Can't hurt me 04

 But he didn't drop his weapon. He aimed it right between my eyes. 

I stared straight at him, blank as possible, my feet anchored to the floorboards. 

There was no one else in the house and part of me expected him to pull the trigger. But by this time in my life, I no longer cared if I lived or died. I was an exhausted 8 year old kid, plain old ******* tired of being terrified of my father, and I was sick of Skateland too. 

After a minute or two, he lowered his weapon and went back upstairs. 

By now it was becoming clear that someone was going to die on Paradise Rd. 

My mother knew where trueness kept his 38. 

Someday she timed and followed him, envisioned how it would play out. 

They take separate cars to Skateland. 

She grabbed his gun from beneath the office sofa cushions before he could get there. Bring us home early, put us to bed and wait for him by the front door with his gun in hand. 

When he pulled up. 

She'd step out the front door and murder him in his driveway. 

Leave his body for the milkman to find. 

My uncles, her brothers, talked her out of it, but they agreed she needed to do something drastic or she'd be the one lying dead. 

So, David, you were something that we didn't put in this book. Is that you, your your uncles actually tried to talk her into having them do something, right? Right. So what happened here was my uncle. 

Is a horse trainer. He's a horse whisperer and he also is a great dog trainer. 

So he had these canines, and he trained these canines, and he trained them in German. 

And his idea was, look, Jackie. 

We need to get you out of here. 

And what's going to happen is you go get the boys. 

Look at Dave and Churners. 

In drive to Indiana, what I'm going to do is I'm going to come in from California. I'm going to go to Buffalo. 

And I'm going to bring two of my canines with me. 

And when trueness my dad walks out of Skateland, I'm going to turn my dogs loose. And my mom was like, this plan is not going to work because basically he has a gun. 

And my uncle was like, well, he can only kill one of my dogs. 

Because the other dogs gonna go for the guys throw. 

O That was the big plan on how to take my dad out. Obviously it never went down, and I don't believe my uncle was going to ever let it go down. But my mom was at such a horrible place that the only way my mom was going to ever, you know, kind of be satisfied was if someone had a plan to kill him. So that's kind of how that whole thing went. So he wasn't ever really going to do it, but he was trying to placate her and commit just to get her to leave. You know what I have to think to myself. I know my uncle. 

Pretty well. 

I don't think he was gonna do it. But you never know. When your sister's been getting tortured like this for years, you never know what's in a man's mind. No, I mean that's. And that's The thing is, is that when when this guy got, it heats up like a kettle, You know, it's like when when domestic violence, you know, even even whether it's violent or or abuse, even emotional abuse, it just kind of, it starts to boil and **** happens. And it could have ended up being your uncle who got it, who ends up in jail. 

For for trying to defend her. I mean, that's that's the kind of stuff that happens 100%, yeah, somebody was getting up in jail or dead for sure in that house. 

It was an old neighbor who showed her away. 

Betty used to live across the street from us and after she moved they stayed in touch. 

Betty was 20 years older than my mom and had the wisdom to match. She encouraged my mother to plan her escape weeks in advance. The first step was getting a credit card in her name. 

That meant she had to relearn Trueness's trust because she needed him to cosign. 

Betty also reminded my mother to keep their friendship a secret. 

For a few weeks, Jackie played. Journeys, treated him like she did when she was a 19 year old beauty with stars in her eyes. She made him believe she worshipped him again. 

And when she slipped a credit card application in front of him, he said he'd be happy to score her a little buying power. 

When the card arrived in the mail, my mother felt its hard plastic edges through the envelope as relief saturated her mind. 

She held it at arms length and admired it. It glowed like a golden ticket. 

A few days later, she heard my father talking **** about her on the phone to one of his friends while he was having breakfast with my brother and me at the kitchen table. 

That did it. 

She walked over to the table and said, I'm leaving your father. You two can stay or you can come with me. 

My dad was stunned, silent. And so was my brother. But I shot out of that chair like it was on fire, grabbed a few black garbage bags and went upstairs to start packing. 

My brother eventually started gathering his things, too. Before we left, the four of us had one last pow wow at the kitchen table. Trueness glared at my mother, filled with shock and contempt. 

You have nothing and you are nothing without me, he said. You're uneducated, you don't have any money or prospects. You'll be a prostitute inside a year. 

He paused, then shifted his focus to my brother and me. 

You two are going to grow up to be a couple of ******* and don't think about coming back, Jackie. I'll have another woman here to take your place 5 minutes after you leave. 

She nodded and stood. 

She'd given him her youth, her very soul, and she was finally finished. 

She packed as little of her past as possible. She left the mink coats and the diamond rings he could give them to his ***** girlfriend, as far as she was concerned. 

Trueness watched us load up into my momma's Volvo, the one vehicle he owned that he wouldn't ride in our bikes already strapped to the back. We drove off slowly, and at first he didn't budge. But before she turned the corner, I could see him move toward the garage. My mother floored it. 

Give her credit. She'd plan for contingencies, she figured he'd tell her, so she didn't head West to the Interstate. That would take us to her parents place in Indiana. Instead, she drove to Betty's house down a dirt construction Rd. that my dad didn't even know about. 

Betty had the garage door open when we arrived. We pulled in. Betty yanked the door down, and while my father shot out on the highway and his Corvette to chase after us, we waited right under his nose until just before nightfall. 

By then, we knew he'd be at Skateland opening up. He wasn't going to miss a chance to make some money, no matter what. 

**** went wrong about 90 miles outside of Buffalo when the old Volvo started burning oil. 

Huge plumes of inky exhaust choked from the tailpipe, and my mother spun into panic mode. It was as if she'd been holding it all in, stuffing her fear down deep, hiding it beneath a mask of forced composure until an obstacle emerged and she fell apart. 

Tears streaked her face. 

What do I do? My mom asked, her eyes wide as saucers. My brother never wanted to leave, and he told her to turn around. 

I was riding shotgun. She looked over expectantly. What do I do? 

We got to go, Mom, I said. Mom, we gotta go. 

She pulled into a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Hysterical, she rushed to a pay phone and called Betty. 

I can't do this, Betty, she said. The car broke down. I have to go back. Where are you? Betty asked calmly. I don't know, my mom replied. I have no idea where I am. 

Betty told her to find a gas station attendant. Every station had those back then and put him on the phone, he explained. We were just outside of Erie, PA, and after Betty gave him some instructions, he put my mother back on the line. 

Jackie, there's a Volvo dealer in the area. Find a hotel tonight and take the car there tomorrow morning. The attendant is going to put enough oil in the car to get you there. My mother was listening, but she didn't respond. 

Jackie, are you hearing me? 

Do what I say and it will be OK. 

Yeah, OK, she whispered, emotionally spent hotel Volvo dealer. Got it. 

I don't know what Erie is like now, but back then there was only one decent hotel in town, a Holiday Inn not far from the Volvo dealership. 

My brother and I followed my mom to the reception desk, where we were hit with more bad news. 

They were fully booked. 

My mother's shoulders slumped. My brother and I stood on either side of her, holding our clothes in black trash bags. We were the picture of desperation, and the night manager saw it. 

Look, I'll set you up with some rollaway beds in the conference room, he said. 

There's a bathroom down there, but you have to be out early because we have a conference starting at 9:00 AM. 

Grateful, we betted down in that conference room with its industrial carpet and fluorescent lights our own personal purgatory. 

We were on the run and on the ropes, but my mother hadn't folded. 

She laid back and stared at the ceiling tiles until we nodded off. Then she slipped into an adjacent coffee shop to keep an anxious eye on our bikes and on the road all night long. 

We were waiting outside that Volvo dealership when the garage opened up, which gave the mechanics just enough time to source the part we needed to get us back on the road before their day was done. 

We left Erie at sunset and drove all night, arriving at my grandparent's house in Brazil IN 8 hours later. 

My mom wept as she parked next to their old wooden house before dawn, and I understood why. 

Our arrival felt significant then and now. I was still only eight years old, but already in a second phase of life. I didn't know what awaited me, what awaited us in that small rural southern Indiana town. And I didn't much care. All I knew was that we'd escaped from hell, and for the first time in my life, we were free from the devil himself. 

We stayed with my grandparents for the next six months, and I enrolled in second grade for the second time at a local Catholic school called Annunciation. 

I was the only 8 year old in second grade, but none of the other kids knew I was repeating a year and there was no doubt that I needed it. I could barely read, but I was lucky enough to have Sister Catherine as my teacher. 

Short and petite Sister Catherine was 60 years old and had one gold front tooth. She was a nun but didn't wear the habit. She was also grumpy as hell and took no ****. And I loved her thug ***. 

Annunciation was a small school. 

Sister Catherine taught all of 1st and 2nd grade in a single classroom, and with only eighteen kids to teach, she wasn't willing to shirk her responsibility and blame my academic struggles or anybody's bad behavior on learning disabilities or emotional problems. 

She didn't know my back story and didn't have to. All that mattered to her was that I turned up at her door with a kindergarten education and it was her job to shape my mind. She had every excuse in the world to farm me out to some specialist or label me a problem, but that wasn't her style. She started teaching before labeling kids was a normal thing to do and she embodied that no excuses mentality that I needed if I was going to catch up. 

Sister Catherine is the reason why I'll never trust a smile or judge a scowl. My dad smiled a hell of a lot, and he didn't give two ***** about me, But grouchy Sister Catherine cared about us, cared about me. 

She wanted us to be our very best. I know this because she proved it by spending extra time with me, as much time as it took until I retained my lessons. Before the year was out, I could read at a second grade level. Trinity Junior had an adjusted nearly as well. Within a few months, he was back in Buffalo shadowing my father and working that Skateland detail like he'd never left. 

By then we'd moved into a place of our own, a 600 square foot two-bedroom apartment at Lamplight Manor, a public housing block that costs us $7.00 a month. 

My father, who earned thousands every night, sporadically sent $25 every three or four weeks if that, for child support, while my mother earned a few $100 a month with her department store job. 

In her off hours, she was taking courses at Indiana State University, which costs money too. 

The point is, we had gaps to fill. So my mother enrolled in welfare and received $123.00 a month and food stamps. They wrote her a check for the first month, but when they found out she owned a car, they disqualified her, explaining that if she sold her car, they'd be happy to help. 

The problem is we lived in a rural town with a population of about 8000 that didn't have a mass transit system. We needed that car so I could get to school and she could get to work and take night classes. 

She was hell bent on changing her life circumstances and found a workaround through the Aid to Dependent Children program. She arranged for our check to go to my grandmother who signed it over to her. 

But that didn't make life easy. How far can 123 bucks really go? 

I vividly recall one night we were so broke we drove home on a gas tank that was near empty to a bare refrigerator and a past due electric bill with no money in the bank. 

Then I remembered that we had two Mason jars filled with pennies and other loose change. I grabbed them off the shelf. 

Mom, let's count our change. She smiled. Growing up, her father had taught her to pick up the change she found on the street. 

He was molded by the Great Depression and knew what it was like to be down and out. You never know when you might need it, he'd say. When we lived in hell, carrying home thousands of dollars every night, the notion that we would ever run out of money sounded ludicrous, but my mother retained her childhood habit. Trueness used to belittle her for it, but now it was time to see how far found money could take us. 

We dump that change out on the living room floor and count it out enough to cover the electric bill, fill the gas tank, and buy groceries. We even had enough to buy burgers at Hardee's on the way home. These were dark times, but we were managing barely. 

My mother missed Trueness Junior terribly, but she was pleased that I was adjusting and making friends. 

I'd had a good year at school, and from our first night in Indiana, I hadn't wet the bed once. It seemed that I was healing. But my demons weren't gone. They were dormant, and when they came back, they hit hard. 

3rd grade was a shock to my system. Not just because we had to learn cursive when I was still getting the hang of reading block letters, but because our teacher Miss D was nothing like Sister Catherine. 

Our class was still small, We had about 20 kids total slit between 3rd and 4th grade, but she didn't handle it nearly as well and wasn't interested in taking the extra time I required. 

My trouble started with the standardized test we took during our first couple of weeks of class. Mine came back a mess. I was still way behind the other kids, and I had trouble building on lessons from the previous days, let alone the previous academic year. 

Sister Catherine considered similar signs as cues to dedicate more.