My Sisters Three

   For the next couple of hours, they walked me through some of our childhood horrors, the beatings, the brutality, our parents' utter indifference to us.  Our parents showed no affection, didn't nurture us and never showed any facets that could remotely be considered love.  There was the inappropriate touching and the molesting that happened for years by our neighbors and acquaintances that we were seemingly loaned out to and even by our own father.  I actually started blocking it out at this point.  I could see their mouths move but I could not hear a word they were saying.  I wasn't replaying anything in my head; I had just turned off.  How could they know all of these things when I knew nothing?  They said that they were not the only ones that this had happened to but they had feared that it was even worse on me.  My defense, my survival seemed to depend on me hiding all of the horrors in the deep recesses of my mind, never to unlock that door again.  Now the door was not just being unlocked but kicked open.

   My sisters openly discussed the beatings, bruises and welts that were left on our small bodies by the belts and switches; the fear of certain sounds like that of a belt that has been folded in two being popped as it comes down the hall, each pop getting louder and closer until it reaches our room.  They thought our Dad received some sort of extra pleasure in knowing the terror he was instilling prior to his beatings and how we were literally raised from our feet by the force of the blows.  Our ages and sizes were never factored into the punishments, the anger directed towards us insurmountable.  As we grew in age the methods changed; his fists replaced the switches but the belt always remained.  I've seen that anger in others as I have grown older and each time I place my back against a support to keep me from hitting the ground.  The fear of being kicked to death still remains in my mind.  Some lessons you learn in life apparently stay with you; this one had stayed with me for some 35 years.

   I was having trouble taking it all in, each thought bumping into the other and the words becoming entwined.  I started feeling physically ill.  They started asking me questions, thinking it might job my memory and then they would replay the reel that was tied to it.  It seemed to turn into a sick game show.