She’s exploitative: Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers Pt 18

The black text is a shortened version of an original work by Chris, The Harpy’s Child. Original at https://sites.google.com/site/harpyschild/ Copyright 2007, all rights reserved

[There are two basic types of narcissistic mothers, the ignoring type and the engulfing type. These may—and often do—overlap but most NMs have a basic style and will be primarily one or the other. Some of the following points may not apply to your NM simply because they describe an engulfing characteristic when your NM is an ignoring type—or vice versa. But our mothers are not the only narcissists we will encounter in our lives. In fact, being raised by a narcissistic parent actually sets us up to be prey for more of the self-centred emotional vampires as we go out into the world, from girlfriends who are anything but friends to lovers who love themselves best to husbands who are the mirror image of dear old mom. So, whether something looks like it applies to your NM or not, read and consider it carefully—it may give you the awareness necessary to avoid the predator lurking around the next bend. As ever, my comments are shown in violet. -V]

It's about secret things. The Destructive Narcissistic Parent creates a child that only exists to be an extension of her self. It's about body language. It's about disapproving glances. It's about vocal tone. It's very intimate. And it's very powerful. It's part of who the child is. ~ Chris

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Part 18. She's exploitative.

She's exploitative. She will manipulate to get work, money, or objects she envies out of other people for nothing.

I am not sure how she did this—my stepmother said NM used sex (although she also said NM didn’t like sex) but I used to be amazed at the things she got. When we first moved to California, we were dead broke. I was only 4, but I remember the battered old car, the cheap one-room “residential motel” we first lived in, and the low-income government housing after that. And yet, within two years, we were moving into a house of our own… For a long time I just assumed they bought it with a VA approved loan until one day I put all of the fragments together—she was sleeping with the guy they bought the house from! He was carrying the mortgage himself and my NM would go over to his house every month or so to make the payment. She came home with stories of his new, younger wife’s extravagances…her “Chinese” furniture, her custom-made and custom-upholstered furniture, custom-made draperies for the picture windows—even her fancy Springolator pumps. The woman was a spendthrift and was going to run Frank broke, according to NM.

It didn’t click for me until years later, but all the signs were there. And then my father moved out and NM started dating again and who did she set her cap for? Frank. And eventually she caught. And it was she who ran him broke, not Marti the “spendthrift” previous wife (whom I had met on a couple of occasions and liked very much). So successfully manipulative was she that, after Marti moved out, NM’s closet was suddenly full of Springolator pumps and dresses too small for her (size 9) that she did her damnedest to squeeze into. Marti was gone, but everything that was Marti’s, from her clothes and shoes to her furniture to her house, her dog and her husband, suddenly belonged to NM.

It took her a number of years to pull the whole scheme off: we got that first house when I was 6 and by the time I was 14 her plan had come to fruition. When Marti divorced Frank, to keep her from getting half of his assets, NM convinced Frank to sell all of his assets to her for $1 on the promise that when the divorce was settled, she would reverse the transaction. It worked but for one flaw: Frank had trusted the wrong person. NM held out and teased and basically led him a merry chase until he realized that the only way to get his stuff back was to marry her. It took me years to realize that she could engage in that kind of long-term planning…it took her less than three years to plot and pull off the theft of my children: it took her a good eight to get Frank to the altar.

Charlie’s NM was no better, but she didn’t have the patience for the long games my NM loved to play. She was more of an “instant gratification” kind of person and wanted things done now…right now…while she was standing there. When she bought a new house, she expected Charlie to drop everything, run to her house and build her a deck and a carport, all at his own expense, of course. When he was “too busy,” or “didn’t have time,” she would ignore him for months at a time, failing to invite him to family dinners, ignore his birthday, etc. Being a widower and having no other family, Charlie was devastated by this rejection so of course he complied.

This includes her children, of course. If she set up a bank account for you, she was trustee on the account with the right to withdraw money. As you put money into it, she took it out.

I never had any money—I literally was not allowed to have any! For every A I earned on my report card, my grandmother would give me 10 cents. It doesn’t sound like much now, but then you could get a bottle of coke and a chocolate bar—or a comic book—for 10 cents. I was a good student and so I would send her my report cards and she would send back money, which NM would take away and say she was keeping it for me. She kept it all right—I never saw a penny of it again. The same with money send to me in cards for my birthday or Christmas. A peculiar little game was the “fairness” game where, if she spent more money on GCBro for gifts, she would make up the difference to me in cash, usually some odd amount like $1.36 or $2.21…this was her way of proving she treated us equally. And then she would take the money to keep it for me and I never saw it again!

When I lived with my grandparents during the summers, I would pick strawberries and beans to earn money, like all of the other kids in that small town. I would save up to buy something “good” that I wanted, like a teddy bear (the only teddy bear I had during my childhood I bought with money I earned picking crops) or a doll or something. NM, of course, had other ideas and any money I had not spent by the time she came to pick me up and take me back to California for the school year, she confiscated. She said I had to help pay for the gas for her to drive all that way to pick me up and bring me home!

Wise to her ways, the summer before my senior year, my grandmother took me and all of my picking money on a spending spree at the outlet stores in Portland. I got a Janssen sweater, a Pendleton skirt, a White Stag coat—all premium brands at the time. I bought most of my wardrobe for school on that shopping trip and when NM came to pick me up and the money was all spent, she was livid. She demanded the receipts from my grandmother who, with an incredibly straight face, told her they had been burned in the fireplace with the “rest of the trash” just the night before. I thought my mother was going to explode because she never, ever threw tantrums in front of her parents—she had to control the fury that was boiling inside her and she looked like she was going to pop with rage!

When we got in the car to go back to California, as we got out of town NM asked me “How much money do you have left?” When I told her I had $10, she stuck out her hand. “Hand it over,” she said without offering an explanation or reason. I never saw it again.

She may have stolen your identity. She took you as a dependent on her income taxes so you couldn't file independently without exposing her to criminal penalties. If she made an agreement with you, it was violated the minute it no longer served her needs. If you brought it up demanding she adhere to the agreement, she brushed you off and later punished you so you would know not to defy her again.

I have heard of NMs who have stolen their child’s identity because their own credit was wrecked, so they started on their child’s. One of my brothers had a wife who stole my dad’s identity to buy a new refrigerator then failed t make payments on it. It wasn’t until the account was in serious arrears (and my father’s credit damaged) that someone actually called my dad about it. Apparently the caller said to my father “When do you plan to make a payment on the refrigerator?” and my father said “What refrigerator?” and the whole scheme came to light. Charla was quite the little N, putting out the image of the perfect family all the while stealing from families and employers alike, sending out Christmas newsletters in which she claimed to have cancer (but was miraculously healed by the next letter) and completely engulfing her daughter by a previous marriage. It was like a family joke that nobody loaned anything to Charla that they wanted back because once she had it, it was hers forever! Not one person in the family was surprised to learn her first husband committed suicide and we were all hugely relieved when she and my brother divorced.

My NM never made agreements with me—that would have meant treating me, even for a moment, like a whole human being for which she had some kind of respect. She made promises—usually involving mayhem (“You say a word and I promise you, you will be talking out of the other side of your mouth for a week!”)—and she made threats, but she never made bargains. And, with the exception of promises of mayhem, you couldn’t trust her word on anything. If she said she would take you to the library on Saturday and she changed her mind, you took your physical safety in your hands to bring it up to her. She was Queen, she was always right, and you just went along with whatever she dished out, if you knew what was good for you.

Sometimes the narcissist will exploit a child to absorb punishment that would have been hers from an abusive partner. The husband comes home in a drunken rage, and the mother immediately complains about the child's bad behavior so the rage is vented on to the child.

I am quite sure this occurs in some narcissistic households—and I have read about such things in news accounts of children being severely injured or killed: the mother has a violent abuser for a husband or boyfriend and to divert his rages from her, she says something about the child (not necessarily true) that will cause him to abuse the child rather than her. I don’t know how anyone can do this: I was married to an abusive man once and when one of our rows frightened the children and started them crying, he stormed towards their bedroom to “teach them a lesson.” He was the one who learned the lesson—never threaten my children, especially when I have a hot steam iron in my hand! (I still can’t believe I could throw it that far or that my aim was so good!).

Sometimes the narcissistic mother simply uses the child to keep a sick marriage intact because the alternative is being divorced or having to go to work.

My malignant narcissist ex-husband Jack had a mother like this. When his youngest sister, Bonnie, was about 12 or 13, Jack’s father told Jack’s mother that when Bonnie graduated from high school, he was going to move out and get a divorce and move away from their small Ohio town. Rhonda, Jack’s mother, promptly seduced Jack Sr. and got pregnant again, assuming this would keep her husband around for another 18 years.

Well, it didn’t work. As promised, when Bonnie graduated from high school, Jack Sr. packed up, moved out, got a divorce and left the state. Rhonda completely lost interest in the last child and while she made sure he was fed, housed, and clothed, she completely ignored the most basic medical care and socialization. He came to live with us when he was 16 because she could not longer manage him and he was failing school despite a genius level IQ. I had to see to braces and prep for jaw surgery, get his grades up (he eventually made the Dean’s List), teach him basic table manners and simple courtesies.

This boy had been born to patch a sick marriage and which he failed to fulfil the destiny his mother conceived him for, she virtually abandoned him. He once said to me, angry that he was being punished for a transgression, “My mother loves me! She lets me do anything I want.” He didn’t want to hear that what she was doing was neglecting him, although eventually, as an adult, he finally “got” it.

The child is sexually molested but the mother never notices, or worse, calls the child a liar when she tells the mother about the molestation.

This one happened to me. Frank was a lech and I spent a lot of energy staying out of his clutches. He was 20 years older than NM but it didn’t stop him from ogling a teenaged girl at every opportunity.

I had a great dilemma with Frank—NM never allowed me to lock doors, not even the bathroom door. If she wanted to sneak up on you and see what you were doing, she didn’t want a locked door to impede her. And yet, Frank couldn’t seem to hear the shower running when I was in it, walking into the bathroom to take a leak while I was showering behind a thin plastic curtain.

When I was 16 I foolishly put myself in a position where he was able to fondle me sexually and I couldn’t get away from him without alerting NM. That may sound odd, but both Frank and I knew that if NM knew what he was doing, he would not be the one blamed, I would. And with the black reputation she had already given me with my family, it was unlikely anybody would believe me innocent.

Years later, when I was in therapy, one of my actions was to write both of my parents and tell them about this incident. Their responses were so very different: my father was so enraged—it was like it had just happened the day before and he was furious. He said if he (Frank) wasn’t already dead, he’d hunt him down and kill him himself.

NM, on the other hand, refused to believe it. She sent me back a card with her reply written inside, a card that had on the front a cartoon drawing of a bedraggled and sad-looking little knight astride a downtrodden horse and the words “You’ll never hurt me again…” were printed on the front. In her reply she told me I was slandering the dead, but that if it did happen, she was certain that I “instigated” it. And then she seemed to get confused and twisted the whole thing around to make it look like I was accusing my own father—and her bizarre response to that was that it was impossible for my father to have molested me because he was married to her at the time. What? Being married to her was some kind of protective magic??

Now, how narcissistic is that??

Next: Part 19. She projects.

Visiting Norma

Her arms were tired. The books were heavy. It was a long walk home from the public library and the books she had chosen were kinda big. But it was OK. She had Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Anderson and a Child’s Garden of Verse and a couple of other really swell books, too…she would have plenty to read for the next two weeks, until she was allowed to go to the library again.

But her arms were tired and the books were heavy and she needed to take a few minutes to rest. She looked around the neighbourhood and realized that although she was walking beside the main highway, she was actually only a block or two from Norma Begay’s house. She hadn’t seen Norma in a long time…not since Norma got transferred into the other fourth grade classroom and Mommy found out she was Indian and said she couldn’t play with her any more.

The books got heavier with every step, and she decided that if she stopped to visit Norma and rested, but only stayed a few minutes, she could still make it home on time. If Mommy didn’t know, she couldn’t get in trouble for it…and she hadn’t seen Norma in a long time.

Norma lived with her grandmother in a very small, very solid little house with a flat roof and a bare dirt yard. The garish turquoise paint was peeling from the few remaining slats in the porch railing and the screen door, holes torn to preclude its original function, was missing a hinge. Is this what Mommy meant by “dirt poor”? Hoping Norma was home and straining to keep from dropping the books, she knocked loudly on the dented and splintery front door.

Norma’s grandmother, seemingly bent with the weight of an enormously long and thick silvery braid, answered the door. Grandmother’s puzzled look changed to a wreath of smiles when she asked for Norma. Within seconds she was ushered into a tiny, spare, but immaculate room, her aching arms relieved of their burden, and Norma was chattering like a dark and glossy little bird in her delight at having a visitor. She was soon swept away to Norma’s room where she was to marvel at the kachina dolls and colourful, beautifully woven blankets. So lost in her fascination with Norma’s souvenirs from her original home that she lost track of time, only to glance out a window and realize in horror that dusk was gathering. Panicked, she looked at the alarm clock beside Norma’s bed and realized she had less than fifteen minutes to get home or Mommy would come looking for her…and that was something to be avoided at all costs!

“I’m sorry, Norma,” she said in a rush, “But if I don’t leave right away, I’m going to be late and then I’ll be in big trouble.” She was already gathering up the books and rushing to the door. “Can I come back another time to play?” Norma’s smile revealed perfect, pearly teeth and her black eyes glittered as she nodded happily. Grandmother lifted the latch and let her out into the late afternoon.

She couldn’t run with the books, but she could walk briskly. What kind of shortcut could she take to cut a few minutes? She couldn’t leave the books behind, but they were slowing her down... Reaching the edge of her school yard, she realized that if she cut diagonally across the school and went through the open corridor near the offices, she would come out at the path to the creek, and she would be only a couple of block from home. Dreading the consequences of being late and the discovery of her illicit afternoon visit, she headed across the school yard, knowing that getting caught crossing the creek was, in itself, forbidden and worth a serious hiding if she was found out. But if she could just get home before dark…if she could just get there before those street lights came on…everything would be OK.

Her legs churning in a brisk walk, she came to the open corridor that led past the school offices. At the other end was a small playground and the entrance to the creek. Her hateful, ugly red oxford shoes were chafing a blister on the back of her heels…the shoes were new and not fully broken in…but she didn’t care. A blistered heel was a small price to pay to avoid Mommy’s strap. She shuddered involuntarily and tried to pick up the pace a bit and skipped up the steps to the long open hallway.

Built in the Spanish style, the corridor had doors to the offices to her left, a broad roof overhang to protect those who walked down the hallway, as it was open to the weather, breeze and sun…and there were some feeble attempts at landscaping on the right side. Glancing worriedly at the darkening sky, she found herself wishing she hadn’t stopped at Norma’s house at all. Norma was really nice and her things were endlessly fascinating, but if she hadn’t stopped, she wouldn’t be late now. Her thoughts distracted, she didn’t notice where the man came from, but suddenly he was standing in the middle of the corridor, blocking her way.

She tried to go around him, but he stepped into her path, his arms outstretched as if to catch her. “Go away!” she cried, darting the other way, but he managed to grab one of her arms and her books fell to the ground. Oh no! she went rigid with panic. Now she was sure to be late and Mommy would make sure she regretted it. She shrieked and rounded on the man and bit him on the wrist where he was gripping her arm much too tight. Surprised, he released her and she took off running, heading straight for the creek. The man caught up with her, grabbed her by her ponytail and spun her around. It was then that she registered that below his tight white cotton T-shirt his jeans were open and something was sticking out of them. It looked kind of like Brother’s peepee, but it was much bigger and…well...different somehow. He reached his free hand near his open fly and while he was momentarily distracted, she kicked his nearest shin and bit down on his wrist again. With a bellow of outrage he released her, only to grab at her again as she ran away, this time holding her ponytail.

Driven by panic and terror, she sprinted to the end of the corridor, vaulted the steps and raced down into the creek bed. Paying no heed to the makeshift bridge she and the other children had constructed from rocks and planks, she splashed through the shallow water and clawed her way up the embankment on the other side, bolting out onto the asphalt of the dead-end street at the top. It was only when she saw one of her classmates, Donny Matthews, looking at her funny that she realized that she had been shrieking like a siren throughout her entire flight. Donny’s father stepped out of the garage where he was working on something, took one look at her terrified white face and stopped her in mid-flight.

“Hey! Hey! What the matter, honey? What happened?” he asked gently, taking her into his arms where she clung, trembling and hiccupping with fear. Gasping for breath she choked out her story, not sure how to explain what she had seen, but telling enough to see Mr. Matthew’s face change from one of gentle concern to one of anger. He took her in the kitchen for Mrs. Matthews to tend and began making telephone calls. Before her wet shoes and socks were off, men with flashlights started showing up in the Matthews’ garage and she realized with a sinking feeling that the street lights had come on. Oh, she was in serious, serious trouble now!

“I have to go home,” she said, sliding down from the stool where Mrs. Matthews had put her while she made some hot chocolate. “My mother will be very upset because I am late.”

“It’s OK,” Mr. Matthews said, lifting her back onto the stool. “Your parents are on the way over here right now.” Her heart sank sickeningly. Her life was over and she was only eight.

People gathered in the garage for a few more minutes until she heard the familiar sound of Mommy’s car. She began to tremble. Mommy rushed into the kitchen, looking stressed and worried and rushed to her side. “My poor baby!” Mommy exclaimed in a too-loud voice, hugging her close. “Are you OK?” She nodded silently, suspiciously. Mommy was hugging her…something was definitely wrong here.

Suddenly, the garage was empty, the men armed with flashlights, baseball bats, garden implements, and whatever else was close at hand, trooped across the creek and fanned out through the dark, deserted school. After a time they returned, one of them carrying her library books. There was, of course, no sign of a scuffle…only her word that there had been a man who had accosted her, but it was enough. Still unnerved, she at least felt validated, and the instant coalescence of a troupe of avenging fathers gave her a sense of security heretofore unfelt. Daddy picked her up in one arm, her books in the other, and carried her to the car. Mommy followed along with her wet shoes and socks, her face shuttered.

Mommy finished cooking supper and they ate in silence, and when she had finished washing the dishes and Daddy had gone off to his nighttime job, Mommy called her into the living room. Brother was not in his accustomed place, fidgeting on his stomach in front of the TV. An unexpected chill ran up her spine at his absence.

“Stand here in front of me,” Mommy said, lighting up a cigarette…she fought the urge to wave her hand in front of her nose to disperse the smoke…Mommy didn’t like it when she did that. Mommy put the bejewelled Zippo down on the coffee table beside her wet shoes and socks, her hand lingering near one ugly oxblood red wingtip oxford. “Tell me how your shoes got wet,” Mommy said in that soft voice that conveyed more menace that the most shrill of her shrieks.

“I was running away from that man and they got wet when I ran across the creek…”

“Why weren’t you on the bridge?” Mommy interrupted.

“I was late…I was taking a short cut through the school so I would be home on time…”

“And why were you late?” Mommy asked.

She hesitated. How much did Mommy know? Could she get through this without revealing her visit to Norma’s house? She put her head down in the best semblance of shame and guilt she could muster and said “I was dawdling…” One Mommy’s favourite indictments, surely this would ring true.

“That I can believe,” Mommy said, a sneer in her voice. “But what about the shoes?”

She looked up, puzzled. “What about she shoes?” she echoed.

CRACK!

She screamed in unexpected pain. When had Mommy taken the strap off the back of the kitchen door? When had she wrapped the handle end around her hand? Why had she hit her with it?

“Don’t you think to mock me, you little bitch,” Mommy hissed at her, drawing back her hand for another strike.

The thin leather strap curled itself around her thigh, burning like a brand. “Owwww!” she wailed, leaping on one leg. “What did I do?” she cried out.

“Like you didn’t know,” Mommy yelled, standing up. “Take down your panties and lay across the sofa and don’t you move or you’ll get twice as much!” She hurried to obey, knowing that when Mommy was in this mood, even the slightest perception of defiance would add stripes.

“I knew you didn’t like those shoes,” Mommy snarled, laying a lash across her bare buttocks. She flinched but lay rigid and silent across the sofa. “But I never thought you would be stupid enough to ruin them,” Whoosh! CRACK! Another welt began to rise up on the back of her thighs.

“And if you think this little stunt is going to get you a new pair,” Whoosh! CRACK! “Then you just think again, little missy, because you are going to wear these,” Whoosh! CRACK! “until your toes poke holes in the ends!” Whoosh! CRACK! “Do you understand me?”

She nodded silently, her teeth buried in her lower lip.

Whoosh! CRACK! “I said, do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mommy,” she cried out, hoping forestall another blow. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again!”

Whoosh! CRACK! “You bet your sweet ass you won’t!” Mommy snarled. “Now get your oh-so-clever little butt to bed before I give you the rest of what you deserve!”

She was in her bed, sobbing silently in the dark, when the door snatched suddenly open. “And if you say one word about this to your father, I will beat you within an inch of your life, do you hear?”

“Yes, Mommy,” she said to the figure silhouetted in the doorway. Mommy paused there, as if pondering something else to say, but she must have thought better of it for she silently stepped back and shut the door.

And when the door was closed and the room was dark and quiet again reigned, she put the palms of her small, pale, nail-bitten hands together and began to whisper her nightly prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep,
Please let me die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.

The Dress

It was her favourite dress.

She fingered the crinkly rust-brown cotton flounce at the bottom of the skirt and ran her fingers over the crocheted trim at the top of the flounce that looked like a string of white daisies. She knew they couldn’t afford to buy her clothes from the store and it was a good thing that Mommy knew how to sew, or she might be running around naked!

She tugged the dress down from its hanger, the soft green calico printed skirt spreading out like a parachute. Mommy had made the dress last year, for the school pageant. Every grade did a dance out on the lawn for the parents at the end of the school year and the fourth grade had done a square dance. All of the parents had been instructed to provide appropriate costumes for the children, and the girls were to have full-skirted dresses with crinolines beneath them, which excited her very much. She loved the fluffy look of the crinolines Janet’s and Megan’s older sisters wore underneath their felt poodle skirts, and now she was going to get one of her own!

Mommy had complained and complained and it had begun to look like she was the only girl in the fourth grade who wouldn’t have a square dance dress for the pageant…would they even let her dance if she didn’t have the dress? But at the last minute, Mommy stayed up all night sewing and the result was this beautiful dress with the full skirt that made a circle when she twirled, and with actual ruffles on the hem and at the edges of the sleeves…even if the ruffles were made of a kind of ugly rust brown. But the mint green of the bodice and the skirt and the delicate daisy trim made up for it, and even though she never did get the crinolines, the dress made her feel pretty when she wore it.

Retrieving the dress from the floor, she pulled it over her head and struggled with the zipper. She had only the one pair of shoes, the ugly brown and white saddle oxfords, and all of her socks were the same thin plain white cotton and she had nothing for her tortured, fried, sadly home-permed hair save a few bobby pins, but it didn’t matter. In this dress, she was pretty.

She had already eaten breakfast and made lunches for her and Brother. The dirty dishes were in the sink for her to wash when she got home. “Hurry up!” she urged Brother from the bedroom door. “I have to wake Mommy up for work in five minutes and you know she will light into you if you aren’t ready!”

“Light into you, you mean,” Brother said, lingering over a comic book when he should have been making his bed. He might only be six, but he was astute enough to know how things worked in this house. She stepped in and gave the blankets a few flips and twitches, giving the bed an appearance that at least an attempt at making it had been made. “Let’s go,” she said. “Your lunch is by the front door.”

Brother was no dummy. He tossed his comic into the jumble on his closet floor and slid the door shut, giving the room an appearance of tidiness, then ran out the front door, brown sack in hand. He did not want to be within earshot when she went in and woke Mommy up for work.

She gave a last look at the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, stopping to pick Brother’s wet towel up off the floor and hang it on the rack. She checked again that the percolator had coffee and water in it, ready for Mommy to turn on the stove and get the coffee going. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she opened her mother’s bedroom door and looked in.

She stood stock still. There were two people in the bed! But…Daddy didn’t live here any more… Her heart soared momentarily…had Daddy come back? She scrutinized the bit of face and hair she could see from the bedroom door…nope…not Daddy. The hair was too long, too dark, too curly. So what should she do now? She pondered for a moment, knowing that to fail to wake Mommy would make her late for work, a major crime by any standard. But she had a sense that her being in the room with that man was a serious invasion of Mommy’s privacy, another major crime. She mentally flipped a coin and decided getting Mommy up was the safest course of action.

Ten minutes later, after dodging half-waking blows and warding off a steady stream of curses, she heaved a sigh and headed out the front door for school. Mommy was in the bathroom, which meant it was safe for her to leave…once up, Mommy never, ever went back to bed. Mommy had said nothing about the strange man in her bed and she knew better than to ask. She hurried, fearful of being late, fearful of Mommy coming along behind her to snatch her back for something she had forgotten, and rushed for the shortcut across the creek, knowing she could not be seen from the roadway and that she would emerge safe in the embrace of the school grounds. She smoothed her hands down the soft pale green sprigged cotton skirts of her favourite dress. At least she felt pretty.


It had been a hard day at school. As usual, she was the last person picked for softball…and then she was put into a made-up position, “far right field.” Right field was the hinterlands, the furthest, most remote legitimate position into which the ball flew only at the hands of a left-handed batter. It was the place of the ostracized, the inept, the bungling sports incompetents. And her team captain had invented an even more remote position for her to play. Just as well, she shrugged, walking slowly alone towards the shortcut. Ever since she had been smacked in the face with that pop fly over the backstop one of the bigger sixth graders had hit, she was afraid of the ball and she preferred being sent out to the hard dirt badlands where no ball threatened her and no taunting classmates interrupted her daydreams.

Fractions weren’t making much sense, especially multiplying and dividing them, and she’d gotten a bad mark on her arithmetic paper today. Another one. She was going to get a bad grade in arithmetic this term and that was going to make Mommy mad. But she couldn’t help it! She didn’t know her times tables and that made it very hard! When she had skipped a grade, nobody thought to take a little time to teach her the stuff that she should have learned in that grade! Arithmetic was hard when you didn’t know your times tables and Daddy wasn’t there anymore to help you memorize them. She hadn’t wanted to skip that grade anyway, and leave all her friends behind and have to try to make new friends with older, bigger kids. But she was smart, the tests said so, and Mommy insisted so much the school gave in. Who listens to the objections of a seven-year-old, anyway? As always, she did as she was told, regardless of her own personal feelings in the matter. The grownups were in charge.

The weather was warm and the creek bed was almost dry. She skipped lightly over the exposed rocks and climbed the path up to the street ahead, passing Donny Matthew’s house. Donnie had died over the winter, from something they called “dip-thir-ee-uh.” She had no idea what that was or why a nice kid like Donny had to die from it. He was there when they went on Christmas Vacation, his desk was empty when they came back. She wondered if this mysterious disease was like polio. Every autumn there were empty desks where classmates went missing due to the dread scourge. Sometimes they came back later, in wheelchairs or on crutches, wearing clunking iron braces on their legs…sometimes they never came back at all. Nobody talked about it. She wondered why.

She walked along the sidewalk, past the small neat bungalows of the newer houses and the occasional large, older house that was surely the dwelling of the original owner of the land. She crossed the street to avoid walking past the “witch’s house,” a dilapidated old structure of peeling once-white clapboards half hidden behind an iron fence draped with the desiccated sticks of what must have once been a flourishing vine. A bent old woman with great streams of wild iron gray hair lived in the house, a vile tempered old woman who screamed at the children as they walked by and shook her walking stick at them. The old woman gave her the creeps.

At the next corner there was her favourite neighbourhood house. A retaining wall of black stone with white mortar surrounded the property and colourful flowers were planted at the edges and cascaded over. The house itself was an appealing mix of candy-pink stucco above a window-high façade of the same black stone with white mortaring. Often, as she walked by, the white-haired old man who lived there would be out in the garden and on occasion he would pick a stem of pretty geraniums and present them to her with a bow and a flourish, like she was a princess, causing her to giggle and blush before she took the flower and skipped home. Occasionally he had a sweet in the pocket of his bib overalls for her, and other times, just a friendly smile and wave. The neighbourhood knew him as “Grampa Flowers,” and many of the children, like her, loved him. Others, unaccountably, avoided Grampa Flowers’ house. She shrugged and continued on towards home, hoping Grampa Flowers would be digging in his garden as she came by…she could use a smile and a flower to cheer her up. Even her favourite dress was not doing the job.

Pink geraniums and petunias rioted in the flower beds at the edge of the retaining wall, and she was delighted to see Grampa Flowers on his knees, plucking out weeds with his gloved hands. “Hi, Grampa!” she called, waving, putting on a happier face than she felt.

“Hi, there, sweetie!” he replied, waving back. He stood up and, removing a glove, reached into the pocket where he usually kept little candies for the kids, but came up empty. He put on an exaggerated sad face, making her giggle, then held up one finger and lifted his white brows as if an idea had come over him. “Come up to the kitchen!” he said. “I know where Gramma Flowers keeps them!”

She skipped up the driveway and followed him to the kitchen door, where she stopped at the threshold. “It’s OK,” Grampa Flowers said, motioning her inside. He had a cupboard open, his hand inside a tin. “Ah ha!” he said triumphantly. “Got them!”

He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down, complaining about his back, and held out a sweet for her. She stepped up and took the hard candy, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. “That’s a pretty dress,” Grampa Flowers said, “What’s this?” he pointed to the row of crocheted lace daisies above the flounce. “Flowers? You know I like flowers, don’t you?”

She nodded, sucking on the hard candy, as he examined the trim on her dress. “Come,” he said, and patted his knee. “Sit here so I can have a better look.”

He pulled her onto his lap, her legs astraddle one of his thighs, and lifted the hem of her skirt, peering at the decorative flowers. “Very pretty,” he said softly. “Pretty like you.” She blushed and giggled a little as one large warm hand covered her bare thigh. “Would you like another sweet?”

At her nod he handed her another candy and as she busied herself unwrapping the cellophane, his hand slid up her thigh until it touched the crotch of her panties. She wriggled, trying to get down, but he said “Be still!” rather sternly in her ear and, knowing she must not disobey an adult, she froze.

“Very pretty,” Grampa Flowers said, stroking the outside of her panties, allowing his fingers to test the tightness of the elastic. “How old are you, sweetie?”

“Eight,” she said. “I have to go home.” She tried again to get down, but somehow his other arm had come around her waist and she was caught on his lap.

“Just sit still,” he said softly, firmly, in her ear. “I won’t hurt you.” She froze again, wondering what to do. Mommy said never to touch herself there except in the bathtub, and then for just a second…it was bad to touch yourself there. And she was going to be late getting home and if she wasn’t home to answer the phone when Mommy called, she would get a spanking for sure.

She felt Grandpa Flowers' fingers inside the leg of her panties, touching her skin, pinching gently, probing. She wriggled again, trying to get down, and he gave a sighing sound in her ear. “That’s right, honey, move on them. Doesn’t that feel nice? It sure feels nice to me.”

“I have to go home,” she whined, his fingers chafing the dry, delicate flesh. She wriggled again, trying to get down and felt his finger actually slide a little ways into her body. Panic gripped her. “No!” she cried. “Let me down!”

His arm tightened around her chest, “It’s OK,” he murmured a little breathlessly in her ear. “Just relax and let it feel good.”

“It hurts!” she cried, and he pulled his fingers back to gently rub and soothe the chafed tissues, still stroking her and holding her tightly in his lap. He was breathing funny and rocking in the chair, restraining her with one hand and rubbing inside her panties with the other, his breathing getting harsher and more rapid as she struggled. “Let me go! Let me go!” she cried, twisting in his grip and flailing her legs, only to have his hand cup her entire crotch suddenly, tightly, with his fingers tightly pressing against the tiny opening he had tried to breach some minutes before. He stopped rocking suddenly and clasped her tightly to him, pressing her bottom into his lap, his breath coming in harsh gasps. His body stiffened and he released his grip momentarily and she bolted from his grasp and out the kitchen door, too frightened even to cry.

She ran to the end of the block and turned the corner to her street, streaked up to the house, let herself in and ran to the bathroom where she was violently, miserably sick. After retching repeatedly, she ran to her bedroom and stripped off her dress, put it on a hanger and hung it in the back of the closet, behind some of Mommy’s extra clothes, overflow from the master bedroom closets. She banged the closet door shut and stood there gasping, unable to find words...or even tears.

But she knew she never wanted to see that dress again. It was home made. It was ugly, that hideous brown colour, that stupid green. It made her feel dirty, ugly, soiled. She hated it!

Bus Money

“Frank,” she whispered. “Frank, wake up, please.” She was whispering so she wouldn’t wake Mother.

“Hmm?” Frank mumbled, opening his eyes to a squint. “What?”

“Frank, I need to borrow a dollar for bus fare. Can you loan it to me until I get paid?”

His eyes flicked in the direction of her mother, who lay snoring gently to his left, then back to her. “Sure,” he said softly, patting the bed beside him for her to sit down. “Hand me my pants.”

She sat. She had known Frank for ten years…since she was six. Frank had owned the house on the dirt road that Mother and Daddy bought as their first house when she was in the first grade. Frank sometimes used to come by the house to collect the house payment, and often he brought his little black poodle, Duchess, who was friendly to the point of sloppy affection. She liked Duchess, especially after Mother had given Duke away and there were no more dogs.

Mother and Frank had been friends for a long time…at least she had thought they were friends…hindsight being clearer, she was pretty sure now that they had been something more…probably much more. When Frank and his much younger, pretty-enough-to-be-a-model and smart-enough-to-hire-shark-lawyers wife, Marti, broke up he faced losing a great deal of property and several businesses in the divorce. She had often overheard Mother…who was a bookkeeper and who could be very creative when she needed to be…and Frank discussing ways for him to retain his assets while shedding the acquisitive, spendthrift Marti. And Mother, true to her conniving ways, had come up with a brilliant idea…and Frank happily jumped out of the frying pan into the fire by selling all of his assets to Mother for one dollar, thinking to save himself from Marti’s rapacious divorce attorneys. He hadn’t considered, apparently, that Mother would then own all of his assets, leaving him even more penniless than Marti’s attorneys were trying to make him. Mother, ever alert to an opportunity, had parlayed this one into what she believed was a financially secure marriage… and, of course, control of Frank’s little empire.

The one good thing, however, was that Frank didn’t have a lot of patience with Mother’s behaviour and, being twenty years older, was seldom intimidated by Mother’s temper and outbursts. She could thank him several times over for aborting Mother’s run up to a beating by saying “That’s enough, Georgia. Leave the kid alone.” He could shout louder than Mother could and didn’t seem to be the least bit phased by Mother’s control of his assets. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected Frank had resumed ownership at some point in the relationship…maybe when they got married... From what she heard when they argued, which, because of Mother’s contentiousness, was often, Frank had resumed ownership of at least some of the assets, but Mother had some kind of financial control. She shrugged inwardly…it didn’t matter, as long as Frank could loan her a buck until she got paid.

She had a job after school, working in a hospital kitchen. While the work was boring and repetitious, she now had a legitimate excuse for being out of the house from seven in the morning until after eight in the evening, which just suited her fine. She had a study hall in which to do her homework, no difficult classes to study for, and only had to be home to sleep and change clothes...she ate lunch at school and dinner was leftovers in the hospital kitchen. But she had to hand over her pay check to Mother, who would then give her $5 for bus fare and school lunches and keep the rest. When she had objected, Mother archly informed her that the law said a parent was “entitled to the fruits of a child’s labour,” which explained a lot of things to her, including why she could pick beans and strawberries all summer and never see a dime of the money once Mother got into the picture. Nana had taken her shopping at the end of this last summer, a week-long shopping orgy in which she bought everything from underwear to a new coat and everything in between. She had only $10 of her picking money left at the end of the summer and Mother was so mad she was almost cross-eyed with rage, especially since Nana destroyed the receipts and nothing could be returned for a refund. Now, Mother said that she was “saving” the wages she was confiscating for things like senior pictures and announcements and a prom gown, but she knew better. She would never see a penny of that money and although Mother would pay for those things items, Mother would keep all the left-over money for herself. She had no illusions about how Mother’s mind worked…she hadn't for a long while.

She bent and retrieved Frank’s trousers from the floor and twisted her body to hand them to him. “Take out my wallet,” he whispered. As she busied herself removing his wallet from the back pocket, she felt his hand slide up her skirt and rest on her bare thigh. Shocked, she sat stiffly still for a second, then tried to pull her leg away. His hand tightened around her thigh. “Sssst,” he hissed softly. “Sit still. You don’t want to wake up your mother, do you?” She shook her head. “Take the money you need,” he said, his hand sliding around to her inner thigh and moving upward to touch her panties.

She snatched a single dollar and tossed his wallet down on the floor next to the bed and tried to get up again, but his hand gripped her slim thigh tightly and his eyes flicked meaningfully over his shoulder. “What do you think she would say if she woke up right now?” he said softly. She ceased resisting and allowed his fingers to roam, frantically trying to think of something to say that would make him simply let her go without waking Mother. When she felt his finger start to penetrate her, she gasped, then blurted “I’m going to be late for school!”

His hand ceased its predations and she saw him look up at the clock. Nodding once in agreement, he withdrew his hand from under her skirt, but as she leapt up from the side of the bed he grabbed her wrist. “If you tell your mother, I’ll tell her you started it. She’ll believe me, too…you know that, don’t you?” She nodded mutely, straining against his grip.

He smiled, releasing her wrist slowly. “You don’t need to pay it back,” he whispered hoarsely as she hurried to the bedroom door. “And you can borrow money from me any time you want.”