Focusing on the prize...

Working, working, working to bring together all the elements of my first full-length book, in readiness for publication. These days, when I'm not at the computer, I'm at the easel, painting the art for the cover. Here's another excerpt...those who have suffered similar wounds may relate to my words, at least a little bit...

"My dad had threatened me, over and over, with death, abandonment, and all manner of excruciating agony if I told anyone. As if any of that could be worse than what he was doing to me. Daddy always told me that no one would believe me.

I always wondered what would really happen if I told? What would anyone do if I whispered of the daily and nightly horrors happening behind the closed doors of the house where I existed? What if I told my teachers? Or the preacher at the church we attended? Maybe the neighbors, the same ones who must have heard us screaming? Maybe I should have told my grandparents? How about my favorite aunt?

Oops, not her husband, though. Before I had turned nine, he had also revealed himself as the sexually perverted hyena he was. He gave me money, too, forcing it on me, actually, while he got what he was paying for. Mom always held out her hand for that money after my aunt and uncle had driven away. I always wished they had loaded up the parents in the car with them and taken them away forever, too.

Daddy never gave me money, only threats as he stole what he wanted.

Just after midnight out in the Aleutians, the phone line had bounced the call up to the nearest satellite, and then down to my parent's home in northern Indiana, where dawn was just breaking on Thanksgiving Day. Nick was on the phone in the kitchen, and had ordered me to use the one in the living room. I waited, shuddering with terror. Mom picked up on her end and war was declared. In short order, she had summoned my dad to get his sorry ass on the other phone in their house, and be quick about it. Or else.

An hour later, Nick hung up the handset in the kitchen, as I replaced mine in the living room. He came around the corner, into the dining room, held out his hand to me, and led me back to bed. Just before he drifted off to sleep, his arms around me, he kissed my forehead and told me to get some rest, that it was already Thanksgiving Day and our guests would be showing up for a turkey meal with all the trimmings in just a few hours.

It went without saying that I was expected to paste on a Kewpie doll smile, work my ass off preparing the meal, while caring for my not yet six-month-old daughter, and make Nick proud of his pretty little wife. By then, I had learned to recognize implicit orders, whether spoken, or not. Mentally, I was also expected to salute.

“I’m glad the son of a bitch finally confessed about what he did to you and your sisters,” Nick mumbled. “Now maybe you can put it behind you, once and for all. Let’s just let it go and move on, okay?”

“Why is it that suddenly you can accept the word of an admitted child rapist, when you had never before believed that I was telling the truth about that fucker?” I wept.

“Oh, Rush, just go to sleep, will you? I figured you were maybe making up some of that stuff, or exaggerating, you know? You can be overly dramatic at times.

“Besides, there’s been all those stories about false accusations. Everyone knows that lots of kids, and even grown women, lie about that kind of thing just to get attention. Or something. I don’t know. I’m tired, I’m going to sleep.” Letting go of me, my husband rolled over and faced the other way. A few minutes later, he was snoring.

I never hated him more than at that moment. I did as he ordered, though; I stuffed all that sewage as far down inside me as I could. Tacitly, I agreed to continue struggling to live while in denial, and to use whatever was at hand to numb my pain. It was the way of the world, and had ever been."

Copyright Rush Cole. All rights reserved.