Step-Mommy Dearest: True Story of Abuse and Fear at Home
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A woman that I have known since before I could remember. She was really good friends with my mom and dad throughout high school, so I already knew her before all of this happened in my life. Unfortunately, my mother was an alcoholic and a pill addict, which led to pretty bad neglect for several years when I was young. Which is a story for another day. After missing most of my third grade year, the Department of Child Services got involved, and my dad got custody of me.

He was dating stepmother at the time and at first, everything was fairly normal. She was like an older sister, a friend even. It wasn't too long before I noticed things started to change though. One day, when I was about 9 years old, I was sitting on the living room floor, playing with my back against the couch. Stepmother crossed the living room to go down the hallway and as she did, she seemed to shoulder check the doorway. As soon as she did this, she turned around and began yelling at me, accusing me of pushing her.

I stared at her dumbfounded because I hadn't moved from my spot on the floor. She continued yelling and accusing me as I tried to rationalize it in my head. Maybe I got up and didn't remember, but why would I push her? I really had no negative feelings towards her at this point, so it just didn't make any sense. But she was an adult and I was a child. Surely she knew what she was talking about. Stepmother was a taller, skinny woman with long, golden blonde hair.

Straightened through the length with those poofy 80 bangs up top. She typically wore high-waisted jeans and kept long pristine red nails. They would end up being a horrifying symbol to me into my teen years. Things only got worse as I got older. I would speak to my mom on occasion over the phone or by letter the first few years. But each time I did, stepmother would become more and more hostile towards me. Claiming that the contact that I had with my mother

was making me quote, "misbehave." But I was always an introverted kid. I loved reading and school and I was a bit of a nerd and hated getting into trouble. So this accusation didn't make sense to me even then. But what could I do about it before too long? I noticed that stepmother looked for any opportunity alone with me to treat me however she wanted. Stepmother quickly became extremely militant. Each morning she woke me up for school by bursting into my room

and aggressively jerking the covers from my body. Some mornings, even grabbing my feet, digging her nails in, and twisting on my toes. I was expected to follow a strict schedule on school mornings. 6.15am, out of bed. 6.15-6.25, get dressed for school. 6.25am, breakfast. And at this time, I was expected to stand in the exact center point of the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room.

ready to take my breakfast and sit in my spot at the table. 6.35am, done with breakfast. 6.35-6.45, finish getting ready for school. 6.45am, be sitting cross-legged in the center of the living room, waiting on everyone else to be ready. If I didn't follow the schedule down to the minute, punishment would be doled out. She would grab my hands upon taking my breakfast, twisting one or two fingers out of the socket, pulling me close to grit through her teeth at me,

with glaring hateful eyes. Sometimes she would step on my feet, grinding her heels into my bare skin, twisting and glaring hate unto me. On a few occasions, she even broke my wooden hairbrushes across my face, leaving bursted blood vessels and massive bruises. When the damage was too obvious to ignore, she would try to hide me for a day or so, gently waking me the next morning, acting as though I was sick and telling me that I was too ill to go to school, brushing my hair back and telling me to go back to sleep.

This treatment rolled over into my days after school and would evolve into other aggressive behaviors. She made sure to conceal any sign of mistreatment from my father, but still, some happened right under his nose. At the dinner table, she would dig her toes into my leg and scrape so hard that she would shave off chunks of skin from my shins with her toenails. Even at church, placing what looked like an affectionate hand on my back,

but would proceed to give me an extremely painful and deep pinch to my back, leaving huge bruises in their place that no one else would see. I was given an hour and a half after school each day to do my homework. After that time, I was expected to go to our playroom, where I was to entertain her daughter. Stepmother's daughter was between five and seven when things really started to get bad. I was expected to play what she wanted, when she wanted, and abide by any requests made. This was never explicitly said,

but understood and later learned the hard way. One day during the summer, while eating lunch with her daughter in the playroom, the daughter asked me to open her dessert. She had a kid's cuisine that she had merely taken all of two bites of. Stepmother would typically leave the plastic on her dessert as a system to encourage her to eat her meal first. Of course, when she asked me to open it, I asked her if she was done eating, passively addressing the fact that she had barely touched her food.

I was about 14 at the time and it seemed like a plausible thing to "big sister" her about, but when I didn't give her what she wanted, she got up in a huff to go tattle to her mother, as most 6 year olds do. Stepmother was immediately enraged and barreled down the hallway right in my direction. I don't even think I was out of view of her daughter when she grabbed me by the hair and began dragging me down the hallway. I tried to keep up, but lost my balance and fell to the floor as she continued to drag me to my room.

Using only my hair. Once we reached the bedroom, she started kicking me in the stomach and then pulled me to my feet to face my bed. She then began rummaging through my belt drawer and pulled out my woven leather belt that she had already used more than once and then proceeded to beat me with it, starting at my shoulder blades. At your job, do you ever have to deal with a nose roller? How about a snub pulley?

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The pursuit to serve others is yours. Find your purpose at GCU. Private. Christian. Affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Way down to my ankles. Heaven forbid if I screamed, because she would only beat me more. The abuse also didn't stop with physical, as she seemed to get a kick out of bullying me. This, she wasn't so worried about hiding from my father either, as she would make it seem lighthearted and jovial when he was around.

One evening, while having a family dinner at one of our local go-to sit-downs, she started kicking me underneath the table, passing me horribly evil glares, when after a few minutes of this, she spoke up. "You chew like a cow! Why can't you chew right? Doesn't she chew like a cow?" My dad chuckled, thinking that it was meant lightheartedly, but as he looked down at his meal again, her death glare staring a hole through me with a tight jaw and grit teeth told me otherwise.

This became a new target for her abuse. She did this again later, when she noticed that I walked on the inside of my house shoes, one day kicking me in the back of the knees, making me fall to the floor. She began kicking me in the back, knocking the wind out of me, all simply over the way that I walked. This became my daily life. Speaking out seemed ridiculous, because all of these "punishments" just felt so absurd. I didn't tell anyone for a long time, but as I got older, people around me grew wiser.

When I was in middle school, my dad and stepmother were called in for questioning by the school. Two of my teachers were highly suspicious of my bruises and constantly swollen fingers. Stepmother proceeded to put on an act, crying and acting hurt and shocked that they would think she could hurt a child. I changed schools after that year. Things only got worse once I went to high school, as she seemed intimidated by my aging and gaining maturity. Male friends were strictly off limits.

and my curves were to be hidden in horribly unflattering clothes. I didn't really mind so much, as I really had very little interest in boys or displaying my womanhood to any degree. However, one afternoon while taking a shower, she burst in the bathroom to remind me of my timing. As she whipped the bathtub curtain open, she saw the hair growing below my waist. Before I could react, she grabbed the hair and jerked it down, pulling out a handful of my pubic hair.

She cursed me for not telling her that I had started maturing in that way. I couldn't tell anyone about that instance for years. After the belt beating, however, stepmother's sister-in-law saw my backside and called my dad at work, cursing him out and threatening to report it. That's when I started going to her house on the weekends. After this, I got braver and became less scared. Once I saw people reacting to what little they saw of my stepmother's behavior, I knew I was in the right for sticking up for myself. So I did.

In subtle ways at first. I brought jewelry and makeup to school and started to give myself space to express myself. Then one morning, while running a minute or two behind on breakfast, stepmother came to the kitchen in a rage. Why wasn't I finished getting ready for school? Why weren't the dishes clean? Before I could turn around from rinsing my dishes, she was rummaging in the utensil drawer and pulled out a fork. She backed me against the kitchen counter, pressing the fork against my throat.

I don't remember what she said to me in those moments, but I remember her hot breath in my ear hissing through her teeth at me, and I remember the chill of the cold metal prongs on my throat. I was no more than sixteen at this time. My last day there was field day of my junior year. I decided to wear a cute outfit that stepmother's sister-in-law had bought for me for casual days. It was a cute cap-sleeve striped t-shirt cut femininely to suit my curves with long matching shorts.

I knew she wouldn't like it, but I also knew that it was completely appropriate for a girl my age, even very conservative in comparison to my other peers. She saw me as I was walking down the hallway towards my bedroom and I saw the rage fill her. She came at me, nails first, grabbing my arms as she dug them in. This was when I snapped and I fought her off, shoving her straight into the wall. It was my turn to have rage fill me as I went to the living room to grab the phone.

If you ever touch me again, I'm going to call the cops. She went pale, and suddenly, I wasn't scared for myself anymore. I couldn't control it, and I laughed. You're scared, I said, suddenly enlightened. Her face went blank. She straightened up and walked towards me. If I have to make your dad choose between you and me, it's not going to be you, she said coldly. I ignored this sentiment, because I knew she was delusional to think something like that.

I went to my bedroom and packed a bag. She didn't try to stop me, but she did make sure to let me know that if I left, that I wasn't welcome back. I ended up spending that summer in Florida with stepmother's sister-in-law and moved in with my grandmother for the next several years. I only saw stepmother again once in my twenties. She had left my dad by the time I was out of high school for the man she had been cheating on him with. She and I spoke briefly over Facebook in that next year, and I confronted her about what she put me and my father through.

Her single callous response: "I'm sorry if you ever felt unloved. I was just really stressed, and you were a pretty rebellious kid." I know that this story doesn't exactly finish by being wrapped up in a neat little box with a bow. There's a lot of unresolved questions that I have that will likely remain that way for the rest of my life. While I'd like to think that I'm well adjusted and don't carry an inordinate amount of luggage from the years of torment at this woman's hand,

I'm not so naive to think that that is entirely true. I was glad to leave that house and that relationship when I did, because my imaginings of just how much worse it could have gotten, or at least just that, imaginings. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. She's the self-proclaimed bingo queen of Manila, and I know better to interrupt her on bingo night, even to pick up cash. Hey!

Sending money direct to her bank account is super fast, and Aunt Tina gets more time to...

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