Being a Bastard
Without Prejudice
He didn't need to be and yet he was, he so was and we had to deal with it everyday. He acted like he hated us, kept lists of our misdemeanours, a 3 page list. number one on the list was that we ate his chocolate and it progressed from there. He made is feel like it was our fault, somehow and ever after when Lauren died, he talked of us in the worst way. Only He was brilliant, only he was perfect, only he was slim or good looking and he was none of those things, not any more anyway.
He had started out not being so very powerful. Money changed him, it gave him a feeling of omnipotent power and he thought it somehow made him a Man. He thought money could buy him status and class, make people respect him, make us respect him, but we couldn't and never would. He wanted his parents respect more than anything, their love and acceptance and it was not to be and that enraged him even further.
He would lose a court case and storm into the house and decide he would hang himself from the washing line, but never did. He would have things go wrong at work and would rant about it for hours. We learned to ignore him in the end as all his needs were pressing. We used to call it the Bob H, circus. Every day was different, every day was like changing trains, this direction one day and the opposite direction another day.
We waited, the silent observers, waited for dark moods to end, tried to please him with thought and deed. By the time A was 12 she had taken her first OD of valium. He ignored her and kept drinking at the Pub. She was an anethama to him and he barely spoke or acknowledged her. She would try so hard to get him to like her. He ignored her, turned his head or kept it down when she tried to break his silence.
Once he did speak to her and spoke harshly and she was all of 13. I spoke up,
"Don't speak to her like she is a dog", I said.
He started on me and she cried. I told her to get out of the room and we went head to head. He could not see the damage he was doing her, not see that his idea of parenting was twisted and bizarre. It went in one ear and out the other. He acted like he despised her and at the moment I am sure he did and did for years.
He hit her so hard at 8 that she wet her pants and ever after she would if he threatened her. Once throwing her at the wall and she slid down a mess of snot, tears and blood. She was a little girl then wearing her new pretty dress. I stepped between her and him and invited him to hit me, but he didn't. She had welts on her legs from him hitting her with the power cord, the plastic and metal pronged end biting in to her childs flesh. And we kept it silent and she tried not to cry out in pain as he would hit her again if she did.
She was not "perfect" and he only wanted perfect.
He in his twisted way thought he alone was perfect and everyone else was not. I always remember a place called Tatura where we went on a visit to some friend of his, a drunk. he wanted 3 men to work for him and he tried to ingratiate himself to them by going to visit them on a farm. They all drank heavily and I took stock of the house. There were dead flies everywhere, they lined the windowsills and the carpet in a mass. I heard the woman of the house left the heavy drinking hubby shortly after and I had no reason as to question why, the devil was in the details as it always is.
We returned the next day to the house of horrors. We were staying in a Motel and the two little girls were frolicking outside and didn't come when they were called. He put them in the car and then turned around and hit them on the legs so savagely I cried out. They went to cry in pain and terror and he made them stop with the threat they would get another one if they cried and they remained silent their faces red, trying to hold back tears. All because we might be "late" for the drinking friends, who he wanted to impress.
He smashed their pet dog up against a brick wall head first, a bully with a long snout, who was getting out of the yard at home. The dumb animal supposed to learn somehow by the savage beating not to escape again. And we couldn't protest, couldn't speak up, as we would cop it if we did. He would pound the table and make the cups of tea overturn and smash things all the better to put us under his control.
We were scared beyond belief of him. I left him and he would have me followed, or cry and plead for me to come back, he would change he said, give me 3 months he would beg. he would throw money in the door and leave. he worked like a mad man and always told us he was doing it for us, but that was not true and never would be. he would give and then take it back, show us wads of money and we had to beg for a dollar.
He would never pick up his kids from anywhere that was my job as a wife and Mother. He began not speaking to me or addressing me except to the girls as "your Mother". And he set up the girls to despise me as some sort of weakling in comparison to him. He would talk of me or at me with hatred. He would tell me I was dumb, fat, ugly and talk of other women as desirable and attractive. He chased me around a car park with his car, I had our 5 year old in tow. He tried to run us both down as I had said I was going back to school at 32.
No one could help us, not the clerk of courts who I went to for a restraining order, not the police, no one could help nor wanted to. They saw only his charisma and lies and I was an ungrateful woman to not respect him or treat him well. I despaired then. I knew no one could rescue us from our situation and I slowly and steadily began to give up. I became the downtrodden wife, the weak one, the enabler in a sea of violence and threats. I was lost to myself and everything I believed in.
He would hit me if I dared to ask where he had been until 3am in the morning. Once punching me straight in the face like a man does to another man. And if I tried to get away he would hit me again, grab me by the hair and push my face into the pillow and I would scream for him to let go, let me breathe, panicked beyond all measure. And the face he showed to the world was that of good Dad and good Husband, but he was a bastard. The violence would build in him every three months and you knew when it was coming and try as hard as you could to defuse it.
To be continued
He didn't need to be and yet he was, he so was and we had to deal with it everyday. He acted like he hated us, kept lists of our misdemeanours, a 3 page list. number one on the list was that we ate his chocolate and it progressed from there. He made is feel like it was our fault, somehow and ever after when Lauren died, he talked of us in the worst way. Only He was brilliant, only he was perfect, only he was slim or good looking and he was none of those things, not any more anyway.
He had started out not being so very powerful. Money changed him, it gave him a feeling of omnipotent power and he thought it somehow made him a Man. He thought money could buy him status and class, make people respect him, make us respect him, but we couldn't and never would. He wanted his parents respect more than anything, their love and acceptance and it was not to be and that enraged him even further.
He would lose a court case and storm into the house and decide he would hang himself from the washing line, but never did. He would have things go wrong at work and would rant about it for hours. We learned to ignore him in the end as all his needs were pressing. We used to call it the Bob H, circus. Every day was different, every day was like changing trains, this direction one day and the opposite direction another day.
We waited, the silent observers, waited for dark moods to end, tried to please him with thought and deed. By the time A was 12 she had taken her first OD of valium. He ignored her and kept drinking at the Pub. She was an anethama to him and he barely spoke or acknowledged her. She would try so hard to get him to like her. He ignored her, turned his head or kept it down when she tried to break his silence.
Once he did speak to her and spoke harshly and she was all of 13. I spoke up,
"Don't speak to her like she is a dog", I said.
He started on me and she cried. I told her to get out of the room and we went head to head. He could not see the damage he was doing her, not see that his idea of parenting was twisted and bizarre. It went in one ear and out the other. He acted like he despised her and at the moment I am sure he did and did for years.
He hit her so hard at 8 that she wet her pants and ever after she would if he threatened her. Once throwing her at the wall and she slid down a mess of snot, tears and blood. She was a little girl then wearing her new pretty dress. I stepped between her and him and invited him to hit me, but he didn't. She had welts on her legs from him hitting her with the power cord, the plastic and metal pronged end biting in to her childs flesh. And we kept it silent and she tried not to cry out in pain as he would hit her again if she did.
She was not "perfect" and he only wanted perfect.
He in his twisted way thought he alone was perfect and everyone else was not. I always remember a place called Tatura where we went on a visit to some friend of his, a drunk. he wanted 3 men to work for him and he tried to ingratiate himself to them by going to visit them on a farm. They all drank heavily and I took stock of the house. There were dead flies everywhere, they lined the windowsills and the carpet in a mass. I heard the woman of the house left the heavy drinking hubby shortly after and I had no reason as to question why, the devil was in the details as it always is.
We returned the next day to the house of horrors. We were staying in a Motel and the two little girls were frolicking outside and didn't come when they were called. He put them in the car and then turned around and hit them on the legs so savagely I cried out. They went to cry in pain and terror and he made them stop with the threat they would get another one if they cried and they remained silent their faces red, trying to hold back tears. All because we might be "late" for the drinking friends, who he wanted to impress.
He smashed their pet dog up against a brick wall head first, a bully with a long snout, who was getting out of the yard at home. The dumb animal supposed to learn somehow by the savage beating not to escape again. And we couldn't protest, couldn't speak up, as we would cop it if we did. He would pound the table and make the cups of tea overturn and smash things all the better to put us under his control.
We were scared beyond belief of him. I left him and he would have me followed, or cry and plead for me to come back, he would change he said, give me 3 months he would beg. he would throw money in the door and leave. he worked like a mad man and always told us he was doing it for us, but that was not true and never would be. he would give and then take it back, show us wads of money and we had to beg for a dollar.
He would never pick up his kids from anywhere that was my job as a wife and Mother. He began not speaking to me or addressing me except to the girls as "your Mother". And he set up the girls to despise me as some sort of weakling in comparison to him. He would talk of me or at me with hatred. He would tell me I was dumb, fat, ugly and talk of other women as desirable and attractive. He chased me around a car park with his car, I had our 5 year old in tow. He tried to run us both down as I had said I was going back to school at 32.
No one could help us, not the clerk of courts who I went to for a restraining order, not the police, no one could help nor wanted to. They saw only his charisma and lies and I was an ungrateful woman to not respect him or treat him well. I despaired then. I knew no one could rescue us from our situation and I slowly and steadily began to give up. I became the downtrodden wife, the weak one, the enabler in a sea of violence and threats. I was lost to myself and everything I believed in.
He would hit me if I dared to ask where he had been until 3am in the morning. Once punching me straight in the face like a man does to another man. And if I tried to get away he would hit me again, grab me by the hair and push my face into the pillow and I would scream for him to let go, let me breathe, panicked beyond all measure. And the face he showed to the world was that of good Dad and good Husband, but he was a bastard. The violence would build in him every three months and you knew when it was coming and try as hard as you could to defuse it.
To be continued
