July 4, 2014
Holidays for survivors can be and usually are very hard. We are no different. Yesterday, having been July 4, was a very teary and difficult day for my internal world and especially for Molly, the 9 year old. Her story is horrific, covers many facets of life, doesn’t begin at 9 years old, and encompasses her own parts – four parts, all named Molly. As I travel this journey, I learn so much about my internal self, the girls who took over for me when I couldn’t handle it. Molly never had negative issues with bunnies; hence, I’m now understanding why she loves them and also am understanding why I have 5 of them for her.
The numbness and pain I’ve felt for so many years is now finally being explained and let out. I know why now. The numbness encompasses the first 43 years of my life. The pain encompasses my whole life; however, now the journey toward wholeness and freedom continues. Here is Molly’s Story.
Rock Climbing
Many July 4th’s our family would go to Bar Harbor Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, ME near Bucksport where I was raised. Each time we did that, Ron would take me mountain or rock climbing. We’ve already talked about it in one of the girl’s stories – Kelsey. After our appendix surgery in 1979, we spent July 4th at Bar Harbor and Ron took us Rock Climbing where Kelsey endured. So many of us endured. Because Kelsey had endured such horrific abuse and had been created after our return from CA, she took that 1979 July 4th for Molly.
Trips to Penobscott
Since Ron’s mother was still alive, he would go see her taking me along – alone. His mother hated me as I was not HER granddaughter. Why did he not take his OWN children? I dreaded each trip knowing what would take place on the way there or way back. He had his favorite spots off the highway…. It was just like the trips to Bar Harbor. I hated these trips yet loved the other facets of the Bar Harbor ones. It was a Catch 22 in a sense because I was “paying” for the rest of the family’s fun time and my own privilege to swim in the ocean. I loved the water. What is a child supposed to do?
Molly’s Story Begins
Molly after the hair cut.
From about 7 years old to 9 years old, I have very few memories of what life was. This is probably due to Molly keeping them all because of the horror she is about to finally share. It was a time of “blackout” for me, a time of just existing; yet, a lot happened during that time. She’s finally ready to tell me and I write to share her story; thus, she begins around age 7. Little Sherry also is 7 and it seems that both of them are involved here. Little Sherry is a spokesperson for others too such as Sally, Sarah, & Jane as we discovered last summer.
When Molly came forward in December 2013, she came forward as part of a group of 4. We had Molly, Maria, Kelli, and Mandie. We’ve shared Mandie’s story.
Molly would not tell me much about her story and only showed me a picture; a picture of a bedroom with her in the bed beside Ron and panties on the floor. I knew instinctively what that meant but just wasn’t ready to share it with the world nor was Molly ready to tell me the rest. It’s been a little over 6 months now and she’s learned she can trust me and hubby. Like the other girls, she calls hubby Mr. David but unlike the other girls, she calls me “Mommy.” Also, 6 months is about the amount of time between their first appearances and them being able to tell their stories, as we have found.
About Molly
Molly hates red, loves projects, and survived hunger and cold as well as much, much more. Molly was expected to do so much. By the time we were 7 years old, Big Sherry knew how to do all the laundry in the house, dust, sweep and mop floors, make beds, do dishes after meals, and anything else that encompassed keeping a house clean. Molly took this on and did it. The world didn’t see Molly doing it, though. Now, today, Molly does projects and hates housework but will help me with it. During the past week, I have completed so many projects. I realized last night that it was Molly running from the pains of the past, running from the memories – or at least trying. She can’t.
Our Quilt
While we weren’t to be caught crying, we did cry an awfully lot into the quilt that our Great Grandma Stewart made for us when we were 6 years old. We still have that blanket in tatters. If mother was gone, we were crying. If we were outside during the summer, we had our blanket and we were crying. All we could do was cry and hope not to get caught. It was during this “blackout” period that the other Molly’s within Molly were created. One to handle the starving and cold, one to handle the slavery in housework, one to handle the additional horrors of abuse other than the bedroom with panties, and one to handle the trips to Penobscott and Bar Harbor.
Additional Horrors – Another Molly
Molly reminded me about the holes in walls and tells me these are just some of the additional horrors she endured. Holes in my bedroom wall which was on the other side of the attic, the bathroom ceiling, the wall on the other side of the dining room, and the key hole in my bedroom door were all the places he could watch me fairly unnoticed. I began to realize and while I’d cover them with pictures, fill them with toothpaste, or any other thing I could do get away, he would just poke knew ones. I’d dress in my unfinished closet with no light – but he still saw. There was no place to hide that he could not see me. To this day, I can’t stand holes. I can’t handle the key hole in the bathroom door unless it has tape over it.
Ron loved wood working. He built Sherry a beautiful toy box with a seat bench on it and her name on it using pretty nails. He did his wood working in the basement. Other horrors happened in this basement. He would often expose himself to us when he was down in the basement and we were doing laundry. Often he would make us go down into the basement for his own purposes and it wasn’t laundry or to learn wood working. About half the basement was full of his wood working tools and things. The other half had a root cellar in half of it and then the laundry area. It was cold and damp in the basement.
Slavery
She was a slave in many senses of the word and with so little to eat. Being in the 25th %ile of girls her age in weight, Big Sherry was way too thin. At 7 years old she only weighed 47 pounds and the baby book gives no more weights until age 11 at which time it states that she only weighed 71 pounds for her tiny frame. It also states that this was underweight.
Starvation & Cold
Being at least 4 years older than my younger sister and 5 years older than my younger brother, I should have had more to eat; however, I only received the same portions. My mother believed in equal portions “to be fair” and no seconds were allowed on anything except maybe the vegetable and this usually consisted of corn, peas, green beans, or carrots. If we were hungry, we might get an apple during the day. We ate very little. The neighbors tried to help by giving us ice cream or doughnut holes – they knew what was up and specifically went the “extra mile” to be an aide to us.
Often I went to bed without my dinner if I had been bad or gotten into trouble. As I got older I was grounded – she must have been called on the carpet for sending me to bed without my dinner because the older girls didn’t experience this punishment that I can remember. I, Molly, did….. When the older girls got grounded though, they had to do what the military calls a “White Glove” on the house which was a lot of work. Mother would sit eating Ruffles potato chips and watch them work. She did that to us too when we did the regular housework.
It was never warm enough. Keeping the thermostat, in Maine in the winter, at 65* and with our frail and tiny body already compromised, we were always cold. If I spoke of being cold I was told to put on a sweater. Thankfully at that time, we hadn’t started wearing those thin dresses all the time yet. That was to come later. I remember at night sleeping under layers and layers of blankets. Staying warm was so hard.
As a kindergartener, one of the lunch room ladies who was also the doughnut hole lady, used to give me extra peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at school until she made the grave mistake of telling my mother. In second grade in the Jewett School, we would get breakfast and lunch “free” and tell the lunch room we forgot our ticket – just to get something to eat. We got into trouble. One time that early spring we fell into a swampy place behind a lady’s house, lost our Brownie dues, and got muddy on the way to school. She rescued me, cleaned me up, and I tried to tell her what was happening at home. So many times, we tried to tell but not tell all… and the people – no one could help. No one could get us away. No one.
Part of Kelsey’s story – the bedroom – Molly was the first to endure. Molly tried to leave a hint – the panties on the floor. Molly also cut our hair when we couldn’t brush it – oh so long it was. Mother wouldn’t brush it for us and told us that if we wanted long hair it was up to us to take care of it. One day we decided we’d had enough and between Molly and Crystal, we cut it. We wanted long hair but we couldn’t care for it. We got into so much trouble when she discovered what we’d done.
52 Elm Street – The Bedroom – to the right of the door.
The Bedroom Story
The bedroom story is so hard to tell. Mother and Ron were part of Amway and so went to those meetings all the time and the functions if they could. They’d secure a babysitter for us but when one wasn’t available, Ron would stay home with us. This one time, and many future times to come, was an extended meeting and that’s the night the bedroom of theirs became a place of horror for us. We remember exactly where the bed was, where pictures were on the wall on the side he had me on – a large picture of the Shepherd, Jesus and the sheep – and where the dressers were. I was trapped. I cannot sleep on that side of the bed if I am closed in. He was stronger than I.
That night, lotion turned into horror for me and red became anathema. This is the hardest part of the story for Molly to tell. Molly can’t write it so Sherry has to interpret and write it for us because we don’t have the words. Sherry went away that night while I, Molly, took the abusive racking her body endured by that monster. That nasty thing that raped her body and penetrated it causing such pain. Pain she’d never endured such pain before, pain that the body never forgets. Pain that left a little girl paralyzed and immobilized not only in fear but physically. He made us get up and wash. We slept in our own bed and cried ourselves to sleep. Living in fear and being watched at all times, never to tell a soul, threatened with death should anyone ever learn of “the secret.”
Children Then & Now
During the 1970’s and 1980’s there wasn’t the help for children there is today in the 2000’s and when children are leaving hints – people take notice. If even a smidgen of what I endured had happened now, the Child Protective Services (CPS) would be all over it and my mother’s stories would not have been allowed to pass for truth. Even in school – the lunch ladies would have to report and keep things in my school file today. If I’d gone to the school nurse, today – the nurse would have been a mandatory reporter. What I’m saying is that today, I’d have gotten the help I and others tried to get for me and couldn’t.
My Life Today
Now at 47 years old and 36 of us inside, we are working on that healing journey. It’s difficult, painful, and like peeling the layers of an onion, it smarts and hurts. There are so many tears still to come and many more therapy sessions to be had; however, one day I can be free of this pain and the memories, while they’ll never be gone, they can be neutralized so I may look at them from a different perspective and hopefully so they won’t hurt and haunt me any longer. Hopefully I will be one day free from the bondage and be Emancipated.
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