The American Pageant
Huddled in the corner, the little girl's riglets stuck to her moist red cheeks. She sobbed and sobbed until her face became numb and her little body quivered until the night swept her under.
I've spent years wondering and analyzing what if scenarios. I have always wondered how different my life would be if my family was indeed the perfect American family. Although I have tried, and painstankingly attempted to rounded our rough edges, my attempts are quite fruitless. In spite of myself, I tried, I tried and then tried some more, and each and everytime I ended up more hurt, and more isolated into my own deep thoughts.
I am trying to write my life story, but it really isn't working, I don't know where to start, how to start and with what I want to start.. There is far too much, and I am far too emotional to even begin.
Where does one really begin to start express the horrors I have seen? The horrors I have undergone? Do I start at the screaming? The cursing or the argueing? Or the moment where I realized the word family was a nonexisistant one.
Family.. according to the dictionary, its one's imidiate members who all have the same blood line, yada yada yada. Family on a deeper, more personal level would be the people who were supposed to love you, suppose to care for you and they were supposed to protect you from the evils of society. What does one do that the evil of societies arise from your very household? That the world isn't scary at all, because your very own home, the place that should be comfortable and peaceful, is the very hell that makes you shit your pants and makes your breath run cold, and sends shivers down your back. What are you supposed to do then? Run to the streets in order to feel safe and happy?
When an entire lifetime has passed by and you realize that there was no one there all along for you, what do you do then? Do you go insane and hallucinate physical pain, when all that is really wrong with you is that your soul has been set on fire and has been trampled.?
It was a small village in the middle of a big island in the middle of an ocean between two vast expansions of land known as Europe. Didi looked up at the sky and let out a a screech that had risen somewhere in her folds. She fell to her knees and weeped. One of the youngest girls of four, she often got stuck with the heaviest loads. Not only that, but it had been up to her to look after her youngest brother Luke. She had watched that little one grow up with her tender care and support and she couldn't help but see herself in his eyes. He was the thing that made her keep going, make her continue to be a slave to the land, and her older brothers. Mike, the eldest of all, had taken over much of the hard work since father had died when Dee was still very young. She barely remembers him, but only as a ghostly image that constantly haunts her dreams. More often than usual, she uses her fathers presence in her dreams as warning signs for disasters. After her father's death, her family had crumbled, her mother went insane, faced with menopause and loneliness, she quickly lost her mind and her purpose in life and eventually became so tired that her older daughters had to take care of her. Maria, the second eldest daughter had left at the tender age of sixteen wound up married and pregnant to an asshole who beat her, and cheated on her and left her penniless with three kids to raise. Angelica the second eldest of the siblings was married off to a sovanistic pig, who moved from the city back into the farmland, and ruined her life. She worked the land day and night, and raised the farm animals to make a couple of dollars to feed her two daughters. Dee's other brother Paul also went insane and had to be locked up for many years, then one day the doctors proclaimed he was 'cured' and sent him back home.Except he wasn't cured, the doctors were just sick of taking care of him and sent him to his home before they shut down their clinic. With all this negativity around her, Dee always knew she was going to leave this misery. Once, an uncle from Canada, Dennis, had brought her a world atlas, which she had taped up on her door, and everyday she'd lay in her bed and look at the atlas and always wonder what was to the west of her. She knew that tomorrow she would be gone, that she would leave, start over, start fresh in the U.S,a nd never have to be a slave to anoyone else.
So on and on went Dee's life in the fields: tilling the land, planting, picking, watering, setting up aquaducts for the expected hot weather and lack of rain. On and on she worked in the fields from when the sun went up to the time it went down, taking a break only to walk two miles back home to cook lunch and dinner for her brothers before they beat her. At the same time, she watched Luke. Luke still young and playful would always run through the fields and sing and dance. This brought the only light of hope in Dee's life. Her mother who had lost so much since her husband left, took out most of her pain and aggression on Dee. She would smack her across the face in the most hurtful and embarassing ways, even for the littest thing. Day by day Dee grew stronger and knew she would leave with the first chance she would get. She would leave and never look back. She would leave her abusive past and never fall victim to manipulators and depression. When she was about sixteen, Luke signed up for the Navy and no one has seen him since. It's about twenty something years later, and he has yet to set foot back there. he used to call now and then, but never took the time to come back and say hello. Left alone to her own thoughts, Dee worked and took care of everything, and the time soon came where it was time to get her married and settled into her own life. Suitor after suitor came, but she rejected them all, for they were all farmers, and they would all push her back into the life that she was desperatly trying to escape. Then one day a man named Nick showed up He preached of his wealth and happiness in America and he had returned to find himself a young wife, to whom he would show the wonders of America. Not caring much for the man, Dee took her first and only chance to leave home and come to America without thinking twice. Her dreams for heading west had come true, and she knew that there, she would never have to be a slave to anyone else.
This unknown man had made himself seem so wonderful and wooed her entire family back home. Dee couldn't care less, she was excited about leaving. On a plane with her soon to be husband, they ended up in Canada for a while. They stayed there, and visited Maria and her children. Despite her own hardships, she was able to raise three very fine young men, with only her paycheck, her drunken husband had another girlfriend who he beat and humliated, and that poor woman continued to support him, when he couldn't even bring a fifty dollar check to his kids. One time, he knocked on the door at 2 am and brought forth a check for almost a hundred dollars, and that was the last of his sacrafice to his kids.
At this point, I was conceived, and it was decided to travel to Chicago to visit Nick's family. Poor Dee who had no idea of the horrible shit that was waiting for her here. Back in Chicago, Nick moved in with his brother Tony , his wife and back then, their three kids.On the second floor lived Nick's other brothers Andrew and Bill. There was no room anywhere else, so Dee and Nick were given the stuffy and overstocked basement. Pregnant Dee sat and moved everything around and made a very homey basement where she and Nick lived. Now the funny thing is that the building was originally Nick's, he was just so nice to his brothers, he gave it to them. Now in reality, Nick had made a name for himself, he was pretty popular around the block. People knew him and respected him. He had left home at around seventeen, so he woudn't have to work in the fields and raise his nine siblings. His father, a drunk, got so wasted one night he managed to topple his tractor truck down the side of a mountain, where they lived and that was it for him, he then was a cripple. His mom, was never home, she would always go out to the 'fields' barefoot and dirty and come back when the sun was no longer visible in the sky. It was rumored that her first born wasn't even Jim's because she gave birth in January, and had gotten married before that, in the middle of June. Her first born was Nick. Suprisingly, all the siblings have a remarkable resemblance, but Nick had golden strings for hair. Jim's brother Dan, had been in America for years, and Nick decided to leave home to seek his father's brother and invite him to join in partnership to start up a business. The first thing Nick did was work for Yellow Cab Company. It was what all the immigrants were doing at the time. He had worked enough and opened a bar right here on the block, on Lawrence. He wasted most of his money wining and dining the whores. He was very popular with the ladies, and they all wanted him. Eventually he sought out his uncle and he paid for everything to open up a grocery store. His uncle's wife, Fay, had taken complete control of the operation, and she was always known as a sly, coy woman, who used her gifts to get what she wanted. If you ever saw her, she would remind you of a dame at a bordello who offers you her vast collection of fresh young pussy.
Back home, his brothers became angered and upset at Nick's sucess and wanted everything to do with it. Nick eventually bought them tickets, and brought Tony here with his wife, and kids. This was when he bought a building on Leland, and they all crowded into one small place. Bill came a bit later and he went straight to a restaurant and became a bussboy. Andrew the youngest of all nine siblings had been sent off to a clinic because no one wanted to take care of him. Eventually when he grew up, Nick also bought him a plane ticket ad brought him here. He usually spent his days fixing random people's cars on Lawrence, and sometimes slept with Tony's wife, and stayed on another floor with Bill. They would always gets into disagreements and fights, and always ended up out of the house penniless, sleeping in cars back out on that famous avenue, Lawrence. Bill, was secretly in love with Rita, Tony's wife. Except it wasn't a secret. Every dollar he made at work went to her. She was just like Fay, except worse. She married Tony when she was seventeen and made him her bitch. He too became a cabbie, and the money he made, she sent back home. She was always a really dirty woman, wearing her famous light blue skirt, with the rip in the back, everyday. She was beautiful no doubt about it, but very promiscious and digusting. She sucked Bill dry,literally, and personally, he must of fathered half of her children. Bill cares more about those kids, more than she and Tony combined time ten. Filled wit jealous and anger, Tony wanted a part of the grocery business, he was fuming that he wasn't included. He said that his big brother should give everyone half of everything so they would be happy. It was communism, it really was. One asshole works , but everyone gets everything, but in this case the asshole that works gets less. Tony got a bunch of guys together and went to the grocery store with Andrew and beat the living shit out of Nick. They beat him with two by fours and sent him home bleeding and blistered. In another scenario, Nick's sister Antonia, had been swept away by an uncle back home from when she was young and she was so glad that she never had to deal with any of them. She eventually asked Nick for help to come here, when she was in her extremely early twenties. He brought her here, and the first man she met on the bus she slept with and married. She got stuck in factory work, and she kept telling Nick that she was working 'overtime' when all that time she was sleeping with this man Tom Davis. He was the most grotesque creature in the world, to call him a pig is to do him justice. Despite this, he made her feel like a queen, and tricked her endlessly by buying her twenty five cent rings and giving her beads and she was bedazzled by the wonderfully jewlery that Tommy was buying her. One day as Nick was rummaging through his sister's shit trying to find the house keys, he found the love letters, got so pissed off he beat the living shit out of Antonia, and then proceeded to get all the brother's to go beat the shit out of Tom too. Antonia was outraged and she ran off and immedietly married Tom. He was a scumbag who never worked, lived off welfare and made her clean shit off old people for a living.
Despite the fact that they always argued and always held insane jealousy over one another, they always paired up to talk shit and also proceed to beat the shit out of Tom. But most of the time, it was to beat the shit out of each other .
Nick drive to suceed had a couple of main sources. First, he was very proud. He never wanted anyone to be better than him. A trait that I myself share. He was a BIG showoff, he grew up having less than nothing. Bread was scarce in his household growing up with nine siblings, a cripple dad, a whore mom, things were just bad. He made his money and wasted it and acted like it wasn't a thing, he wanted to prove to his buddies that money wasn't an issue with him, he made so much he never needed to worry about it.Not only that, but his sister Kathy, when she was twelve had slept her father's best friend. All the male brothers in the family called it rape. They vowed to avenge the rape and come back and kill the man that did this to her. But that was complete bullshit. That little cunt enjoyed it, and she fucked the old man all night and day under trees and in the breazy evenings for many years, until the old man , who was just a bit older than her dad, died. So the brother's who were the "Cowboys of Lawrence", took it upon themselves to do the honorable thing and kill that man's son. So the top mission for the rest of their lives is to make it big to go back and kill this man's son.
Everyday, that is what Nick woke to, and what Nick went to sleep with. It took him very fasr in his life...
Then one day, Nick was thirty and he decided, what the hell, I might as well get married. I had fun with my whores, and might as well put together a plan. That's how Dee got tangled up in this mess. Poor girl who had no clue the kind of shit that was waiting for here.
Huddled in the corner, the little girl's riglets stuck to her moist red cheeks. She sobbed and sobbed until her face became numb and her little body quivered until the night swept her under.
I've spent years wondering and analyzing what if scenarios. I have always wondered how different my life would be if my family was indeed the perfect American family. Although I have tried, and painstankingly attempted to rounded our rough edges, my attempts are quite fruitless. In spite of myself, I tried, I tried and then tried some more, and each and everytime I ended up more hurt, and more isolated into my own deep thoughts.
I am trying to write my life story, but it really isn't working, I don't know where to start, how to start and with what I want to start.. There is far too much, and I am far too emotional to even begin.
Where does one really begin to start express the horrors I have seen? The horrors I have undergone? Do I start at the screaming? The cursing or the argueing? Or the moment where I realized the word family was a nonexisistant one.
Family.. according to the dictionary, its one's imidiate members who all have the same blood line, yada yada yada. Family on a deeper, more personal level would be the people who were supposed to love you, suppose to care for you and they were supposed to protect you from the evils of society. What does one do that the evil of societies arise from your very household? That the world isn't scary at all, because your very own home, the place that should be comfortable and peaceful, is the very hell that makes you shit your pants and makes your breath run cold, and sends shivers down your back. What are you supposed to do then? Run to the streets in order to feel safe and happy?
When an entire lifetime has passed by and you realize that there was no one there all along for you, what do you do then? Do you go insane and hallucinate physical pain, when all that is really wrong with you is that your soul has been set on fire and has been trampled.?
It was a small village in the middle of a big island in the middle of an ocean between two vast expansions of land known as Europe. Didi looked up at the sky and let out a a screech that had risen somewhere in her folds. She fell to her knees and weeped. One of the youngest girls of four, she often got stuck with the heaviest loads. Not only that, but it had been up to her to look after her youngest brother Luke. She had watched that little one grow up with her tender care and support and she couldn't help but see herself in his eyes. He was the thing that made her keep going, make her continue to be a slave to the land, and her older brothers. Mike, the eldest of all, had taken over much of the hard work since father had died when Dee was still very young. She barely remembers him, but only as a ghostly image that constantly haunts her dreams. More often than usual, she uses her fathers presence in her dreams as warning signs for disasters. After her father's death, her family had crumbled, her mother went insane, faced with menopause and loneliness, she quickly lost her mind and her purpose in life and eventually became so tired that her older daughters had to take care of her. Maria, the second eldest daughter had left at the tender age of sixteen wound up married and pregnant to an asshole who beat her, and cheated on her and left her penniless with three kids to raise. Angelica the second eldest of the siblings was married off to a sovanistic pig, who moved from the city back into the farmland, and ruined her life. She worked the land day and night, and raised the farm animals to make a couple of dollars to feed her two daughters. Dee's other brother Paul also went insane and had to be locked up for many years, then one day the doctors proclaimed he was 'cured' and sent him back home.Except he wasn't cured, the doctors were just sick of taking care of him and sent him to his home before they shut down their clinic. With all this negativity around her, Dee always knew she was going to leave this misery. Once, an uncle from Canada, Dennis, had brought her a world atlas, which she had taped up on her door, and everyday she'd lay in her bed and look at the atlas and always wonder what was to the west of her. She knew that tomorrow she would be gone, that she would leave, start over, start fresh in the U.S,a nd never have to be a slave to anoyone else.
So on and on went Dee's life in the fields: tilling the land, planting, picking, watering, setting up aquaducts for the expected hot weather and lack of rain. On and on she worked in the fields from when the sun went up to the time it went down, taking a break only to walk two miles back home to cook lunch and dinner for her brothers before they beat her. At the same time, she watched Luke. Luke still young and playful would always run through the fields and sing and dance. This brought the only light of hope in Dee's life. Her mother who had lost so much since her husband left, took out most of her pain and aggression on Dee. She would smack her across the face in the most hurtful and embarassing ways, even for the littest thing. Day by day Dee grew stronger and knew she would leave with the first chance she would get. She would leave and never look back. She would leave her abusive past and never fall victim to manipulators and depression. When she was about sixteen, Luke signed up for the Navy and no one has seen him since. It's about twenty something years later, and he has yet to set foot back there. he used to call now and then, but never took the time to come back and say hello. Left alone to her own thoughts, Dee worked and took care of everything, and the time soon came where it was time to get her married and settled into her own life. Suitor after suitor came, but she rejected them all, for they were all farmers, and they would all push her back into the life that she was desperatly trying to escape. Then one day a man named Nick showed up He preached of his wealth and happiness in America and he had returned to find himself a young wife, to whom he would show the wonders of America. Not caring much for the man, Dee took her first and only chance to leave home and come to America without thinking twice. Her dreams for heading west had come true, and she knew that there, she would never have to be a slave to anyone else.
This unknown man had made himself seem so wonderful and wooed her entire family back home. Dee couldn't care less, she was excited about leaving. On a plane with her soon to be husband, they ended up in Canada for a while. They stayed there, and visited Maria and her children. Despite her own hardships, she was able to raise three very fine young men, with only her paycheck, her drunken husband had another girlfriend who he beat and humliated, and that poor woman continued to support him, when he couldn't even bring a fifty dollar check to his kids. One time, he knocked on the door at 2 am and brought forth a check for almost a hundred dollars, and that was the last of his sacrafice to his kids.
At this point, I was conceived, and it was decided to travel to Chicago to visit Nick's family. Poor Dee who had no idea of the horrible shit that was waiting for her here. Back in Chicago, Nick moved in with his brother Tony , his wife and back then, their three kids.On the second floor lived Nick's other brothers Andrew and Bill. There was no room anywhere else, so Dee and Nick were given the stuffy and overstocked basement. Pregnant Dee sat and moved everything around and made a very homey basement where she and Nick lived. Now the funny thing is that the building was originally Nick's, he was just so nice to his brothers, he gave it to them. Now in reality, Nick had made a name for himself, he was pretty popular around the block. People knew him and respected him. He had left home at around seventeen, so he woudn't have to work in the fields and raise his nine siblings. His father, a drunk, got so wasted one night he managed to topple his tractor truck down the side of a mountain, where they lived and that was it for him, he then was a cripple. His mom, was never home, she would always go out to the 'fields' barefoot and dirty and come back when the sun was no longer visible in the sky. It was rumored that her first born wasn't even Jim's because she gave birth in January, and had gotten married before that, in the middle of June. Her first born was Nick. Suprisingly, all the siblings have a remarkable resemblance, but Nick had golden strings for hair. Jim's brother Dan, had been in America for years, and Nick decided to leave home to seek his father's brother and invite him to join in partnership to start up a business. The first thing Nick did was work for Yellow Cab Company. It was what all the immigrants were doing at the time. He had worked enough and opened a bar right here on the block, on Lawrence. He wasted most of his money wining and dining the whores. He was very popular with the ladies, and they all wanted him. Eventually he sought out his uncle and he paid for everything to open up a grocery store. His uncle's wife, Fay, had taken complete control of the operation, and she was always known as a sly, coy woman, who used her gifts to get what she wanted. If you ever saw her, she would remind you of a dame at a bordello who offers you her vast collection of fresh young pussy.
Back home, his brothers became angered and upset at Nick's sucess and wanted everything to do with it. Nick eventually bought them tickets, and brought Tony here with his wife, and kids. This was when he bought a building on Leland, and they all crowded into one small place. Bill came a bit later and he went straight to a restaurant and became a bussboy. Andrew the youngest of all nine siblings had been sent off to a clinic because no one wanted to take care of him. Eventually when he grew up, Nick also bought him a plane ticket ad brought him here. He usually spent his days fixing random people's cars on Lawrence, and sometimes slept with Tony's wife, and stayed on another floor with Bill. They would always gets into disagreements and fights, and always ended up out of the house penniless, sleeping in cars back out on that famous avenue, Lawrence. Bill, was secretly in love with Rita, Tony's wife. Except it wasn't a secret. Every dollar he made at work went to her. She was just like Fay, except worse. She married Tony when she was seventeen and made him her bitch. He too became a cabbie, and the money he made, she sent back home. She was always a really dirty woman, wearing her famous light blue skirt, with the rip in the back, everyday. She was beautiful no doubt about it, but very promiscious and digusting. She sucked Bill dry,literally, and personally, he must of fathered half of her children. Bill cares more about those kids, more than she and Tony combined time ten. Filled wit jealous and anger, Tony wanted a part of the grocery business, he was fuming that he wasn't included. He said that his big brother should give everyone half of everything so they would be happy. It was communism, it really was. One asshole works , but everyone gets everything, but in this case the asshole that works gets less. Tony got a bunch of guys together and went to the grocery store with Andrew and beat the living shit out of Nick. They beat him with two by fours and sent him home bleeding and blistered. In another scenario, Nick's sister Antonia, had been swept away by an uncle back home from when she was young and she was so glad that she never had to deal with any of them. She eventually asked Nick for help to come here, when she was in her extremely early twenties. He brought her here, and the first man she met on the bus she slept with and married. She got stuck in factory work, and she kept telling Nick that she was working 'overtime' when all that time she was sleeping with this man Tom Davis. He was the most grotesque creature in the world, to call him a pig is to do him justice. Despite this, he made her feel like a queen, and tricked her endlessly by buying her twenty five cent rings and giving her beads and she was bedazzled by the wonderfully jewlery that Tommy was buying her. One day as Nick was rummaging through his sister's shit trying to find the house keys, he found the love letters, got so pissed off he beat the living shit out of Antonia, and then proceeded to get all the brother's to go beat the shit out of Tom too. Antonia was outraged and she ran off and immedietly married Tom. He was a scumbag who never worked, lived off welfare and made her clean shit off old people for a living.
Despite the fact that they always argued and always held insane jealousy over one another, they always paired up to talk shit and also proceed to beat the shit out of Tom. But most of the time, it was to beat the shit out of each other .
Nick drive to suceed had a couple of main sources. First, he was very proud. He never wanted anyone to be better than him. A trait that I myself share. He was a BIG showoff, he grew up having less than nothing. Bread was scarce in his household growing up with nine siblings, a cripple dad, a whore mom, things were just bad. He made his money and wasted it and acted like it wasn't a thing, he wanted to prove to his buddies that money wasn't an issue with him, he made so much he never needed to worry about it.Not only that, but his sister Kathy, when she was twelve had slept her father's best friend. All the male brothers in the family called it rape. They vowed to avenge the rape and come back and kill the man that did this to her. But that was complete bullshit. That little cunt enjoyed it, and she fucked the old man all night and day under trees and in the breazy evenings for many years, until the old man , who was just a bit older than her dad, died. So the brother's who were the "Cowboys of Lawrence", took it upon themselves to do the honorable thing and kill that man's son. So the top mission for the rest of their lives is to make it big to go back and kill this man's son.
Everyday, that is what Nick woke to, and what Nick went to sleep with. It took him very fasr in his life...
Then one day, Nick was thirty and he decided, what the hell, I might as well get married. I had fun with my whores, and might as well put together a plan. That's how Dee got tangled up in this mess. Poor girl who had no clue the kind of shit that was waiting for here.