The House That Built Me

Every person who, without lawful authority, forcibly seizes and confines another, or inveigles or kidnaps for purpose of extortion or assisting in disposing, receiving, possessing or exchanging money or property received shall be guilty of a felony, and upon conviction shall suffer death or imprisonment in the State Penitentiary, not less than ten years[ii].  However, if the offender is not a principal in the kidnapping, s/he shall be punished by imprisonment in the State Penitentiary, not less than five (5) years[iii].    
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My mother hadn't been dead but a month and a half before my life hit another speed bump.

It was October 14, 1984.  I had been living with my grandma and grandpa ever since she passed that late August.  Why, I was a second grader in Mrs. McCaslin's class, with her curly and black short hair and striped dresses with a large bow on the chest.  She was plenty mean, too, I recall --  the second meanest of the second grade, and runner up to Mrs. Dancer, who's on first.  And believe me, with a name like Dancer, that woman was not a delight, as one might venture to think.  Quite the contrary, she looked bitter and as though she had been in a very bad mood the last 30 years.  

I had settled into my own routine at my grandparents' house and had gone right back to school after my mother's funeral just 6 weeks prior.  She died on a Friday, her funeral was on a Monday or Tuesday, and then the very next day I was put on the bus and shipped to school as if I had just gotten over the flu.  There was no time to grieve, after all, and besides...what was the point?  Or, so thought  my grandparents.  So! Off I went!  Confused, stricken, and completely spent.  That was the new me, and I was only 7.  

As humans, we are creatures of habit.  Routine is safe and predictable and studies show that routine in early childhood increases productivity, but, when taken to extremes, constricts creativity.  As children, we are taught to brush teeth, say prayers, go to bed. Brush teeth, say prayers, go to bed.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  As adults, we wake up and put our house slippers on, stumble into the kitchen and flick the coffee pot to 'on,' and then go sit on our porcelain thrones while stirring to a completely alert state.  Next morning, we do it all over again.  Life is just like that, one solid routine after another and, if we are lucky, that is how we design our days and guard against our own insecurities.  Doctors tell us to put our children on routines "or else they'll put YOU on a routine," and we do just that, because far be it from us to go against medical advice so much so that we have a 2-year-old spoiled brat who thinks he runs the roost.  We oblige.  We sleep train, we feed on schedule, we make time for baby's nap, etc.  It's entrapment inside a Rolex watch, and it's all built on the rock of saving time and increasing stability, and lays the foundation of probability for well-adjusted adults. 
 
Oh, I knew about routine, I sure did!  I knew my dad came to pick me up every other weekend and usually once or twice throughout the week, but the majority of the time I lived with my Grammaw and Pawpaw.  I had a bed on their couch, and from 8:00 at night until 5:00 the next morning, it belonged only to me!  When my Pawpaw, who was a butcher, woke up each morning, he did so anywhere from 4:00 to 4:01, and I could bet on my Grammaw being in the kitchen making him breakfast by the light of an oil lantern that cast its yellow hue to every corner of the kitchen.  I found it comforting, really, knowing that they were in there sipping coffee and eating toast with butter and sugar.  My grandparents never had conversations, not where I could hear them, anyway, but I know they interacted because I would hear my Pawpaw grunt or mumble something or other, but I always stayed put on the couch.  Often, I would roll over and fall right back to sleep.  I found comfort in the way that routine went.  And pretty soon, my Pawpaw would poke his head around the corner from the kitchen and grab his hat and coat, if it were a brisk morning.  

Other kids I knew, well, they had routines all their own.  There was a boy in my class that year who, every day after the Pledge of Allegiance, he would squeeze himself down into that too-tight desk and start picking his nose.  I guess maybe it brought him comfort, I really don't know, but what I do know is this:  He would pick his nose and then drag out his harvest on his finger and look at it for a few minutes. Then? Then, he bent over, ass crack just shining, and he would wipe his finger on a yellow Post-It note!  Like it was his catch of the day or something!  You can bet dollars to donuts I never wanted to touch a stack of worksheets he had had his paws on, but that's a different story for a different day, my phobia of germs and obsession with clean hands.  

To this very day, the first thing I make my kids do when we walk in the door is take their shoes off.  Second?  Wash your hands!  And, I am your typical micromanaging mother, because if I don't hear that water running or if you haven't been in there long enough to sing your ABC's, then you can bet I will make you go right back into the lavatory and try it again.  Rule of thumb?  If I ask to smell your hands and they don't smell of flowers or fruit, then I'm going to assume that you bypassed the entire thing!  So!  Go back and treat yourself to a do-over!  I do the same thing with myself; this routine isn't just for kids!  Heck, it's designed to keep people healthy and, well, because kids are gross and they touch gross things that make mothers cringe, I am sure of it.  But it works!  My kids and I have a routine that works for us and is designed to keep us and others safe and healthy.  Structure is an important part of our day, and without it, it is safe to say I would have already lost my mind.
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It was a fall day.  Sunny.  I was sitting in my Pawpaw's orange chair a few feet across the room from the only television in the house.  Probably my Grammaw had tuned it to Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.  If I were really lucky any given day, Let's Make a Deal.  Sometimes, Judge Wapner if my Grammaw had been reading her family law books for whatever reason.  She may have been just a stay-at-home mother and wife, but by no means was she dumb!  She was an avid reader and would visit the library and rummage sales quite frequently for Harlequin's romances.  She would be sitting on that brown couch that automatically transformed like Cinderella's carriage into my very own bed right around 7:30 each night.  She would be reading, in her own little world, and sometimes I would catch a glimpse of her just over there...smiling...like she knew a juicy secret that none of the rest of the world was privy to.  Sometimes she would put her little legs up on the couch, her indian moccasins kicked off on the floor right in front of the divan (that is what she called the couch - a divan).  That's how you knew she was really enjoying her book.  That's how you knew it would be a few more pages before you could ask for some bread and butter from the kitchen.  

It was a day just like the rest had been up until they took me.  The inside heavy door was flung right open and the sunshine flooded through the window to interfere with my TV-watching routine.  I would squirm and reposition myself in my Pawpaw's chair and hold up a hand to shield away the blinding light.  

Soon, the screen door opened.  My aunt and uncle walked in.  Grammaw had been in the kitchen, probably wrangling up some "supper," as they often referred to it.  I knew it as "dinner."  Either way, it was always good and filling and there was always plenty enough for everyone.  She came 'round the corner and seemed surprised they were there.  It was, after all, almost the end of the week.  We had been out of school for teachers meetings.

They looked at me like they'd never done before.  Now, I'm not sure what was said, but they wanted me to come visit them for the weekend and ride horses, and to go pack a few clothes, okay?  I was hesitant to leave the only steady home I had known, my grandparents' house.  During all the fighting, and the screaming, and the yelling, and the general disgust two of the most important people in my life had resorted to, I ended up each time right smack dab back in the middle, with my bed on Grammaw's divan.  It was a neutral territory, it seemed.  My mother could deposit me there, and my dad would pick me up when it was his turn.  They never had to see one another.  They didn't have to pretend.  Drop off, pick up...drop off, pick up.  It was our routine.  It was what we did back then.  My mother would spit me out and leave, and my dad would come collect me and we'd hit McDonald's and go swimming, camping...fishing a couple of times, too.  He wanted custody and tried to prove her unfit, and my mother just did not want to have to deal with his temper.  I think she would have given anything she had just to get some peace, because he was relentless and scary.  But to me, he was daddy.  A little scary, but I never felt as though he would hurt me at all.  

I did as I was told, and said goodbye to my grandma.  She never was a hugger.  They didn't do "I love you's."  I don't remember how I did it, but I got together some clothes in a grocery store sack, and tucked my pal, my gal, my Cabbage Patch Kid, Minnie, underneath my arm.  I kissed my doll before we walked out the door.  I wanted to quietly reassure her.  Everything would be okay.  Why, we were going to go play in the country all that fall weekend!  What could be better than a break from such bland boredom?

Only, we didn't ride any horses.  

In fact, I never even saw a horse anywhere on their place.  

And you know something?  They never brought me back that Sunday like they'd promised my grandmother.  I don't know what I had ever done wrong, but it was like nobody really wanted me, but everybody kept grabbing at all my limbs.  I felt torn, once again, into a hundred pieces.  I had to share a bed with two of my cousins.  I had to sleep in the middle of the bed, and I remember just staring up at the ceiling and wishing for time to rewind like my favorite cassette tape.  I longed for this all to be a bad dream, but turns out, bad dreams really can and do come true and there's nothing you can do to stop them.

One day that next week, my aunt asked me out of nowhere, "Elizabeth, if you could have ANY other name in the world other than...Elizabeth...what name would you choose?"

I was on the hotseat.  What was the right answer?  What was the wrong answer?  

Without giving it a lot of thought, mostly because I knew so many people were growing impatient with me and my grief stillborn, I blurted out, "Shelly!"  Of course.  It was a happy, upbeat name, and not at all old fashioned or old ladyish like Elizabeth Ann.  Never mind that my father had chosen my name from a piece by his favorite poet, James Whitcomb Riley.  Shelly was The New Me!   

That next morning, I was taken to school and enrolled under the name 'Shelly Quinnelly.'  That was their last name, definitely not mine.  Outside the office, I sat while my aunt did some talking to the principal.  They would glance over to me and put their heads back together.  Just what had I gotten myself into? I wondered.  

Several minutes later, I was ushered to Mrs. Frayzee's second grade classroom.  The principal introduced me as Shelly Quinnelly.  Why had they changed my name?  I just wanted to go home.  Home.  Wherever that was!  I felt like every safe and true thing I had ever known had died right along with my mother.  And nobody wanted me...they just pulled me around as they saw fit.  That's how it seemed.  That is how I remember it.

I didn't know it at the time, but my dad had been looking for me.  He had hired lawyers in Creek County...his lawyer (and neighbor!) here in town and whom my dad considered a good and trustworthy friend.  And if I know my very own father, then he was looking for me himself every chance he had, but between working two jobs to pay for the fight to get me back, he never found me on his own, and with that, my aunt and uncle should have thanked their lucky stars, because he would have slaughtered them.  Gutted and hung them up to dry, he sure would have.  My dad and my mother had been in a heated custody battle since they had divorced just 3 years prior, and whatever knowledge I have of that entire period I have gleaned from piles of typewritten court transcripts my dad had filed and paid for and, then, collected like bones.  There were a lot of those, and at one point in my adolescence I can remember putting them all together and reading them like a very thick book.  It made me sick sometimes, the hatred that dripped from those pages.  And to think, I had caused it!!  

During the 3 months I spent in Kellyville, I guess I became accustomed to a new routine.  I didn't like it, but it was something.  My aunt and uncle took me to a child psychiatrist where I was asked to draw pictures and talk about my feelings.  I think I went once, but I may have gone more than I can remember!  Turns out, they were trying to build a case to gain full custody of me, a social security survivor's benefits check, and a small suicide/reduced-benefit life insurance policy my mother had on herself in the amount of $25,000.  That whole entire time, I wanted so hard to believe they loved me, that they wanted nothing more than to provide some kind of solid something resembling normalcy as best as someone as broken as myself could feel and live with.  Nothing in my life had ever been normal, nor would it prove to ever be normal again after her death.  People lied about it all from Day One, and they lied all my life!  They didn't want to hurt me, I guess.  What nobody knew, though, was that everything hurt.  Everything absolutely stung, even when it wasn't supposed to.  When problems come up and they are never acknowledged or fixed or put to rest, everything hurts.  It is a feeling that never leaves, and it rears its ugly head during sleepovers, during bicycle rides with your best friend.  It's that voice in your heart that says:  ​Psssst!

Something happened in February 1985.  One day, I got to see my daddy again.  He loaded me up, sped away, and brought me back to my hometown, Nowata, to live with him and his mother right there on Pine Street.  That night, February 3, 1985, my GrandMaud's barn red wall phone rang, loud and twangy. Intrusive.  My dad picked up the receiver.  I stood there at the bar in the kitchen, looking up at him with a quickened and shallow breath.
"Hello?"  He said, mad.

Something was said on the other end, but I don't know what.  He hesitated, then handed the phone down to me.  "Here.  She wants to talk to you!!!"  Still mad, he was.

I could barely swallow.  "H...hello?" I croaked.

My aunt Rose, sobbing on the other end of the line.  "Why didn't you come back?  You were supposed to come back...Why didn't you??"  

Like I had any control over any of this!  What nerve she had!  I was eight, for God's sake.  I had turned from 7 to 8 that December 7, 1984, and I don't even remember the celebration they had for me, or even if they had one at all.  

"I'm sorry!"  I gasped.  "I'm sorry!!!"  I knew I had let her down.  I knew there was a lot riding on me:  Their mortgage, their futures, their happiness.  I had disappointed everybody again, and through no fault of my own.  I just DID that to people.
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Growing up, my dad would explain it as a "kidnapping."  I didn't take that approach because, after all, they were supposed to be my family.  These were the very people who were supposed to help protect me, not take me away from the only solid part of my life and make me start everything all over again.  But still, I wanted to see the good in them.  In MY mind, I told myself they were just looking out for my best interests, that a single man in his early 30s had no business raising a little girl, especially one who was so in love with his guns and his liquor and whatever else kind of trouble he could find to get himself into.  I had seen him smoking those fancy cigarettes they rolled up on tin trays!  I had seen him drink beer on a pontoon boat and then jump off the ass end of it like he had nary a care in the world!  And as a little girl who saw that, my heart raced as I panicked and thought, "What if the undertow drags him away?!"  I always would breathe a sigh of huge relief when he resurfaced.  Good.  He had not left, too.  ​I told myself that my aunt and uncle only wanted me to live with them so that I wouldn't be lonely and would have siblings, finally. 

But I knew from a conversation with my mother just 1 week prior to her untimely death, that this is not something SHE would have willed for me.  She never would have put me with her sister, she just would not have!  The look in her eyes that night we had that conversation, that scared, trapped, wild look she had...she just wouldn't do that to me.  Would she?  I hadn't wanted to live there with them, and I sure hadn't wanted to be called something other than Elizabeth Ann!

For the better part of my childhood and early adulthood, I spent holidays on edge, on alert. My dad always threatened that if he caught my aunt and uncle in this town, he would kill them.  He accused them of kidnapping me so that they could file for sole custody and then gain control of that life insurance money and my survivor's benefits.  So, each Thanksgiving and Christmas, I would slink around and try to orchestrate my visits to my grandma and grandpa's house so that we would never, ever accidentally run into that side of my family.  They didn't come around for years, and I will always believe they were terrified my father would have shot them in cold blood, just like he had promised to do.  Me?  I didn't think that was very fair.  I mean, that was my aunt's mother and father they were trying to come to visit!  I felt like nobody should ever deny that from another person, ever.  I knew from experience and it wasn't easy.  But I remember phoning before my dad would take me over to see them at the holidays.  "Grammaw?" I would always ask quietly so that my daddy couldn't hear.  "Um, this is 'Lizabeth...daddy wants to bring me over there to visit for a little while, but...um...are Rose and Bruce over there?"  And she would answer yes or no. Usually, no.  But when it was yes, my anxiety went through the roof.  After all, if he killed two people, wouldn't he go to jail???  I didn't want to lose my dad, too.  So I ran interference for all of us.  The weight of the world, it seemed, never truly left me.  Being 8 was tough, by golly.
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To this day, I watch my kids at the end of our long driveway as they wait for their big yellow school bus.  I don't go about my morning routine until I see them climb up onto Bus Number 7.  One morning, I had forgotten to do something in the bedroom, so I left the front door.  When I returned to the door, my children were no longer at the end of the driveway.  It scared me, it really did, and as soon as I knew rollcall had taken place at school, I called to make sure they were there.  I am hyper-aware of anybody showing any of my 3 children any attention or affection.  When they misbehave at school or wherever, I try and get to the bottom of why?  Why did you kick your friend at school today?  What is hurting you so much that you feel the need to act in this manner or say these hurtful things?  

I am damaged goods.  Everything in my life has happened for a reason, I fully believe this.  I don't understand it clearly, but when I look at my precious babies I get a glimpse of a love only God could have known that I have needed all my life.  I will fight for my children.  I will be their voice.  I will protect them until the day that I die, no matter how old and senile I become.  I will love them through their bad days.  I will encourage them to marry for love, not money.  I will forever try to kiss away their boo-boos.  I will always bend down to hug and kiss, and bury my nose into heads of salty hair.  I will always remember the connection I feel to them when they reach for me, arms outstretched, and I lean in to pick them up.  My babies.  I love them so, so much.  They have no idea, the wild ride that could be just around the corner for us.  I mostly want to reassure them that none of this is their fault.  They are good, and pure, and special, and mommy loves you!!  I want them to know that no matter what, I tried my best to make things work, but none of what is wrong has anything, anything! to do with them.  I don't want to grapple at my kids and try to pull them into the whirlwind of divorce and heartache, but I also don't want them to think anything about living like that is okay or right or normal.  Soon, I will be taking my children away from the only home they have ever known, and it kills me to think about it like that, but at this point it is the only thing that can be done.  It is the only option I have left.  My kids are the most important thing in my life.  God has entrusted them to me.  As their mommy, it is my job to protect them from whatever I see that isn't to their benefit.  And all this whirlwind?  Why, it doesn't benefit anybody, not really.  

I understand now how my father has felt all these years toward people who only wanted me for their self-serving purposes.  I understand now how strong the determination is to protect your children from the world.  On the flip side, though, it could have easily gone the other way.  Had I not woke up and stopped abusing alcohol, I would have likely lost my children, and that would have absolutely devastated me.  Worse than suicide.  Worse than kidnapping.  Worse than abandonment.  To have lost my children from something that I was inflicting upon myself, well, that's such a selfish way to be.  I am thankful to have lived all of this.  I am thankful God has shown me important, albeit hard, lessons.  I may be damaged goods myself, but I will do everything in my power to make sure my kids are equipped to handle the speed bumps in their precious, precious lives...<3