Things A Child Never Told ... She Never Knew To
Story/photos written, owned by Gloria Faye Brown Bates
Photos taken 2018-2019 ... Gloria Faye Brown Bates in both. True story, photos owned by me.
I never thought to tell anyone what was happening to me. I've thought about it ... and even now, I have no answer as to why I didn't go to someone and tell them. Also, I never wanted anyone to get in trouble when I began to know to tell someone. Not only that ... years had gone by. ... by then
I never felt sorry for 'me' as a child either ... somehow it was Life and I existed day to day full of dread to being made fun of ... someone was going to hurt, beat me up, cuss me out, make fun of me as a little girl. It was life, I didn't know any better.
I didn't know to feel sorry for myself ... I didn't know to tell on someone ... I didn't know life wasn't supposed to be like that. I didn't know anything ... I just went to sleep, woke up knowing ... feeling Hell all the time I wasn't asleep.
I somehow learned from someone ... I don't remember at all as a little girl how I learned to ... want to kill myself. Maybe someone told me to ... and maybe I don't want to remember that they'd do such a thing. Sometimes kids and adults alike ... say, do things hoping someone does what they want them, wish them to do.
Doesn't matter today. I do remember trying to ... when things became ... worse over time. It had to be 'much worse' to be worse than it was.
I remember once at Grandma Alma and George's ... riding the school bus for a short time ... the abuse/bullying on there was so awful ... especially from a high school boy and his girlfriend ... I remember them today. I was deathly afraid of them and quit riding, began walking again.
Men would stop, try to talk me into getting into their car ... I was just a child. I knew them ... they never looked at me in church when I went with the old ladies. When they would stop to try to get me to get in ... they would smile the sweetest smiles, their voices would be very kind. I would be tempted ... almost ... be lured by kindness.
I would turn my head and keep walking. Today ... people would be shocked at 'who' those men were. I wouldn't ever tell even today. How did I know not to get in the cars? So much kindness to a little girl who knew only a harsh, mean, cold world. Like a moth is drawn to the light ... I would almost ... get in.
Once when I babysitted my brothers for my mother I got in the car with a man. I learned what would happen when a young girl got into a car with a grown man ... even when it was okay to. After babysitting ... he was to take me to my Grandma Alma's house.
My mother would date sometimes ... I would watch my little brothers. That particular night I was supposed to be 'down at Grandma's (Grandma Alma)'. She was sick and wanted me to stay the night with them.
My mother asked me to stay with my little brothers while she went out and her boyfriend would drive me to Grandma Alma's when he brought her home. Of course, I agree. I sort of knew her boyfriend.
That night ... it's a wonder I wasn't killed, thrown in the lake he drove me to. I'll always remember the alarm I felt when he turned the wrong way to go to Grandma Alma's. I felt fear. I wanted to go to my Grandma Alma's.
The words he said to me I can still hear in my mind ... when I write them here ... you can imagine what he tried to do. It's a wonder when I cried out to him while fighting him ...... 'just before' ..... he didn't just choke me to death, drag me to the lake, throw me in.
I cried out, "I'm going to tell my momma! I'm going to tell my momma on you!"
He let go of me instantly ... I was crying. He tried to hold me in a nice way ... I wanted his hurting hands off me. I cried as I tried to get my clothes back on. He drove me to my Grandma Alma's. I never spoke of it to anyone until I was an adult in my early 30's.
A few years later when I had moved away ... he had become a member of my family ... later ... he committed suicide.
The ugly words he said to me were: "Give me some of that young stuff the boys have been getting around here!" I hadn't been with a boy ... he didn't hear me when I told him. He was in a frenzy.
Really, I just didn't know life wasn't supposed to be like that. I was so naive. Looking back now ... a young girl is always in danger if she is left to the mercy of the world. Someone is always watching, waiting for an opportunity. I think I always thought something was my fault ... when 'grown-ups' did things to me. I never thought then ... 'how could it be?' Maybe because I was living?
I was eleven-twelve the only time I'd ever told on a man ... I told my mother what her boyfriend was doing to me (I had to become afraid of him to tell on him) ... oh my! I learned I'd never do that again. It was an awful experience ... she kept asking me questions and if I were telling the truth ... good thing I hadn't been a lying child before ... she believed me ... and I never saw that man again.
She had left me in the back seat of the car ... and her boyfriend to watch me while she went into the doctor's office. Somehow it seemed dark with nightlights around ... I always see this when I look back. The man's hand kept coming between the seats ... to touch my legs and go up my dress to touch me.
I was trapped until my mom came back. Looking back ... I can see his head turn toward the direction mom went while his hand touched me. I was too afraid to say anything ... it wasn't the first time such had happened to me.
I look back and think of the little girl next door. She was my only friend ... even now she will say I hid all that happened to hurt me as a child well. I never told anyone. When I got to play with her ... the world was good ... I was a happy child for a short time.
The times we played, danced, laughed were so wonderful to me ... I was so happy to have a friend ... I forgot everything else when we played.
Going back (just a few steps) to Grandma Alma and George's ... I would hold my head down in dread of what I would see, hear getting back to the house. I could usually hear loud voices cussing ... that was the norm.
Cussing ... oh my ... I learned some good cuss words I'm not proud of at all. They are still in me if I get hurt, upset ... they will come out if I don't exercise self-control. Hell is still in me ... I always work hard to be a good person ... it's still in me.
I would be Hell if someone really went out of the way to push me. Normally ... I am just soft-spoken, nice. I don't like to be unkind to anyone ... I have to live with it if I do. I know how pain feels, I don't intentionally inflict it on anyone.
Yes, life back then as a child ... was what I lived and never knew it could have been different. If you don't know anything else ... you just exist where you are at. I didn't have a choice. Well ... today children do have a choice and they are taught to tell on someone. Today ... children are very important ... they speak, people will listen to them, help them achieve goals, dreams.
I look back through time ... everything was an education to prepare me for the following years when 'bad' things happened. Now ... I wouldn't trade it for the world. I see now ... I had to live all that to be as strong as I am today.
Suppose I'd stayed a 'little princess' ... and experienced all I've been through all these years ... I would have been too soft to have survived ... I would have been in a little ball crying ... and feeling sorry for myself. I've never done that ... I didn't know to. I honestly don't think I would have lived this long if you want to know the truth if I hadn't begun gathering strength beginning as that little child.
I look back ... pure mental abuse, pure physical abuse. I wasn't the only child who had their experiences there in the house at Hell ... I can't write their stories ... only they know what their minds, bodies felt. I knew but, I write my own stories.
I have one cousin who resents me writing period ... because she never knew my love for words ... all my cousins only thought about one cousin who wrote all the time ... when I did my books ... they all began yelling ... it was supposed to be so and so to write, publish a book! No one ever knew me long enough to know my love for anything ... I was thrown here, there.
I always kept my love of anything to myself ... someone would have destroyed it if they knew when I was little. I was private then ... and no one probably knew I had a mind ... or knew that I could think ... that I had dreams to be a fashion designer ... I did make paper dolls and clothes that fit them ... then.
When I was taken away to live at my father's or my Grandmother Lola's I made straight 'A's' living with him or her. At my father's I lived in a different kind of Hell ... a silent Hell no one saw, heard unless they watched closely.
My father was cruel to me without physical abuse ... it was mental ... quiet ... his actions toward me ... devastated me ... kept me afraid, upset. I couldn't eat ... I would sit in the bedroom studying ... when I did chores I overdid them to do more than I was asked hoping he would approve of something I did. I never did win approval for nothing.
Only one time did he ask something of me ... that secretly he liked, wanted to do. I remember I was amazed my father wanted to know one of my art techniques I did ... he was an accomplished sign painter for all kinds of businesses, an artist who painted portraits, anything ... a boilermaker and in the union ... and well-thought of.
I learned to do the little technique on my own. I couldn't believe I was doing something he didn't know.
My father never taught, showed me anything when I used to stand at the door of his wonderful art studio ... hoping to be invited in. He never invited me in ... knowing how I loved to draw like him. I look back ... it's sad when a parent doesn't teach his child what he knows ... pass on his knowledge when he could.
I told him my little art technique without hesitation. I didn't let the past stand in the way. He never said thank you ... he went on to use it like it was his all the time.
My father hit me one time ... it made up for all time when he did. I didn't deserve it ... he never heard me when I softly told him I wasn't the one to steal his razor to shave my legs, not at least wash it before putting it back in his bathroom so he wouldn't know. My stepmother caused it all to protect my two sisters ... I was the outsider. I can say I know what 'seeing stars' means.
When I was thrown into Hell at Grandma Alma's ... I made B's and C's, D's ... I always made enough to pass. How can a child sit, study with Hell breaking loose around them ... when on their walk home from school someone is making fun of her, or trying to get her in a car ...scare her?
How can she study when her every day at school someone was constantly picking on her to tell her she was fat, ugly and laugh at her family?
How can a child study when their hands shake when picking up a pencil to write? How can a child study when her stomach felt like someone had kicked her in it because it was full of dread, fear all the time?
I look back and see the positive that has come from ugliness of all kinds ... I will say I am proud I'm a good person ... no, I'm not perfect but, I'm alright. Sometimes ... I can say an ugly word ... I'm still alright, a good person.
Note by this Author:
When I write I write about my life ... I write about what I know best. I don't write to feel sorry for myself, dwell on the past, to whine or cry 'woe is me'. Don't feel sorry for me. I write true life, I don't sugar-coat it.
