Lies on the Border Line

Beaten but Not Broken

Very early on in life, Aaron had to make a choice. A choice that would change the rest of his life. He was maybe 8 at the time. His mother had a new boyfriend and she was moving away with him. Aaron and his two sisters were all given a choice: Stay in the town they lived, where everything was familiar and safe,  where they had their school and friends and everything they had ever known; or move away with their mother, to a town they'd never been, where they'd have no friends and everything would be uncertain. Aaron and his two sisters all got together one night to discuss this. The three of them together all made the most obvious choice: to stay with their father and friends and live the life they had always known. However, Aaron felt bad that the three of them all wanted to stay. "Shouldn't someone go with mom so she wont be alone?" he argued. His sisters were rather adamant about staying, so Aaron decided that he would be the one to go.

When he told his mother that he would go with her, she was overjoyed to hear the news. "You always were my favorite." she said to him. Aaron was glad that he could make his mother happy. Making other people happy made Aaron feel happy, so he tried to make other people happy as much as he could. He couldn't have known at the time how sad his decision would make him later.

Living with his mother was often difficult. You see, Aaron's mother often made the decision to follow her brother around. The reason for this was never quite clear to Aaron, although he supposed that maybe it was out of a strange sense of familial bond. Perhaps she thought that Aaron should not grow up without family. However this idea was sorely misguided and caused Aaron a lot of hardship. Because his mother was so bent on following her brother they moved around a lot. From the age of 8 to the age of 13, Aaron moved to different towns a total of 7 times; and that's not even counting the times when they moved but stayed in the same town.   

The first move, the move that started it all, was to a seemingly magical place called Tahoe. Aaron had never lived in a place where it snowed, so he was enthralled by the fact that it snowed there often. Everything there was a wonderful new experience at first, and Aaron thought for sure that he had made the right choice. When they got to Tahoe, he was going to be living in a house with his aunt, uncle, mother, his mother's boyfriend, and his two cousins; one which was older than him by a few years which meant that he got to do things that Aaron couldn't do, and the other which was considerably younger than him which meant that Aaron could do things that his younger cousin couldn't do. This age gap proved to make it rather difficult for the three of them, since none of them really had anyone their age to play with. Besides the fact that it was an awful lot of people to live in one house, Aaron had been told they were all family (despite being strangers) so they would all have to learn to live with one another.  

Living with them proved rather quickly to be a trying experience, and later Aaron would agree that arguably some of the worst days in Aaron's life were the years he was subjected to his Uncle's rule. You see, his Uncle was rather strict. Since everyone was living under his roof, they had to follow his rules, and anyone perceived to be out of line would be put in their place by force. This terrified Aaron because he had never had an adult figure in his life that regularly threatened him with physical violence whenever he misbehaved. While he hadn't yet known the pain of a 'whooping', which involved Uncle taking his belt to your behind, the idea of it was enough to terrify him into compliance.

Before they even had time to settle in, things were already going poorly when Uncle kicked Aaron's mother's boyfriend out. He was gone to the wind, presumably never to be heard from again. It wasn't too long before things settled down and for a short while things were ok. Aaron got used to following the rules, even if he didn't like it, and while his Uncle was sometimes very cruel he learned to cope with it by commiserating with his cousins which had been dealing with it their whole lives. The three of them sort of became a team. They would keep each other's secrets and would often get up to trouble together, as young boys are inclined to do.

This was all well and good, as  their antics were often completely harmless and never really bothered anyone. At least, until one afternoon the boys were hanging out and one of them had found an old lead pipe. A pipe might sound like nothing exciting, but when you're young and bored anything can be made into a toy. It was a pretty heavy pipe and the boys found amusement banging around on things with it. This was fine until Uncle heard what they were up to and came outside, irate because they had woken him from his nap.

Uncle saw the pipe and the racket that the boys were making. Furiously he led the boys inside and sat them down on the cold stone of the fireplace. He began to lecture them as he often did when they were in trouble, and the boys reacted in a typical manner by slouching, looking bored and disappointed. Uncle must have took this as a sign of disrespect, because before any of them knew what they'd done wrong he started swinging the pipe at their legs.

Aaron had never actually been hurt by his uncle, despite being threatened numerous times. It was unexpected and rather terrifying. He sat there in shock, watching as the pipe swung to hit each of them in turn. Aaron's cousins just sat there, straight faced without crying. They knew that any sign of weakness was an invitation to their father; Aaron unfortunately did not. As Aaron began to sob, his uncle took notice and decided that it was time to teach Aaron a lesson. He yelled at Aaron, beating him over and over and telling Aaron how this was his fault, and that if he didn't want to respect him, that he could go live on the streets.

Just as quickly as it had began it ended. Without a sign of remorse, Uncle merely left the boys there to think about what they had done. After spending some time recovering, the boys comforted each other and went back to playing quietly among themselves to ensure they wouldn't disturb Uncle again.

Later on, Aaron told his mother about what had happened and showed her the bruises which covered his legs. She was furious, as any mother would be. When she confronted Uncle about this, he pinned all the blame on Aaron, telling her how Aaron had disrespected and provoked him. Obviously Aaron's mother didn't buy this story, since she had always known Aaron to be one of the most well-behaved children. A fight ensued, and before they knew it they were being thrown out onto the street with nothing to their name, and nowhere to go.

Aaron's mother was unemployed at the time, and had just enough money to rent a Hotel room for the night. The next day, the two of them crawled back to Uncle and all was 'forgiven'. Aaron learned a few things from the experience. First and foremost, his Uncle had a very dark, evil side that he never wanted to see again. Second, his mother was powerless to do anything about it, so if he ever had trouble with his uncle again he should keep it to himself; and he did. While there were many more instances of his uncle hurting him over the years, Aaron knew better than to tell his mother about them. The incident with the pipe fell into distant memory, and they never spoke about it again.