It was weeks after our trip to the dump when I had one of my worst nosebleeds. It happened after school. I remember running into the kitchen to find Mother, and I tripped on some marbles from the Hungry Hungry Hippos game. Immediately, my nose bled—onto my clothes and the floor in the hallway. I panicked. Covering my nose, I tried to keep from making an even bigger mess. I’d already been in trouble for blood on the carpet once before.
From the time I could remember, all it took to give me a bloody nose was a quick flick of the knuckle or a spill to the ground. I remember several occasions at school when I’d be sitting at my desk, and out of the blue my nose would start bleeding. It was a constant struggle.
Using my shirt to hold my nose, my six-year-old self was at a loss to know how to make it stop bleeding. My father was usually around to rescue me from this sort of thing. He’d scoop me up and hold me so I’d lie flat in his arms. He’d tilt my head back while holding my nose with a cotton cloth or whatever was nearby.
“How are we going to get this nose of yours to ever stop bleeding, Christina-beana? Every time I come home, you’ve got another bloody nose. I’ve never seen anything like it!”
He gave me my medicine—two pills and a nose spray. I remember taking that medicine every day for what seemed like forever.
Another time, I was playing with Christian and we were running back and forth in the hallway downstairs by the kitchen, teasing each other.
“Na-na-na waspy man gotta save me from the bees,” I said, giggling and sped past him.
“I’m gonna get you with my lion!” he jeered as he held his lion by the tail, spinning it over his head. I turned, and he was coming straight for me.
Crash.
We hit head on. Within a millisecond, my nose started bleeding like a fire hydrant had exploded. There was red everywhere. It was all over my little brother. All over me. I’ll never forget my father’s face as he saw the carnage. He ran like lightning to us. He scooped both of us up and tried to figure out who was bleeding from where. When he discovered that all of the blood was from my nose, he held me in his arms for hours. He stripped us of our soiled clothes and took baby wipes to our faces. He told us gently, “This is why we don’t run in the house. I have no doubt you two learned your lesson.”
As I lay in his arms in just my Care Bear underwear, I looked down to see my little brother holding our father’s hand in nothing but his Elmo Pull-Ups. He could steal your heart with just one glance. Seeing his sad, teary eyes made me so upset.
But this time, as I stood in the kitchen, my father wasn’t around, and six-year-old me wasn’t sure what to do to stop the bleeding. He had been gone for a few days now with the army, and I didn’t know when he was coming back.
I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop my nose from bleeding and I’d ruin Mother’s carpet. So, I lay on the floor in the hallway, holding my nose with my school shirt. All I’d wanted to do was find Mother so I could read some sentences I had learned at school. She was very angry that I couldn’t read yet, and she’d make fun of me in front of my brothers and sisters. I thought that reading the sentences I had learned that day would make her happy.
My older sister walked past me and stopped. “What are you doing lying on the carpet?” she asked.
“I’ve got another bloody nose, and I’m waiting for it to stop before I stand back up. See—there by my backpack,” I replied as I pointed to the bloodstain.
“Has Mom seen this? Quick. Help me grab some rags and soap. We can clean it up, I think.” RaeLynne whizzed into the bathroom and pulled the cleaner from underneath the sink. “Go grab me that ripped-up washcloth. We’ll use that,” she said, pointing to the dirty laundry pile in front of the washer.
As she cleaned up the blood from the carpet, I stood before her in amazement. She was nine—exactly three years older than me. We share the same birthday, which I hated until I was in my twenties. I thought RaeLynne was the coolest girl. She was popular in school and always came home with good grades and stickers. As I stared at her while she cleaned up my bloody mess, my heart was filled with new understanding. She was helping me because she didn’t want Mother to give me another spanking. She was helping me because she wanted to protect me. This was the only way she could.
At that moment I didn’t say anything, but I knew she loved me.
As quickly as we could, we got rid of all the evidence of my accident. She stripped me bare, put all my clothes in the washer, and told me to put on different clothes. I grabbed her hand, squeezed it as a show of thanks, and ran upstairs to find clean clothes. I decided not to read to Mother that day and did my best to be invisible instead. In this instance, crisis was averted.
But just a few days later, we were all at the dinner table, Mother, RaeLynne, Abbeygail, Christian, Jemma, and me, when punishment would come fast and furious. I was holding my most prized possession, Bear, a small, cotton panda bear with big brown eyes and a tag that wouldn’t come off its backside. He had been given to me at the hospital when I was born. He was part of me. We slept together every night. I couldn’t sleep without him. I took him to school every day. We played on the playground and had lunch together. He even came with me to the bathroom. I did everything with Bear.
He was a tough little thing. I didn’t know of any stuffed animal that could survive that many ripped limbs sewn back on. Thank goodness for my godmother; I wouldn’t have had the years I did with Bear if she hadn’t stitched him up every other week. He had little holes with stuffing brimming out the sides. He was patched up all over. His white coloring turned into a dirty gray, and his black coloring faded into a dull wash of a charcoal color. But Bear remained my most beloved friend.
So, there I was at the dinner table, eating dessert, when Bear fell out of my hands and into my bowl of chocolate pudding—rear end first. I pulled him out and Mother laughed and started singing, “Poopy bottom bear! Poopy bottom bear!” My siblings giggled and joined the chant. Over and over again, they repeated the same thing. I started to cry. “Please stop. Please stop making fun of Bear!” They kept going, and I was puffy-eyed and red-faced in frustration. I glanced at Mother. She looked excited.
I’ll never forget that moment. It was when I saw the shift in Mother’s heart from “I do not like this child” to “I do not love this child.”
I was so young. But I saw her eyes and heard her voice. Up until that point, I believed she loved me but did not like me. I wasn’t good at anything like my two older sisters or my younger brother. They each excelled in some way. I stood out because of my shortcomings. If I could become smart like Abbeygail or pretty and funny like RaeLynne, then maybe Mother would like me too. But at that moment, I knew she enjoyed hurting me. In my realization, I immediately stopped crying and begging them to stop. I wiped the pudding off Bear and began to raise the spoon to take a bite for myself.
“Just what do you think you’re doing, little girl?”
I looked up at her in confusion. “I’m eating my pudding?” I said tentatively.
Her face became hot with temper.
“No one said you could eat your pudding. We aren’t done singing our new favorite song. Stand up. Get off your butt and stand in the doorway!” she yelled with a red-hot fury. I had seen this face of hers before and did not want to fall against the hand that came with it. I shot up out of my seat quicker than quick and made my way to the kitchen doorway, Bear in hand.
“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered and lowered my head.
“We are going to finish our song, and you, little girl, are going to stand there perfectly still and listen. Do you hear me? Not a sound, or I will tan your hide. Kids, I want you to repeat after me as loud as you can.” My brother and sisters grew pale and looked at me with fear.
I gripped Bear and whispered to his heart from mine, “I love you.”
After Mother was finished, she told me to clean up the kitchen and to not come out until everything was sparkling. She excused my siblings from the dinner table, and they all scurried off. She went underneath the sink and pulled out a rusty old mop bucket and cleaner. She gave me the supplies and walked away, reminding me of the punishment that awaited me if I didn’t do a good job.
I pushed a chair over to the sink, climbed on top, and filled the mop bucket with water. My mind raced. I had cleaned up after dinner before, so I knew how to do it the way Mother liked. But I had never mopped a floor before. I did remember seeing her clean the floor before my father came home. I did my best to copy how she did it.
After I cleaned the kitchen, I quietly made my way to my bedroom, hoping Bear wouldn’t be taken away. I opened my dresser drawer, pulled out my Barbie nightie, and got ready for bed. I stared out the window at the tall pine trees. I drifted off to sleep with Bear in hand, dreaming of our great adventures and faraway places. Luckily, Mother left me alone.
The next day, I had the hardest time trying to write and to read the school assignments. I sounded out letters but just could not make words. Writing was also hard for me, although I was a better writer than reader. Because I was so behind in classwork, my teachers decided to keep my desk outside the classroom. I was given a different curriculum that included listening to “Hooked on Phonics” cassette tapes for hours. I had to wear bulky headphones that started hurting a few minutes after I put them on. I also had big Coke bottle glasses. They were the ugliest shade of pink, and my eyes looked huge behind the lenses. I hated my life.
If I thought dinner at home was the worst, lunchtime at school was a close second. I was picked on relentlessly by other kids. It didn’t help that I had failed the first grade, a reality Mother kept fresh in my memory through her comments. Even trying my best, I just could not read, and I wanted to so badly. (Reading would elude me for years.) As the months passed, I looked at school as both a blessing and a curse—it was a blessing to be safe with the nuns and far away from Mother, and it was a curse because I was markedly different from other children.
One afternoon, I came home from school as happy as a little clam. I think I remember it so well because that wasn’t a normal feeling for me! But on this day, I made a drawing for Mother. I was excited to give it to her because I thought by doing so, I’d get the kind of affection she gave my brother and sisters. With a big smile, I pulled my drawing out of my backpack and handed it to her.
I’d written “I luv you” at the top in giant, illegible letters with stick-figure drawings of us together standing by some flowers.
Mother pulled me into our laundry room, ripped the drawing out of my hand, bent over, and looked me square in the eyes. “You, little girl, are so stupid. Since you’re too stupid to read and write, I’m going to help you learn what you are good for. Go get all the dirty clothes from this house. You’re our Laundry Lady now. Laundry Lady, Laundry Lady—that’s what we’ll all call you.”
She then summoned my siblings and demanded that they chant my new name while I stood next to a pile of laundry. I lowered my head. I felt the crushing weight of shame wash over me. I went from being the elephant in the room to the object of open ridicule and rejection. I longed to be like everybody else—to read, to write, to be liked. I had a terrible stutter, Coke bottle glasses that hurt my eyes, dyslexic tendencies, and a mind filled with Mother’s crippling words.
When I wrote the word love incorrectly on the top of that gift for Mother and felt her rejection, something shifted deep inside my soul. From that moment on, I knew I was always going to be the outcast. The unwanted one. So, I was going to stop trying to get her to like me. As a child, you learn rejection quickly. And you learn to cope with rejection by accepting it.
That moment taught me not to give affection where it’s unwanted, and Mother definitely didn’t want it. It would take years for that wound to heal.
My joy is gone; grief is upon me;
my heart is sick within me.
Jeremiah 8:18 ESV