and yet keep it at arm’s length