Debbie, Debbie, Debbie.

I must know at least six women named Debbie.

In my life, certain names seem to re-emerge again and again; Robert, Kathy, Tracy to name a few. But Debbie, though the name constantly recurs in my life with new introductions, was one of a kind.

"Kids meet your new step-mom," dad announced when I walked in from a hard day in 8th grade.

I was shocked to see him home on a weekday before 7 p.m. Amazement replaced shock when my baby blues beheld the long brown haired twenty something woman straddling his lap in one of our two pleather and chrome kitchen chairs.

Her jeans were tight and she wasn't wearing a bra under her tank top. That particular fact really irked me because I had to beg my dad to buy me a bra a few days before.

All the girls were wearing them at school. The boys running their hands up our backs to see if they could snap them. Humiliation bloomed, like slow dripping acid on the heart, when one of the most popular boys in 8th grade, Bryant H, tried to pop my bra only to find I wasn't wearing one. The only thing worse than having your bra snapped by a popular boy?  Everyone laughing when he announced you didn't wear one.

I made up a story about how bras slow you down when you run. I was on the track team that year and didn't want to be slowed down by a bra. Pfft.

Back at the trailer, after much badgering, I talked my dad into taking me to Rinks. A low end retail store for folks who thought K-Mart finacially out of their league.

The bras sat beside the fabric cutting station. The lady cutting fabric figured out our dilemma when dad bellowed..."Just pick one!" He was uncomfortable because neither of us had any idea what size I wore or even how to find out.

The fabric cutting lady took out her measuring tape, put it around my rib cage, and figured out what I needed. With her chubby arms and perfume surrounding me, I wondered if her help was what having a mom felt like. 

Dad bought the first bra I found which met my requirements.  He never shopped for bras with me again. Until I was old enough to go myself, I wore that same tired old “training bra.”

While I was taking in the newlyweds, I couldn't help but notice the fresh smell in the air. The asbestos tile of our tiny trailer was white and actually shining. The tan pleather sofa, which matched the tan pleather kitchen chairs and the only piece of furniture in the living room, was now its sole occupant. The large black amplifiers, speakers, guitar cases, gun racks, and keyboard were gone.

Nicely folded clean laundry perched on the sofa; and I smelled something cooking. I wondered briefly if she invaded my room and disposed of the donut and Dorito bag collection under my bed. Overall though, I was pleased.

I rushed to my room after a quick hello to see if the changes encompassed the entire trailer. The double bed my brother and I shared was made and there weren't any clothes or trash on the floor beside the bed. I quickly fell to my knees and looked under the bed. The true test.

"I counted over 16 bags," came the female voice behind me.

"You and your brother must really like Doritos," she said. I didn’t bother explaining dad gave us ten dollars every weekend to buy the food we needed from the Short Stop at the front of the trailer park. He would go off to play music and leave us alone pretty much the entire weekend. We bought food though, donuts, Doritos, chocolate icing in a can, and candy bars. The food of champions as far as we were concerned.

My dad stood behind her when I turned around. "I've never seen such a mess," he said. "You should be ashamed letting things get like this."

I knew he was only saying it for her benefit. He never said anything about the trailer before. In fact, he joined us on the few occasions he didn't have a gig; munching on snacks, watching the black and white, slipping empty Dorito bags under the bed to keep from making a trip into the kitchen to the garbage can, a whole three steps.

We ate shrimp and corn bread that night. It was the first time I ever ate shrimp. Debbie fried it on top of the stove. The neighborhood cats sat at the kitchen door and meowed the entire time she cooked.

Since we only had two kitchen chairs, she and dad ate on the brown pleather sofa. Jay and I ate at the round table in the kitchen. It was the first sit down meal we shared since my dad left his former girlfriend’s trailer and found us this one, about a year before.

When Jay and I went to bed that night (on clean sheets) I thought, now this is going to be great.  Clean sheets and everything!

I think I even offered up a little prayer of thanks for dad and his new wife.

Sucker.

I can't say exactly when her tension and anger began. Just that it started shortly after the wedding vows. Dad continued his factory job, the one-hour-each-way commute during the week, and played music on the weekends. So he was almost never home.

Debbie moved her things into the bathroom and my things out. She made a big fuss when she found a jar of vinegar in the bathroom cupboard. She wanted to know why it was there. 

I was twelve going on thirteen and understood there was some sort of "meaning" to the question, some sort of "female" meaning, but no idea what it was. 

But the truth was out of the question.  So, I lied. Told her I tried to clean the tub with it. She looked skeptical because the tub had obviously never been cleaned.

Really, I was pouring that vinegar over Jay's head while he stood in the tub not a week before trying to get rid of lice. He was sent home from school with lice and one of my friends told me vinegar killed it. So I made him stand in the tub while I poured it into his hair. He screamed and cried because it burned his eyes. I told him to shut up and take it. Dad came home and asked what was cooking because it sure smelled good. Heh. But he took my word that vinegar kills lice. (It doesn’t by the way.)

When Jay brought home notes from teachers or a report card, I signed them. When Jay had problems with bullies, and we were trailer court kids, we had lots of bullies...I defended him. So when Jay came home with lice I (in all my 12 years of wisdom) got out the vinegar. But I wasn't about to tell Debbie that.

Little things started appearing in the trailer. A color tv, though used, was one of the best purchases. We watched "Battle Star Galactica" on it the first night.

Dad's musical equipment wasn't gone, just relocated to his bedroom. The amps were so big Debbie put their mattress on top of them. They called it their "nest."

Heavy wooden bunk beds replaced the double bed Jay and I shared.

I always believed my dad was poor. Partly because every year before school, when we were at Rinks buying clothes, he said Jay and I were too expensive. And because whenever I needed money for something at school, like having my last name put on my gym shirt, he got angry and said he didn't have the money.

But Debbie made my dad spend money on making our home life better. She didn't think dad was going to be a famous musician like he did.  She knew exactly how much money he made and had no problem spending it.

It wasn't very long before we moved into a trailer across the street. Jay and I got our own bedrooms (or closets as we called them because they were about the size of a small walk-in). Dad sawed the bunk beds apart. With the bed in place there was exactly 14 inches of space to move around in each bedroom.

Shortly after the move to the “bigger” trailer, Debbie stopped going with dad to gigs. I don't know what happened in their relationship exactly, but Debbie became bitter and angry all the time. Probably when she realized she was just a glorified babysitter who was not going to get attention and worship from the guy in the band. A groupie turned step-mommy, or more accurately, step monster.

Since dad wasn't around much she chose to take her anger out on Jay and me, with Jay (three years my junior) getting the brunt of it.

No more shrimp and corn bread. Her cooking degenerated to a piece of slimy meat in the crock pot. She sat in a newly acquired living room chair smoking cigarettes, drinking Pepsi, popping pink hearts (speed) and swinging her leg while wearing her tank top and no bra.

At first she started taking things away from us. For Jay it was sweets, for me just starting high school it was anything social and sports. I was no longer allowed to play basketball, run track or go to any games or dances. She sat in the trailer and expected us to do the same.

Jay would beg for Pepsi and she'd gleefully tell him no while sipping at the one beside her.

I began to hate her. I tried to talk to my dad about her cruelty because it was increasing and was irrational. He said Jay and I were "heathens" who resented having someone put limits on us. He said we finally had someone to take care of us and just look how we complained!

I realized something very important. My dad wasn't watching out for us. Debbie was our jailer and seemed to be intoxicated with the idea of having authority over two other people.

Debbie also realized something very important. My dad wasn’t going to correct her if she got violent, or just plain crazy toward us.

She couldn't decide if she wanted to play cool step-mom or evil step-monster. One day she'd keep me up all night on a school night moving furniture and watching MTV. Give me a little pink heart for energy and send me off to school. And the next day she'd be trying to bend me to her will by hitting me with a wire hanger on the back of the legs until they bled.

Her physical violence toward me happened twice. The first time was with the wire hanger prong ends out. I stood completely still and when she was done I turned around to face her. I was wearing shorts and could feel warm blood oozing down my legs. I reached back and wiped at the blood with my hand, then swiped my face leaving a hot trail a crimson splashed across it. I told her if she ever touched me again I'd kill her. But I wanted the effect of the blood and the hate in my eyes to stay with her. (The first and last time she ever touched me without retribution.) It must have made an impression because she didn't touch me again until a few years later.  And she paid dearly for it.

Debbie's feminine dignity was threatened by Linda, who lived a few blocks away. Linda was dad’s ex-girlfriend. We lived with Linda for awhile, but were pretty wild, and things didn’t work out.

By Debbie's time, Linda well and truly moved on and was dating another man named Charlie. Before Debbie became too harsh, I was allowed to go out and play with a girl friend named Doty every day. Except there was no Doty. I made her up, lied, so I could get out of our trailer and go visit Linda.

I spent many hours with Linda, Charlie, Dondie (Linda’s son), and Charlie's children. I longed for dad to get back together with Linda. She was working at the new Honda plant and making decent money. She bought a new Firebird, a brand new big as I'd ever seen trailer, and Dondie had an Atari.  Most of all though, Linda "mothered."

It was not meant to be.

Debbie, plagued with worry about the proximity of an old girlfriend, pushed dad to leave Marysville toward the end of my freshman year.  Debbie found a trailer court out in the country of Plain City, Ohio.  I started at Jonathan Alder High School. I didn't get to say good bye to Linda and I missed my friends in Marysville.

Debbie degenerated into a raving bitter lunatic in the country. Because she didn’t have to worry and plot against Linda, there was little for her to do.

Too bad for Jay and me.

I never liked the way Debbie treated Jay. Even when she was new and trying to make a good impression, she treated him like an inconvenient after thought.

After defending him and looking after him for so long, I thought she was too mean to him. I was a scrapper, I'd fight pretty much anytime anywhere (there is a certain amount of infamy in a fighter and any attention was better than none). But I was afraid of Debbie for the most part. So I watched her make Jay sit in his room with his bedroom windows closed in mid summer as punishment for some imagined crime. I watched as she hit him with belts for using one of her writing pens. I watched and did nothing but burn inside.

By the beginning of 10th grade, I knew things had gone too far. Debbie was not just screaming at us anymore, she was screaming at my dad. So he wasn't home but a few hours total during the week. Little things would set her off and Jay was throwing his arm up and cowering every time she raised her voice around him.

I made new friends at Jonathan Alder High School. They were mostly throw away kids, kids whose parents were non-existent or abusive. The kind of friends who never questioned why I wasn't allowed to go to dances, or ball games, or any school functions. I was loyal to my friends. The way I saw it, I didn't have anyone else.

Usually when we came home from school and walked in the door, Debbie would be waiting. Sitting in her chair, Pepsi beside her, swinging her leg, smoking a cigarette, wearing her tank top and no bra. She'd point to a laundry basket without saying a word. We had a washer but no dryer. So Jay and I would lug the wet clothes to the laundry mat in front of the trailer court 3 blocks away.

I didn't mind the laundry mat. It got us out of the trailer (which was NEW and bigger than any we’d ever lived in before). I'd let Jay go play out front while I did the clothes. It was right next to the pool so sometimes we'd go out and sit there.

We'd carry the laundry back and go straight to our separate rooms. They were bigger than the ones before. My room was a typical teenager’s room with a poster of Michael Jackson's Thriller Album on the wall, cassettes galore, and pictures of my friends from Marysville and Plain City scattered everywhere.

Jay's room was stripped of everything but a bed and chair. No toys or books. Jay had to sit in his chair until called for supper, usually a hard to eat piece of slimy crock pot meat. Then after supper, back to his chair. Everyday. If he broke the rules in any way she raged or beat on him.

Jay and I took a paper route just to get out of the trailer. I started getting involved in drinking before school with a girl down the street named Samantha. It was the only time I wasn't under Debbie's thumb. And Sam’s parents were alcoholics so we always had beer. She was as wild as I was. We’d drink beer and take speed, or smoke a little pot before school.

I can't really say how much honest drinking we did. We drank mixer for a long time thinking there was alcohol in it. And instead of taking the bus to school a few guys we knew would swing by and pick us up. Though of course Debbie thought I was waiting at the bus stop for the bus and taking it to school. Pfft. I only took the bus about 5 times the entire first semester.

The boys would drive fast and recklessly as Sam and I hung out the windows yelling, "Cool breeze," and "woo hoo." It felt good to be free. We’d scream for them to go faster, faster!!

Those stolen moments were exhilarating and I wanted more of them.

One day when I rode the bus I mouthed off to the bus driver. She gave me detention. The high school was a long way from our trailer court, about 45 minutes by bus. And when you had after school detention you missed the bus.

My freshman year, after the move, dad bought Debbie a clunker beige four door Pontiac. It had rust around the bottom so he spray painted the bottom of the car black to help disguise it. There was an 8 track player in it.  She listened to a lot of Daryl Hall and Jon Oates. Debbie was just learning to drive.

Since I had detention for a week, I had to find a ride home. I found a ride for every day except one. I stood at the pay phone and called every person I knew with a vehicle but no one could come pick me up.

A thunderstorm broke loose just as I decided to walk home, even though it would take me the rest of the day and probably most of the night. I didn't have any choice.

When I walked out the front door of the school building, now long deserted except for the janitor, I saw the Pontiac sitting in front. I didn't know Debbie was waiting for me, all the longer because I spent at least twenty minutes on the phone trying to find a ride.

I could tell by the way Jay was crouching in the back seat Debbie was in a rant. I started to open the passenger's side door. She jerked her arm up and pointed with her thumb to the back seat.

I got in beside Jay. His eyes were red from crying.

Debbie peeled out and began screaming about how long she'd been waiting. She was beating her fists against the steering wheel sending ash from her cigarette flying all over the car..

"I'm sick of this shit," she screamed pounding the steering wheel.  "I waited for thirty minutes!"

I didn't say a word. What was the point?

"You and your brother are worthless!" More screaming. "Especially you! You are done! Do you hear me? DONE! You won't step a foot outside our trailer again until you are 18!"

My eyes narrowed. Three years seemed a lifetime away. Little did she know that by this time I wasn’t just spending my mornings before school cruising and partying, I was sneaking out my bedroom window most nights. Not to do anything spectacular. Sam and I would climb the fence to the pool and swim, or get high (but not usually because my paper route money was usually spent on cassette tapes). If boys were involved it was for a ride or for fun, there was no sex or anything else for that matter. I was too immature, but guys liked me, even though they knew they’d never even get a kiss. I guess because I laughed all the time, and did crazy things.

Debbie kept pounding the steering wheel. "After the crap you pulled last week, now you do this!"

She was referring to an incident with one of my girlfriends. T was a bad girl. She was chubby, smoked pot (the real kind not the homegrown brown looking stuff Sam and I used), slept around, and was pretty tough. She was one of the girls in my group of throw away kids. T spent the night with me one weekend. I never was allowed to have friends over so I should have known something was wrong when Debbie suggested it.

Debbie took her back to the master bedroom. They smoked pot together on the waterbed and then Debbie pumped T for information. T told everything. She told how much I hated Debbie. How I couldn't wait to leave. How I wished my dad would divorce her. And most of all she told about my fantasies. The fantasies I told in Home Economics to the same group of throw away kids about slapping Debbie, treating her to the same sort of abuse she dished to my brother.

They were stories I wove, all centered on smacking Debbie and telling her off. A fantasy of mine, something I wanted to do since shortly after meeting her.

No one in the class actually believed it. Our teacher, Ms. B, just ignored it.  Everyone seemed to have a story or fantasy of their own. We were teenagers and most of the class was, after all, throw away kids.

Ms. B taught us to sew, cook, and how to go on a job interview. She was all of twenty-three, twenty-five at most. I remember thinking she was incredibly naive and optimistic for one so old. And I didn’t miss the fact that every single kid in my class was considered a “low expectation” kid with the school, even though some of us had great grades.

When my friend T, in a stoned stupor, told Debbie everything, it was the beginning of the end.

I just didn't know it yet.

Later that week, Debbie forced my dad to get off work early and come to the school. The office pulled me out of class; said the guidance counselor wanted to see me. It was an ambush. I walked in and there was my dad sitting in his red jacket just like Burt Reynold's jacket in "Smokey and the Bandit." His said Honda on the sleeve and not Bandit.

Debbie sat beside him looking like the cat who swallowed the canary. And she actually wore a bra, so I knew things were going to get bad.

She spent the next hour saying things like, "You're gonna tell this man (meaning the guidance counselor) and that class you never touched me. Admit it, admit you never slapped me."

I didn't say a word.  Just stared at her. I wasn't admitting anything. When my dad saw the mutinous look in my eyes he used his this-is-your-last-chance-before-I-beat-your-ass-voice, "Admit it!"

The guidance counselor, the voice on the intercom which cracked jokes every morning, and always quick with a smile and hug, looked ill. He was in over his head. I knew it.  And he knew I knew it. He excused himself and after a few moments, returned with Ms. Bell.

Ms. Bell was scared. I could see the fear on her face. She was worried about losing her job. She let us talk in class and now that talking had come back to haunt her, had actually brought parents into the school.

I wanted to comfort her but humiliation choked off the words. Only sarcasm remained.

"Can you believe they came all this way because she is worried a bunch of teenagers might think I beat her up?" I asked in a tone that would have gotten my face slapped at home.

Ms. Bell's voice shook. "It doesn't matter. No one really listened or believed it. I didn't believe it."

Debbie snorted. She saw the immaculately dressed college educated Ms. Bell and despised her.

Debbie believed in being tuff. She talked about whipping this woman or that woman, how she rode with the Hell's Angels and learned to fight there. Blah blah blah.

Her stories made me afraid. Afraid to defend Jay, afraid to stand up against her, afraid to make "good" girl friends.  But, I always knew, inside my gut that one day we'd have a blow out. She must have sensed it too because she always said, "When you feel froggy...leap."

The day I wiped blood on my face and told her never to touch me again was a beginning of sorts for me. The second time I stood up to her was in the guidance counselor's office. She looked like a fool for concerning herself with teen talk and I made sure she felt like a fool before she left. The guidance counselor and Ms. Bell did a lot of shifting in their seats, clearing their throats, and looking at each other.

So after detention a few weeks later, in that two toned Pontiac, on the way back to the trailer court in the pouring rain, I listened to her rant, threaten, and pound the steering wheel with her fist.

A little voice inside me said, "It's time."

By the time we got back to the trailer the storm was in full force. I wore Sam's Lee pin stripped baggy pants. Dad and Debbie weren't shopping at Rinks anymore, but I still wasn't allowed to go or pick out my own clothes. Debbie did it. And sometimes she picked to humiliate. So I borrowed a lot from Sam.

I walked back to my room and Jay to his. I was determined to leave. I picked up the pictures of my friends and put them in my coat pocket along with a Billy Squire cassette tape.

I went to Jay's door right next to mine and looked at him sitting in his chair.

"Get your coat on," I whispered, but not too soft, I wanted her to hear. "We're leaving."

Debbie heard us talking and came stomping down the hall with cigarette in hand.

"What are you doing?" She demanded.

"Leaving," I said. "I'm taking Jay and going to find our mom. She may be a self-centered abandoner, but she has got to better than you."

"You're not going anywhere," she said. "Get back in your room."

"No," I said.

She held her cigarette out to Jay. "Hold this Jay," she said.

I looked at Jay. "Don't hold it Jay. You don't have to do what she says anymore. Today's liberation day."

She flicked the cigarette in my face and came toward me. I swung and hit her full force in the face knocking her glasses off. We scuffled. She pulled my hair and scratched my face but I just kept punching her.

The years of taking her abuse, watching her abuse my brother, it all came out. I raged. I fought. I sat atop her and bashed her head into the floor over and over. I beat her cigarette smoking, Pepsi drinking in front of my brother, no bra wearing, ass.

She got away from me and ran into Jay's room. He ran from her and huddled on his bed. She screamed, "You can go. You can go. But Jay stays here!"

"Jay goes with me!" I screamed and knocked her against the wall and punched her in the face. She fell to the floor. Jay got his coat and we left her there, bleeding, on the floor in his room.

I threw open the screen door on the trailer. The wind caught it and broke the chain. It slammed against the aluminum siding as the wind and rain hit me full in the face. The paper truck was just dropping off our newspapers for delivery when we walked out. We walked right past the pile of papers and headed for the highway.

Common sense hit me two blocks later. We were at the edge of the trailer court closest to the highway. I had no idea where my mom lived (she abandoned contact with us years before). I didn't even know if she still lived in the state. I knew we would be reported as runaways. But I didn't think that was right. We didn't run away. We were forced out.

I saw Drachel's trailer. Drachel and her sister Stephanie were upper crust in our trailer court. Their parents were still married and they dressed well. They took piano lessons and their mom was classy because she spoke respectfully to everyone.

I went to the door and asked her if I could use the phone. She didn't want to let me in at first, soaking wet, with scratches on my face. But I was persistent until her dad came to the door. He took one look and told us to come in.

Crying and laughing alternately I told them what happened. Crying for leaving my dad, and laughing to finally be free.

They didn't know what to do with apparently crazy and soggy teenager, so I suggested they call Children's Services. I gave them a number I had hidden in the protective cover of my wallet.

Why would I have that?

A couple months before liberation day, I skipped school for the first time ever in my life. A good friend of mine moved to Columbus. She called our group and said she was feeling blue, suicidal. We all skipped to go see her. I made the arrangements, and told the lie to get a woman who befriended me to drive us there and pick us up later that day.

I didn't know the school called when you were absent, I’d never been absent before. No matter how sick I may have felt, being with Debbie all day was a sure fire cure to get my butt to school.

Debbie took the call and immediately called the police. She wanted me arrested for being truant.

They were all waiting for me when I came home. I saw my dad's car out front and knew I was busted before ever stepping inside the trailer. He was never home at 4 in the afternoon.

The police talked to Debbie and then to me. They'd spent a good hour or more with her before I arrived. They pulled me outside at one point so she couldn't hear. One of the cops handed me the number to social services.

He said, "I can see things aren't right here. Your step-mom is a little high strung. If you ever need anything or things get crazy here call this number."

That one officer gave me something my dad denied me. Validation. After only a few short minutes in her presence he knew she was twisted. Despite skipping school he was on my side. I took the number and hid it.

That is the number I pulled out and gave to Drachel's dad. He called it reluctantly, not wanting to get involved. The police and social services arrived an hour later.

The police took pictures of my face. Debbie scratched it and tore my clothes. Some of my hair was missing.

Then the social worker, an obese man in a suit, took me and Jay to a half way house in another town.

It was a house like any house you might see in the country. Except it was new and sported industrial size windows. We sat down at the kitchen table. I looked around at the big house, at my reflection in the dark glass windows. I saw a boy about my age peeking around a corner. He didn't come out and was cautious not to be caught.

Jay was twelve but scared. He sat close beside me.

I didn't know what was going to happen to us. I did know it was a beginning. We were free.

A short round man with red hair and beard came and talked to us briefly. He took Jay to the boys wing where a few other boys, all teenagers, were sleeping. I was taken to the girls wing. There were no other girls there.

The industrial bathrooms were large and clean. I didn't have a toothbrush or anything else, heh, teens are so practical, just the pictures of my friends and Billy Squire. I went to bed and the next morning awakened to sunlight streaming across the bed. It was quiet. No one was yelling and it felt good.

I got up and went to look for my brother.

In the large kitchen I discovered you had to earn your food. They explained a point system to me, but I didn't listen. It was just a pit stop and I wanted to see Jay. They showed me around and finally brought Jay out. I met three other boys. The one who peeked from around the corner the night before, and two older boys.

The obese social worker came to take us back to his office. My dad met us there. It was a weekday which meant dad was missing work. He was alone when he arrived.

The social worker asked, "Where is your wife?"

"She's tired. She was up all night after the kids ran away worrying." Dad said.

I rolled my eyes. I knew she called the police as soon as we left the trailer. But to hear my dad take her side (and call us runaways) before he even talked to us was disappointing, but typical.

"We're all tired," the social worker said. "But that isn't a very good reason to miss something this important. I am deciding today if you will get your children back."

"I'm not going back," I said. "I didn't leave to go back."

"Can you keep your wife and daughter from fighting?" The social worker asked dad.

"When I'm home," dad said.

"And just how much is that?" The social worker had his number.

Dad adjusted his seat and smiled in the way adults do when they are uncomfortable but about to tell you something you should already know. "Not much."

"If you send me back," I said. "I will leave again. But this time on my own. I won't come for help."

"Shut up," my dad growled. "Haven't you done enough? Debbie told me what happened."

"I bet she did dad," I said. "I tried to talk to you about her but you never wanted to hear it."

"What's to hear?" He spat. "You want your own way and when an adult tells you no, you don't like it."

"I don't like it when its always no dad," I said. "Debbie is crazy. You don't want to admit it because it's easier to just let her kill us."

"There is the issue of Debbie striking your daughter," the social worker cut in. "She left scratches on her face."

"That is from restraining her!" Dad said. "Do you think my daughter would be able to walk if my wife was fighting her? She'd be hurt a lot worse."

I knew my dad was choosing the easy way when he didn't respond to my pleas about Debbie in the past. Somehow that was easier to stomach than this. But I finally had to face the truth in that stuffy little social worker's office. My dad was choosing Debbie, not just the easy way, over me and my brother. Choosing her and clinging to her like a dying man in need of water. I wasn't about to sacrifice my life for his illusions.

"Mr. Thomas," the social worker said. "Debbie is an adult and should know better than to fight with a minor. She chose to fight. That's called child abuse, even if the child fights back or initiates. The adult can always walk away. The adult is supposed to use better judgment."

Dad shook his head. Not even the social worker would convince him Debbie was wrong.

At the end of the meeting the social worker determined dad couldn't protect me so the state of Ohio took custody.

When Jay was asked what he wanted to do, dad insisted he go back home. I looked at Jay and he nodded. I couldn't believe it. I wondered if something happened at the half way house to make Jay want to go back to Debbie instead of spending another night there with the older boys.

The social worker warned me the twelve girls in the group home where I'd have to live were a "rough" lot. What he didn't know about me was that I could fight, and was pretty good at it. I doubted they were any rougher than the crowd I belonged to at school, any rougher than Debbie. I was willing to risk it. Since Jay was going back to dad's house I could always leave if I didn't like it. But I kept that to myself.

At the end of the meeting, a court date was discussed. Jay went and stood by dad. I hugged Jay good bye and shook my dad's hand. That was the end of his parental role in my life. And really any role in my life.

A week later, I was in open court testifying about Debbie's transgressions. She sat and scowled with my diary open in front of her. She believed the judge would give her a chance to speak, to humiliate me by reading my diary in front of the court. She miscalculated.

The judge never allowed her to speak. I spoke on record, into a tape recorder, and then Drachel's dad got up and gave his testimony. He was scared and uncomfortable because he didn't want to be involved. He said as much on the stand.

Satisfaction, hell VINDICATION coursed through my veins when the social worker testified  Debbie was irrational and immature. He said she wasn't suitable to raise children and the court needed to direct her to parenting classes and most likely a psychiatrist.

I wanted to jump for joy when the judge looked at her and grouched, "Mam you are lucky this isn't a criminal proceeding or you'd be on your way to jail right now."

She actually started to speak. He held up his hand and yelled, "Don't say a word. I don't want to hear anything you have to say. Hitting a child and leaving this, he held up a picture of me taken from that night (and I looked really bad because it was raining and my hair was wet and clothes in disarray) is a criminal act. I don't care what you think this child did. She didn't make you raise a hand to her. You could have let her go and then this would have been a situation for the youth authorities. But your bad judgment proves you are not fit to raise her."

I smiled.  Finally, after three long dark years, the light in my soul started to shine again.

The judge continued. "The only reason I am not taking the boy out of the home is because he wants to stay.  I believe this incident will make the father more attentive. However, the social worker assigned to this case will be making unannounced visits to check on Jay for at least the next year. I am also ordering you both to parenting classes. I will review the case and report in twelve months to determine if further action is necessary. And, if appropriate, talk about allowing Tonya to come home.”

Pfft. I never had any intention of ever going back there.

It was over. I was free. Jay wasn't with me, but the social worker was going to make sure he wasn't abused anymore.

It was the first step away from what I was born into and had no control over, and onto a life path of my choosing.  Granted, a group home and state custody isn't a glamorous beginning.  But it was so much better, so much closer to a "normal" life, I could actually see my future with hope.

The judge ordered dad to pack my things and have them ready for pick up the next day. My clothes were in black garbage bags, shredded, the next day when my social worker took me to pick them up. She destroyed everything else, including all the short stories and poems I'd written over the years.

The social worker drove me out to Sedalia, or Midway Ohio, depending on when you lived there before of after the name change. My real life began at Sunrise house, a group home for girls. Within 8 weeks I was getting straight A’s and running track again. I was going to school dances (different high school) and starting to believe I just might be ok.

Of course the girls in the group home would become the bigger part of my world for the next year....but event the drama of 13 teenage girls couldn't keep me from plotting a better life, a future of MY choosing.
"