School Was My Personality
Trigger warning: child abuse
As I have been gathering all of my notes and photos, I have been pondering where to even begin this story. I think part my inability to piece things together stems from how I experienced living a lie for 19 years but not knowing in real time, then I found out something huge and that put everything in a whole new light. And as I’ve had time and distance, I have been able to analyze how things happened. It’s like I lived two childhoods, the lie and then again through the lens of (some of the) truth. Do I start with the day that unraveled everything? It occurred to me that all of the stories I’ve listened to on various podcasts such as Something Was Wrong, Family Secrets, This is Actually Happening, etc. they pretty much always start out with a bit about themselves, rather than hitting the listener over the head with a dramatic event.
So that’s what I’m going to do — introduce myself and my family. I think first I’ll start with me and how I fulfilled my grandmother’s needs through my performance in school and work.
Me? Oh, it would be so easy to say “I had an idyllic childhood with my parents, brothers and/or sisters, and a dog and then this tragic thing happened out of nowhere!” but that’s not how it happened. It was more like a 19 year long train wreck in slow-motion without my even realizing it. For the first few years, I thought nothing of my living situation. I wasn’t really allowed to have friends over or to go over to a friend’s house, so I didn’t really know what normal was. All I knew and could remember was that I lived with my grandmother and step-grandfather in a 3 bedroom house on a quiet dead-end street.
They were married when I was 2 years old and Bob was all I knew as a grandfather. He was a long-haul truck driver and would be gone for days at a time so it would be just me and my grandmother until he came home.
When I was 4 I went to a nearby preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, from 9:00–12:00 or so, just long enough to play with other kids and have our snack of Oreos and juice. In my foggy memories there were three teachers, 2 women and a man and we were all in the one room together. My grandmother would pick me up in her blue Chevrolet and I remember eating sour cream and onion chips on the way home once. I remember preschool graduation and her being mad that I was in the counting group and not the group that recited the ABCs. I remember the playground and the snacks we had after the graduation, but my cousin went to the same school a couple years after me so it feels more likely that I’m remembering his graduation in place of my own.
Then I went to the neighborhood elementary school. I was shy and didn’t make friends easily. I did well enough in school and was pretty invisible. I didn’t get in trouble, nor was I outspoken in class. I remember bits and pieces of kindergarten, like how one day my grandmother brought little toys for everyone in the class, in hopes that it would help me make friends. There were tubs of Hot Wheels cars for the boys and brightly colored plastic coil bracelets for the girls. My grandmother was getting to a point that she needed to find a job and my kindergarten teacher was the one to show her the ropes on how to get hired within the school system. When I was in first grade, she got a preschool teacher assistant job at a different school and I did not adjust to it very well. But like everything else, it just was, and I had to deal with it.
I tried so hard to make my grandmother like me. I was quiet. I would use her favorite colors when we drew pictures in class. Every time there was the “who is your hero?” writing assignment, I would write about her. I even got the same haircut she had when I was around 7 years old. Think about the types of haircuts 50 year old women had in the 1980s. Just for your mental picture, it was short and permed and did I mention short? I knew to leave her alone when she was on the phone for hours at a time. I tagged along wherever she went and she’d tell people that I was her “copilot” while we ran errands. As long as I made good grades and she could brag, and let people believe it was because of something she was doing right. I thought if she could see herself in me and if I was compliant enough that I’d remain on her good side. If I could just be self-sufficient and quiet enough and not bother her or her husband…
But I was a kid and I wanted things, like kids tend to do. One day I got a Garfield reflector out of a cereal box that went on my bicycle tire. I must have been maybe 6 or 7 years old. I couldn’t attach it myself and I asked my step-grandfather, who was just home from a trip, one too many times to help me. She took me into the bathroom and beat me with a belt for bothering him. I can’t remember if I peed on the floor or if I begged her to stop because I needed to use the toilet, but she did finally stop. That’s the last time I remember a physical beating and it was all psychological and emotional abuse after that.
I remember my grandmother dropping me off at my aunt’s super early in the mornings and my aunt would take us to school and then pick us up again in the afternoon. Once my grandmother’s day ended, she would pick me up from my aunt’s house and then we’d go back to her school so she could work (and socialize) until well after dark. Often, my aunt would report back to my grandmother anything I did that she didn’t like. I specifically recall getting in trouble for eating too many of their potato chips. I’m sure my aunt reported my many real and perceived behavior issues, but my eating too much food is the most prominent memory I have of their phone calls after we got home. Now I’m sure my cousin and I weren’t perfect little angels, but it was hard to get home from school and be silent while my aunt was napping. We were hungry and had just spent the whole day being quiet in school.
When we weren’t spending the evenings at her preschool, she was helping care for a family friend who had cancer. I only knew him as Mr. C. I see him now in photos and wonder who he really was and what that relationship meant. I remember doing my homework for first or second grade on his living room floor. Writing words on that paper with the red and blue lines, hoping I was getting it neat enough. (I wasn’t. My messy handwriting was always noted on my report cards.) I remember we were there when he died and the first responders arriving.
In 4th grade, I guess it was, they had us take a test to determine if we could be in the Academically Gifted class in 5th grade. I missed it by a point, maybe 2, and my grandmother really wanted me in that class, so she made them make me take the test again until I got in the class. Unfortunately being in 5th grade AG just meant going to a trailer on Friday mornings, which meant I was missing regular instruction. We got extra homework, usually in the form of crossword puzzles or other worksheets that I couldn’t complete. I didn’t have help, she didn’t have time to take me to the library, and all we had at home was a set of 20 year old encyclopedias. Those worksheets always ended in tears because I was never able to complete them.
I was sick a lot in elementary school. In kindergarten I got sent home with pink eye. I had all the stomach bugs and bronchitis more times than I can count. I would go to school sick since my being in school allowed my grandmother to work and she hated missing any days (perfect attendance was a bragging point), then we’d go to urgent care at night. She would lie each time when they asked if she was my legal guardian. I had no legal guardian and I think that, and the cost, was a major reason I didn’t get medical care until things got bad. After hours of waiting there, I’d be upset because it was preventing me from doing the homework needed to keep my grades up. I was sick but also worried about the one thing that made me valuable to my grandmother.
In 6th grade, I went to a school a bit farther away and rode the bus for the first time. She didn’t have time to take me to school before she went to her teacher assistant job. It was also the first year that I had different classes with different teachers and had to move between classrooms. I didn’t handle the changes very well, plus I was sick a lot, and my grades started slipping. Her bragging rights about what a good student I was disappeared and we started butting heads.
Here’s a little side story that I have told absolutely no one, for no particular reason. Do you want to know why I left my middle school after 6th grade? I had accidentally ripped 2 pages in my science book and hastily taped them back together before my grandmother could get home from work or my step-grandfather notice what I’d done. I was so terrified of getting in trouble if the teacher noticed and told my grandmother that I changed schools! (The teacher never noticed, as far as I know, but I was terrified the day we came to that lesson and then again at the end of the year when we were called up to turn in our books.)
So because of the torn pages I applied to a magnet school and was accepted. I did so well in 7th grade and was in her favor again. I got good grades and had some school friends. My new friend in class taught me how to write neater so it was finally no longer an issue. Then 8th grade was a bit of a slide because I struggled with math, which became an even bigger issue in high school.
Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like had I not applied or been accepted to the magnet school. Two torn pages and my fear of my grandmother finding out changed the trajectory of my life.
By 9th grade, math was next to impossible for me and I made my first C on my report card and my grandmother went ballistic, nearly kicking me out of the house. My mother came over, told me to make myself a sandwich while she talked my grandmother down. My mother calmed her down and I was able to stay, though I had hoped to finally move in with my mother. That same quarter I made a good friend in marching band but my grandmother had some disagreement with her mother and we weren’t allowed to be friends anymore. I wrote poetry in English class that got me called into the guidance counselor’s office. It was a bad year.
However bad 9th grade was, 10th was worse. In 10th grade, and I don’t remember the circumstances, but I think I was still seeing the guidance counselor and one day I guess I said something alarming enough about suicide (not sure if I said it verbally or in a writing assignment) that they called my grandmother at her job. I begged the counselor through tears to not call my grandmother because I knew it would make things that much worse. I knew I had really done it because her job and reputation was sacred and she was not to be disturbed, especially not for anything as mortifying as this. I was sick with dread for the rest of the day because I knew I was in for it. When she picked me up at school after work, she told me just how badly I’d fucked up, which, looking back, was so many levels of wrong. The secretary had called her on the intercom to take the call and my grandmother was more mortified that people knew things weren’t perfect than she was about my crumbling mental health.
I knew I couldn’t spend another summer in that house so after 10th grade I got my first job as a cashier in a grocery store called Harris Teeter. I worked literally every minute I could. I knew I could clock in 10 minutes before my shift started and that’s what I did. I was the one they would call when someone called in sick or they had miscalculated staffing for the day. I was the one they called when the weather was bad. I worked all the holidays. My grandmother was so proud of my work ethic! Unfortunately my aunt also worked at this store and reported back to my grandmother if my till was even the slightest bit short. I’m sure my aunt reported more, but I definitely heard about my till shortages. My aunt was also the person who made the schedule and one year she scheduled me to work when the family had their holiday get-together. My grandmother started coming in to the store to do her shopping but also to check up on me and since she couldn’t come through my line, she would come through a cashier in front of me so she could watch me work. When I’d get home she would criticize me for not smiling enough, among any other shortcomings she found in me at my job.
I kept that job, despite everything, because it gave me freedom, of sorts, and because I was afraid of what my grandmother would say or do if I quit. I worked every weekend and most evenings after school until the middle of my senior year. It gave me the ability to be out of the house and away from her, even though it meant dealing with crappy customers and not getting much sleep. I was doing okay in school even though I’d regularly fall asleep in classes. I learned to keep things to myself so there would be no more calls to my grandmother’s work. Eventually, I couldn’t keep up the work schedule and my grandmother’s hovering over my cashier job and so I quit. I didn’t discuss it with her or anyone, just turned in my 2 week notice. My aunt, of expected, reported it to my grandmother and she, predictably, was upset. I think she thought I was going to cashier until I got promoted and made a career working at the store. I had plans to go to college and get the hell out from under her thumb. Fortunately my grades improved after I stopped working, so it was all okay and she could brag to her friends again.
I got accepted to the local university and counted the days until I moved into the dorm. That summer I spent working at CVS and packing my things because I knew I wasn’t coming back. I didn’t make good grades my freshman year in college because I again didn’t adjust well. Too much freedom, I guess. I got that warning letter that I was failing three of my classes and had to get it together in a hurry. I called my grandmother nearly every day and went home every weekend. Another aside — when I went home she did my laundry because at 18 years old I didn’t know how. I had never learned how to use the washing machine and she didn’t want me touching it for fear I would break it. It took me a whole semester to realize I could just not go back every weekend. I watched how the other kids used the laundry machines in the basement of the dorm and I just copied what they did. She didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much she could do, I guess. I started working at CVS again in the spring semester and into the summer.
After freshman year, I moved into an apartment close to the university. I remember my uncle helping me move and that my grandmother helped me with the rent. That summer I worked at CVS, then Applebees close to where I lived, then Harris Teeter, and finally I got a job working at a veterinary office. I was doing alright with my new roommates. I did a bit better in school and really enjoyed working in the kennel. I loved all the pets and got along well with my coworkers. Everything seemed to be finally falling into place. The vet was having a Halloween party potluck and I wanted to make some desserts so I told my grandmother I was coming home to get the recipes from their recipe book. I wanted to make these peanut butter pinwheel candies and butterscotch haystacks. I had no idea just how wrong that one trip back home could go.
That was my first semester of my sophomore year and between learning some of the truth and getting mono, that semester was a wash. I didn’t fail any classes, but I missed so many classes that I didn’t make good grades. I was able to begin pulling myself together, yet again, in the spring semester. I met my now husband, moved out of the apartment, and started doing a lot better in school. By the time I graduated, I had pulled my GPA enough to graduate with honors and applied to graduate school. My grandmother was so proud! Once I finished my Master’s degree, I was accepted into a Ph. D. program and my grandmother was over the moon. That was like the penultimate in bragging rights for her. She bought me dress clothes for the teaching job I would have while I got my doctorate degree. I remember her bragging about me to the department store cashier that day.
We moved across the state and then… I just didn’t do it. I backed out of the Ph.D. program and we moved back to Charlotte. I have no idea what she told her friends about that after she’d probably bragged about how HER grandkid was going to get a doctorate.
I think growing up in an environment where I was valued based on my accomplishments in school (and later on, work) affected how I’m trying to raise my kids. We chose to homeschool and try to resist the focus on grades in their online classes. I don’t think kids should make school their whole personality (like I did) and have it affect their worth as humans. I try to navigate a healthy distance so they can learn without me interfering. I don’t meddle in their friendships, getting in fights with their friend’s mom and banning them from being friends. I don’t use their badges (the school’s measure of accomplishment) as bragging rights or a measure of their worth. I think kids should have a childhood and personality that isn’t just school and grades.