I had a very bad childhood, full of abuse, both physical and emotional, but luckily not sexual, though my siblings were not spared that atrocity. My dad was the worst abuser but my mom the most frequent. I grew up poor white trash in an uncultured, uneducated violent, crude family. I used to pray I was adopted or picked up as the wrong baby at the hospital. Unfortunately, I look like my father now. You have no idea how disconcerting to look in the mirror and look like the person who beat you and yelled at you. My family came from Arkansas and Oklahoma during the dust bowl like the Joad family but without the noble spirits and likable characters. My father bragged of tales of him and his brothers trying to kill each other with pitchforks and shovels. His father was eventually put in a home when he tried to kill his wife with a rifle. His wife, my grandmother, used to torture me for hours when my parents dropped me off at her house, so I could hardly blame him. In her later years, she tried to send me notes saying she loved me and thought about me. My wife wondered why I tossed them out. In any case, it has left its mark on me for good and ill and I am trying to compile stories and put them in a memoir. Here is one such draft:
The Ladder
by Michael Bradley
The ladder loomed above me like the face of El Capitan. I could force myself to the first step, and shaking like a leaf to the second. After that, panic set in. It is difficult to explain fear of heights to anyone who does not have a phobia, but the fear is overwhelming, primal, and cannot be overcome. My Dad was screaming at me as usual. He pulled his well worn leather belt with the metal buckle through his pant loops and began to whip me with it.
I wanted to climb the ladder and prune the tree, but try as I might, I could not pass the second step. I was used to beatings. I was hit every day and at least once a week my Dad would whip me with his belt until my legs were bloody. I fell from the ladder as he whipped my legs, then on the ground, my arms and my face.
A neighbor ran over to stop it. I was worried the neighbor would hurt my Dad. I knew my Dad had a heart condition and could not fight the neighbor without being hurt. Through my tears I pleaded, “Don’t hurt my Dad, please.” The neighbor looked uncomfortable and left after speaking to my Dad. My Dad beat me more for making so much noise.
My Mother came out to stop him. My Mother only beat me in the house, not outdoors. “They will call the police,” she said. I did not want my Dad to go to jail, but I could not climb the ladder. My Dad stopped whipping me and moved toward the house.
Then with a suddenness he ran back to me, grabbed me by my small left arm and yanked me up, spun me around wildly and let go. I flew about fifteen feet into a prickly bush. I laid there for quite awhile, then got up, limped to my room and hid in my closet. It was the day after my seventh birthday.
Twenty years later I found my Dad had dislocated my shoulder that day and broke my clavicle. The jagged repair cut my shoulder joint apart while playing racquetball and a surgeon fixed the old injury. He fixed the physical injury, but the emotional one is still there. Among hundreds of wounds, days in school where blood would soak into my pants as they tore at scabs on my legs, but no one seemed to notice. Nor did they notice my ulcer that year, my scratching myself till I bled, or my constant shaking.
Freedom came to me in a strange way. At fifteen, my Dad died, his heart gave out in surgery. My Mother abandoned me months later, moving from California to Tennessee with a man she knew for two weeks. I have seen her around three times in the last thirty years. Physical freedom came immediately, but emotional freedom arrived just a few years ago. Some wounds take longer to heal, like the ladder.
Michael Bradley - Time Traveler 