Betty
WARNING: The material on this page is not appropriate for younger children (e.g., primary school age).
My mother died of cancer in December, 1967, when I was eight years old. A few months later, my father introduced us to Betty, a social worker whom he'd met at a bar in New York City. They were married in June of 1968. Two of my siblings were already grown and out of the house, leaving just one of my older brothers and myself.
Things started out peacefully enough; I remember Betty showering us with gifts during our first Christmas together, and she helped my father financially, paying for badly needed repairs to the house that he, overwhelmed with hospital bills from my mother's long illness, couldn't afford.
About two years after she moved in with us, Betty developed multiple sclerosis. One morning she awoke with no feeling in her right side, and a few weeks later she started having spasms during which her right arm and leg would clench up for ten minutes or more. My father was devastated, and Betty was terrified. Eventually she regained some of her mobility, but walking and climbing stairs were always difficult and painful for her.
Whether the MS affected her brain or whether she was simply an angry and violent person, I don't know, but my life with Betty was hell from about 1971 until I graduated from high school in 1977. I lived in near-constant fear of her frequent outbursts of rage, when she screamed at me and frequently hit me over some minor transgression. During one of these episodes she was holding a table knife, and when she saw me backing away to a safer distance she lunged forward and stabbed me in the chest (the knife hit a rib and didn't penetrate). I vividly remember her once pushing and kicking me down the basement stairs, screaming "I hate you!" at the top of her lungs. She told me she would kill me if I ever told my father that she beat me, and I believed her.
I rarely deserved her wrath; I was a good and conscientious kid who worked hard both at school and at home, but she treated me like a juvenile delinquent. She once tried to frame me as a criminal, claiming that $70 had been stolen from her dresser drawer and calling the state police to investigate. Since nothing else in the house had been taken, they of course concluded that it was an "inside job." She confronted me about it, and I told her, "well, it must have been Dad, then, because I didn't take it." She beat me for saying that.
Betty was a tyrant who tried to exert total control over my life. She rationed my food, counting the slices of bread I was allowed to eat each day and yelling at me (or worse) if I went over that inadequate amount. It's not like I needed a diet; I was a tall and very skinny kid. I was constantly hungry, and sometimes would walk or ride my bike to the nearest grocery store, five miles away, to buy food and eat it on the spot or bring it home to hide. When the health risks of cholesterol were first publicized in the 1970s, she controlled my diet even further (and tried to control my father's). Eggs, butter, and milk were outlawed in the house; I was allowed to drink only powdered skim milk.
One Saturday morning my father decided he'd had enough deprivation and went out to get donuts as a treat. We polished off a baker's dozen between the two of us. Betty woke up and wandered into the kitchen just as we were finishing the last crumbs. She exploded in fury, and even tried to hit my father when he argued with her. He grabbed her fist and held it. "Don't you hit me, woman," he shouted, "or it's divorce!" He then turned to me and asked, "Has she ever hit you? Because if she has, she's out of here." I knew what she would have done to me later if I had said yes, so I lied. She behaved like a loving parent whenever my father was home, but from the moment he left for work in the morning until he returned at 7:00 pm, I was in danger.
Proud of the fact that she had worked in some of the poorest and toughest neighborhoods in New York City, Betty considered me a spoiled rich kid, and saw my artwork and nature study as the idle dreaming of an indolent child. Several times she threatened to tear up and throw out my sketches, and I had to find safe hiding places for them. She tried to make me too busy to pursue my interests, giving me long lists of chores to do around the house and property, and requiring me to find paying jobs (yard work, housepainting, and later dishwashing) for the weekends and summers. I didn't mind working, but between my duties at home and my paying jobs it wasn't unusual for me to be working 12 or 14 hours a day during the summer or on autumn weekends when there was a lot of leaf-raking to do.
Betty imposed her own rules on my chores, making me clean the toilets at home using my hands and a sponge—she wouldn't let me use a toilet brush because she wanted to see me get my hands dirty. Knowing that I was "early to bed, early to rise" by habit, she made me responsible for giving our ailing dog his evening medication at 11 pm each night. I struggled hard to stay awake, but it was a losing battle. Whenever I fell asleep too early, she would climb the stairs to rouse me, and then I had to wait while she took 10 minutes to struggle back down the stairs with exaggerated effort and grunts of pain before I was allowed to follow, give the dog his pill, and go back to bed. She was a night owl, rarely going to bed before 2 in the morning, so it would have been simple for her to give the dog his pill. But she preferred to make my life difficult.
The title of this Web site, "A Childhood Saved," has a double meaning. My nature journals and notebooks saved a record of a vibrantly creative period in a teenage boy's life. But the strength and focus of my passions for nature, drawing, and writing also saved me, or at least my sanity, from destruction. Betty was determined to break my spirit, but once I realized that's what she was aiming for, I vowed not to let her win.
One morning in April, 1983, when I was 22 and living in Worcester, Massachusetts, the phone rang. It was my father. "How're you doing, Dad?" I asked. "Very poorly," he replied in a strained voice. "Betty died today." She was 49 years old. She'd had too much to drink the night before, and the alcohol apparently interfered with her medications. She got violently ill, went into convulsions, and died. I was shocked at the news, and felt terrible for my father having to endure the loss of two wives, but in the same instant I felt a wave of relief pass through me. For the first time in nearly 15 years, I felt safe.