A Fucking Oprah Episode

Once Sis (an executive for Kiddie Academy) asked me to write something about our childhood because she couldn't remember anything from before my folks' divorce (I was 7, she was 5). She was taking a class and had to give a talk about early memories or something, so I pieced together some favorite early memories. Reading the draft now I can't help but cringe at the inconsistencies in the narrator's voice and the woesome martyr complex, but fuck it; it's one of two things I wrote that had a public airing.

Daddy sleeps and his room is dark and quiet all day because at night he works. Mommy makes us go to bed at 7 and stay there until 8am. I am awake six hours, watching shadows of trees on the
silvery wallpaper, looking out the window, bored, before sleeping. Sometimes when I'm asleep I hear Daddy in my sister's room. "Daddy loves her," he says, and then he comes in and kisses
me. Sometimes he stinks like medicine and yanks me too hard out of the bed. In the morning if I get up before 8 my sister stands at the bars in her crib and yells "outtabed!" This is a game we always play because it's funny. Mommy yells at us.

Mommy lies on the couch weekends watching TV. Daddy tries to get on the couch with Mommy. Mommy starts yelling. He tries to hug and kiss her. She pushes and yells some more. He begins to yell. I can't get out of the chair I'm in, and my sister is there too, but very small. If I get up to leave the room they might yell at me. My sister would be there alone.

Daddy hits Mommy with a loud slap. She hits back, but with words. "Well divorce me then!" he shouts. She cries. He hits her again, and I run over, sad and saying stop stop please stop,
but he knocks me down with his big strong hand. I only wanted to stop them. The TV is still playing and people are laughing. They always laugh on TV.

Mommy lets us fingerpaint when she is home. We make a big mess. Mommy reads me books and teaches me letters. My sister can't read yet. There are lots of kids in our neighborhood. They come over and we play in the bushes and on the back porch. We jump off the porch and into the yard. My sister is too small to do that, so she cries. My friend Missy and I walk to the graveyard and play there. We go to Mrs. Henry and she gives us candy. We walk to my grandparents' and they give us candy. We get chestnuts from old Mrs. Hersey whose house is like a Western movie full of old fancy things. Her house is very quiet. One day I don't see her anymore and someone else moves in. Mommy tells me she went away. That night I look at a card from Mrs. Hersey. She used to give me cards at Xmas addressed to "Master Geoffrey." This makes me feel grownup and small at the same time. I don't know what Master means. On the card is a snowy street, with a boy in a big coat. He is alone.

My sister and I play with our toys in the big walk-in closet in her room. We sometimes take them down to the new addition and play in the shag carpet like furry grass. We fight and Mommy yells. One day I am in the tree house with Missy and my sister and Robin and I have to pee so I go behind the barn. Daddy catches me and hits me three times in the back and then in the belly. He says nothing and walks away. I lie on the ground out of breath. Tippy the dog tries to lick me, but his chain won't reach that far.

I explore the house because I'm bored. My sister follows me all around. This annoys me. She always tells me not to do things. I go in the room on the other side of my parents' room and there are lots of boxes of things, and she follows me. "Don't do that," my sister says. We rummage through the boxes, and go in the closet. There's a fishing rod and a long gun. "Don't go in there! I'm telling." Mommy is in the kitchen cleaning, or talking on the phone. When she is not at work she watches TV where there are people who are happy. Sometimes the afternoon shows have sad women. Sometimes Mommy yells up the steps.

When Mommy works we go to Grandma's. Grandma has boxes of small bricks and we play with them like Dominoes and make them fall. They make my fingers smell weird. My sister and I never fight at Grandma's for some reason. She lets us draw and makes jokes about toilets and poop. When I tell Mommy that she gets very mad and yells.

Once I am very sleepy in the middle of the night and I get up to pee. I know Mommy is asleep so I look at Daddy's magazine which he keeps on the back of the toilet. I am so sleepy I can barely see, but the magazine has pictures of ladies with no clothes on. Mommy comes in the bathroom and starts yelling. She makes a rag wet and hits me in the face with it over and over until I can barely breathe. She keeps asking me why I was looking at the magazine, but I don't know why. She hits me when I say I don't know. I am crying and I hear my sister crying in her crib because I am crying. Daddy comes home from work and Mommy tells him what I did and they yell.

I get angry a lot. I hit my sister when she annoys me. I have learned that when I try to stop Mommy and Daddy from fighting that I get hit. I have learned that if I don't understand something I get hit. I have learned that if I do something bad I get hit. I have learned to be quiet. If my sister follows me I start to hit her now. This is how I learned to communicate.

One day my sister goes under the couch where Mommy and Daddy always fight. She is stuck and she is screaming and crying. Mommy is outside and I am scared, so I grab her arm to pull her out. Mommy says I hurt her arm, and hits me.

Sometimes when Mommy and Daddy fight the policemen come. They never come in the house, but stand on the porch. I can hear Mommy crying and talking to them.

When we are a bit older I am given a choice. I can be hit or stand in the corner. I hate standing in the corner, so I take the belt. It stings, but is quick. Sometimes Mommy uses it on my legs, sometimes my bottom. Sometimes she makes me stand in the corner with no choice. I have to spend three hours in the corner. I pick at the wallpaper with my key collection because I am bored. Mommy hits me when I come out of the corner because I ruined the wallpaper.

Mommy and Daddy always yell. I lie in bed trembling. I know one of them will come in and complain about the other. Sometimes it's Daddy and he is what Mommy calls drunk. He hugs me and kisses me but it's not pleasant. He stinks and he's insincere. One time Mommy comes in in the middle of the night crying. She shows me her eye, which has a black and purple mark around it. "Do you see what your father did to me?" she screams, and hugs me. "Never be like your father" she says, over and over. We cry.

Shortly after this Mommy wakes me up in the night. Downstairs there are trash bags everywhere. They are full of clothes and picture albums. My sister is asleep in a blanket. We are going somewhere. Daddy is at work. I ask if Daddy is coming, and Mommy says no. Mommy's friend is there because we're going to her house. The police are on the porch. We leave.