The walk-in closet was a nightmare. I was never able to make peace with it. In my mind, I can walk into it and look. On the left is a long rod with hung clothes. In the back are old things, maybe some of Grandma Teresa’s things. On the right are large plywood shelves with big sliding doors. Eight feet by six feet. I mostly remember shelves with toys and games. The closet held a lot of stuff.
My clothes must have hung nearest the opening. I don’t have a clear picture of them. Zack’s clothes were in a little “shif and robe.” I had a dresser. I don’t remember that well either except for training bras and the obnoxious menstrual pad belt that I was dreading using at 12.
Before my brother was born and when he was still in a crib, I had the small bedroom. My parents had the large bedroom. I was three when Zack was born. I don’t remember being afraid in the small bedroom except once when I was sure I saw an alligator go under my bed. My dad came in and looked under the bed. He assured me there was no alligator. Not completely reassured, I got back in bed. My feet were up. I didn’t think alligators could climb so I went to sleep.
After my brother got old enough to sleep in his own bed, my parents moved Zack and I into the big bedroom and they took the small one. The bedrooms were at opposite ends of the house. Zack and I had our own beds along walls across from each other. We had an old oil furnace with one fan that blew in the living room. Consequently, the bedrooms were cold. We each had an electric blanket that laid on top of our beds.
I think I was five. I hadn’t started kindergarten. With a December birthday, I had to wait until I was almost six. I had long blond hair with ringlets down my back. I woke up in the middle of the night because my eyes were burning. I got out of bed in my nightgown and started for my parents’ room. As I got near the foot of the bed, I saw a glowing orange oval on the bed. I reached out to touch it. My handed hovered near. I felt nothing but thought better of actually touching it. I just stared at it. I’d never seen anything like it.
I made my way to my parents’ room and my mom. I told her my eyes were burning. She sat up. As she tells it, she thought, “Her eyes are burning. Why would they be burning?” Then, she smelled the smoke. “LeRoy!”
My mom says she and my dad rushed in the bedroom as my bed started to flame. As they entered, Zack came out between them. Dad went to my bed to douse the fire while mom went to the opposite side and opened the windows. Dad carried the blanket outside smoldering. I remember there was discussion about whether they needed to call the fire department which was behind our house and decided it wasn’t needed. Mom made up the fold out couch in the living room for Zack and I. She says we were all back in bed ten minutes later. She acted as if it reflected our response and adaptation skills as a family. I thought it only reflected our ability to ignore a scary event.
Over the years, I heard her talk about what might have happened had the fire caught my hair. We still slept with electric blankets. After hearing the story, people wondered why I still slept with one. I believed the electric blanket had its chance to get me. I woke up. If it didn’t get me then, I didn’t think it ever would. An electric blanket wasn’t the only dangerous thing in my house.
*******
At night, the large black opening of the closet haunted me. It had no door and was adjacent to the bedroom door to the rest of the house. Midway inside was a bare bulb with a hanging string to pull for lighting. Entry into the closet was required to turn on the light. I could not stand at the opening to turn on the light to confirm no monsters were present. I was always sure monsters were there at night.
My earliest memory of the closet was awakening at night to see a man walk out of it. I was terrified and watched in horror as he came closer and closer and still closer to my bed. I lay petrified watching him move nearer. I stared at him as he bent over me. Just as he stretched his hands out to grab my throat, I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t feel his hands. I waited with my eyes closed. When I opened them, he was gone. I breathed in relief. My fear of that closet never ended.
I’m sure I told the story to my mom or friends at some point. I never saw that man come out of the closet again. I told myself if I saw him to just close my eyes to make him disappear. I wasn’t put to the test but I was vigilant.
When I was eight, my parents bought bunk beds for Zack and I. The bunk beds were against the wall under the windows with light sheer curtains my mom made. A play area was created where my bed had been. I had the top bunk. My parents were sticklers for early bedtimes. We got into bed at 7:30. In the summer, I remember telling my mother I couldn’t sleep because it was light out. She said, “Just lay there. It’s still resting even if you’re not sleeping.” I didn’t think much of that plan.
My brother and I loved each other dearly. I dangled my hand over the side of the bed. He reached up to hold hands. We had a secret code. I would squeeze three times for I-Love-You. He would squeeze three times back, I-Love-You. We did it as much and as often as we wanted.
We two were finding our way in a sea of fright listening to my father come home drunk, arguing with my mother. We had our share of beatings with my father’s belt. Between us, we had five head injuries requiring stitches. Three happened at home. I don’t have an explanation for why or how they happened. A doctor lived behind us with a clinic. My mom thought he was only good for emergency visits. He stitched up our heads without asking questions.
When we were young and my mom was waiting for my dad to come home, she’d play the piano. It was in the hallway between our bedroom and the furnace. I loved hearing her play hit tunes from the 40s. “When the deep purple falls over misty garden walls...” I couldn’t hear it enough. Hearing her play was comforting. She stopped playing as the conflicts with my dad enveloped our lives. Mom didn’t have the patience to teach me to play though she tried. She said we couldn’t afford lessons. It was a sad loss for me with my long fingers.
My brother and I were big fort builders using dining room chairs, sheets, and blankets. One time, we built the fort in the walk-in closet. It filled the closet. There was a pathway through the chair legs to a space at the end of the closet. We packed in our sleeping bags and decided to sleep in there. That night, Zack changed his mind and slept in his bed. I braved the closet. I liked the little secret place in the back. However that night, the secret place did not feel safe. I couldn’t completely wake up but I spent the night wriggling in my sleeping bag working to get out. The passage way was full of twists and turns. I wasn’t awake enough to escape. All through the night I worked to get out of the closet. I vowed, never again.
In the summer after fourth grade, my father finally let us have a dog. Poor neighbors several blocks away had puppies. We picked a black male. Zack and mom named him Snoopy. The three of us had asked dad for a dog for years. I was so excited. I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag with Snoopy. My mom kept reminding me that come September I would have to sleep in my bed without Snoopy. I wish she would have explained the corollary to that. I was too young to make the connection myself.
Dogs weren’t allowed on beds. I didn’t understand that or maybe I didn’t want to. In any case come September, Snoopy and I were both rudely awakened again and again and again. After I went to bed, Snoopy would quietly, silently crawl up on the foot of the bed to sleep with my brother because he was in the bottom bunk. My father would come in the middle of the night hitting Snoopy because he was on the bed. No amount of imploring Snoopy to not do that by Zack and I made any difference. No one implored, asked, or pleaded with my father not to do anything. That wasn’t an option.
Unfortunately, the same thing happened at my grandparents’ beach house on the weekends. My grandfather used a rolled up newspaper. The effect on me was the same from sleeping to wide awake watching my dog get hit or harassed because I had taught him to sleep with me. Helplessness, horror, and shame were the watchwords. It was all my fault. My father never mentioned it. My grandpa told me he found the dog on my bed in the morning as if somehow I might have missed it. (The full Snoopy story is here: https://joceile7.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-underdogs.html.)
*******
The nightmares bother me the most. It’s not the night per se. I’ve walked almost everywhere at night. I’m not afraid of hardly anything outside. I’ve walked alone in places I wasn’t supposed to be safe. I can count on one hand the times I’ve been afraid walking at night. It’s in the house that scares me. It’s what can happen in the house that scares me. It’s what can happen in my bed. It’s the place that was never safe growing up. The universally unsafe bed where I slept.
“Fuck you, LeRoy, and Dean, and Randy, and Leslie. Fuck you all for this!”
Pain comes late at night with no apparent source. I feel disquiet, uneasy as if something’s terribly wrong but I don’t know what it is. At nine at night, I feel fine. By 10:30, I’m uncomfortable. In an effort to delay the dragon, I write. It can be an intense reflection or a simple memory as long as I’m externalizing. The externalizing buys me time with a dose of comfort with those youngsters inside afraid of the monsters.
After decades of introspection, understanding, and healing, my knowing the intellectual truth of the problem does not diminish the upset. I no longer feel powerless over dissociating into a trapped angry person without limits on good behavior. I still sit with this wrongness that appears as the evening turns late.
I avoid the triggers of upsetting movies, television, books, and articles. There is absolutely nothing I can do about the earth’s rotation. I’m 63 years old. I haven’t lived with my father since I was 14. Yet, the programming of childhood trauma persists. I had no intention of writing about this at 9:00, 9:30, or even 10:00. At 10:20, the creeping feeling of something wrong began.
Another way to combat it is to feel the rage. As a child, rage was a dangerous emotion. I was highly attuned to the compliance demanded by my father. Any slight, real or imagined, was grounds for punishment. Worse was not being able to say two profound words: No and Stop.
I know this disquiet is wanting to avoid bed and sleep. In my house, my exhausted mother slept. My prowling father didn’t. He didn’t need much sleep just as he didn’t need much food. Predators feast on something else. They take energy from sucking power from others. I don’t know what neuro-chemical process is involved. I just know it’s potent.
I laid in my bed afraid. If I was awake, I could hear him coming. If I was asleep, I awoke to invasion. It’s hard to say why hearing him coming was better. Maybe because I could prepare my mind and cease to exist. “I’m dead. I feel nothing. I’m dead... I’m not here. I don’t exist. I don’t have a body. There is no touch. I feel nothing.” By self-hypnosis, I made myself numb. Pinch me, bend my arm hard, crush me with hands tough like a vice. I don’t feel it. I have no reaction. I Am Nothing.
In my mind, I devolved into space. I went to a place between the molecules. I did not exist on this earth or any other. I was the space between. A tiny speck. I could not be found because I did not exist.
If I awoke to him already grasping me, I had no time to prepare. The struggle to cease to be without warning caused me to feel instant, stark terror before I could force myself to disappear. It was much better to sleep lightly to awaken at the slightest stirring of air to know he was coming. His approach wasn’t loud. He was a hunter. He knew how to be quiet. My mother and brother were sound sleepers. I hated them for that. It was just me and him in an existential battle. He proving his mastery. Me proving I did not exist.
This is where the rage lives. Master proving again and again that I have no agency over my own body. Slave proving again and again that it doesn’t matter. This is where the recovery is. Understanding that I matter. Believing that I matter even as I continue to age, running headlong into that time when I will cease to exist. This is the ultimate defilement. That I should work so hard to be alive and well even as I get old and prepare to die. Both are true. I am running passionately into the joy of being alive with the certain knowledge that I have no power over when my life will end. This is the crime of violation. I should never have to had to work so hard simply to know I’m alive.
It’s 11:20. I am angry. This man and his brethren have caused me a lifetime of struggle merely for the right to feel my body. Countless hours struggling with numbness and paralysis of my legs because I was trained not to feel. Working to feel my body with it’s normal aches and pains so I can feel joy. If I could dig him up and kill him again, I surely would. The fact that men like him still roam the planet without penalty or accountability feeds my rage. I can’t let my rage make me impotent in my life. I have to feel the rage. Feel the wrongness, the craziness, the madness of those who derive power from enslaving those with less physical and economic power.
I am playing the long game. I don’t know what happens when I die. I will die with a smile on my face. I got here on my own, Dad. You didn’t win. I have more power than you because I’m here and well. I have more passion in my little finger than you had in your entire life. You were the enslaved. You chose to do what you were taught without questioning. Still, if I could dig you up and kill you again, I would. You are the one who couldn’t feel.
I rise. I stand tall. I walk. I see the beauty in the land. I see the beauty in the mirror. I am the protector. I am angry. I’m alive.
It’s 11:55. Midnight nears. I am safe though no closer to sleep than I was hours ago. It will come as surely as dawn breaks this struggling tradition. A life without sleep is unsustainable. A life with the wrong kind of passion is just as bad. Perhaps this is why my dreams are so vivid. Passionate sleep is my only option. In my dreams, the sun is bright on many waters. I visit those I love. Love has never been lost for me. It can’t be taken. My heart is mine.
L’Chaim.
Joceile
2.8.21
[Picture: The perfect family. LeRoy, Zack, Me, JoAnn. Circa 1962]
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