Memoir: Perfect Peter: Prologue- Installment 7; Hunger
Me, and my father’s blue Chevy van before it was lettered.
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. They may not know they’re doing it.
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 6.
Note:
The World Health Organization reports that over 264 million people of all ages around the world are depressed. Though huge, I wonder how accurate that number is, and is it really depression they suffer from? Before I started my memoir I would reluctantly think of myself as depressed, but never admit it. However, I always sensed there was something else wrong. Then I found it; 12 steps programs inform us, “Unexpressed grief from childhood can masquerade as depression.” Only in going back, have I been able to go forward.
Installment 7
It’s the summer of 1976. I’m six years old. My parents have been separated since I can remember. Soon my father will be arrested for domestic abuse and not paying child support. When he walks out of the courtroom door, the three of us, my brother, sister, and I, stand from the wood bench we’re sitting on, then run to him, calling Ba, [Dad] confused about what’s happening. He stops us mid stride, “Look! I’m going to jail because of you!” showing us his cuffed hands as two policemen lead him by his forearms through a thick metal door with a big lock on it. We look at each other as others stare at us in the courthouse hallway. I feel embarrassed and think, What did we do wrong? My mother is silent.
That summer, my mother and us three kids move to a small two bedroom apartment across the street from School #13 where I will start first grade in the fall. When my sister starts school, my mother whispers “Get up soon, comb your hair, and hold your sister’s hand crossing the street. Make sure you watch her go into her class.” She works long hours on a sewing machine in a factory because she gets paid by the piece, leaving early before we wake, and comes home exhausted late in the evening. “I demanded an apartment close to the school so the three of you could walk to and from school alone, safely,” she tells me. She makes my brother promise to call her. I hear him on the phone; “Yes, we’re home. No, I won’t let them go outside until you get home. Yes, I promise.” We’re latchkey kids, my brother, sister, and I.
The three of us sit on the stone steps in front of our apartment. It’s getting dark. “When’s mommy coming home?” my sister asks. We look for the headlights of her car turning our corner. We wait like hungry chicks with mouths open. We know it’s the night she gets paid. She’ll arrive with warm white sacks of food, often Burger King Whoppers and fries, and on Fridays, a special treat, a large steaming bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Even though we’re Greek, we grow up on American fast food because my mother can’t cook during the week and she knows we’ll pounce her for food before she stops the car and has a chance to step out. My brother and I tear into our sacks as fast as we can swallow, eyeing the other’s progress, then hover over our sister for her leftovers. Kindly at first; “Are you gonna eat that whole burger? It’s really big. You look full.” Then aggressively as she gets down to her final bites; “I’m starving and you’re not even hungry. It’s not fair. Please can I at least have your fries? No? Then I won’t be nice to you.” I don’t know why I’m surprised when she says, “I remember being hungry all the time when we were kids.”
At the time, my father lives in the next town, a couple of blocks from a neighborhood where most people aren’t comfortable walking at night. He rents a small room on the top floor of a boarding house that shares a bathroom with several men down the hall. “I no gonna live here long,” he says with his accent. In his room is a creaky wood bed, folding chair, and a card table topped with a box of ritz crackers and bottle of whiskey, the large kind with the handle. When he takes us there on Sundays, I don’t want to use the bathroom. It has a loose door knob, creaky hinges, broken tiles, rotted toilet seat, and smells like old piss. I still have disturbing dreams about its filth. There’s a picture of us in the room; my sister on my right, my father on my left; He’s standing, looking uncertain, wearing a white tank top, hair curly and wild, with dress pants on. He has one hand on his lower hip, like he’s trying to pose, but not sure.
On most sunny days that summer, we’re playing in a small grass side yard with our friends who live on and around our block. We’re alternating between running bases and tag, until someone yells, “kill the man with the ball.” Our tanned bodies are sweating through our Scooby Doo and KISS T-shirts, as my father pulls to the curb in his brand new Chevy van. He’s rapid fire beeping his horn to signal the importance of his arrival, sending us running. My friend recalls, “Your brother, sister, and you ran as fast as you could because you were afraid to keep him waiting.” He admits, “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t keep him waiting either.”
My friends know my father from him picking us up and dropping us off, and the few minutes of interactions during those times. They keep their distance. My friend Mario, who lives upstairs, quickly catches on to the Greek, and sometimes Italian names my father calls him, like “Kouratha,” which most closely translates as “a large stinky turd”, and “hodros,” [fatso]. My father asks, “Where’s hodros?” so often that to my young mind, I think Mario and fatso are interchangeable. I call him fatso until his mother, Filomena, in her thick Italian accent scolds me, “Thats anot his aname.” My father also calls him, faccia brutta [ugly face] which Mario already knows. Mario says, “I know what Kouratha means,” so my father has to come up with other Greek words that mean fat, turd, and ugly because Mario keeps figuring out he’s not complimenting him.
But Mario is no angel. When he gets his 6th grade report card he gives it to his mother, proudly telling her, “Ma, F is for Fantastic.” His mother, unable to read or write English, like my parents, goes around the neighborhood waving it around, saying, “Looka dis. My Mario isa sooo a smaarta. He gotta alla F’s.” Once, he got down on his knees, wrapped a cape around his shoulders, and put on a Freddy Krueger mask. His Aunt Gelsomina, who lives in the apartment with them, opens the door, jumps and screams, then, seeing it’s him, yells, “Ohh Mario. You a stupida ajackassa, anda showoffa.” His father, from the background sitting on a plastic covered couch, yells, “Maaket caat sufi,” [What the hell are you doing?]. His father doesn’t want to learn English, and never does.
My father seems to know endless insults, bad words, and phrases in multiple languages. His favorite in English is, “Goddamn mother fucker cock sucker son of a bitch bastard,” as a complete sentence. In Greek it’s worse because he knows what he’s saying; “Gammo to Christos sou,” [Fuck your Christ]. He tells us, “Papa did a good job in bed making you.” He says we are his “poutches arhedia”, [little penises and testicles.] He says it to my sister too.
My mother pays for our groceries with food stamps at the Grand Union on Saturdays, so I imagine my father’s brand new van is a big deal. It’s skyline blue, shiny, and in my memory, still naked. He hires an artist wearing a sailors cap, situates him on a stool in the backyard, and using his mahl stick to steady his hand, slowly paints my father’s name, phone number, and services as a house painter, paper hanger, and so on, on every side. As kids, we’re mesmerized with the artists long, precise strokes. With just enough paint on his fat brush, he forms a substantial letter and ends with a flare by the flick of his wrist. He works late into the hot day. When we get bored, we tackle each other on the grass amongst the lightning bugs, then come back for more hypnotication. I admire the work for years, even though the sight of his van becomes a trigger for my fear.
We run up to the van parked at the curb and stand straight. My father leans over to the passenger side, hand cranks the window down, and says, “Get your mother and get in. We’re going for a ride.” When my mother comes out of the house, I pull at her skirt and whisper in Greek, “Prepo na pou sto merous,” [I have to go to the bathroom].” At six years old I won’t speak to my father directly. I imagine it irritates him, my “shyness.” He’s loud and strong and powerful. I’m not.
My petite mother is still taller than us back then. By junior high all three of her children will tower over her four foot, ten inch, frame. My brother and I each max out at six feet, four inches, and my sister is not far below at five feet, eleven inches. Ever since, people comment, “That’s your mother? You’re father must have been tall,” causing me to look down awkwardly.
When she tells him I have to go to the bathroom, he yells in Greek, “O’hee!“ [No!] “Get in the van. He’ll go when we get back!”
I plead with my mother. She begs, “Please let him go Lefteris,” “To pedi prepi na pie” [The child has to go.]
He starts cursing. My mother tells me I’d better get in, her face saying, I’m sorry I can’t help you, while he becomes more agitated, yelling, “Lets go!”
I climb into the back and sit on the bare metal floor behind the passenger seat, near the sliding door. He drives around town boasting, I assume about his new van. I can’t hear all his words because my blood is pounding in my ears. I’m in my familiar world of private panic. I beg to no one, no, please, but can't hold it any longer. I feel the tears starting, then, the warm liquid running down my leg, into my sock, sneaker, and eventually pooling in the sliding door step of my father’s brand new van. I feel relief, then cold, then panic. I start to cry, knowing what awaits me.
I can see him sitting in the driver’s seat, his distance from me his long arm’s reach away. His thick silver 70’s sunglasses hug his handsome profile. Wide sideburns run down his face toward broad shoulders leading to tanned forearms and strong hands. His long powerful legs disappear under the dashboard, that when standing, raise him to six feet, three inches tall, a giant to a child. I hear his commanding voice, but not what it is saying. I know from past experiences when he finds out what I have done to his new van, he’ll transform. My mother’s sitting next to me with my baby sister in her lap. When she sees me crying she mouths, “Shhh,” looks, sees my pants, then the puddle. She has the same look on her face I must have on mine. With nowhere to go, I sit in my urine as he drives by familiar landmarks I wish I could escape to. As we get closer to, then turn down our block, my chest feels heavy and I have trouble breathing. When we get home, my father beats me for peeing in his new van, while reminding me of everything that’s wrong with me.
He grits his teeth, raises his big hand up and back, swears, “Gammo ti Panagia sou,” [Fuck your Virgin Mary], and lands it on my face. I close my eyes, shrug my shoulders, and drop my head between them to brace for the impact. There’s a burning sting, causing my vision to go white for a few moments, and a high pitched ringing in my ear on the side where his hand has landed, more like fragile glass breaking than a bell being rung. He’s much larger than me so it won’t take much more than one of these to cause my knees to buckle and send me to the ground. There, I cover myself with my arms.
I’ll learn, when there isn’t a healthy adult around to tell a child who’s wrong, the child concludes he is. I do…
More to come…
My little sister, me, and my father in his apartment room.