Chapter 5

the sound: Black Sabbath-Wizard, AC/DC - Highway to Hell, Edgar Winter - Frankenstein, Deep Purple - Child in Time, Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild, Iron Butterfly - In a gada da vida, Alvin Lee & Ten Years After - Slow Blues in C, Santana - Revelations

That was the beginning. I didn't trust men so much because I think maybe I was three the first time I was sexually/physically abused...I may have been older and I may have been younger I'm never really sure.

I didn't remember it until I was 13 years old, and I didn't tell anyone until I was 16, but it happened thereby setting the stage for things to come. (Now no one but me remembers being told or doing the telling, but it happened none the less.)

By the time I was three my family lived in a huge house with a big yard and lots of neighbours. The house had a big veranda and a large back porch.

It had a huge yard and the flowers in the garden to keep my mommy happy. It had a big tree for forts in the back yard...but better yet the whole back of the lot was surrounded by plum trees and an old cedar hedge that was perfect for hiding in.

It even had a side door that let to the butler's pantry and shutters for the windows. When the storms came my mother would get me out of bed and fully dressed to sit in the window seat with her and watch the lightening. I always thought is was for the “learning experience” but it turned out it was her fear.

See, my mom grew up on the prairies in the 30’s and 40’s and there lightening storms usually meant rolling prairie fires that could cause great balls of fire to roll right through your house(started by lightening and attracted to the metal of your wood stove and chimeny….so she was being prepared.

My mother's friends called the big green on green house on Pete Street, across from the River Tay their favorite coffee house, and the traffic at the front door was non-stop. My parents were sociable people in those days…always had and went to parties and one of the neighbour’s daughters babysat.

When my mother and father went out together they usually left via the front door. The baby-sitter would let her boyfriend in the side door through the butler’s pantry. The boyfriend was a biker and he had a big knife. Any knife was big to a little girl's eye.

While the baby-sitter came upstairs and woke me up to bring me downstairs, the boyfriend would pull down all the window blinds in the house...all except the one right over the couch.
And when the baby-sitter brought me to the living room the biker made me stand on the coffee table and keep watch out the crack at the bottom of the blind over the couch...so he and the baby-sitter could do things on the couch and not get caught.

When I cried he held a knife to my throat and told me that he would kill my mommy and daddy if I ever told. So I decided to be as strong and strong could be and save my mommy and daddy's life.

And I didn't cry again.

Ever.

And I didn't tell anyone for more than 10 years. But by that time the dye was set. I didn't even tell when the biker boyfriend did the same things to me that he did to the babysitter...which made the baby-sitter cry.

The baby-sitter was not anywhere near as strong as I was and that made me proud.