Tiller Hard Alee

When my mom gave me a bubble bath and lotion set when I was six or seven, my father turned purple and tore that Christmas up one side and down the other with the edict that I would become a whore.  I don't think the glass bottles were more than 3 ounces each, and I picture them as clear today as on that awful holiday.  She don't need that, she'll be down on Franklin Street with the rest of them red haired women.  There was green shampoo, pink lotion, bubble bath, and a light cologne in a cardboard box with a cellophane window.  I was so excited to get it, but any feeling dropped out of me as my mother's face crumpled and we ended both in tears.  Knots in my stomach.  Another Christmas hell.  She tried to stick up for me, for us, for women, but my father countered any sanity with his contorted, crazy accusations.  I put the set under my bed where it gathered a grey layer of  dust.  Never used it.  I wanted to side with my mom, but was frightened of consequences.

When I was little, I was permitted to be bathed once a week using Oxydol or Spic and Span.  Mom switched me to Tide once, and the fresh scent started another witch hunt.  When my father came home from work, first we had to greet him as if we were happy to see him. Then, once he sat with the evening paper, I had to go over and let him smell me, my neck, checking for anything contrived as fragrance that would label me as a six year old parasite, sucking the life out of a man.  I didn't want to be near him under any circumstance, it wasn't love on either side.

I have mentioned that he had brought me a pirate skull kite.  I also had a catcher's mitt, a Zorro outfit, a gun that shot plastic darts, and weirdly, was allowed to run around outside topless, wearing just red shorts as if I was a boy, which is what dad was hoping I would turn into.  He hated women, and bragged of beating one up that had been leading on a buddy of his during the war, he gave her just what she had coming, the bitch.   He had named his fists Mariah and Beulah, and challenged the men who objected to fight.  Laughable, unless you were living with it.   He was the Master Sergeant at Arms or some such nonsense, and taught judo and hand to hand combat, so the tale recounted ends with him coming out on top of the heap.  Mom and I didn't know what to make of his stories or if they were true or not, but the design was to intimidate us from ever crossing him and to tiptoe when he was around.  We sure the heck did.

I wasn't allowed to eat at the dinner table because I didn't appreciate him enough, so mom spread newspapers on the living room floor and put my dinner plate there, in front of the television.  I was happy enough to be put off to the side and watched Three Stooges reruns until the evening news came on.   He had gotten a rubber squeak doll of a curvaceous woman in a bathing suit that he would play with after supper, sit it next to him on the arm of the chair.  Ordered it from True magazine.  I was supposed to move out of the living room when he had it.  Mom hated the thing, fights ensued, and he didn't get rid of it until she told him to ask the priest if it was an appropriate item.  He was told it would lead him to sin, and burned it with the night's garbage in the back yard.  You never, ever knew what was coming next.

After he looked at me when I was thirteen and said "You're a woman now,"  I stopped bathing altogether.  My school life was abysmal as it was, I had no clue what people were or how to talk to them, so this development put me into another category altogether.  I was greasy, smelly, poorly dressed, and inside out with shame and shyness.  Every day was hell, all one could do was duck and hope not to get an apology later, for the "I'm sorrys" were dramatic.  He would come and explain and explain and explain as if I cared or understood the dynamics of his alcoholism, he would relate incidents that occurred between him and my mom, or tell me of stories of past exploits and penance.  I would freeze into stone, hoping he would hurry up and leave, for god's sake go away.  These were my junior high years.

I got out eventually, got away, he lost interest once I started working.  Today I received a bill with his name on it in the mail; since I had got him an account with the Veteran's Administration they would send correspondence here.  I still can't look at his name without a reflexive clench, even though he's been dead for two months and my brother had been involved with his care more than I.  Will it ever stop?  Only if I look forward and forcefully push the garbage aside.  I have legally changed from my maiden name and have built a small network of friends that I love.  My one son and my other son are in my life.  There are gentle, kind men, those that are selfless and giving, stable and unpretentious examples of what fathers can be, of what husbands are, of what friendship and companionship mean.  Congratulations if you have one in your life.

Hold your head up, o child.  Hold your head above the abusive actions taken by those mentally ill, the ones entangled in webs of delusion and accusation.  Get out there and learn, but don't apologize for who you had to be because that deflected the physical and verbal lashings intended to raise weals on your soul.  So I wasn't clean.  So I wasn't able to make friends.  So what.  I am here now, and it is a good place to be.

Tuck someone in tonight, even if it is yourself, you are such a sweetie pie.  Think of someone and send them a thought.  Let the night float by in dreamtime, and sail upon the glimmering ocean of Nod in a cockleshell made from dimensions beyond time. Sleep as if you were a child, innocent of premonition.  You are, you are.  Love.  Tiller hard alee.