Mom had never told me anything about my grandfather, neither good nor bad. It was almost as if he didn’t exist to me, and I knew and trusted my mother enough to realize that there would have been a good reason for that.
“Our father was a monster. And I don’t use that word lightly either,” she said. “I’ve known many awful and evil men. But I’ve never known one that was a true monster, aside from our father.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“Oh, he wouldn’t do anything,” she said with a far-off look as if she needed to distance herself from the story she was telling. “He would just make you think about all the things that he could do. He would twist your mind around itself so many times that you couldn’t tell up from down, truth from lie, or hero from villain. Paula and I would watch him chip away at our mother, too. It wasn’t anything drastic at first; little things like making a comment and then immediately pretending like he didn’t say it and like we were all crazy, even though we all heard him clear as day. We had a dog back then; I think his name was Sam. I remember watching my father stuff the dog in a trash can and close the lid. I can’t even remember what the dog did, only that it got into something or chewed something that it shouldn’t have. I remember standing there and watching him do it. He looked at me and smiled, the creepy kind of way that those clowns in horror movies do. Eventually he left the room to go do something else. I stood there and watched the trash can shake back and forth as Sam tried to get out. I should have helped him get out, but I didn’t. I knew what would happen if I tried. After a few hours, he came back into the room and pulled Sam out. Of course, the dog was dead by then. He threw it at my feet and then yelled at me for not letting the dog out of the trash can as if it had all been my fault. But I knew what would have happened if I had let the dog out.”
I cringed at the visual image that was playing out in my mind.
“Your mother came into the room at that moment. She saw our dead dog at my feet. She knew exactly what had happened and she started to yell at our father.”
Naomi stopped talking.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
When she didn’t answer for a few minutes, I asked again. “Naomi, what happened to my mother?”
She looked as if she was going to be sick. Even the coloring of her face started to turn a blanched shade of green. “Did you ever know why your mother wore scarves all the time?” she asked me. “Even in the summer, Paula would wear scarves, or bandanas, or sometimes pretty choker necklaces.”
“Yes,” I said. “Because she had a scar from when she was little and accidentally got her head wedged between the bars of her crib. She told me that story. She told me that she didn’t remember it, but that her mother told her that was what happened.”
“Of course that’s what she would say,” Naomi said with a knowing nod. “Like I said, your mother was stupidly brave.”
“Wasn’t that what happened?” I asked. “Did something different happen instead?”
“Your mother remembered exactly how she got those scars around her neck, and it had nothing to do with being a toddler and getting her head stuck between the bars of a crib. Those scars came from being forced to wear a dog collar around her neck for a whole year. Sam’s collar.”
I felt sick to my stomach. “Are you telling me that my grandfather made her wear your dead dog’s collar around her neck for a year because she stood up to him when he killed your dog?”
She nodded mindlessly. “Yep. And I have a hundred more examples just like that one.”
All of a sudden, things became clearer to me. My mother and Naomi suffered an abusive childhood, and it affected them both in drastically different ways. My mother became strong and defiant, and she also became compassionate and the desire to help others that suffered at the end of abusive hands, grew as her purpose. Naomi wasn’t as strong, or as lucky.
I heard her sigh, and for a split second it almost sounded as if she had pulled her head out of the crazy clouds she snorted on a daily basis. “Our father never did those things to me, because I was always too weak to challenge him. I stood by and watched and let him get away with everything that he did. Not that it mattered if we spoke up, it didn’t. He would do whatever he wanted anyway, and our mother was powerless to stop him. She just tried to clean up the mess he made and did damage control after the fact. But your mother, she stepped in each and every time. She was like my sword and shield on every battlefront. I watched her take the fall for everything. I watched our father torment her both mentally and physically; mostly mentally though. That was what he got off on. He knew that Paula could take the physical pain. The incident with the dog collar showed him that. So, he focused on causing her as much mental anguish as possible. I have no idea how she was able to protect her mind from him for so long. I know I wasn’t.”
It all made sense now. Naomi’s mental illness wasn’t something she was born with. It was a result of years and years of trauma; years of watching my mother being abused just to spare her younger sister. Somehow, my mother had emerged from it stronger and more fortified, even though she was the one who was made to suffer the most.
But Naomi didn’t have the mental fortitude to withstand it.
When she emerged, she was damaged; broken.
And that is why my mother wanted to help her.
That is why she wanted Naomi brought here, in this sanctuary that we would build. Finally, my question had been answered completely. The true purpose of my mother’s personality and why she did everything she had done became clear to me with one long, gut-wrenching story from my estranged—and batshit crazy—aunt.
That was why my mother always tried to fix broken people.
Because she understood that brokenness was rarely ever innate.
10
“Naomi,” I said after we had both sat in silence for a while.
I was leaning up against the doorframe out of both physical and mental fatigue, and she was picking at the cords on her wrists and trying to get them apart, unsuccessfully, because her fingers weren’t long enough.
“Is this why you hate men so much?” I asked.
It would make sense that if she had an abusive father that her view toward all men might be skewed.
“I have always hated boys,” she said. “Even before I saw the monster that my father truly was.”
“Yes, I remember,” I said. “I remember when we would play dolls and you would pull the boys’ heads off. I remember when you would read stories and you would always change the endings.”
Naomi smiled.
“You remember those things?” she asked. “That makes me feel good. My favorite endings were the ones with dragons.”
Oh yes, I remembered those storiesvery clearly. The princess or maiden would always befriend the dragon that the prince or warrior was sent to kill. Then she would command the dragon to eat the man, and the dragon and princess would live happily ever after.
“Yes, but why did you do that?” I asked. “I was only a small child. I had no reason to be jaded against boys.”
“That’s precisely why I did it,” she answered. “You were so naïve and innocent, and you still are.”
I huffed. If only she knew how not innocent I was now. I had killed people, I had multiple lovers; I don’t think I was quite as virtuous as my aunt thought me to be.
“You needed to know how men really are. Your mother certainly wasn’t going to teach you, although she should have. I may not have been able to save her from our father or from her awful husband who was ten times worse even, but I was determined to save you from ending up in a similar situation.”
