CHAPTER 1

Rave Reviews From Readers

 Excerpt

     Mother had come home again, for the last time.

     Mascara and tears streaked my cheeks.  I thought of the futility of her life, it was all of the pain, sorrow, striving and her unceasing fight with life.  The battle was finally over.  Death had won.

     Mother died many deaths, deaths of disappointment, deaths of disillusionment, deaths of her hopes and dreams. She never discussed her hopes and dreams that I can recall.  She rarely smiled; and when she did; her smile was over-shadowed by sad, bulging, eyes with pinpoint pupils from years of glaucoma.

     She always seemed frail to me.  Stooped shoulders, heavy lines deeply etched her transparent skin, sagging skin that hung on protruding bones.

     Medora looked beaten and she was.  She was beaten viciously three or four times a week by my Father for the first nine years of my life and for years before that.

     Broken bones, gashes, bruises, bloody noses, clumps of hair missing...nothing could bring her to leave him.  Not for any longer than two or three days hiding out in one of the few small motels in our small town.

     Always we came back to the violence.  Always we returned for more name-calling and more beatings.

     Each time, I would beg her to leave him; her only reply was, "I love him."

     I heard him promise her, "It'll never happen again."  But of course it did.  Again, again, and again.

     It happened again on a very important day for me.

     I was raised Catholic.  My grandparents, all my relatives, my parents and my sisters and I were all Catholic.  My sisters and I went to Catholic school.  Part of going to Catholic school was attending Mass every morning before school and on Sundays.  In the Catholic religion, one must be baptized as a newborn baby; then around the age of seven or eight, you make your First Holy Communion.

     On April 1, 1951, I was seven years old.

     I made my First Holy Communion at St. Patrick's Church in Dickinson, North Dakota.

     Mother and Father always had an excuse not to come to church, but it was usually from hangovers.  I thought my First Holy Communion would be special and they would come, but they didn't.  Auntie Rhisa, my mother's sister, dropped me off at the church.  I was alone.

     I was dressed as a little bride with my special white dress, white veil, white stockings and white patent leather shoes.  Mother and Father had a big fight over Mom buying my Holy Communion outfit the week before, but that had passed.

     I went through the ceremony.  Girls entered from the left side, boys in their navy blue suits entered from the right, boy and girl meeting in the middle of the communion rail.  Little brides and grooms, splitting off after genuflecting before the crucifix of Jesus, then kneeling before the communion rail.  The Monsignor moved down the line making the sign of the cross before each communicant, whispering sacred blessings in Latin as he placed the host on the outstretched tongue before him.  When it was my turn, I was so elated!  I was the bride of Jesus.  By taking the host inside of me, Jesus was in me.

     After the mass, I stood in the vestibule, the scab on my right knee catching on one of my white cotton stockings.  Family and friends surrounded everyone but me.  I clutched my new crystal rosary and First Communion Prayer book in one hand, my Holy Communion Certificate in the other.

     I read the certificate and studied the picture on it.  It showed Jesus giving communion to a little girl dressed like a bride, dressed just like me.  I fingered the veil, seeing the reflection of the sequins in the crown on the huge metal propped-open door.  I was smiling and proud; I had almost forgotten that Mom and Dad had let me down again.  I was still smiling when Rhisa honked the horn, and I smiled all the way home.  I smiled as I waved goodbye to Rhisa and ran into the house, eager to show my parents how beautiful I looked, and to show them my new prayer book and certificate.

     I clung to him, my tiny arms wrapped around his long, muscular leg, trying with all my might to pull him away.

     "Daddy, no!"  I cried.  "Please, Daddy, no more!"

     He had slapped Mom three or four times, knocking her next to the chair, pulling her up, he slapped her so hard her head snapped back as though he had broken her neck, she landed on the bed.  He pulled her up by a handful of hair when I began trying to pull him away.

     He was crazy with anger as he reached down with his left arm, grasped my upper left arm, and dug his powerful fingers into my arm.  He lifted me off my feet and threw me against the wall.

     He hit her with his fist this time; blood splattered onto the bedspread, the lampshade and my Holy Communion outfit, as I cowered against the wall.  Blood!  Blood so red all over my beautiful white dress!

     Suspending her by the hair, he slugged her in the stomach, knocking the air out of her.  She crumpled to the floor in a heap.

     He towered over her, eyes wild, the purple birthmarks on his cheek and neck standing out in relief.

     "You no good bitch!"  He kicked her.  "You're not good enough for me!"  He bent down, pulling her bloody face up by the chin.  "You hear me?  You two-bit whore!  You think you're so goddamn smart?"  He pushed his palm into her face, "You must think I'm stupid!  Well, I'm not stupid.  I'll teach you one and for all not to give me shit?  Nothin' I ever do is good enough for you!"  He slapped her so hard the blood splattered again.  One of her eyes was almost swollen shut, her lips, cut and bleeding, were so swollen she couldn't speak.

     "Daddy!  Please don't hurt Mom anymore, please!"  I cried.

     He spun and grabbed me by the shoulders.

     "You quit your goddamn crying!"  He shook my shoulders so hard my veil tumbled to the floor.

     Yes, it happened again and again and again.  The first nine years of my life, the nights were filled with terror, yelling, screaming, name-calling and beatings.  The days were spent trying to escape the terror.  Trying to be invisible, wanting to be loved, trying to be good enough to stop the hate and hurt.

     I dreaded the nights when my parents would come home from the nightclub.  The Palm Beach Club they owned...which really owned them.  They came home, usually drunk, some nights more drunk than others, but always they had been drinking.

     The fights and beatings were over anything and everything.

     If my Mother bought us school clothes (usually only three or four outfits for the whole year), he would beat her for spending "his" money.  If someone at the nightclub had talked to Mom too long, he beat her.  If Mom looked at him the wrong way, he beat her.  If Mom asked a question about a bill at the nightclub, he beat her.  Always in those years, I felt it was somehow my fault.  They fought because of the nightclub and the customers always wanting them to drink with them.  My parents couldn't help it, I told myself.

     We had horses.  Thoroughbreds.  Two Palominos, a chestnut Tennessee Walker and my Shetland pony, Stockings.  As soon as I was able to walk, it was my job to care for and feed the horses.  It was one of my escapes.  I would groom and exercise the horses for hours on end.  I couldn't tell anyone about the fights, so I told the horses.  I couldn't tell anyone about my hopes and dreams to escape the violence, so I told Stockings.  I would saddle up Stockings and ride up into the big lime cliffs at the end of the box canyon called, "Baghdad," find my secret place on the ledge after crawling through a huge cave, sit and dream of being so good everyone would love me.

     My other escape was books.  By the time I was eight years old, I studied the Bible from Genesis through the Apocalypse, devoured all of the Nancy Drew mysteries, and read the entire Book of Knowledge, including the supplements.

     I loved school.  Loved Sister Audrey, the cherub-faced Nun who was my first, second and third grade teacher.  Hated Sister Marion who gave me piano lessons in a room not much larger than a closet.  Every time I hit the wrong note, Sister Marion would slam the metal edge of a ruler across my fingers.

     I wanted to belong.  I wanted to be like everyone else because I always felt so different.  I never could be like everyone else.  So many nights without sleep from the beatings going on all night long.  Many days we went to school with dirty clothes, unwashed, exhausted and tense.  I tried to become a Brownie but was thrown out after being warned three times that I had to have a uniform.  I begged for that uniform.  Dad refused and beat Mom for sticking up for me.  So I withdrew and learned not to ask.

     My Father, Alex, was of Ukrainian descent.  Six-foot-two-inches tall, brownish-black naturally wavy hair, bushy brown eyebrows arched to sharp-pointed tufts over brownish-black eyes.  Very visible, large, deep-purple birthmarks spread across his left cheek and down his neck.  He was muscular, broad-shoulders over slim hips.

     He was always angry about something.  He was a habitual drinker.  Brandy in his coffee in the morning, beer all day long, and more brandy at night.

     I was his favorite, his tomboy.  The almost son he hadn't fathered.  I helped pour concrete sidewalks and finish them.  Helped build brick or concrete block walls, mixing cement and hauling bricks and blocks.

     I rode the trail rides on my Shetland pony with the men.  On one of the trail rides to Medora, (sometime home of Teddy Roosevelt and his Roughriders), I was racing ahead, riding in the ditch next to the highway, when Stockings shied, side-stepped, dumping me over his head down in the ditch next to a coiled, large rattlesnake.    Father wasn't far behind on his palomino and he heard and saw the rattlesnake.  He pulled his six-gun from the holster, shot the head off the rattlesnake, all in one smooth move.  For that one moment, he was my hero.

     Sometimes, I would ride Stockings bareback, my little legs barely able to reach around his fat belly.  I'd hang onto his long mane like I'd seen the Indians do in the western movies, racing with the wind across the plowed fields.  One day, Stockings shied again, this time from a tin can.  I was thrown over his head and under him.  He stepped directly in the middle of my chest, his front hoof skimming the tip of my nose!

     I got up, walked over and kicked him.  My chest hurt to breathe for weeks afterward.  I wasn't about to tell anyone; Dad would probably shoot Stockings and then slap me around.

     There were real round-ups in those days.  We all rode, bedrolls tied to the back of our saddles, for miles and miles bringing in the cattle.  The chuck wagon would meet us at lunchtime and at sundown.  We'd sit around campfires, the adults telling tales of deer and elk hunting, of winning at poker, drinking and talking into the night, finally crawling into our bedrolls staring up at the millions of stars in the clear, cool, North Dakota night.

     The next morning, we rode for hours bringing in more cattle to a makeshift corral.  Branding the cattle always took at least two days.

     Rodeos were my favorite.  I rode Stockings in the parades with Mom and Dad on their matching palominos; with matching black saddles decorated heavily with silver and gold, they both wore matching black and white western outfits.  I rode Stockings in the Grand Entry parades at rodeos, and one year he won the Blue Ribbon for "Best Shetland Pony."  That was the year that Dad rode a Brahma Bull on a bet.  He won that bet.  He rode through the buzzer.

     So there were good times, but always they soured from the drinking.  The good times turned into bad times, which always began with name-calling, yelling and beatings.

     The beatings varied in intensity, but over the years became more vicious, more injurious, more broken bones.  Mom took longer to heal.

     The last couple of years in North Dakota, the beatings didn't stop unless I ran to get Uncle Sven, my mom's sister, Auntie Rhisa's husband.  Uncle Sven would come, distract Dad or talk him into going down to the nightclub for a drink.  Mom, my little sister, Marilyn, and I, would pack hurriedly and go hide out in some small motel.  Usually, it was for two or three days.  Mom wouldn't let us go to school because she was terrified that Dad would steal us.

     Always he found us.  I can still vividly recall him standing at the open window of the motel room, his face shadowed by the window screen, begging her to come home, that he missed her and the girls.

     She always gave in.  It always happened again.

     Now, he beat her for leaving him, embarrassing him in front of the whole town.

     One night, he hit Mom in the bar at the nightclub.  Uncle Sven and Aunt Rhisa were in the club.  Uncle Sven grabbed Dad's arm before he could hit her again, and Sven and Dad started fighting ending up out on the cement patio punching each other out.  Soon, they were wrestling; all the nightclub customers gathered around watching.

     Mom's parents, Grandma and Grandpa Teppier, lived in the guesthouse next to our house above the nightclub.  Grandma heard the fighting, came down to join the crowd, dressed only in her nightgown and robe.  It was a pretty even fight, both men the same size, same build, now both wrestled on the cement patio in front of the nightclub.

     Suddenly, Grandma stepped out of the crowd holding a full gallon milk bottle; and when Dad was on top, she smashed the milk bottle over his head.

     Always, Grandma and Grandpa Teppier had been there for my little sister, Marilyn, and me.  Grandma often cooked us breakfast of French pancakes.  Grandpa would sit in his rocker, chewing tobacco, occasionally spitting it into the brass spittoon to emphasize a point, while telling me of the days he and Grandma had come to North Dakota in 1896 as homesteaders from a small village in Canada.

     Gerard and Millie Teppier only spoke French for many years.  Gerard, with Millie's help, built their log house insulated with mud and straw between the log gaps.

     I loved to hear his stories.  The Indians would raid the homestead.  Gerard and Millie would hear them coming, their horses hooves pounding, Indians whooping and hollering, wearing war paint, brandishing spears decorated with feathers.  Grandma would immediately open the front door and both she and Grandpa would sit on chairs in full view, the oil lanterns turned up full light.  The Indians would leap off their pinto ponies, race into the cabin and threaten them with spears in their faces and necks.  The braves would look around the cabin, knocking belongings around with their spears, then exit to the barn and pigpen.  They would bring a pig from the pigpen, close to the front door, gut the pig and eat the intestines in full view of Gerard and Millie.

     Grandma and Grandpa never moved a muscle, and the Indians would leave.

     Gerard and Millie could grow enough food on the homestead, but still they needed cash to buy seed and cloth for clothing Millie made.  Gerard took a job driving a stagecoach from Belfield to Glendive, Montana.  When there weren't enough stagecoaches, he drove twenty-mule teams.  Eleven children were born to Gerard and Millie Teppier on that homestead.  My mother was one of them.

     One of the eleven children, a girl of four-years-old, was not sick or ill, but was weakening every day.  One night, while Grandma was rocking her, singing French lullabies in her hushed voice, her daughter, pointed across the cabin, and in French said, "Look, Mama, there's Jesus.  There's Jesus!"  She died in Grandma's arms, a peaceful smile on her face.  Gerard and Millie buried her near the cabin.

     Grandma loved to tell me the story of the church they built in the small French-Canadian village where they grew up, fell in love, and married.

     Shortly after their autumn wedding, there was a harvest celebration in the center of the village.  A traveling priest was saying Mass in front of a crude outdoor altar.  It was a clear, sunny, autumn day when suddenly a thick mist began to form above the altar.  In moments, within the mist, the Virgin Mary appeared and spoke to the villagers.

     The Virgin Mary asked the villagers to build a church on the place where she appeared.

     The only place to get the logs for the church was from the forest across the lake.  The only way to get the logs across the lake was during the winter when the lake was frozen hard.  They would use my Grandfather's horses to pull the logs across the frozen lake.

     Winter was late coming and when it did it came full force.  There was a heavy blizzard for five days and four nights.  When the blizzard stopped, the lake was frozen solid.  The men immediately began crossing the lake, cutting the forest and hauling the logs back across the lake.  Day after day, week after week, they worked.  Everyone worked on either building the church or cutting and trimming the trees as logs for the church.

     Winter gone, the spring thaw began on the far edges of the lake.  Miraculously, a narrow strip of ice, wide enough and strong enough to hold the team of horses, the logs and the men guiding them, held fast to opposite shores of the lake.  Every night, the villagers prayed to be able to finish the church.  Finally, the last logs were towed across the remaining strip of ice on the lake to the village side, the last logs to be used for the roof and the steeple.

     As the last logs came ashore, followed by the men, there was a loud cheer from the villagers gathered at the lakeshore.  A giant thunderous explosion interrupted the cheer as the middle of the narrow ice strip exploded in the center, then was swallowed by the water of the lake.  The ice pulled away from the shore, crackling and hissing, slipping below the water.  The church was completed for first Mass on Easter Sunday.

     So Grandma and Grandpa had instilled in me the belief in miracles.  They had seen and heard the Virgin Mary.  Their dying daughter had seen Jesus.  So why didn't God or the Virgin Mary or Jesus hear my prayers?