After I got this job at the syndicate, I started sending them money so they could go on trips and do the things they could never afford to do. All the while, I never knew that my mother was socking money away.
If I was in love with someone, I would get their picture out of the school yearbook and do portraits. If I was curious about sex, I would draw pictures of it. There were no books for me to look at. Then I would go find my father's matches to burn the paper.
That's what my mother did. And my father was the first person she'd met who treated her kindly. She was terrified of men, and she married a very meek, kind, dear man. And she had the upper hand. She ruled the roost.
And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry.
Yes, and when I had Aaron, he left me, and I didn't know how to raise a child. And I wasn't close to my parents, and because I was too proud to go to my parents for help, I mistreated that little baby. I didn't want a baby.
You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian.
