A child called it - The Lord’s Prayer

7 – The Lord’s Prayer
About a month before I entered the fifth grade, I came to
believe that for me, there was no God.
As I sat alone in the garage, or read to myself in the near
darkness of my parents’ bedroom, I came to realize that I would
live like this for the remainder of my life. No just God would
leave me like this. I believed that I was alone in my struggle and
that my battle was one of survival.
By the time I had decided that there was no God, I had totally
disconnected myself from all physical pain. Whenever Mother
struck me, it was as if she were taking her aggressions out on a
rag doll. Inside, my emotions swirled back and forth between
fear and intense anger. But outside, I was a robot, rarely
revealing my emotions; only when I thought it would please The
Bitch and work to my advantage. I held in my tears, refusing to
cry because I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of my
defeat.
At night I no longer dreamed, nor did I let my imagination
work during the day. The once vibrant escapes of watching
myself fly through the clouds in bright blue costumes, were now
a thing of the past. When I fell asleep, my soul became
consumed in a black void. I no longer awoke in the mornings
refreshed; I was tired and told myself that I had one day less to
live in this world. I shuffled through my chores, dreading every
moment of every day. With no dreams, I found that words like
hope and faith were only letters, randomly put together into
something meaningless – words only for fairy tales.
When I was given the luxury of food, I ate like a homeless
dog; grunting like an animal at Mother’s commands. I no longer
cared when she made fun of me, as I hurried to devour even the
smallest morsel. Nothing was below me. One Saturday while I
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was washing the morning dishes, Mother scraped some
halfeaten pancakes from a plate, into the dogs’ dish. Her wellfed
pets picked at the food until they wanted no more, then walked
away to find a place to sleep. Later, as I put away some pots and
pans in a lower cabinet, I crawled on my hands and knees to the
dogs’ dish and ate what was left of the pancakes. As I ate, I
could smell traces of the dogs, but I ate anyway. It hardly
bothered me. I fully realized that if The Bitch caught me eating
what rightfully belonged to the dogs, I would pay dearly; but
getting food any way I could was my only means of existing.
Inside, my soul became so cold I hated everything. I even
despised the sun, for I knew I would never be able to play in its
warm presence. I cringed with hate whenever I heard other
children laughing, as they played outside. My stomach coiled
whenever I smelled food that was about to be served to
somebody else, knowing it was not for me. I wanted so much to
strike out at something every time I was called upstairs to play
the role of the family slave, by picking up after those slobs.
I hated Mother most and wished that she were dead. But
before she died, I wanted her to feel the magnitude of my pain
and my loneliness for all these years. During all the years when I
had prayed to God, He answered me only once. One day, when I
was five or six years old, Mother had thrashed me from one end
of the house to the other. That night before getting into bed, I
got down on my knees and prayed to God. I asked Him to make
Mother sick so she couldn’t hit me any more. I prayed long and
hard, concentrating so much that I went to bed with a headache.
The next morning, much to my surprise, Mother was sick. She
lay on the couch all day, barely moving. Since Father was at
work, my brothers and I took care of her as though she were a
patient of ours.
As the years passed and the beatings became more intense, I
thought about Mother’s age and tried to calculate when she
might die. I longed for the day when her soul would be taken
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into the depths of hell; only then would I be free of her.
I also hated Father. He was fully aware of the hell I lived in,
but he lacked the courage to rescue me as he had promised so
many times in the past. But as I examined my relationship with
Father, I realized that he considered me part of the problem. I
believe he thought of me as a traitor. Many times when The
Bitch and Father had heated arguments, Mother involved me.
She would yank me from wherever I was and demand that I
repeat every vile word Father might have used in their past
arguments. I fully realized what her game was, but having to
choose between them was not difficult. Mother’s wrath was
much worse for me. I always shook my head, timidly saying
what she wanted to hear. She would then scream for me to
repeat the words to her in Dad’s presence. Much of the time she
insisted that I make up the words if I couldn’t remember. This
bothered me a great deal because I knew that in an effort to
avoid a beating, I was biting the hand that often fed me. In the
beginning, I tried to explain to Father why I had lied and turned
against him. At first he told me that he understood, but
eventually I knew he had lost faith in me. Instead of feeling
sorry for him, I only hated him more.
The boys who lived upstairs were no longer my brothers.
Sometimes in years past, they had managed to encourage me a
little. But in the summer of 1972 they took turns hitting me and
appeared to enjoy throwing their weight around. It was obvious
that they felt superior to the family slave. When they approached
me, my heart became hard as stone, and I am sure they saw the
hate etched in my face. In a rare and empty victory, I’d sneer the
word “asshole” under my breath as one of them strutted by me.
I made sure they didn’t hear me. I came to despise the
neighbors, my relatives and anybody else who had ever known
me and the conditions under which I lived. Hate was all I had
left.
At the core of my soul, I hated myself more than anybody or
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anything. I came to believe that everything that happened to me
or around me was my own fault because I had let it go on for so
long. I wanted what others had, but saw no way to get it, so I
hated them for having it. I wanted to be strong, but inside I knew
I was a wimp. I never had the courage to stand up to The Bitch,
so I knew I deserved whatever happened to me. For years,
Mother had brainwashed me by having me shout aloud, “I hate
myself. I hate myself.” Her efforts paid off. A few weeks before
I started the fifth grade, I hated myself so much that I wished I
were dead.
School no longer held the exciting appeal that it had years
ago. I struggled to concentrate on my work while in class, but
my bottledup anger often flashed at the wrong times. One Friday
afternoon in the winter of 1973, for no apparent reason, I
stormed out of the classroom, screaming at everyone as I fled. I
slammed the door so hard I thought the glass above the door
would shatter. I ran to the bathroom, and with my tiny red fist I
pounded the tiles until my strength drained away. Afterwards, I
collapsed on the floor praying for a miracle. It never came.
Time spent outside the classroom was only better than
Mother’s “hell house”. Because I was an outcast of the entire
school, my classmates at times took ove r where Mother left off.
One of them was Clifford, a schoolyard bully who would
periodically catch me when I ran to Mother’s house after school.
Beating me up was Clifford’s way of showing off to his friends.
All I could do was fall to the ground and cover my head, while
Clifford and his gang took turns kicking me.
Aggie was a tormentor of a different sort. She never failed to
come up with new and different ways of telling me how much
she wished I would simply “drop dead”. Her style was absolute
snobbery. Aggie made sure she was always the one in charge of
a small band of girls. In addition to tormenting me, showing off
their fancy clothes seemed to be the main purpose in life for
Aggie and her clique. I had always known Aggie didn’t like me,
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but I really didn’t learn how much until the last day of school
our fourthgrade year. Aggie’s mother taught my fourthgrade
homeroom, and on the last day of school Aggie came into our
room acting as though she were throwing up and said, “David
Pelzer-Smellzer is going to be in my homeroom next year.” Her
day was not complete until she fired off a rude remark about me
to her friends.
I didn’t take Aggie very seriously; not until a fifthgrade field
trip to one of San Francisco’s Clipper Ships. As I stood alone on
the bow of the ship, looking at the water, Aggie approached me
with a vicious smile and said in a low voice, “Jump!” She
startled me, and I looked into her face, trying to understand what
she meant. Again she spoke, quietly and calmly, “I said you
should go ahead and jump. I know all about you Pelzer, and
jumping is your only way out.”
Another voice came from behind her, “She’s right, you
know.” The voice belonged to John, another classmate, one of
Aggie’s macho buddies. Looking back over the railing, I stared
at the cold green water lapping against the wooden side of the
ship. For a moment, I could visualize myself plunging into the
water, knowing I would drown. It was a comforting thought that
promised an escape from Aggie, her friends and all that I hated
in the world. But my better senses returned, and I looked up and
fixed my eyes directly on John’s eyes and tried to hold my stare.
After a few moments, he must have felt my anger because he
turned away taking Aggie with him.
At the beginning of my fifthgrade year, Mr Ziegler, my
homeroom teacher, had no idea why I was such a problem child.
Later, after the school nurse had informed him why I had stolen
food and why I dressed the way I did, Mr Ziegler made a special
effort to treat me as if I were a normal kid. One of his jobs as
sponsor of the school newspaper was to form a committee of
kids to find a name for the paper. I came up with a catchy
phrase, and a week later my entry was among others in a
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schoolwide election to select the best name for the newspaper.
My title won by a landslide. Later that day the voting took place,
and Mr Ziegler took me aside and told me how proud he was
that my title had won. I soaked it up like a sponge. I hadn’t been
told anything positive for so long that I nearly cried. At the end
of the day, after assuring me that I wasn’t in trouble, Mr Ziegler
gave me a letter to take to Mother.
Elated, I ran to Mother’s house faster than ever before. As I
should have expected, my happiness was shortlived. The Bitch
tore the letter open, read it quickly and scoffed, “Well, Mr
Ziegler says I should be so proud of you for naming the school
newspaper. He also claims that you are one of the top pupils in
his class. Well, aren’t you special?” Suddenly, her voice turned
ice cold and she jabbed her finger at my face and hissed, “Get
one thing straight, you little son of a bitch! There is nothing you
can do to impress me! Do you understand me? You are a
nobody! An It! You are nonexistent! You are a bastard child! I
hate you and I wish you were dead! Dead! Do you hear me?
Dead!”
After tearing the letter into tiny pieces, Mother turned away
from me and returned to her television show. I stood motionless,
gazing at the letter which lay like snowflakes at my feet. Even
though I had heard the same words over and over again, this
time the word “It” stunned me like never before. She had
stripped me of my very existence. I gave all that I could to
accomplish anything positive for her recognition. But again, I
failed. My heart sank lower than ever before. Mother’s words
were no longer coming from the booze; they were coming from
her heart. I would have been relieved if she had returned with a
knife and ended it all.
I knelt down, trying to put the many pieces of the letter back
together again. It was impossible. I dumped the pieces of the
letter in the trash, wishing my life would end. I truly believed, at
that moment, that death would be better than my prospects for
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any kind of happiness. I was nothing but an “It”.
My morale had become so low that in some selfdestructive
way I hoped she would kill me, and I felt that eventually she
would. In my mind it was just a matter of when she would do it.
So I began to purposefully irritate her, hoping I could provoke
her enough that she would end my misery. I began doing my
chores in a careless manner. I made sure that I forgot to wipe the
bathroom floor, hoping that Mother or one of her royal subjects
might slip and fall, hurting themselves on the hard tile floor.
When I washed the evening dishes, I left bits of food on the
plates. I wanted The Bitch to know I didn’t care anymore.
As my attitude began to change, I became more and more
rebellious. A crisis erupted one day at the grocery store. Usually
I stayed in the car, but for some reason Mother decided to take
me inside. She ordered me to keep one hand clamped onto the
cart and bend my head towards the floor. I deliberately
disobeyed her every command. I knew she didn’t want to make
a scene in public, so I walked in front of the cart, making sure I
was at least an arm’s length away from her. If my brothers made
any comments to me, I fired back at them. I simply told myself
that I wasn’t going to take anybody’s crap anymore.
Mother knew that other shoppers were watching us and could
hear us, so several times she gently took my arm and told me in
a pleasant voice to settle down. I felt so alive knowing I had the
upper hand in the store, but I also knew that once we were
outside, I would pay the price. Just as I thought, Mother gave me
a sound thrashing before we reached the station wagon. As soon
as we were in the car, she ordered me to lie on the floor of the
back seat, where her boys took turns stomping me with their feet
for “mouthing off” to them and Mother. Immediately after we
entered the house, Mother made a special batch of ammonia and
Clorox. She must have guessed I had been using the rag as a
mask because she tossed the rag into the bucket. As soon as she
slammed the bathroom door, I hurried to the heating vent. It
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didn’t come on. No fresh air came through the vent. I must have
been in the bathroom for over an hour because the gray fumes
filled the small room all the way to the floor. My eyes filled
with tears, which seemed to activate the poison even more. I
spat mucus and heaved until I thought I would faint. When
Mother fina lly opened the door, I bolted for the hallway, but her
hand seized me by the neck. She tried to push my face into the
bucket, but I fought back and she failed. My plan for rebellion
also failed. After the longer “gas chamber” incident, I returned
to my wimpy self, but deep inside I could still feel the pressure
building like a volcano, waiting to erupt from deep inside my
soul.
The only thing that kept me sane was my baby brother Kevin.
He was a beautiful baby and I loved him. About three and a half
months before he was born, Mother allowed me to watch a
Christmas cartoon special. After the program, for reasons
unclear to me, she ordered me to sit in my brothers room.
Minutes later she stormed into the room, wrapped her hands
around my neck and began choking me. I twisted my head from
side to side, trying to squirm away from her grip. As I began to
feel faint, I instinctively kicked her legs, forcing her away from
me. I soon regretted the incident.
About a month after Mother’s attempt to choke me, she told
me that I had kicked her so hard in the stomach that the baby
would have a permanent birth defect. I felt like a murderer.
Mother didn’t stop with just telling me. She had several different
versions of the incident for anybody who would listen. She said
she had tried to hug me, and I had repeatedly either kicked or
punched her in the stomach. She claimed that I had kicked her
because I was jealous of the new baby. She said I was afraid the
new baby would get more of her attention. I really loved Kevin,
but since I was not allowed to even look at him or my brothers, I
did not have a chance to show how I felt. I do remember one
Saturday, when Mother took the other boys to a baseball game
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in Oakland, leaving Father to babysit with Kevin while I
performed my chores. After I finished my work, Father let
Kevin out of his crib. I enjoyed watching him crawl around in
his cute outfit. I thought he was beautiful. When Kevin lifted his
head and smiled at me, my heart melted. He made me forget my
suffering for awhile. His innocence was hypnotic as I followed
him around the house; I wiped the drool from his mouth and
stayed one step behind him so he wouldn’t get hurt. Before
Mother returned, I played a game of pattycake with him. The
sound of Kevin’s laughter filled my heart with warmth, and
later, whenever I felt depressed I thought of him. I smiled inside
when I heard Kevin cry out in joy.
My brief encounter with Kevin quickly faded away and my
hatred surfaced again. I fought to bury my feelings, but I
couldn’t. I knew I was never meant to be loved. I knew I would
never live a life like my brothers. Worst of all, I knew that it was
only a matter of time until Kevin would hate me, just like the
others did.
Later that fall, Mother began directing her frustrations in more
directions. She despised me as much as ever, but she began to
alienate her friends, husband, brother and even her own mother.
Even as a small child, I knew that Mother didn’t get along very
well with her family. She felt that everybody was trying to tell
her what to do. She never felt at ease, especially with her own
mother who was also a strongwilled person. Grandmother
usually offered to buy Mother a new dress or take her to the
beauty parlor. Not only did Mother refuse the offers, but she
also yelled and screamed until Grandmother left her house.
Sometimes Grandmother tried to help me, but that only made
things worse. Mother insisted that her appearance and the way
she raised her family were “nobody else’s damn business.” After
a few of these confrontations, Grandmother rarely visited
Mother’s house.
As the holiday season approached, Mother argued more and
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more with Grandmother on the telephone. She called her own
mother every vicious name Mother could imagine. The trouble
between Mother and Grandmother was bad for me because after
their battle, I often became the object of Mother’s anger. Once,
from the basement, I heard Mother call my brothers into the
kitchen and tell them that they no longer had a Grandmother or
an Uncle Dan.
Mother was equally ruthless in her relationship with Father.
When he did come home, either to visit or stay for a day, she
started screaming at him the moment he walked through the
door. As a result, he often came home drunk. In an effort to stay
out of Mother’s path, Father often spent his time doing odd jobs
outside the house. He even caught her wrath at work. She often
telephoned Father at the station and called him names.
“Worthless” and “drunken loser” were two of her favorite names
for him. After a few calls, the fireman who answered the phone
would lay it down and not page Father. This made Mother
furious, and again I became the object of her fury.
For awhile Mother banned Father from the house, and the
only time we saw him was when we drove to San Francisco to
pick up his paycheck. One time, on our way to get the check, we
drove through Golden Gate Park. Even though my anger was
ever present, I flashed back to the good times when the park
meant so much to the whole family. My brothers were also
silent that day as we drove through the park. Everybody seemed
to sense that somehow the park had lost its glamour, and that
things would never be the same again. I think that perhaps my
brothers felt the good times were over for them too.
For a short time Mother’s attitude towards Father changed.
One Sunday, Mother piled everybody into the car, and shopped
from store to store for a record of German songs. She wanted to
create a special mood for Father when he came home. She spent
most of that afternoon preparing a feast, with the same
enthusia sm that had driven her years before. It took her hours to
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fix her hair and apply her makeup just right. Mother even put on
a dress that brought back memories of the person she once was.
I thought for sure that God had answered my prayers. As she
paced around the house, straightening anything she thought was
out of place, all I could think about was the food. I knew she
would find it in her heart to let me eat with the family. It was an
empty hope.
Time dragged on into the late afternoon. Father was expected
to be home by about 1:00 P.M., and every time Mother heard an
approaching car she dashed to the front door, waiting to greet
him with open arms. Sometime after 4:00 P.M., Father came
staggering in with a friend from work. The festive mood and
setting were a surprise to him. From the bedroom I could hear
Mother’s strained voice as she tried to be extra patient with
Father. A few minutes later, Father stumbled into the bedroom. I
looked up in wonder. I had never seen him so drunk. He didn’t
need to speak for me to smell the liquor on him. His eyes were
beyond the bloodshot stage, and it appeared to be more of a
problem than he could manage to stand upright and keep his
eyes open. Even before he opened the closet door, I knew what
he was going to do. I knew why he had come home. As he
stuffed his blue overnight bag, I began to cry inside. I wanted to
become small enough to jump into his bag and go with him.
When he finished packing, Father knelt down and mumbled
something to me. The longer I looked at him, the weaker my
legs felt. My mind was numb with questions. Where’s my Hero?
What happened to him? As he opened the door to leave the
bedroom, the drunk friend crashed into Father, nearly knocking
him down. Father shook his head and said in a sad voice, “I
can’t take it anymore. The whole thing. Your mother, this house,
you. I just can’t take it anymore.” Before he closed the bedroom
door I could barely hear him mutter, “I … I’m … I’m sorry.”
That year Thanksgiving dinner was a flop. In some kind of
gesture of good faith, Mother allowed me to eat at the table with
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the family. I sat deep in my chair, quietly concentrating so I
wouldn’t say or do anything that might set Mother off. I could
feel the tension between my parents. They hardly spoke at all,
and my brothers chewed their food in silence. Dinner was hardly
over when harsh words erupted. After the fight ended, Father
left. Mother reached into one of the cabinets for her bottled prize
and seated herself at the end of the sofa. She sat alone, pouring
glass after glass of alcohol. As I cleared the table and washed
the dishes, I could see that this time I wasn’t the only one
affected by Mother’s behavior. My brothers seemed to be
experiencing the same fear I had for so many years.
For a short time, Mother and Father tried to be civil to one
another. But by Christmas Day, they had both become tired of
their charade. The strain of trying to be so nice to each other was
more than either could bear. As I sat at the top of the stairs,
while my brothers finished opening their gifts, I could hear
angry words being exchanged between them. I prayed that they
could somehow make up, if only for that special day. While
sitting on the basement stairs that Christmas morning, I knew
that if God had wanted Mother and Father to be happy, then I
would have to be dead.
A few days later, Mother packed Father’s clothes in boxes,
and drove with my brothers and I to a place a few blocks from
the fire station. There, in front of a dingy motel, Father waited.
His face seemed to express relief. My heart sank. After years of
my useless prayers, I knew it had finally happened – my parents
were separating. I closed my fists so tightly I thought my fingers
would tear into the palms of my hands. While Mother and the
boys went into Father’s motel room, I sat in the car, cursing his
name over and over. I hated him so much for running out on his
family. But perhaps even more, I was jealous of him, for he had
escaped and I had not. I still had to live with Mother. Before
Mother drove the car away, Father leaned down to the open
window where I was sitting, and handed me a package. It was
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some information he had said he would get me, for a book report
that I was doing at school. I knew he was relieved to get away
from Mother, but I could also see sadness in his eyes as we
pulled away into the downtown traffic.
The drive back to Daly City was solemn. When my brothers
spoke, they did so in soft tones that wouldn’t upset Mother.
When we reached the city limits, Mother tried to humor her
boys by treating them to McDonald’s. As usual, I sat in the car
while they went inside. I looked out the open car window at the
sky. A dull gray blanket covered everything, and I could feel the
cold droplets of fog on my face. As I stared into the fog, I
became terrified. I knew nothing could stop Mother now. What
little hope I had was gone. I no longer had the will to carry on. I
felt as if I were a man on death row, not knowing when my time
would come.
I wanted to bolt from the car, but I was too scared to even
move an inch. For this weakness, I hated myself. Rather than
running, I clutched the package Father had given me and
smelled it, trying to pick up a scent of Father’s cologne.
When I failed to pick up any odor at all, I let out a sobbing
cry. At that instant, I hated God more than anything else in this
or any other world. God had known of my struggles for years,
but He had stood by watching as things went from bad to worse.
He wouldn’t even grant me a trace of Father’s Old Spice After
Shave. God had completely taken away my greatest hope. Inside
I cursed His name, wishing I had never been born.
Outside, I could hear the sounds of Mother and the boys
approaching the car. I quickly wiped my tears and returned to
the inner safety of my hardened shell. As Mother drove out of
the McDonald’s parking lot, she glanced back at me and
sneered, “You are all mine now. Too bad your father’s not here
to protect you.” I knew all my defenses were useless. I wasn’t
going to survive. I knew she was going to kill me, if not today,
tomorrow. Tha t day I wished Mother would have mercy and kill
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me quickly.
As my brothers wolfed down their hamburgers, without them
knowing I clasped my hands together, bent my head down,
closed my eyes and prayed with all my heart. When the station
wagon turned onto the driveway, I felt that my time had come.
Before I opened the car door, I bowed my head and with peace
in my heart, I whispered, “… and deliver me from evil.”
“Amen.”