Bashed But Not Trashed

Introduction

Writing is a reach -out by one mind, but it always takes two to tango. So if you’ve decided to own this book, our dance is about to begin, and I thank you for being my partner!

Here’s a little info about how this book came to be.

As I worked on composing these stories, I found myself blending two genres. I kept braiding lots of memoir into fiction. Remembrances were taking right over.

Because I didn’t feel I needed to invent much. Considering the soul-slamming things I’ve been through, and the controversial rogue I’ve become, I felt that making something up was rather pointless.

Yet I knew that narration is hugely empowered by the merging of truth with invention. So I did create some of the characters, and I tinkered somewhat with the details, until this became plausibly fiction. The sum of its parts, however, is the portrait of my own life. That fact is made clear by events that resurface throughout, and in the sense of sequential imparted.

So I'm thinking, what do I call this? Fiction peppered over with True Crime? An Autobio/Short Story hybrid? I can’t say, and I hope it doesn’t matter.

What matters to me is the reach-out. What matters to me is our universal gift for prevailing against our own sorrows. Surviving our unbearable sufferings...the kinds that both destroy us and grow us. The kinds that give birth to compassion. The kinds that reveal there’s no Other.

This is where I share mine.

A.P.

Dedication

For Adam, Josh, Justin, Brooke, Liya, Jaylie, Jessie, Jo Ann, Lisa, John, Fulvio, Gordo, Joel, Andrew, Aunt Gloria, and David from Special Forces.

And yes, to be fair, this is also for the liar and the coward.

Other Books by Aphrodite Phoenix

Not #MeToo. #MeinCharge.

This P—sy Grabs Back at Trump, the Religious Right AND Steinem

Are They Bad Girls or Brilliant?

A Woman Whose Calling is Men

And the POINT of All this Agony IS...?

Please Note:

Bashed But Not Trashed

is an updated, retitled and re-edited edition of

And the Point of All this Agony Is...?

I. THE MOTHER STORIES

Little Boy Skipping

God couldn’t be everywhere...that’s why He made mothers.

—-Jewish Proverb

AS HER YOUNGEST CHILD blissfully loped on ahead, the mother felt a guilt-heavy heartache. She knew she was going to hurt him. Afterwards he would still skip, just like now, and zoom on his bike, and roughhouse. He wouldn’t lose that coordinated magic that only little boys possess.

But deep down, he would be broken.

At the moment he was four, just as blonde as sweet corn, safe and sound and full of light and nearly winged. He and his parents and two older half-brothers were departing from an Open House tour. They had cruised the inner sanctum of a prefab, a cavernous, almost-McMansion, and now they blundered down the brand-new sidewalk in their typical disjointed promenade.

His parents were the owners of a sufficient brick house on a very large corner lot. They didn’t need anything grander. Didn’t need to be poking around here. But huge houses went up in the ‘80s New South just like handy open-air art shows, and it was fun, it was even the fashion, to pile into the car on a weekend afternoon, window shop the estates, and imagine being somebody different.

The mother wasn’t having any fun, though. Not today. And not on most other days, either. Fun was what she hoped all her children could manage, but for her, it had gotten pretty scarce. Her eyes left the baby for the eyes of her husband, who had just turned around with a glare. She was cramping, she had told him, but his face wasn’t kind; his look said Catch up, you’re a drag.

Well at least he wasn’t barking or harassing. He wouldn’t do that in public, and she saw his two stepsons knew it too; relaxed for once, goofy and laughing, they weren’t being stiff wooden soldiers.

It was silly, it was so damned ironic, that they’d just toured that massive new house. Like she and this husband were ever going to purchase another nice home together. As if a more spacious, more lavish place to live would make everything okay. But really, she thought, maybe it would. A roomier house meant avoidance. Her older boys could steer clear. If their stepfather saw less of them, he’d mistreat them much less. Wasn’t that logically so? But then she thought, You’re being a dumb ass. A dumb-ass middle class fool. Always looking ahead, forever dreaming up...always in the market for something bigger, something better...like that would fix everything.

Perhaps that was why she’d gone roaming around through those plentiful rooms back there, even with her cramps pinching fiercely. This time of the month, she felt rooted. Free, if for only a couple of days, from her burgeoning thoughts about flight, and with sweet, profound urges for nesting.

But not. As they jumbled down the perfect-poured walkway, her smallest son’s skipping continued to fill her with corresponding waves of despair.

Because he, the only child loved by the father, was the only child not living in fear.

And that would never do.

So his confidence had to end, too.

His security was already wormed by a stranger. A man had sneaked into her life. Had burrowed inside of her head. She knew he was trying to call her right now, had probably been trying all day. He was going to be disappointed to learn that they’d gone on this real estate jaunt; he was trying to murder their marriage.

But he was just another bad joke. Never to be seriously sutured into her motherly life. She could tell he despised all her children. But all was the operative term there; at least he didn’t play favorites. So she fantasized about him, a little. She allowed him to call her, and hope his dumb hopes, and coo his canned sympathies. But she knew he only wanted to unwrap her. To peel her down, and then probe her. To fill her hungry hole in her darkness, and then rip it all apart with new pain.

Because whenever men offered their comfort, and called her current partner a bastard, it was just so they could get in her, possess her, and become just another bastard. Stop it, stop it, she scolded herself. She struggled to lose those mean thoughts. She needed to think positive. But how do I do that? she wondered. Her littlest boy’s prancing was breaking her heart, and her older boys broke her heart, always.

So what do you think, guys? she suddenly hollered, contriving a daft reckless cheer. How did you like that big place?

I liked it. Is it a mansion? her eleven-year old yelled back.

I guess you could call it a small one.

Can we buy it? her eight-year old chimed in.

She knew they both desperately hoped so. A nice big new place to escape to.

Hell will freeze over before we’ll afford that, her husband declared impolitely. He was right though; she couldn’t deny that.

His stepsons didn’t protest that, they didn’t Aw, Dad! him, and such; they just went all silent, as usual, because he had opened his mouth.

Hell will fweeze ovuh! chirped the baby, then he stopped and reached out to his father’s passing legs. The young man bent down then and scooped him up high, and the child’s corn silk hair showered sunshine.

Hell will fweeze ovuh! he chortled again, this time to his half-brothers, and the boys and his mother all smiled; this one was worshipped, but he’d never got bratty; this was a true golden child.

WHEN THEY GOT HOME, the dogs wagged around them. Registered Samoyeds, a male and a female, astoundingly beautiful beasts: black skin sprouting white eyelashes, and the thickest, softest, snowiest-looking fur that had ever grown out of a canine. Her oldest boy let them go bounding out into the big fenced empty back yard, and then all her sons went tearing out there, running next to and in between them, those big white fluffy sweet sled dogs, a breed recommended for families.

Their mother couldn’t see all their romping; she was busy with herself in the bathroom. But she heard her sons’ hoots and wild laughter, and the dogs’ sharp staccato barks of love; it all came up ringing in the bright corralled sound waves that bounced off the six-foot high fence pickets.

It merrily bounced into her.

In the near future, not a year down the road, when suddenly single and packing, she’d discover that someone had mistaken for garbage her trash bags stuffed full of dog hair. For years she’d collected the dogs’ silky brushings as zealously as she stored the kids’ photos. All of it had gotten thrown out. Damn, she would think, when the time came. There’d been enough fur to spin into skeins, and made into a coat of Samoyed.

One of the dogs would disappear, too—ruthlessly stolen, she would guess. It would just be so hard to guard everything, when everything was coming undone.

But for now, all the dog hair was with her, as were both dear precious dogs. The living room closet kept the bags of brushed fur with the hats, helmets, cleat shoes and jackets, it harbored a family’s sweaty life force, and she often peered into that funky-smell space, inhaled, and felt a moment of contentment.

She came out of the bathroom and encountered her husband sprawled belly-up on the couch. He had clicked the TV to loud life. He had found himself a game and turned up the noise, and she no longer heard what went on in the yard.

Come and watch this with me.

Can’t. Gotta check on the kids.

Oh, don’t worry, they’re fine—his brothers are out there with him.

She didn’t want to watch football, and she knew he didn’t really care. She was already to the back door. The wall phone right next to it rang.

It was him.

Who’s that? yelled her husband.

Bob, your friend from work.

Tell him to come on over, watch the game with me.

She relayed the message, and Bob said he’d be there, but only so he could watch her. She smiled in response; she was flattered, but she didn’t say anything.

Where were you? he asked. I’ve been calling.

We were out. We looked at a house.

"A house?"

Just for something to do. No house is gonna get bought.

He got quiet. She felt him go sulky. I’ll see you in a bit, she told him, then she hung up and looked out back.

Her baby was skipping again. With his balance diminished this time. Negotiating grass knolls and leaping, lapping dogs, and his own breathless riotous laughter. His eldest brother was giving the dogs chase, working them up, keeping them excited. She stood there for a moment, observing, and realized her eleven-year old was doing all that just to make his little sibling ecstatic.

Her middle child had given up on trying to fit in. He was off by himself, a few yards away, looking defeated and frustrated Normal sibling conflicts, she figured. Regular brotherly stuff. She called to her sad son and invited him in to help her prepare their supper. No. He would stay there and suffer, the odd disgruntled man out, and she realized it was something he needed. Boys needed regimentation. Something she couldn’t provide. She only knew how to love them. All that male hierarchy, all that alpha wolf stuff...they all had to face that alone.

The visitor arrived.

The kids blew in right behind him, sweat-glistened, red-cheeked, and thirsty. Hi Bob, her four-year old hailed him. The houseguest didn’t respond. Hi Bob, her baby repeated, and again, the guy acted deaf.

She could see he ignored him on purpose. And he thinks he’ll get into my pants?

Even the nightmare she’d got her boys into had spoken to them, charmed them, at first. Even that huge disappointment had embraced her two elder sons, had insisted that they call him Daddy. But his love for them was erratic, and sometimes competed with noticeable failure with his trips to the neighborhood bars; and his love for them often got flung by the wayside when he ground them into terrified scapegoats.

And then finally, when the youngest child happened, it was plain that he just wanted him.

But he’d never made a point of disregarding a kid not his, not like this one was doing. At least he’d never done that.

THE WHOLE BUNCH, BOTH human and canine, was now inside for the night. She maneuvered her way around them in the moderate-sized living space, serving food and diverting the children and dogs so the men could enjoy their game.

She stayed busy with the womanly synergy of sloughing off uterine lining and attempting to keep the peace. A bit later, when she felt herself drooping, her fatigue gave way to false hope. She pondered the purchase of that big house again...and again, her good sense swung her back.

The men