Memoir: Perfect Peter, Prologue- Installment 2, My Half Sister

One reason I’m sharing my memoir is because I have realized as a health coach, often, when we are struggling, like when trying to be healthier, our childhood may be holding us back. Until we address our past, our present and future may be affected.

Another reason is, when I shared it with friends, many said, “I feel the same. Can we talk?”

And maybe the most important reason; Right now, somewhere, an adult is harming a child. I pray it stops.

If what you read affects you, please reach out to me via email or phone, or leave a comment. My hope is to connect authentically with you, so we can support each other.

Caution, Dear Reader - Some of the content is graphic, and I have been told, disturbing at times. My goal is not to upset, but to share honestly. Only reflection and honesty have helped me glimpse what has eluded me for 50 years-happiness. Please read at your discretion. 

*Most names have been changed.

Click here to read my memoir from the beginning.

Click here to read installment 1.

Installment 2

When I share more with Bella, she says, “Dad! You have a half sister? That’s crazy. Where is she? Do you talk to her? How old is she?” 

I tell her.

It’s 1986. I’m 16. On a beautiful cool spring day, I’m standing in a cemetery, my father’s grave at my feet. I’m alone in this part of the cemetery except for a  woman who appears to be walking toward me. I pray she’s not because I recognize her. It’s Brigitta (not her real name), my father’s second wife; tall, full figured, wearing a tight sweater and slacks that hug her curves and reveal her knock knees. She pulls off a bouffant in 1986, barely. My mother calls her Perouca, Greek for wig, with uncharacteristic meanness. I guess she earned the right; Brigitta did try to kill her once, while my father watched. It happened when my mother and Magdalena, our downstairs neighbor, went to confront her. When Brigitta opened the door of her apartment, my mother breathed fire, “Shame on you. Do you know he has three young children? Why can’t you find a single man?” That’s when Brigitta wrapped both hands around my mother’s small throat and pushed her down to the couch, sending Magdalena running out the door then down the apartment building’s hallway with arms outstretched, screaming, “Help. Police! They’re killing her!” 

Brigitta and me visiting my father’s grave at the same time is an unfortunate coincidence. Though Brigitta had been kind to me on those Sundays my brother, sister, and I spent at their house, I haven’t seen her since the funeral, and don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to talk to anyone. My instinct is right. I cannot remember exactly how this happens; somehow we start exchanging “fuck you’s”. I never speak this way to an adult. I think it’s what she accused my father of that sets me off. Seconds before, his body resting six feet under our feet covered by black earth, marked with a generic stone plaque, she tells me, ”Your father touched your little sister.” She’s referring to my three year old half sister, Chloe, their daughter. I don’t want to think about him doing that. 

That reminds me of Chloe (not her real name), my half sister. I last saw her when she was three, and I was 16, the year my father died. 14 years later, she’s 17, I’m 30 and not prepared to run into her. When I tell her something I think any girl would want to hear about her father, she seethes.

She’s a new patient in the physical therapy office where I work, and due to a strange coincidence, I have to treat her. As I stand nervously outside the door, I can’t think of what to say to her; my father’s second daughter, another living blood connection to him, and the past I thought hadn’t affected me.

I walk in. She’s tall, like us, with dark curly wild hair, like his. That surprises me because I remember blond hair. I speak hesitantly, “Hi Chloe, I’m your brother Peter. I don’t know if you remember me.”

“I do,” she says.

I don’t know why, but the first thing I want her to know is, “You know, your father loved you, and...” She cuts me off. Her reaction makes me speechless. I didn’t see it coming.

“My father was a monster,” she says; lips tight and nose flared. “I hate him. My mother told me everything.” 

I regroup, and try again, but she cuts me off again. She won’t hear it. I remember my father lifting her high as a little girl making her golden curls bounce, hugging her hard, adoring her. She’s smiling and laughing. She has no memory of it. That’s so sad, I think. 

What she says makes me for the first time in my life consider, was my father a monster? Because I’m so young when the worst things happen, except the fire, I don’t understand there is anything wrong with his behavior. My father was different from my friend’s fathers, but he’s the only father I knew. It will take 18 more years until I have no choice but to explore Chloe’s accusation truthfully. Recently, I called Chloe, and when I told her who I was, there was a long pause. I ask if she and her mother would be willing to talk someday. There are questions I want to ask Brigitta about my father, like, what did he do to my half sister? As of this writing, I haven’t heard back from them. 

I tell Bella more. One Sunday at his house, he warned my brother and me, “If you let your sister have sex with a boy, I’ll kill you.” She was four, and I didn’t know what sex was at six, but I believe him because I saw him chase my mother with a knife. When I share this with a friend, she says, “Sounds like your father didn’t want your sister with a man. Maybe it has something to do with her being gay?” My sister is a lesbian, (a term she doesn’t identify with) and states she was born that way. I believe her. 

A few minutes later, he’s upstairs in the kitchen preparing dinner, and farts so loudly my brother and I hear it from the furnished basement where we are watching TV. We look at each other on the couch, unsure at first, then laugh uncontrollably. We hear him laughing because he hears us laughing, and now with tears in our eyes, we laugh more.

When the food is ready, he yells, “Dinner’s ready. Turn the goddamn TV off and come up. You just come here Sundays to lie on the couch and watch TV all day. You’re so lazy, the three of you.” Obediently, we quickly walk up the back steps through the warm kitchen filled with the scent of roasting meat, and sit quietly at our places at the dining room table. He carries in a tray of food from the kitchen, places it down in the middle of the table, pours liquid over it, and lights it on fire. I feel the heat bathe my face and recoil, frightened the fire will burn me. I’ve never seen anyone light food on fire before. He laughs when he sees our fear. “It’s Chicken Flambé,” he says, in Greek, and smiles, satisfied. 

There are stories I don’t tell Bella. One sunny summer afternoon when I’m 10, I’m helping my father paint a customer's basement in the town where I live. I decide to look for him because he’s been gone awhile, and I don’t want to get in trouble for standing around. I walk up the stairs and out of the side door of the basement, walk to the back of my father’s van parked on the street, and  surprise him while he’s masturbating. I see his large penis and several porn magazines showing naked women lying open on the van’s floor in front of him. This is a few weeks after he tells me, “Don’t do this, it means your gay,” making pumping motions in front of his zipper. It was after he came up the stairs looking for me. He found me alone in one of the unfurnished, except for a mattress on the floor, unairconditioned upstairs bedrooms in his house. I was covered with sweat. 

Back at the van, I pretend I don’t see what I see. He yells, “Go back inside!” When he returns, he never mentions it. If my father ever apologized for anything he did, I don’t remember it. And now, when I think about it, I realize I always pretended nothing strange was happening, no matter what he did, even when he threatened to kill my little league baseball coach. That evolved into pretending to be fine, when I’m not. Today, I appear perfect on the outside because I’ve become so good at hiding my fear on the inside.

More to come…