Successions of Somethings ~ Chapter Four

“The Lord is my shepherd… he restores my soul”
Psalms 23:1a,3a

Walters and Conner had no idea what they had stepped into. This was like an old episode of The Twilight Zone that never ended. More specifically, like the episode in which a woman drove into a small, seemingly, quaint, rural town. Only when she arrived, there was not a living soul there. She was completely alone. She went everywhere, and then suddenly, she saw something looking at her. It was a pair of eyes, and that pair of eyes was not normal sized. In the end, the lady found that she was in a dollhouse, and she was the little doll. Those eyes were of a little girl, and the woman was her toy. Similarly, that was the feeling of the two detectives. Tom thought he knew her , but there they were, with this woman they both suspected was a few flowers short of a full bouquet, and they felt that they had no option but to listen. Internalizing every part of her story, Tom stared at her and contemplated what to say next.
The room was quiet for a moment and Tom Conner spoke, “Pearl, what ever happened to that niece?”
“She grew up, like the rest of us. She has tried to get to know the family a little bit, but you know how it is when you are told one thing about someone and then try to form your own opinion…sometimes you just can’t shake those ugly lies you have been told. I guess it is really difficult for her to trust any of us. She does better over time, but still.”
“So, she began college back here?”
“Oh, no; she is grown and married with a child of her own. Sonny’s youngest daughter, from his second marriage, is a student at the community college in Batesville- pretty close to where I live. Now there is an amazing kid.”
“Would you mind telling us about her? Did you have the same feelings about her that you did about the other niece?”
“I can honestly say, No. I didn’t have the same feelings. The things that I dealt with in watching her grow were totally different. You see, her mother stayed. I had to be part of this girl’s life and watch all of these things happen. I have often wondered if I were just as guilty of abuse, because I never knew what to say or do. He was horrible to her and her mother as he had been to his first little family, only this time they stayed together. We all knew, yet we remained silent.”
“So, he abused his daughter and wife?”
“That’s putting it lightly. He brainwashed them, beat them, and literally took away their hope. My niece called me one night and told me about a game she had played. She was a big basketball player in high school. Her mother and father could not make it to the game, so my poor niece did not have anyone at the game that night. It was a usual thing. It was awards night, and she received the MVP award. Her parents didn’t even care. When I asked her why her parents did not go, she got really quiet. I told her that she needed to talk and that I was there for her. She went on to say that when she told her parents about it, her dad became angry and told her that he was not about to go to one of her “G. D.” games and that if she said one word about it, he would knock her on her butt (to put it mildly). She said that she knew that tears were welling up in her eyes, and he looked at her and told her that she was a crybaby and then hit her. Her mom said that she would go with her and told her how proud she was.
After hearing his wife support their daughter, my brother turned around and went ballistic. He told his daughter to go to her room for causing trouble and then beat his wife for showing favoritism to her daughter over her husband. I guess that explains why she went alone. After that incident, my niece went to all of her functions alone. My parents and I lived too far away to attend, and she did not want to relive that night, so she didn’t ask any more.
You know, as she told me that story and I began to picture her in that room, listening to her mother getting beaten and being put in her place. I could only revisit the past. It was like I was standing in that living room listening to him torture Gwenn all over again. Flashes of the past flew through my mind and bitter abscesses of hatred began to boil in my gut. All I could see was everything he had taken away from his family, from my younger brother, and from me.
She was so young and so smart. She used to tell me all of the time that as soon as she was 18 and had graduated from high school, she was out of there. She went on to say that sometimes she hated her mom for staying with him. She wanted better for herself and for her mother, and it hurt her that her mother was too afraid to do better for the two of them long ago.”
“So, she graduated and left home?” said Conner
“Yes, she graduated, and though he tried to stop her, she left, enrolled in a college here, so she could be closer to the family members she felt were safe.”
“So, she stood up to him.”
“I guess you could say she stood up to him. But, the fact is, she is tormented every single day by him. He told her that if she really walked out that door and left her parents, he would pray that something bad would happen to her grandparents. Then he reminded her about the power behind his prayers and told her that she would be responsible if anything ever happened to her grandparents.”
Pearl Continued: “She called that night and talked to me about it. I told her that she would have to decide for herself if what he said was true, or if he was trying to control her and guilt her into staying. She cried so much I wished I could step through the phone and just hold her. She had already received her acceptance letter to college and was really ready to step out. I just reassured her that until she was able to think for herself and free herself from being responsible for her family’s happiness, she would always be tormented by the evil instilled in her. I went on to explain that even when and if she really takes control, there will be times when the hurt is so strong it will bring doubt. She sobbed more and told me how much she loved me and missed me. It was so sad to hear her young voice wanting so much for someone to make the decisions for her, but the fact is, she had to make that choice and know that whatever choice it was, it was between her and God and was not her father’s choice to make.”
“The day he took her to the airport, she called crying beyond clear recognition of who was on the other line. She told me that her parents had taken her to the airport and on the way her father had told her what good for nothing slut she was, and because he couldn’t reach her, he hit her mother three times in anger that his daughter was leaving. Imagine this- sitting in the car, and he hits her. He then told her not to ever step foot in his house again and continued with the name calling. He stopped long enough at the curb to let her out and then drove off. There she was eighteen years old and scared to death. She got on the plane and headed to Grandma’s. When she arrived, she slept for two days and then came to visit my family. She wrapped her arms around me, and we just held each other for a while. Her cousins all did the same. For days she called and asked advice about school and life and just anything she could think of. She had been through so much torture in her life and had all of her decisions thrown in her face and the heaping pile of guilt that went along with them, but suddenly, she was free and she didn’t know what to do.
“So, what did she do?” implored Conners.
“She asked me if I thought it was a bad idea to take a semester off of school and just try to decide what she really wanted to do. I thought it was actually a wise choice, so I told her that she needed to do what she felt was best for her. And, after living the life she lived for eighteen years, rest was probably the very best thing she could give herself. It later proved to be the correct medicine.”
“She’s doing well now. She has one semester left until she will complete her bachelor’s degree in education. She’s happy most of the time, but she feels guilty many times for not speaking to her parents very often. She said she just can’t do it. It’s kind of sad in a way, but they did it to themselves. After her first year here, they moved to Little Rock and my sister-in-law took a job at the hospital. They told us they were coming to be closer to their daughter, but it didn’t really work. Their daughter still held a lot of deep resentment, and her parents moving closer did not help.”
The officers sat still. The room was quiet almost stagnant, then Walters cleared her throat and spoke softly. “Did she move again?”
‘No, Little Rock is about an hour and a half from where she lives and attends school, so she really doesn’t have much of an opportunity for contact with them unless they happened to stop by and since Sonny’s accident, he doesn’t drive, so his wife has to drive everywhere. Her work schedule doesn’t allow many days off when their daughter is not working or in class, so they do the dance of avoidance and do it well I might add.”
Walters looked slightly puzzled and finally asked, where did they move from, and why Little Rock?