Dawn

No, not the light of a new day coming.  More a case of darkness setting in.

If you have been reading the other posts you have heard mention of Dawn before.  To this day that name is odius.  I have yet to work my way through forgiving the wretched beast that is Dawn.  She has/had her own story.  Academically I know that I am no better or worse than her, but the effect of her presence in my life marks the darkest, worst days of my life.  There is no parallel to scourge on my life that was Dawn.

Dawn would come and go over time, and there was not ever a time that her presence in my life meant anything good or positive.  I did not ever hear say a kind word about anything or anyone.  I did not ever see or hear of her doing any good deed ever.  Only vitriol spewed from her mouth.  Many times I would feel her bony hands smack my face and head like a hammer.  As I write this I feel the cold darkness that marks her time in my life creep on me as if something palpable.

I can not tell my story with out speaking of her.

After the first time I saw Dawn she was not seen again for a long time and I had initially forgotten about her. The next time I saw her, I came home from school to find her sitting in my living room watching TV.  As I came in she announced to me that she was living there now.  She was rude and ill tempered.  She made frequent threats.  Then one day she was just gone.  I didn't miss her.

During this time my father became something of a scarcity.  It was common for several days to pass without seeing or hearing from him.  When he did show up, he was usually drunk.

Dawn reappeared in the living room one day.  She was angrier and made good on her threats from the beginning.  It was a short period of time until Dawn smacking me in the face became not just a daily occurrence but several times throughout the day. There was no way to avoid it.  No matter how hard I tried, I would say or do something to incite her wrath.

It is difficult to think and write about her and these times so I am telling the most significant memories.  I believe it will suffice for you, the reader to understand how she still has an impact on my life to this day.

Bear:

I had been wanting a pet dog for sometime.  My father would not allow me to get one, but that didn't stop me from wanting one.  This was after all relations to the church had been severed.  I had one friend, Richie.  His dog had puppies.  Since my dad wasn't around very often I brought a puppy home and just sort of hoped that once my dad came back around and realized that there was a dog there, that he would let me keep him.  It worked.  My dad begrudgingly let me keep him.  His name was Bear.  He was black with tan, he had a bit of rottweiler in him but was pretty much a mutt. He had a big belly and wobbly legs.  My brother commented he looked like a Grizzly bear the way he walked and so I named him Bear.

Bear was my buddy.  He and I were bonded.  He understood that I was his human.  I loved that dog dearly, and he was a very happy, playful puppy.  We were inseparable.

Then Dawn came back.  She brought a friends dog with her that she was keeping for a few weeks.  It was an old, mean dog.  One of those small cat-dogs.  Dawn decided that since the two dogs didn't get along that my dog had to stay outside.  My puppy didn't understand and became upset.  Then he got sick and stopped eating.  I watched Bear turn from a happy, playful and rotund puppy to trembling dog that refused to eat and become emaciated.

It was also an unusual winter for the Texas coast.  We had snow and ice and still I was not allowed to bring my dog in.  The landlady who was not fond of us or either dog, brought Bear inside her home since he wasn't allowed inside my home.  When Dawn found out, she got angry and made me take the dog back outside.

The next morning I went looking for Bear but he didn't seem to be in the yard.  I asked the land lady and the neighbors, they hadn't seen him.  I went back to where I had last seen him.  There was an accumulation of ice on the ground there.  I started digging and I found my puppy, buried under ice, frozen.

Dawn killed my puppy.

Dear ol' Dad;

This is part of my brother's story but it is also is part of mine.  It began with me and ended similarly.

For one reason or another, I was as usual in trouble with Dawn.  She had gripped my shirt collar and was jerking me around.  It hadn't escalated to hitting yet, but I was already crying.  Often there was a verbal barrage that preceded the main event of me getting smacked around.  I had been complaining about her, to her and to my dad.  I was crying and asking why it was always Dawn that had to punish me and why it couldn't be my dad once in a while.  My dad spanked us with a belt, but that was not as bad as being smacked in the head and being jerked around.

I remember balling, almost hysterically, pleading with my dad to punish me this time.  To spank me with the belt.  He wouldn't answer me.  He would not even look at me.  He just kept taking a bite of his dinner, sipping his coffee and taking a drag of his cigarette.

About the time Dawn started hitting me my brother came out of his room and interjected himself into the situation.  He was not going to allow her to hit me this time.  Unable to hit me, she took a swing at Charlie who responded in kind.  Once my father realized what was happening he was swiftly out of his chair, grabbed Charlie by the hair, threw him across the room where he collapsed in a heap.  My father swiftly moved into the corner and began pummeling Charlie.  After several uncontested blows my father picked up by his hair and drug him outside and across the street.  I stood in the door way of our home, watching my father and brother trading blows.  Then my father yelled that he was not his son anymore and that he was not ever to return to our house.

T-Shirt Painting;

This is embarrassing.  I didn't stop wetting the bed till I was in ninth grade.  in Fourth grade I was a prolific bed-wetter.  Every single night, the entire mattress would be soaked.  I was shamed and humiliated, I wanted to stop but it was uncontrollable.  Apparently Dawn thought more shame and humiliation would do the trick.  She painted a picture of a boy laying in a bed with a stream of urine arching up and splattering in the bed.  I big, bold, friendly letters read "I wet the bed!"  She put the shirt on me and sent me off to school.

Report Card Day;

We were a working class, blue collar family.  My aspirations were to be a cowboy, a preacher and a U.S. Marine.   I was not a good student.  During one of the times in which Dawn had disappeared, my father had started becoming scarce again and Charlie had assumed the role taking care of me.  It corresponded that I brought my straight 'F's' up to an 'A', a 'B', a few 'C's' and a few 'D's'.  Then Dawn came back and my grades began to decline.  They didn't drop as low as they had been but it was a definite downward trend.  On the day that I brought that report card home Dawn was on the front porch smoking.  Once she saw my report card she grabbed me by the collar in the usual way and began wailing away on my face.  On the front porch.  Right after school, in front of all the neighbors.  At that point I didn't have any friends and was known as the weird kid with all the problems.  I got picked on and bullied a lot.  Now everyone from school got to watch me get the shit beat out of me by my goonish looking 'step-mom'.

That particular beating didn't last as long though because Dawn's hand started hurting.  About the time everyone's fun was wrapping up my dad came home.  He left a few minutes later to take Dawn to the emergency room.  She came back with a cast on her wrist.  I was grounded because it was my fault after all.  I had made her do that to me with my report card.

This is not an exaggeration or embellishment.  There was a red hand print with five fingers on the left side of my face.

There are many other 'Dawn stories' but this should be enough for you to get the point.  The effects of her time in my life linger with me to this day.