Tears of the Silenced Page 4

  A lot of times, he would scream at me and tell me I was worthless. I would never amount to anything. Once, when I was ten, he told Mamma that I was seducing him and that she should tell me to stop. I remember how my face burned and how I blinked back tears as Mamma told me it was wrong to seduce men. I wanted to tell her that Brian was molesting me; I wanted her to believe me and hug me and tell me it was going to get better. But I felt she already knew, and if I said anything, she would blame me. I don’t know how any mother could look into a ten-year-old’s tear-filled eyes and tell her to stop seducing her fifty-something-year-old stepfather.

  And so, as I climbed the ladder to the loft, I would let my mind travel to a better place. I had learned to drift away to pleasanter places when things around me got to be too much. Most of the time, I was a missionary doctor saving AIDS patients in Africa. Sometimes, my daydreams were so real I could almost smell the rain forest and hear the monkeys chattering to each other as they swung from tree to tree. It was a great fantasy, but not one that was attainable for a girl no one even remembered existed.

  One day in October, Mamma came back from the welfare office with a worried look. She told Brian that, because she had filled out her government paperwork stating that Samantha and I were being homeschooled, the state wanted us to come in for standardized testing. Mamma and Brian argued for a couple of days. Mamma then dusted off math and spelling books for Samantha and me. We were to study between chores. Brian was angry and accused us of being lazy, sitting around looking at books. Mamma, though, seemed worried that they might go to jail for not having us in school.

  Brian reluctantly consented for us to study and allowed for no more than an hour a day; we had to get as much done as possible in that time.

  While we tried to follow the instructions in the books, it was difficult, and we got most of the problems wrong. Unfortunately, our school sessions only lasted about two weeks; Mamma somehow got around the State testing.

  We continued to do lessons sporadically in case someone from the State started asking questions or wanted to see our school work. I do not know how much it helped since we were not doing the lessons correctly or regularly.

  The last week of October brought snow flurries and a cold north-easterly wind that whistled through the ravine and up the mountains as if it were a herald announcing the arrival of old man winter. I looked forlornly at the flurries and wrapped my thin black blazer tightly around my shoulders.

  Even though it was the end of October, the thermometer dropped to the mid-twenties in the early morning hours. A thin layer of ice could be seen on any standing water, and my teeth chattered constantly.

  I had low blood pressure and poor circulation, which made me sensitive to the cold. I began developing first-degree frostbite on my hands and feet. The tops of my feet and hands itched terribly, and I scratched them until the skin came off. My feet hurt badly. I put cotton balls on each bloody toe before putting on my thin socks and my thin black canvas shoes. Thankfully, Samantha was not sensitive to cold and did not have to suffer the ridicule from Brian for being a weakling.

  One day, Brian and Mamma finally came back with coats and boots that they had bought at the Army surplus store in town. Samantha and I were happy with the long, dark green trench coats that were the same length as our long dresses. They were not very thick, so we improvised by wearing our blazers underneath. The thick, heavy leather boots were great too because we could wear four pairs of socks inside them, and our feet were no longer numb.

  Even with the new winter clothes, I could never get warm. The winds that blew across my cheeks and up my dress made my teeth chatter as I went about my daily chores. Up until the snow came, Mamma was unyielding in her rule that Samantha and I take cold baths outside. When the snow started to fall, Mamma started letting us bathe inside. But the house was not much warmer. As the winter grew colder, even Mamma forgot about bathing for a while. It was just too cold. Later, we would start taking showers in town during the cold months at the park. They had a shower in the restrooms that took quarters. While this was nice in some ways, after getting out of the shower room the freezing wind would send my teeth chattering uncontrollably.

  Later that winter, the sores on my feet covered the top of each toe and were so painful I could not walk. The rough army boots and my constant scratching wore the skin away. When I took my boots off each night, I would painfully pull off the bloody cotton balls and dab each toe with peroxide.

  By mid-December, my toes began to get infected. It was a surprise when Mamma took me to the doctor in Wenatchee and we found out that I had frostbite. It was strange, but Mamma liked to go the doctor. Whenever she went to Wenatchee, she would make a random appointment for herself. When she ran out of reasons to go, she started taking me. The visits were free. I would sit fully-clothed and silent as the doctors would ask about my upset stomach, headaches, etc. We never followed through with any treatment, but I could tell Mamma loved the attention.

  I am still amazed that none of the doctors and nurses tried to get me alone to question me about my odd behavior, but then they could not see the bruises because I was clothed from head to foot.

  That winter, however, all ten of my toes were bloody. I am surprised that Mamma was not worried about getting in trouble for her neglect. The Amish act and the clothes served her well and no one seemed to question that I might be abused.

  On Sundays in the evenings, Brian read aloud to us. We would sit and listen as he read old books Mamma brought home from the library. We were never allowed to touch these books, and only Brian was allowed to read them to us. His reading was a regular ritual.

  Even though we loved stories, we would listen with mixed fear. The slightest thing would set Brian off, and when he switched from one of his supposed nice moods to an angry one, his eyes would become crazy and I often felt I would pass out just from looking at him. These were the most eerie moments—without logic or sense. One minute, he would be reading about the Oregon Trail and laughing about something in the book. His laugh was strange and did not sound like a laugh. Samantha and I would laugh nervously, hoping he would keep reading. Then, out of nowhere, he would see a fork on the table, or he just plain did not like the looks on our faces and he would erupt. Samantha and I would jump up defensively, but we knew if we tried to run, we would get a worse beating once caught.

  Seasons of Sorrow

  The heart has no tears to give,—it drops only blood,

  bleeding itself away in silence.

  —Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

  The next spring, Brian found an orchard shack that we could have for free. It was the size of a small house and bigger than the tiny structure we had spent the winter in. Brian hired a big truck and was able to have the shack moved up to the mountain where it was placed on a flat spot about fifty yards from our house.

  It was nice to have a bigger place to live but, as we moved our belongings into the orchard shack, I felt a little uneasy. This meant we would be staying on the mountain for good. Samantha and I had been secretly hoping that we would go back to Arizona, somewhere closer to civilization, but it did not look like that would be happening any time soon.

  We set up a wood burning stove, a picnic table and a wood table on which we put two large stainless steel bowls to use as a sink. We set the two treadle sewing machines along the wall. Upstairs we put two mattresses, with Mamma and Brian on one side of the room and Samantha and me on the other. I always hated these arrangements because Brian stared at us while we undressed, and he would dress and undress in the middle of the room so there was no chance we could miss it.

  That spring, Brian and Mamma bought many animals: pigs, chickens, rabbits and calves. The work was endless, and Samantha and I could hardly crawl out of bed each morning when the alarm rang at 5:00 am. My sister and I were rotated on a weekly basis. One of us would do all of the work inside of the house, while the other would do all the work
outside. We were still not allowed to talk to each other, and we were still not fast enough at our work, no matter how hard we tried. Every day, we were beaten for being too slow.

  When Brian read the story Uncle Tom’s Cabin aloud, I could relate to Uncle Tom. I felt I was a slave who had been sold down the river to the cotton fields. But instead of cotton fields, I was trapped on an often-freezing mountain with Brian, a man who could be every bit as cruel and Uncle Tom’s master, Simon Legree.

  Gradually our farm grew, and we started a farmers’ market route. On the weekends, Samantha and I took turns going with Mamma to sell our crafts and produce from the farm. This was the one part of the week we looked forward to. However, when it was Samantha’s turn to go to the market with Mamma, my day at home was spent mostly upstairs with Brian. Many times, when Samantha would wave goodbye, I seriously considered ending my life. That is how bad it was.

  As the farm grew, we started an egg route as well. Soon, we had five hundred laying hens at once, and every night before the outside girl was allowed in the house, she had to collect and clean the eggs and put them in cartons to sell in town.

  Occasionally, a neighbor would visit with Mamma and Brian, but Samantha and I were usually sent outside or somewhere out of sight.

  The only times Samantha and I came off the mountain was to help sell alongside the road. Once or twice a year, we would be invited to one of the Mennonites’ house for dinner. There was a small community in the valley below the mountain that had noticed us right away when we had moved in. Brian would usually lecture us for hours on why the Mennonites were going to hell. They wore flowers on their dresses and were worldly. On these rare occasions, Samantha and I would stand in the kitchen of the Mennonite house and not say anything. We would quietly help put the dinner on the table and then do the dishes afterwards.

  Sometimes, we would go upstairs with some of the Mennonite girls, but we always knew to keep quiet about our home life and we never stayed long. Brian would watch us from the side of the room where he would be arguing with some of the men. I think the only reason he agreed to these visits was so the Mennonites would think we were halfway normal plain people. We never stayed long, but these visits left Samantha and me feeling sadder and more bewildered. We could glimpse a world beyond our grasp. But we did not belong to that world. It seemed we did not belong anywhere but on the mountain. How often had there been a chance for someone to help us? Our withdrawn behavior and lack of conversation skills were abnormal.

  One day, a neighbor who lived on the county road in a nice cottage asked me if I liked to read. I think she pitied me. I was a teenaged girl in a dirty gray dress, a long black apron and a white cap on my head. I was exhausted and sad and wished she could have seen the green and purple bruises that covered my body beneath the clothes. I smiled at her, though, and told her I loved traveling away when I read. Mamma frowned at me, but I did not care what she thought.

  “Well, that is great,” the neighbor lady smiled at me. “I have a lot of National Geographic magazines and history books.”

  Brian walked up in time to hear the conversation. He got upset that I was talking to a neighbor and told me to get back to work. As I walked away, I could hear him telling her that he did not want us exposed to outside culture through her books and magazines. I turned around in time to see an angry look on her face.

  After that, the neighbor would occasionally leave a box of books and magazines at the end of the drive for Samantha and me. Whenever Brian would see it, he would yell at us to burn them, but most of the time we were able to hide them under the house. We would read them any time we were sure Mamma and Brian were gone, or in the moonlight when we were supposed to be sleeping. Afterwards, we burned them in the trash barrel or buried them on the mountainside so Brian would not find them.

  Tortured

  As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.

  —C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

  My fifteenth summer was a turning point for Samantha and me. One morning, Mamma announced that she had a half-sister we didn’t know about. As her story unfolded, it sounded strangely familiar. Our grandmother had had a child at the age of fifteen and the child was taken away from her to be raised by the child’s paternal grandmother. The father lived out the rest of his days in a psychiatric facility in Mississippi. Mamma said she had always known about her older sister, but they had only met once when she was a teenager.

  The only memory she had of Aunt Fanny was that she was short with a sort of smashed-looking face, and that she did not say a word the entire day they were together. She went on to say that she had been contacted by a government agency in Prescott, Arizona, informing her that Aunt Fanny was at a facility that housed people with special needs. Aunt Fanny was in Prescott at that time because her grandmother had died, and she had been brought to Arizona to live with our grandmother, Fanny’s biological mother.

  Because of Fanny’s severe mental impairment, our grandmother had been unable to care for her. Doctors had diagnosed Aunt Fanny with schizophrenia, partially caused by the rape she suffered at age nine.

  Aunt Fanny constantly walked along the road, believing it would take her home to Mississippi and to her grandmother. The facility where she was currently living in had decided they could no longer care for her. She was always trying to escape.

  Samantha and I did not know what schizophrenia was, and neither did Mamma and Brian. When Mamma told us that our forty-year-old Aunt Fanny was coming to live with us, Samantha and I were so excited. We imagined that Mamma and Brian would have to watch their behavior with someone else in the house. This was the best news we had had in many years.

  Mamma told us that she would have to fly to Arizona in two weeks to pick up our aunt. I wondered at the time why Mamma cared about her sister’s living arrangements when she was constantly cracking jokes about how dumb her sister had seemed when she had met her. I learned the truth when I heard Mamma and Brian discussing how to spend the extra $550 a month they would receive for her care.

  Two weeks later, Samantha and I ran out in the dark to greet the truck when it arrived from the airport. When Aunt Fanny got out, I went to her and she hugged me, but her face was vacant and she was silent. I remember my surprise at her appearance. She seemed innocent and looked like a large five-year-old child. She was about four-foot-nine and weighed approximately 210 pounds. She had blue eyes and porcelain white skin. Her face drooped a little but was chubby and sweet. She had short brown hair and was wearing a flowing green summer dress. As she stared vacantly into the empty night sky, I could tell she was confused.

  Mamma and Brian were arguing again, and Aunt Fanny grabbed my hand. Samantha took her other hand, and we walked into the house. Before her arrival, Samantha and I had fixed another bed next to ours and we had made a divider enclosing our sleeping area. We had been told that she often tried to escape at night. I had taken two cowbells from the shed and tied them on the makeshift doors so she could not leave without our hearing her.

  We took her upstairs and showed her the bed. Aunt Fanny stared vacantly at the room while squeezing my hand tightly. Looking back, I realize the kind of world she was accustomed to. I can imagine her shock on arriving at a farm in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of strangely dressed people. There was no electricity, bathroom, television, no couch for her to sit on. She must have been terrified.

  While upstairs, we heard Mamma scream at us to come down. We all ran down together, and Mamma yanked Aunt Fanny’s hand out of mine.

  “She is not a baby, you know,” she said disgustedly.

  Mamma pushed Fanny into a chair and told her to stay put, and ordered me to make sandwiches. I made bologna sandwiches and put them on the table. I sat next to Aunt Fanny and pushed a sandwich at her, but she continued to stare into space. Ma
mma looked angry, and Brian shook his head.

  “I cannot believe how retarded she is,” Mamma scoffed. “She has been like this since we got on the plane; she hasn’t said one word to me since I met her.”

  Samantha met my eyes across the table. I gave a smirk as she rolled her eyes and mouthed, “I wonder why?”

  “Well,” Brian said authoritatively. “Tomorrow, I want her in Amish clothes. Misty, that is your job. I do not want her out of this house until she is properly clothed.”

  After the sandwiches, Brian ordered everyone to bed. I showed Aunt Fanny the outhouse and told her that if she needed to use it I would go with her. After we all climbed into our sleeping quarters, Samantha secured the doors while I tried to get Aunt Fanny to change her clothes and lie down; she vehemently refused. Mamma yelled up to see if Fanny was in bed yet. Samantha yelled back that we were all in bed, and I blew out the candle. Aunt Fanny sat on the bed in the chilly room, still wearing her green summer dress, staring off into space.

  I awoke in the middle of the night to the ringing of cowbells and a crashing sound, followed by a loud thud. I lit the candle, and saw Brian catching Aunt Fanny by the back of the dress as she was starting down the stairs. The makeshift doors, made out of thin plywood, were crushed. It looked like Aunt Fanny had pushed on them, and when they did not move, she fell over on them. I gasped as I saw Mamma reach for the metal fly swatter next to her bed, and I jumped over the broken doors to stand by Fanny who had lost her blank stare and now looked terrified. I sank to my knees and covered my ears as Aunt Fanny screamed in terror and pain. When Mamma had finished beating her, she dragged her by the ear and slammed her down onto her mattress.