Violent Acres

I guess most people would have been happy to hear they had a Father who was alive and wanted to get to know them. But I wasn’t.

In my case, I was happy with the Father I had before and even though he was dead and gone, I loved him with every ounce of my soul. Every good quality I possess, I owe to the man who adopted me when I was just a toddler. It would not even be an exaggeration to say my feelings for him come very close to resembling ‘hero worship.’

Henry Smith wasn’t my Father. He was just some guy with a stack of legal papers claiming he had a right to me.

I didn’t want any of it to be true.

Even after speaking to my Grandmother, I wanted it all to be a big mistake. I went searching through my personal papers looking for evidence of a possible misunderstanding. I examined my birth certificate only to find it had been issued 4 years after my birth. My social security card revealed nothing new, either. I started frantically thumbing through a family photo album that I had stolen from my Mother’s house, desperately searching for a picture of my Father holding me right after I was born…although I knew in my heart that that photo didn’t exist.

I did find the first picture ever taken of me, though. I was lying in a hospital crib, a few hours after my birth, wrapped in a white blanket. I had been a C-section baby, so my head was perfectly round; I looked like a little Hummel figure. My red little hands were balled up in tiny fists and there was an I.D bracelet around my right wrist. Written on that I.D bracelet, clear as day, was a single word: SMITH.

Growing up, I looked at that picture hundreds of times and never did I notice the writing on the I.D bracelet. The truth was right there, staring me in the face all those years and I never saw it. Remember back when I said people see what they want to see? That includes me, too.

I felt like such a fool.

I decided to call my brother and tell him the news. My brother didn’t seem to have much to say about it, but I could tell he was upset. Mid-conversation, something suddenly occurred to me.

I said, “Hey, remember Mom’s little metal box? The one she kept locked up in her closet and never opened? I wonder…”

My brother didn’t wait for me to finish. He simply hung up on me.

About a half an hour later, he called me back.

“I pried open Mom’s box,” he said.

“And?”

“It’s all there. All of your adoption papers.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” I said appreciably, “She would have literally killed me if I would have gotten into her stuff.”

“Eh. She likes me.”

[Side note: A lot of people have asked how I could leave my brother with my Mother when I left home. The answer to that is simple. My Mother never abused my brother, so when it came to her, I never felt he needed protection. This is not to say that she wasn’t sometimes neglectful of him, but she never actually hurt him. All of her hatred was strictly reserved for me. However, my brother did go through his own shit growing up. One of our stepfathers, Troy, used to use him as a punching bag quite often. My Mother and Troy had a tumultuous relationship that was very on-again/off-again. When it was on, it spelled disaster for my little brother. I did not actually leave home until my Mother and Troy split up for good.]

Anyway, my brother didn’t like this new turn of events any more than I did. I guess if I were in his place, I would have felt pretty bad, too. After all, his Father died when he was a mere 4 years old; he barely has any memories of him at all. Then, all of the sudden, his sister is having dinner with her new Dad and he’s left out in the cold?

The whole fucking thing was just shitty.

But I still went to dinner with Henry Smith, mostly out of some misplaced feelings of guilt, but whatever. He took me to a fancy restaurant and insisted on paying even though I offered to go dutch.

I didn’t say much as he rambled on and on about himself. After my adoption, he ended up getting his shit together. He remarried and moved into a ridiculously large house and worked his way up the ladder at work. He was into sports cars and ski trips and old movies. His family was very close-knit and they were all curious about me.

Finally, finally, he asked, “So what about you? What was your life like?”

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “My Mother abused me.”

The sentence hung in the air like a poisonous gas. Henry Smith’s eyes widened in obvious disbelief. He opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it abruptly.

I…I…don’t know what came over me just then. For reasons that I can not discern, it suddenly became vitally important to me that this man know where I came from. I think…I lost my mind a little.

Almost panicking, I thrust my hands in his direction. “Do you see these?” I said as I pointed to all of my little scars, “These are from broken glass. If I missed a spot when I was washing the dishes, she’d break the dishes over my hands in punishment. Personally, I think she just needed an excuse to buy new dishes and waste my Father’s money.”

Henry Smith stared at my hands dumbfounded. But I was incensed. I was out of control. I couldn’t just shut the fuck up.

“And look at this!” I insisted as I leaned over and showed him the scar above my eyebrow, “This is from having my face slammed into a brick wall. 14 stitches, but my eyebrow hides most of it.”

I could see Henry Smith shrinking away from me. I knew the look on his face well. It is the look most people give you when you tell them about the tragedy that was your childhood. It is a look that says, ‘Please stop. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to know things like this exist.’

But I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.

I got to my feet. I hiked up the right leg of the pair of shorts I was wearing. “These right here,” I said as I pointed to two scars on my thigh, “These are actually stab wounds. She got me twice right here….” I switched legs and displayed my left calve. “And once more right here, as I tried to kick away from her.”

Henry Smith cleared his throat. “Stop.” He insisted. “Stop. Why are you telling me this?”

I stared at him, confused. Then, in a tiny voice, I replied, “Because you asked.”

“I don’t understand the point in telling me any of this!”

Disgustingly, I sneered, “My Father would have wanted to know what happened to me.”

“Well, that’s him.” He snapped back.

We stared at each other silently for a minute. Then he said, “Look, V, I don’t know what you expect me to say. I mean, I was a drunk back then. I would have never gotten my life together if….”

I raised my eyebrows before he could complete his sentence.

He cleared his throat and tried again, “Listen, if I had it all to do over again, I’d do it all the same way.”

Had Henry Smith actually taken his cock out of his pants and started pissing on me, he couldn’t have ruined our relationship as perfectly as he did with that one sentence.

Please understand that I do not fault him for feeling it in his secret heart of hearts. He barely knew me when my Mother took me away. And, accordingly to him, he actually put some effort into learning about my Father before he let him adopt me. He had shit going on in his life and he felt he couldn’t be a decent parent to me and whatever. I understand all of this and I totally sympathize.

With that said, all of those excuses and justifications should have remained in his secret heart of hearts. Because when your flesh and blood tells you after you abandoned her to a monster, her life became a nightmare, the appropriate response is to put your arms around her.

You say, “I’m so sorry.”

You say, “If only I would have known…”

You do not say, “I do not want to hear about this.”

And you especially do not say, “If I had it to do all over again, I would have done it all the same.”

You. Do. Not. Say. That.

Things with Henry Smith and I never got much better. We tried everything. We tried dinners and phone calls and when none of that worked, we tried writing letters. Our biggest problem was that Henry wanted me to understand him, but he didn’t want to understand me.

Does that make sense?

It seemed like every conversation and every letter revolved around what his life was like 20 years ago and how, because of this, it was the best decision in the world (for him) to sign those adoption papers. Oh, and he’s a really nice guy and he really wants to be my friend!

But just as much as he didn’t want to hear about me, I didn’t want to hear about him. So many times I tried to tell him, “Listen, there is no way you can phrase what you’re saying to make me think it was all for the best that you abandoned me. If it was the best thing for you, I understand that. But you will never convince me it was the best thing for me. And all you’re doing with all of these piss poor excuses is pouring salt on an already gaping wound. Let’s just forget about it.”

He just didn’t get it. I actually think he thought I would be happy to hear about the epiphany he had on the ski slopes 15 years ago the winter he spent at his vacation home in Colorado, but I wasn’t. Maybe a bigger person would have been thrilled to hear that her biological Father had managed to live a happy and fulfilled life in her absence and would have firmly shut her mouth when the conversation had turned to her own dark past. Maybe a bigger person would have avoided raining all over his big parade.

But I am not a bigger person. I am a very small, very angry, little bitch of a person and I rained all over his goddamn parade because I was PISSED THE FUCK OFF. Henry Smith would try to tell me about his trip to Italy and I would merely reply, “Was that the summer of 1986? Where was I in 1986? Hmmm, let’s see here. Could that have been the summer my Mother made me eat my own vomit because I had the audacity to get sick on her new rug? Yes, I think that’s where I was…”

Henry Smith tried to ignore me, but his lack of acknowledgement of what I’d been through just further enraged me. Our communication broke down to the point where every conversation ended in me crying and yelling at him while he stayed dispassionately silent. I’m not even exactly sure what I wanted of him. I think all I really wanted him to say was, “I’m sorry that happened to you.” But he never would.

It was actually Henry Smith who finally decided that contacting me had been a mistake. He called me up one day and told me he was calling the whole broken ‘friendship’ quits. Clearly, the failure was 100% my fault. But before he said goodbye forever, he told me, “Maybe when you’re older, you’ll understand.”

I’m over a full decade older right now.

I don’t suspect I will ever understand.

The man who adopted me, who I always thought of as my Father, died when I was 7 years old. I think about him every day. I cannot begin to tell you how much I miss him.

After the debacle with Henry Smith finally ended, I tried my hardest to remember the very last time I laid eyes on my Father. For hours, I would lie in bed, eyes shut tight, mentally scouring my brain for every single glimpse into the past that I could possibly dredge back up. Slowly, slowly, the memories would start to surface.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table working on my valentine box for school. I remember the yelling coming from my parent’s room. I remember my Father storming out into the living room and my Mother screaming, “Don’t you walk away from me!”

I remember Father calmly asking her where his car keys were. She responded by picking up a bottle of lotion and hurling it at him. As it flew through the air, lotion somehow squirted out and made a big ‘S’ shape on the ceiling.

I remember my Father batting away the bottle of lotion and saying, “Fine. I’ll walk.” My Mother lunged at him as he walked towards the door, but she stepped on my brother’s truck, slipped, fell, and smacked her face on the corner of our coffee table. She screamed.

I remember the way my Father paused and almost went to help her. But instead he shook his head and walked out the door. Furious, my Mother picked up the phone and started screaming into it. Some time later, the police showed up at our house. They looked at my Mother’s eye. They took a picture.

I’m not sure what happened next.

I have another memory. In this one, my Mother yelled at me because I wouldn’t stop asking her about my Father. She showed me some ripped up pieces of paper. She said, “Do you know what these are? These are bills that your Father isn’t paying because he doesn’t love us anymore.”

Was this before or after the lotion on the ceiling? I don’t know.

I remember when we moved out of that house. Actually, that was kind of a good memory. (Even though my Father wasn’t there.) Our neighbors helped us move and they had 2 kids around the same age as me and my brother. While the adults loaded up our stuff, we played tag around the moving vans…..with flashlights.

We needed the flashlights because it was dark outside. Normally, we would have been in bed sleeping, but my Mother told us moving was special occasion, so we were allowed to stay up late. Back when you’re 7 years old, playing outside while it’s dark out is an incredible treat. Add a few neighbor kids and a couple of flashlights to the mix and you end up with one hell of a fun game of tag.

I smiled a little as I remembered running around those trucks. Then, something occurred to me that startled me into sitting position. I thought to myself:

Who fucking moves in the middle of the night?

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