Beginnings

My mom worked for my dad starting at age 15. He was 15 years older than her. He owned a little store. He was married, had three kids, and lived on the same lot with his parents. At age 18 or so, my mom was engaged to someone else and had an engagement party.

My mom married my dad when she was about 20, and I was born an unknown-to-me number of months later. They eloped in Vegas, and I’ve never known the date. It was not discussed much. My mother really only brought it up when she was hoping it was not a valid marriage so she would not have to do the paperwork to divorce him after he had been completely gone, like we were not sure where he lived, for several years.

My father had gotten a quickie Mexican divorce from his first wife, and my mother also hoped that was invalid. Yes, my mother was wishing I was a bastard…

My mom says when I was a baby, my dad found the pictures from that engagement party. She had supposedly thrown them away but instead she hid them.

My dad suggested to my mother that she take me to my grandmother’s for babysitting. When they were alone, he beat the crap out of her.

She says this was the first time.

I believe my mother had seen bruises on the previous wife, but her story has changed around a bit from time to time.

Many of my mother’s stories have turned out to be amazingly distorted. However, when I was a child I thought there were screaming fights as a matter of course in every family, every night, and I can quite believe there was hitting involved.

There was a mysterious break, when my dad stopped drinking and hitting, between my ages 7 and 13, but after age 13, I recall listening at the door wondering if he was going to kill her.