Mama, why didn’t you ever help me?” asked eighteen-year-old Margarette Ann Wells. Hurt and disappointment infused Margarette Ann’s heart and mind as she looked sadly at the woman she called mother. This woman had known about her father’s abuse all those years and had never done anything about any of it.
“I just don’t understand, Mama” Margarette Ann reiterated, packing her bags, preparing to leave for boot camp that day. She wanted to understand, she really did.
Looking around the room that had served as her torture chamber for the majority of her still young life, Margarette Ann remembered the nights Albert Wells had come into this room to molest her. She remembered the tears she shed as she cried out for someone to help her. She stopped believing in God during this season of her life. After all, a real God couldn’t possibly let the things happen to a child that had happened to her.
She swung her mind away from the memories of it all. Life has a way of setting things straight, she guessed. She was going into the military. She would change her own destiny.
“Mama, I’m going into the Army and that’s that,” Margarette Ann said decisively. Her mother begged her not to go when she found out Margarette Ann had signed up for the Army to get away from home.
She had already signed the paperwork and was flying to Columbia, South Carolina for twelve weeks of training at Fort Jackson. She couldn’t wait to get away from home. For seven of the last eight years, Albert had molested her and Emma knew it. She couldn’t stay in this disgusting, fear-filled house another moment with a man who had treated her as her father had.
“Mom, you need to get some help,” Margarette Ann advised the sobbing woman. “Don’t let him do this to the others. Please!” Margarette Ann insistently requested.
“Margarette Ann, honey, you have to understand,” her mother began. “That’s just the way it was. Divorce was unheard of. No one wanted to go to a counselor to let their dirty secrets out. We just had to sit back and endure,” Emma explained as best she could.
Once Emma began working evenings at the hospital, it didn’t take long for her to realize that while she was at work, Albert got drunk and beat the children. There just wasn’t much she could do about it. They both had to work to keep the family going. Unfortunately, she worked while he was alone at home with the children.
And it was true—no one wanted to get a divorce or counseling. How embarrassing it would be in their community with her mother being a minister as well!
When Emma discovered the abuse going on in their home, she stopped going to the family church where she and Albert had grown up. Living in such a small community, she knew someone would eventually know what was going on in their house. She couldn’t run that risk.
Once Albert started doing other things to Margarette Ann, it was more than Emma could bear. Short of killing him, though, she was at a loss on what to do about the situation. She knew if she killed him, she could go to prison. After that, it was anybody’s guess what would happen with her children.
She certainly didn’t want them to go to his parents for fear the same thing would happen in that home. Emma felt caught between a rock and a hard place. But she didn’t know the depths of braveness in her oldest daughter.
Margarette Ann finally stood up when she turned seventeen. She started by telling Albert he could not do those things to her anymore. She was tired of being physically, mentally, and verbally abused by her drunkard of a father. When Albert insinuated her younger sisters wouldn’t mind, Margarette Ann found the strength and the courage to threaten him with the shotgun she had kept hidden for about a month in her closet. And she was prepared to use it.
“No, Dad,” she warned him that day. “You will not hurt Cindy or Annie as you did me because I don’t mind killing you. You stole something very important from me. I will not allow you to do the same to my sisters. Please don’t try me, Albert. You mean nothing to me. Your death means even less.”
Albert backed down and did not pursue the matter any further. The look on his daughter’s face told him she was not playing with him and was very serious. He watched Margarette Ann with a brand new respect after that day, a respect borne from her not allowing him to get away with the abuse any longer.
Now that she was going away to the Army, it concerned Margarette Ann that he would be able to get to her sisters in her absence. But she had a plan for that as well.
“Mom, please don’t allow your husband to do to Annie and Cindy what he did to me. I didn’t deserve the way he treated me and neither do they. Please, Mom, get some help,” she pleaded with her mother again. Margarette Ann hoped their talk would help even though deep inside, she knew it wouldn’t.
Emma sat on the side of Margarette Ann’s bed, head down. Crying profusely, she understood the harm she had allowed to invade her home. Irreversible damage had been done to children she had birthed into the world. As the truth permeated her mind, she regretted not doing anything about the situation before it got worse.
“Mom, Jerry is driving me to the airport,” Margarette Ann informed her mother, breaking through the reverie Emma had lapsed into. Jerry was the cousin she had grown up with who was always there when she needed him.
“He’ll be here in a few minutes. I’m going to go and say goodbye to Dad,” Margarette Ann said, closing her suitcase.
Margarette Ann went out into the hall and looked at the house she was leaving, probably for the last time. It had not been a home to her for a very long time, probably about right when the abuse started. She was determined to never come back here unless there was a death, preferably her father’s.
She touched each photo of her and her brother and sisters lovingly as she looked at the pictures of them through the years. Looking at the pictures of her parents, she wondered when everything went wrong in their marriage. She would never put a child through what she had gone through. She wondered what made her parents, good people when they married, put her through what she had been through.
She had boxed up her personal photos in her room along with some of the things she wanted to have with her from her childhood. She realized as she packed that there was not much she wanted to remember from her childhood. She took only enough to show she had survived. And that’s what Margarette Ann was—a survivor. She had made it through.
Jerry came into the house as she walked down the steps. Taking her suitcase, he told her he would wait outside in the truck. As she walked into the kitchen, Albert looked up from the cup of coffee he drank. After their confrontation last year, Albert had given up drinking anything alcoholic. He now stuck to hot coffee and iced tea. Realizing his daughter would kill him if he tried anything again, he became paranoid. He wanted to keep his faculties about him. Alcohol only made him weak.
As his oldest daughter stood in the doorway, Albert looked into her eyes only long enough to let her know he recognized her and hadn’t forgotten their conversation. He hadn’t been able to look into her eyes any more since the confrontation. She had proved to be the stronger of them. He respected her for that.
“Well, I guess y’er Mama and I will try to make it to your graduation, Margarette Ann,” he said, turning his attention back to the steaming cup of coffee. He said it more to himself than to her. He wasn’t sure how she would react.
“Don’t bother. When I leave this house, the only other time I want to see you is when you’re in your coffin so I can spit in your face,” Margarette Ann said calmly, slowly, to make sure he understood every word she said.
No malice in her tone, Albert glanced at his daughter warily. She had a new strength about her he never dreamed she would have. There had been times over the years Albert had felt sorry for treating her as he did. Through it all, though, he kept telling himself that he couldn’t help what he did to her.
“I told Mom to get help and to not let you do to my sisters what you did to me. Please don’t let me hear from my sisters that you are abusing your privilege of being a father if that’s what you can be called. I will go to prison if I have to,” Margarette Ann warned him, the expression on her face unlike any he had ever seen before. “Not only that,” she continued, “but while I’m riding to the airport, I’m going to tell Jerry what went on in this house all those years. So rest assured, Albert Wells—you may have gotten away with it concerning me, but I will not allow it to happen to another little girl in this house.”
Margarette Ann finished her goodbye to her dad without allowing him to say another word. Albert watched her diminutive figure as she left the house, possibly for the last time. A startled expression on his face, Albert realized he couldn’t be angry with her. He knew his actions had been wrong. He just couldn’t help it, he kept telling himself.
He also knew that, when Jerry returned from the airport, he would tell many of the family what Albert had done to his children. He would have to face it. He hoped that one day Margarette Ann would find it in her heart to forgive him, but he doubted it.
Having said goodbye to her brother and sisters before they left for school that morning, Margarette Ann Wells walked out of the house to Jerry’s truck, triumphant. She looked forward to Army basic training. She knew it would be hard and she hoped she would make it. But even if she didn’t, she would not come back to this town or to this house until her father was dead. Today was the first day of the rest of her life.