Once, I Was A Child.

Chapter 1

     My mother retired from the army when I was seven years old and moved us to be closer to our grandmother. Traveling to our new home can be remembered with flashbacks to an old Dodge truck, it's inhabitants cooking from the heat that bore down. We rattled along with only hot Pepsi to drink, a drink I now hate.

     We pulled up to an old farm house that, at the time, looked so massive. The dilapidated farm buildings on the property looked more like a jungle gym, than danger, to a small child. We were miles away from any town and I don't think it could have felt any more secluded.

     After retiring from the military, my mother went to college for nursing and also worked a job in fast food. My step-father, who had also retired from the military, got a labor job with a shipping company. My biological father? Another military man. After pressuring my mother to have three children, he cheated on her with a woman whom he would eventually start a new family. Adultery is illegal in the military and when my mother pressed charges he was relentless in his harassment towards her, even getting his family to join in.

   The DNA ejector was named David, but that's all I have ever known. I can remember the constant fighting, the screaming, but his face, his real voice, his touch, are things I have never experienced. After divorcing when I was three years old, he met my eldest brother, then nine years old, a couple times, and then threw us away. Even to this day he has never tried to contact his children.

     My mother has always been a strong and "take no bullshit" kind of person. She once told me " I have always had to work twice has hard as any man to be considered almost equal". That's how she lived. She worked hard and would not settle for being treated as anything less than equal. I always looked up to her and if things had been different, perhaps I might have turned out more like her.

    My step-father was quite the opposite. Though he adopted us after my father's abandonment and was the only father figure I ever knew, he was never a strong influence. He was a "yes man" to my mother and only took charge when she wasn't present. The older we got, the less we respected him as an authority figure. I didn't help his case that he often threatened to walk out on us when he became frustrated with us.

     I had two older brothers, each of us three years apart. I know, as the youngest and the only girl, that I was a spoiled little brat. I got the second largest room in the farmhouse and it was often boasted that I hit various milestones long before normal children. Various things that I took for granted were things my brothers resented me for. I always envied siblings that were close.

     As for my grandmother, I suppose there isn't much I can say about her. She was an intimidating old woman. She had an air about her that told you she could beat you at any moment for touching her trinkets, even though she never did. The warmth she felt for us wouldn't show until we were older.

     Grandma was the only elder I knew as my grandfather died when I was born and any family memorabilia was washed away in a flood. The only photos of him either showed a disheveled old man or a stern looking adult. My mother once told me he was sixteen years older than his wife b it didn't tell her until after they were married. He raised horses but was often an aggressive, careless owner. He was not adverse to kicking their genitals when exposed or allowing his only daughter to run around them, resulting in horse kicks to her body.

     The five of us, six counting grandma, were the only ones I considered to be "family". Any extended family seen at "reunions" were nothing more than strangers that made as much effort to keep in touch as we did, which was none. We were the black sheep, standing apart from those labeled as relatives.