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For anyone who didn't know, and to get it off of my chest, so to speak, since I personally came to terms with what happened years ago, or so I believe, I will now detail my memories of watching my father physically abuse my mother. I won't even go into what he used to do to us kids with his belt, which, by some accounts, could be considered legal in a twisted sort of way, and therefore only requires mentioning in the face of the other atrocities.
My earliest memories are not very clear, so I won't try to elaborate on them too much. It may be a combination of things disjointedly connected together in my head, possibly related, but maybe not. I recall it involved a dispute between my mother and father in which one of them jumped in the car and sped off down the street, with the other in pursuit, leaving the kids alone. As we ran around trying to figure out what was going on, the cat was let out of the house while the dog was unrestrained in the back yard, and the cat was mauled to death. Again, the details aren't clear, but those events did occur, and, as I recall, were associated with altercations.
The next thing I clearly remember was on a nice summer day, and it must have been on the weekend because we were all home, and everyone was doing their own thing. I was out in the yard when I heard the commotion, but my father had somehow shooed any kids in the house out, and then locked the doors. We heard our mother screaming for him to leave her alone, only to be replace by eerie silence, and then later sobbing, and more pleading, and more silence. I ran around frantic trying every door to get into the house. I tried to keep the other kids calmed, as much as you could in a situation like this, and do something.
I remembered that I could stand on the bricks in the wall of the front of the house, because of the way they were staggered or something, and look into the window. I had tried this before successfully, as a technical challenge, so I ran up there and started scaling the wall. When I could see inside, she was lying on the floor and he was straddling her chest, using his knees to pin her arms down so she was completely restrained. His hands were around her throat, and he would throttle her until she stopped screaming, and then let her catch her breath again. Over and over. I stopped watching. The other kids were asking me what was going on, and I didn't know what to tell them, so I told them the truth. I think Caren climbed up to see also. Finally it was over and we just went back to what we were doing.
The next instance occurred at night, while the kids were sleeping. After we went to bed, they may have stayed up talking, or not, I don't know. I woke up once, at least, and Dale and I talked about the commotion, but decided to just keep the bedroom door closed and hope it went away. But at some point, Caren came into the boy's bedroom and woke Dale and me up, and told us that dad was trying to kill mom, or something. I didn't want to get out of bed, so I was trying to tell her to just go back to sleep, but she insisted that I come down to the other room and see for myself what was going on.
When I got into the hallway, the lights were on in the other room and the girls were all crying. I could hear my mother sobbing, and my dad was saying something to the girls. I walked into the room and he had her pinned down again, with all the throttling, etc. He was asking the girls to go get a knife out of the kitchen so he could cut her throat. That's where Caren was going when she stopped by our room and woke us up. Of course, she didn't want to do it; hence, she woke the boy's up instead. I had all the kids leave the room and get as far away from the situation as possible. We went back to the living room to regroup and try to calm all the kids down. Eventually he let her up and went to his room, and my mother took care of us to get the kids back to bed.
The last time my father touched my mother, to my knowledge, was the day we left the house because of his abuses. I really don't know what caused it all to happen, but I remember my dad sitting in his chair watching TV and drinking a beer. He was not a big drinker, but he would occasionally have a beer while watching Wide World of Sports on the weekend, or something like that. It's only pertinent because, after the incident I'm about to describe, he went right back to that chair and smugly and defiantly sat back down and had a beer. That was the last image of him that I had from that day, as I was helping my mother file all of the kids out of the house, with toothbrushes and whatever we could quickly grab to take with us as we left to go to my Aunt Helen's house.
So, anyway, somehow they started fighting again, who knows. The result was the same. My mother was pinned down on the ground while he choked her to near unconsciousness repeatedly. For some reason, they ended up in the boy's bedroom on the floor. We usually tried to ignore stuff like this, and then pretend like it didn't happen. But for some reason, I got directly involved. Maybe I was in my room already, or I walked by and witnessed what was going on, I don't know. I remember saying something to Dale about having had enough of this crap, and that we should attempt to stop him, and then I just jumped him and started pounding him with my fists.
I was eleven or twelve at the time, and Dale was a year behind me, so we didn't comprise much of an attack. My dad would grab us and throw us off of him, or just try to push us aside. We were being slammed into the walls, and the floor, and the bunk bed, and then we would get back up and start pounding away again. It couldn't have lasted more than a few minutes, although it seemed longer than that, with the adrenaline going and all. He finally gave up and got off of her and left the room. Dale and me just looked at each other and helped our mother up off the floor. Our knuckles were bloody and we were scratched and bruised, but at least we had stopped it. We then collected everyone, as I previously indicated, and left the house. I never looked up to my father again after that.
These are only the instances that I remember, I'm sure there were more that we just ignored. Since Caren and me were the oldest, I suppose we remembered more. I don't know what the younger kids remember. I apologize to anyone who read this and is now regretting it. I wish I didn't have to bring any of it up, but with some new situations occurring around me, not the least of which is meeting up with some old friends online, and the fact that Bob, as I now call him, is asking me to be his friend on Facebook, I felt that I needed to let everyone know what happened, and set the record straight. Plus, now I'll be able to reject his friend request without having other people not understand why. I've
talked about these events many times before, but not to the people I knew
prior to leaving Detroit. My apologies.
Please, if you can't get along, leave, don't fight. Thank you.
Tim Allen Herman
April 4, 2012
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