SENIOR HIGH

1970-1972:

Everything changed in senior high. I have no idea what happened, but nothing was the same anymore. Now that I look back, I wonder why some things happened and wonder why some things didn't. These were probably the worst years of my whole life.

My family as I had know it for years ceased to exist. We no longer went away on summer weekends, no more playing board games at the kitchen table, no more did anyone laugh and have fun in our house. Out of the clear blue my father started beating my mother and he finally turned his anger towards me. Something happened to turn this man into a beast and I didn't know what the heck was going on. I could be sitting at the kitchen table and he would tell me my glasses were crooked and to take them off so he could fix them. Once I got my glasses off, WHAM, I'd catch a slap so hard it would knock me off my chair. A few times I wasn't lucky enough to be sitting and I'd go flying into a wall. More than once he hit me so hard I wet my pants.

My mother once tried to interfere and he only turned on her so after that she would stand silently in the background while I got beat to a pulp. It didn't take me long to catch on to the "your glasses are crooked" excuse but then he would change it to "it looks like you're wearing makeup, let me see" and I'd have to take the glasses off to prove to him I wasn't. (we weren't allowed to wear makeup until the 12th grade).

Back in those days child abuse was not talked about and it wasn't a crime. I didn't know what to do, but I knew if I didn't get out of there I just might end up dead. I started running away from home towards the end of the 10th grade, only to be found and returned to him. Every time I ran away my parents would call the police to look for me and tell them I was being belligerent. I tried to tell them what was happening at home but was told there was nothing they could do to help me, that I was underage and they had to go by what my parents were telling them. Why wouldn't my mother help me?

I finally confided in my aunt and she wasn't surprised. She told me that a few years before, my father had also been beating my older sister. My aunt and uncle went to the police and tried to get Dianne removed from the home. Like me, the police were no help and they were up against a brick wall. I was shocked to learn about Dianne. Our house was not very big, and there were 6 kids in the house. How was it that no one knew what was going on? When I look back now, I realize that the only times I got beat was when none of the other kids were at home. I wonder if that's the way it was with Dianne, too. How many of the other kids were beat, too? No one ever said and still haven't.

I do remember once when we got a phone call that my dad had had a heart attack and Debbie and I were standing looking out the living room window watching my mother leave to rush to the hospital. I was crying and all of a sudden Debbie blurted out: "I hope he dies". Why did she hate him? Had he beat her too? I never asked her. I didn't want to know.

By the end of the 11th grade life was so miserable for me I turned to an organization called 'The Bridge'. They were a group of Catholic nuns who helped runaways. I was Lutheran, but I was desperate. After a few days with them they were convinced that I couldn't go home. They got Social Services involved for me and it was decided that I was too old to go into a foster home so they found a private school I could not only attend, but live at too. For the first time in a long while I finally felt safe.

As far as school went, I have mixed feeling about my senior year. Academically, it was fine, but socially it sucked. Since I was in an all girl school boys were called in from a local college to take us to prom. We had a social gathering the Saturday before prom to mingle with the boys and get to know them. What really sucked was the boys got to pick which girl they wanted to go with and we had no say in the matter. I was still 'going steady' with Jeff, so I kind of stayed to the side that night hoping no one would pick me, but, wouldn't cha know it, the ugliest boy in the room chose me right away. I didn't want to go with him or anyone. Prom night was not the way every girl imagines it should be. It was horrible!

Since there were only 6 or 7 girls in my graduating class, the school asked the local high school if we could participate in their ceremony. So, on graduation day the 7 of us met at this strange school with the other 500 kids that we did not know from Adam. It was hot and while we were lined up waiting to go into the gym, I decided it was time to faint. The boy behind me caught me and told me not to worry, that he would hold my hand untill we could get in the gym and sit down. Once we got in our seats I looked around for my parents. I saw my mother sitting all by herself; no dad around at all. Later I found out that he had been there but he had walked out when he saw me walk in the room holding a boy's hand. That boy happened to be that school's foreign exchange student from Africa and was black! Look up the word prejuidice in the dictionary and you'll see a picture of my father!

A few weeks after graduation I turned 18, which meant I could no longer stay at the school. I had to go home for the first time in over a year. My plan: go home, get a job pronto and get a place of my own a.s.a.p!