The Belief in Angels (5 page)

She’s arguing with Officer Hennessy. “I’m telling you, I didn’t make the fucking call. I’m sure one of the neighborhood morons did it.”

My mother gestures to the neighbors across the road, who are just arriving home from church. They stop to stare at the commotion. The siren light blinks a huge fiery red reflection off the white paint on our house shingles. You could probably see it a mile away.

“The divorce won’t be final until August, but he’s not supposed to be bothering me. He’s supposed to be here on Sundays to pick up the kids. Of course, he has a hard time remembering to do this unless he wants to harass me about something.”

My mother’s real angry with the local police because they’ve never arrested my father before today and he’s beaten her up lots of times. But it’s mutual: the cops don’t like my mother because she’s always calling them pigs and telling them they’d be criminals if they hadn’t become cops so they’d be able to carry guns.

Officer Hennessy asks my father, “Is this gun registered, Howard?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Listen, Missus Finn, you’re going to have to come down to the station and let us take pictures of your face if you wanna press charges.”

He leans in closer to her. “If ya don’t put a stop to this for your kids’ sake, I’ll make sure we take you away next time and the kids’ll have to go to live somewhere else. Do you care about that?”

“Of course I care, you imbecile.”

First Officer Hennessy acts as if he might hit my mother, but then he says, “Good, we’ll see you at the station in a little while.”

“Let’s take him in,” he says to the other cop—then, to my father, “Howard, I can see how the woman tests your patience,” and they all laugh. “I’m gonna have to book you this time, though, and you better not be coming back here except to see your kids. Make ’em wait on the front lawn, or down the road is a better idea, for Chrissakes.”

I remember Officer Hennessy was a regular at my father’s bar before my father lost it in the poker game, and I wonder if he’s arresting him now because he can’t get free drinks anymore.

I look up and I see Moses peeking out his window. He holds one hand up on the wavy windowpane and it seems like his whole body is crying.

Windowpain.

By this time, more of the neighbors have arrived home and are standing on their porches or on their lawns, watching as the police car leaves. Mrs. O’Connell, who lives across the road, still wears her church clothes: white gloves, a short, polyester pink coat that matches a polyester pink dress underneath, and a pea-green, pillbox hat. They’re the kind of clothes my grandmother wears, although I think Mrs. O’Connell is my mother’s age.

She walks up to my mother with Mr. O’Connell by her side.

“Fucking pigs.”

Mrs. O’Connell pretends she didn’t hear my mother’s comment, but her face is all scrunched up.

“It’s such a good thing you’re doing for the children’s sake. We’ve been afraid for them. Anything we can do to help?”

“He wasn’t touching the kids, you dig? Mind your own business, you square.” My mother walks inside and slams the front door.

Mrs. O’Connell asks her husband, “What did she call me?”

“It’s that hippie talk they use in the city. I can’t make sense of it.”

“Well it doesn’t make any sense.”

Mr. O’Connell walks to his porch as Mrs. O’Connell stands talking, mostly to the air. “Those poor children. Mrs. Finn’s been gone more now, since that beast of a man left, than when he lived there. Lord knows who’ll take care of them.”

I can’t figure out why, but it feels worse to hear her talk about us that way.

Glancing back up at the window where Moses stood, I can see he’s gone now.

My mother is screaming my name. I duck and step down a rung on the ladder, hiding. When I hear the sound of her and my brother’s voices from the driveway I peek over the edge of the cliff” again.

My mother, David, and Moses all pile into the station wagon. She guns the engine and screams at my brothers to hurry up so she can drive to the police station for photos of her bloody face.

I don’t want to go to the police station and risk a run-in with the lady I spoke to on the phone. I hide my head behind the scrub again and creep back down the rickety ladder, which splinters off rotted pieces with every step.

Jules, 18 years

WITHENSEA, MA

A Normal Suburban Childhood with Regular Beatings

“AND DON’T FORGET to go through the stuff in the cedar chests downstairs,” Wendy says. “There are old comforters that you can look through to use for your bed in the dorms.”

I’ve been packing up, organizing, or trashing every item I own for days now. The dorm assignment papers that came in my freshman orientation packet last week stressed the fact that there’s limited storage space and we might not have our own closets. So I’ve got to pare down everything I own to two suitcases, limited wall decorations, and bedding.

Wendy’s taken my departure from the house as an opportunity to pawn off all the crap in the house she doesn’t want but doesn’t want to throw out. Piles of smelly, aged, ripped sheets and pillowcases sit on my bedroom floor. The frayed and bulb-burned lampshade from a long-broken lamp stem decorates my bureau.

“Here. A going-away gift,” Wendy proudly offered, despite the fact I’d explained that my dorm room will come furnished with a desk and study lamp.

I wonder if David received the same “gifts” when he left for college a few years ago. I can’t remember.

So much has been lost. So much has been denied, despite the evidence, the psyche marks, like cigarette burns on formica.

The moments that my brain does remember seem quite random.

Even now, after all these years, my memory of that moment with David and
The Three Stooges
remains crystal. It’s wrapped in a sort of warm insanity that, however peculiar, provides vague comfort.

It became clear to me, early on, that David had a unique method for dealing with the stress of our family. I think he figured he couldn’t change the situation, so he retreated to a place where no one else could go. I, on the other hand, fought back. But it was a war no one but me knew I was fighting. I was a secret warrior. Incognito.

Over time, I developed the
voice of a mother,
the mother I imagined out of “Beaver Cleaver-land.” In the beginning, I used it to call the police. Later, I used it to call in the absences and tardies my brothers and I accrued when my mother went to party with her friends and left us, sometimes for days, without supervision.

In retrospect, I don’t feel bad about lying to the lady about Howard pointing the gun at us. He had, in the past, not only threatened but hurt each of us. He was a man filled with a rage he couldn’t contain. It seethed and seeped out, sometimes in alcoholic bursts, sometimes with no alcohol and seemingly no provocation. He beat us with his belt or his large fists. His blows were uncontrolled and without concern for the frailty of our small bodies. He must have been unaware that his physical strength was much greater than ours, and I felt, when he beat us, that he wanted pure domination over us and, sometimes, the annihilation of our wills, our individual wills to defend, to argue, to defy, and even—at times—to live. In those moments, I felt his true intent might be to kill me.

We were smashed against walls, beaten against furniture, slapped down on floors, and left with no reactive movement. We learned to get there fast, to that place where we didn’t react, feigning unconsciousness, disassociating from the pain because it caused response and response equaled more pain. The sooner I could leave my body, the sooner he’d leave my body alone.

Wendy beat us with the horsewhip she used on her rides at Withensea Stables.

I think the reason the police came that day when Howard had the gun—they didn’t always come—was because I told them my father had threatened us, his children. Although the local police thought a good talk and a walk around the block was the correct way to deal with domestic violence, I don’t think their morals stretched to allow child abuse. At least, not when firearms were being waved around.

In our community, hitting your kids isn’t considered child abuse. This is “spare the rod, spoil the child” territory. Good old Puritan ethic. Massachusetts is, after all, the state that, in 1646, enacted the law allowing the death penalty for a rebellious child—the “stubborn child” law. People here look the other way when parents discipline their children. When we were beaten, we were left with visible
welts, scratches, and bruises, but no one ever asked about them—and if they did, they were satisfied with an honest “my father hit me” or an obviously made-up version of how we’d gotten the marks.

They were minding their own business.

I knew Mrs. O’Connell was trying to be kind that day with Howard and the gun. For a New Englander, getting involved rather than maintaining a cold, silent regard was a grand gesture. But my mother didn’t like the neighbors because they were “nosy.” It must have been hard to ignore the stuff going on, though, and my mother never did get that.

“Who cares what the neighbors think?” was one of her favorite sayings.

I think there must have been many small fractures, but with no hospital visits and no x-rays, there’s no way to be sure. When you’re young, bones heal fast.

Complaining about a beating or the pain invited more of the same. Also, I knew my friends were being hit by their parents as well. I knew our situation didn’t differ much from theirs. But I never believed that my friends were being hit as often or as hard.

Now I understand more about why Howard and Wendy were so mean.

For Wendy, we existed merely as a barrier between her and loneliness. I found out when I was about six that Wendy was adopted. I think, as an adopted child, she must have missed out on the crucial bonding in early childhood that deters sociopathy. I read an article about it in one of Wendy’s
Psychology Today
magazines. Then, this year, I learned more secrets that explain why Wendy is so messed up.

She received an exclusive education at Girls’ Latin School in Boston, where she distinguished herself as an excellent student. But she was never taught to take care of herself. Yetta waited on my mother like a servant. Wendy wasn’t expected to do chores, let alone pick up the clothing she dropped on the floor as she removed it from her body. She was a pampered, spoiled child who never developed housekeeping skills.

Yetta loved to cook for Wendy, but refused to let her learn to cook herself. Later, in her teens, Wendy spent hardly any time at home with her parents and refused to eat most meals with them. Yetta began leaving Wendy her meals in the refrigerator to have when she wished. It wasn’t until Howard and Wendy married that she began her education, instructed by Howard, in what were considered her wifely duties. It was a painful education that, had it been graded, would have received poor marks for execution and a failing score for effort.

Howard, ten years her senior, married Wendy when she was seventeen. He seemed entertained by her independent, nonconformist behavior before their marriage. Afterwards, he became scarily determined to subvert her personality and pull
a Pygmalion-style miracle by transforming her into a suburban housewife. They were both unhappy with the attempt.

Howard expressed his displeasure by having affairs, and, after several years of half-hearted attempts to please him, Wendy began to assert her independence. For this reason, my mother spent more time in the kitchen during the early period of my childhood than she ever did again. Howard demanded that she provide balanced, nutritious meals and bellowed if they were less than palatable. I remember a lot of bellowing around the dinner table.

That day with the gun marked the beginning of another chapter in my life.

My first seven years were filled with the fear of Howard’s violence, but they were also filled with artistic and athletic activities. My brothers and I participated in most of the same activities our friends did. There was at least a semblance of normalcy in our suburban existence. We were kept busy with practices and lessons. My brothers played team football and baseball. We all endured piano lessons. I used to sit at the piano in my wet bathing suit in the summers, because I’d have run in off the beach just in time for the lesson. In the winter, I peeled off snow clothes before sitting down, having just come in from playing outside.

I hated my piano lessons because it meant I had to come back to the house and the chaos. My teacher, an older Italian woman who ate foul-smelling pepperoni sandwiches, beat time to the piano metronome with a baton, on my knuckles, as I tried to play. I still can’t play the piano without thinking of the smell of pepperoni and that tapping baton.

I also attended ballet classes with the Boston Ballet on Saturdays. This remains the one class Wendy brought me to with regularity. She always got stoned with a friend in Boston while I practiced. I never wanted to be a ballerina, though I liked the formality and structure of the ballet studio classes. I possessed no real talent, and eventually the ballet master became honest about my chances for acceptance into the corps. He encouraged me to study tap dancing. But I knew tap wasn’t my style. Tap was for people who smiled. Ballet was serious.

Summers were better. My father’s sister, Doreen, owned a summer bungalow in Withensea and came to live there every summer. During the first seven years of my life I spent almost every summer day at my aunt’s beach bungalow or on the beach with my other aunts, uncles, and cousins, and grandparents on Howard’s side.

I felt freedom on the beach. It was my playground. My cousins and I spent all day in and out of the freezing waves, drawing and playing circle hopscotch with Popsicle sticks and building elaborate sand castles with our plastic pails and shovels. At lunchtime we were whistled in like dogs. We would run—pink-skinned, blue-lipped—to the spot up on the soft, white sand where there was a semi-circle
of aluminum chairs and chaises. Once there, we were toweled off and fed warm peanut butter sandwiches, soft peaches, and icy water from a long, silver thermos. Afterwards, we were lectured to stay out of the water until we had digested. We always ignored those instructions and ran directly back into the ocean, where we played for hours, until the ice cream truck rang its bell at the edge of the dunes. Then it was a chorus of whines and begging until someone offered coins, which I would trade for blue raspberry Italian ices.