Joy

It hit me today, August 30th 2009. Like a frieght train and so explosive you would have thought I had a heart attack. Luckily for me, I was at my son's school and it was almost sun-down. Me, Trace, Jessie and Ed the dog were the only people there. As I sat and watch the boys it made me smile. I thought to myself "what I wouldn't give to feel that kind of joy again". That's when the train crashed. I realized right then and there that I have never had that kind of joy. Ever. Sure, I have been excited and I have been pleased. But I can't honestly ever in my life remember feeling true and honest joy. Ever since I was a small child my heart has always been very heavy. I don't like to getting into pissing contests about whose life has been worse. So a lot of people don't know all of the things I have gone through. The pain that has been brought into my life by the very people sent to this world to protect me, is so immense that it is almost like a made up story. Most people in their life face one debilitating tragedy. I have lost count.

My very first memories from my childhood don't go any further back then 5 years old. I remember school and I remember the tree house in San Bernardino. I remember not being able to walk to school without my mom because some little boy had been cut up and thrown in the canal taht we had to walk over to get to our elementary school. I remember My dad getting beat up at a party. He apparently mentioned that someone's kid was a nice looking kid. He got the hell beat out of him and our car door got ripped off. I only remember this because he came into the room that my older brother Doug and I shared to hold us and tell us he loved us. I remember my Uncle Walter. He would visit from time to time and he always had this nasty stench to him. He had been in the army and always smelled like an old army cot. He collected Star Wars memorobillia. He babysat my brother and I from time to time. I always got to sleep in the same bed with my uncle. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that his dirty hands had been touching me from before I could even remember.

I fast forward to the ranch in Newberry Springs where we moved to in the middle of my kindergarten career. My grandpa Herb had been diagnosed with some sort of lung cancer and the doctor prescribed him fresher air than what he was getting at their home in Fontana. I only have two recollections of my grandpa. He picked me up from the bus one time. And my other memory is of him lying in bed in the house at Rancho Shalom in Newberry Springs. He was connected to oxygen and looked like a skeleton. I know that I loved him. I know I did. But I watched him put his hand up my mom's shirt. She swatted his hand and laughed it off. I always thought it was normal. Because after all, its what uncle Walter would do to me.

When my Grandpa passed away I was 6. The family divided then and everyone was upset that Grandpa had died in a convelescent home rather than dying in peace at home. Everyone was angry at my grandma. From what I remember. We moved out off Harvard Rd close to where my uncle Walter lived. The house was huge and the rooms were wonderful. My mom was young and beautiful and had just given birth to my little brother Greg. She was sweet to us. She used to play the radio all day long and even watched CMT before it went to cable. I remember Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Ronnie Milsap and George Jones. They all make me think of my mom and our life at that time. We had barbecues and puppies and kites. Clean clothes, food on the table and a set of parents that were truly in love with each other.

We moved out to a place in Newberry Springs to be a Care Taker for an old man named Dale Tingle. This was when I remember my dad always being at the bar in Newberry. A place where as a child my brothers and I played under the table while my dad got wasted. I remember my dad being so drunk that he beat us with rubber hoses for smiling wrong. He was a very angry man when he was drunk. The best guy in the world when he was sober. One night while I was showering in the bathroom of the travel trailer that we lived in, I lathered myself up with ivory sopa while my mom was putting stuff away in the cabinet beside me. When my dad came stumbling through the door I said "look dad, I made it look like your shaving cream". He promptly ripped me out of the shower and beat the hell out of me. He then got in the car and drove away. He left us and we were so worried about him. He went to his Brother Matt's house in Fontana. He sobered up and never touched alcohol again. He came back to us and we lived happily again for a little while.

My Grandma had somehow met his amazing old lady that lived all alone out in the middle of nowhere in an oasis that she and her husband had created out past what was Whiting Brother's at the time. The woman was loaded but you could tell that her wealth came from the sweat of her and her husbands brow. She had a house that they made out of adobe bricks. A split level home with a music room. In the music room was a giant gold harp, a piano and a violin. It was such a warm and beautiful place to be. Outside she had paved trails that led like a maze through the mesquite bushes. I could go on and on about how amazing this place was. It was just what we needed. She paid very well and gave us a 2 bedroom 1 bath trailer to live in. All my parents had to do was make sure she was ok and do landscaping. It wasn't very long after that our world fell apart. The money was so nice to have that the drugs came easy. Of course first it was pot. Then they started doing lines of cocaine on the table in the kitchen. Parties would rage all night. My uncle walter came and stayed in a travel trailer. He gave the best gifts so it seemed a fair trade for me in my childish mind. I kept his secret he bought me a cabbage patch doll. Give me a break I was 7. What the hell did I know. No one else seemed to notice and I didn't even know it was wrong. Child molesting was rarely ever talked about way back then. When Mrs. Orcutt passed away her son Wren let us stay at the property as caretaker's. What a big mistake. My parents by then were into speed. The fastest way to hell. They sold everything we had, and everything she had. Her harp. I remember. That was big deal. How awful. It probably went for 20 bucks back then. Into the hands of some crackhead desert rat. I remember my parents got taxes back that year. They bought my brothers and I bicycles. What a huge treat. 2 days later they took them and sold them. No apologies. No holding their crying children. No feelings whatsoever. But hey, we had Walter. My little brother was so small. I can't remember but I believe he was still in diapers. I know he wasn't in school yet. My parents would stay up all night and sleep all day and we would miss the bus all the time because they would be too screwed up to get up and take us. One day the principal and the secretary made a visit. My brothers and I were way out playing in the dried up lake bed too far for my parent's to have known if we were faced with any danger. The principal found us and asked us where our parents were. Of course we showed them. When the secretary stepped into our living room I thought she was going to start crying. Our house was filthy. There were dishes on the tables, dirty clothes everywhere, papers and garbage throughout the house. I tried to wake up my mom and she yelled at me. Then the principal woke her up and she didn't even indicate any type of embarassment. She promised them that she would clean up and get us kids to school on time. It was short lived. My parents began fighting. Incessantly every single day. They would hide out in the bathroom. When friends would come over they would hide in the bedroom. When Walter would invite me to his trailer they were oblivious. So was I. When my parents finally got busted for stealing and selling all of Mrs. Orcutts belongings, we were taken in to state custody and sent to foster home. By the grace of God himself my Uncle Al and Aunt Lori stepped in. and we went to go stay with them. I was in 3rd grade at the time and it was the best year of my life. We had clean clothes and stories before bed. We had consequences to our actions. We had the authority in our lives that had been stolen from us by speed. We had love. Unconditionally and truly. They never made us feel bad that they had to take care of us. They accepted us and loved us. My parents were released from jail and moved back out to Dale Tingles property where they lived in an unfinished house that was constantly under construction. This is the first time that Walter didn't live with us or come to our house. Life was good again. For a while. My dad had began building me this beautiful doll house. He framed it out with mini 2x4's and was so careful about the whole project. He made my mom multiple jewelry boxes. An item that I would die to have right now. One day his drunk friend came stumbling through the porch area where my dollhouse was. He stepped right on it and kept walking. This man has no idea how that moment has effected me my whole life. It was like he stepped on my happy home and killed it. We moved out to the other side of Newberry to stay with my Grandma in the house down the hill from Lake Delores. My parents were doing better. Not 100% but definitely better. I spent 4th and 5th grade at Yermo elementary and we moved back to the other side of town right at the end of 5th grade.

We moved into the pink house on Mountain View road. About a quarter mile from where my Grandma lived and my aunt and uncle lived in the house in front of us. I was happy to live close to my grandma still but Walter had somehow made it back to her. I was 10 going on 11 and had seen movies about "touching" and telling our parents. I didn't have the courage to tell my parents what I felt I was letting him do. I was and have always been so ashamed that I let him do those things. I remember that he lived in a house off of National Trails Highway where there were tons of chicken coops. I remember him making my brothers sleep in the living room and him taking me into his bedroom. Making me lie down with him. It was the first time he had done more than fingers. I remember crying and him not stopping. I was probably 9 years old. What a mean and terrible monster. I remember the next night mouthing "help" to my brothers. They didn't do anything of course, they were children. It went on until I was twelve and started being "too busy" to be home enough for him to get near me. I was always at Somer's house and far away from my own. My parent's drug use got worse and worse. They couldn't stay out of jail. My dad couldn't keep a job and my mom was a welfare success story. She managed to work the system amost my entire childhood. Our house quickly turned into the same type of house that we had when we lived at the Orcutt Ranch. We were lucky to ever have clean clothes let alone clothes that were in style or without holes. We were never forced to bathe and half of the time we didn't have electricity or propane to bother with grooming needs. Shampoo was a joke. I was lucky enough to get to wash my hair with dish soap that my might have recieved in a government food box given out at the community center. I still didn't tell my parents about what Walter had done. I feared that my mom would deny it and my dad would believe it. Thus either tearing my parents apart or my dad going to jail for killing him.