| While I was in school, I had to worry about other kids making fun of the way
I dressed, because we were so poor that we didn’t have nice clothing. To top that off, I was what people called a “tomboy.” I didn’t fit in with other girls because I hated pretty bows and dresses. I didn’t fit in with boys because I was a girl. When I was home, I had to worry about my father beating us, or making us rub him or do those sexual things. I was getting to the point where I hated being alive. I would sometimes think how would I kill myself without it hurting. I was too young to know about drugs, and I didn’t want to bleed, so I couldn’t do anything but live and take it. Once, I even thought about how could I kill my father and get away with it. One thing I considered was to cut his car’s brake line. I had helped him fix his car so many times that I pretty much knew how it worked and where everything was. I also believed that if I did such a thing, God would punish me by having my father tell me to run an errand with him on that particular day, and I would die with him. No thank you! At home, there was more and more abuse going on. Every time I walked in the house, I had butterflies in my stomach. I never knew if I was going to be beaten, or if my brothers and sisters, or even mom, would be beaten for something. My brother Tony was always being beaten for things he did wrong in school. My father got to the point that whenever my brother would bring home a letter from the teacher; Tony would get one lash with the belt for every word in the letter. One letter was so long that I was in my room shaking and praying for my brother, hoping that my father would stop and not kill him. I kept saying, “Please God, make him stop; please God, that’s enough.” At that time, I wondered why a God who is supposed to love and protect this world would let a man beat a child like that. What kind of God is this that I believe in? Not only would my father beat us, he had certain punishments for us as well. Not like parents do who might take away your music or TV. We never had those things anyway. My father would hang us over a doorway for hours, and there were nails up there sticking us in the stomach. In the early 70s, the doorways were made with a small window over them. All the doorways in our apartment were missing these pieces of glass. So my father would hang us in the empty window frames. Another punishment was to make us lean up against the wall, as if a policeman were frisking a suspect. Our hands would hold the wall, and our feet would be away from it and we were not allowed to move an inch. If we moved, he would beat us with the belt. The worst punishment was when he would put two empty plastic bowls in our hands – palms up – and make us hold the bowls for a very long time. If our hands moved down, we were slapped or punched. These punishments were for infractions such as writing on the wall, or making too much noise while he was trying to watch TV, or not cleaning the house fast enough, or good enough. Once, Mary didn’t clean a pot spotlessly and my father took her head and slammed it into the sink full of dirty dishes. Her eye was a fraction of an inch from a knife. There was a special punishment if we told a lie. Our father would take a whole tablespoon of red hot pepper and make us eat it. If we threw it up; we had to do it again. One day my father was cooking something on the stove. Tony wanted to touch the stove while the fire was on. My father told him not to touch it, but Tony had to touch it anyway. My father got so mad when Tony didn’t listen to him he took Tony’s hand and held it over the fire. He said, “You want to touch? Here, this is how it feels.” Tony had blisters around all of his fingers from the fire on his hand. I stood there while Tony cried in agony and thought, “I really hate my father. I hate him so much.” |
| EXCERPT |
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| To Save One A true, emotional, fast paced book, you will not want to put down. |
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