Memories

Certain of my memories, especially those from childhood, are like snapshots, a picture frozen in time. There is no dialog, no slide from the previous scene, or from the next. There’s just the one picture-one image burned into my consciousness. The first memory I have of my father is like that. I don’t know how old I was, but I must have been younger than three. I was in a playpen. I was crying. My father was beating me. That was the first photograph; but those snapshots-snapshots of my father beating me-would fill an album.

We lived in a small East Texas town in the upstairs portion of a house that had been divided into an upstairs apartment and a downstairs apartment. It was owned by my grandfather, who was a Realtor. My father drifted from one job to the next, and probably wouldn’t have worked at all, except for the favors owed to my grandfather. His favorite past-time, other than beating me, was sitting in one of the honky-tonks drinking beer with his buddies.

He never used his hand when I was younger-that came later, when he started slugging me. He either used his belt, or a switch from the willow tree behind the house-if he had enough patience to go get one. One of my snapshots is a picture of me, peering out the kitchen window, looking down at him, while he cut a switch from that tree. They were always as thick as his thumb, and supple-snapping against my bare buttocks like a whip. He always pulled down my pants before he whipped me. I still have marks on my butt left by those switches.

The beatings left other marks as well-marks that couldn’t been seen, but that have lasted all my life. They were evident only from their symptoms: in the first grade I peed all over the floor in class because I was too afraid to ask the teacher to let me go to the rest room, and in the second I often crapped in my pants at school. Even today, I have difficulty trusting people, or making friends, but that’s not just because of the beatings. What happened later was worse than any beating.

I was thirteen. My father was drunk-as usual. I was watching a program on TV, but my younger sister wanted to watch something else. He said, “Let Julie watch what she wants.”

I said, “No.”

“What did you say, boy? Don’t you talk back to me. Change the channel to what she wants to watch.”

“No,” I replied. I’d had enough of his always favoring her over me.

“He slugged me, knocking me to the floor.

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Fuck me? You little bastard. You think because you have some hair on your balls that you’re big enough to talk back to me, do you? I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

“Fuck you. I don’t care. I hate you.”

“Motherfucker. Think you’ve got balls big enough to take me on? I’ll show you.

He grabbed me, bending me over the back of the couch, where he held me by the back of my neck, which he gripped so tightly that I later had bruises in the shape of his fingers. With his other hand he reached around, unsnapped my jeans, and pulled them down, along with my underwear. Reaching in his pocket, he pulled out his pocket knife, flipped it open with one hand, thrust it between my legs, and slit open my scrotum. When my balls dropped down, he sliced them off. The pain was extreme. It was worse than getting kicked in the nuts. At first I thought that the high pitched screams I heard were coming from my sister, who was still in the room, but then realized that they were coming from me. When he released my neck, I fell to the floor, screaming, groping at my crotch.

He picked up my balls from the floor, and holding them in his hand, said, “I’ve got your fucking big balls now. I’ll bet you don’t feel so fucking big now-you little shit.”

Pulling my hand away from my crotch, he said, “I ought to cut off your dick, too. Maybe you’d make a better girl than a boy. At least you won’t need this,” he said, as he cut off my scrotum.”

I don’t know whether he would have cut off my penis-or not. I think that he probably would have, but, at that moment, my mom, coming in from the kitchen, jumped on his back, knocking him across me; then, pulling his hair, rolled him off of me onto his back-pummeled him, striking him across the face with her hands. He was too drunk to fight her off. He threw up and then passed out. Before I fainted, I heard her call for an ambulance.

I woke up as they were loading me into the ambulance. My image of this scene is of the flashing lights of the ambulance and the police car, reflecting off the front of my house. They had to strap down my hands because I kept trying to touch my crotch, which was ablaze with pain.

After I got out of the hospital, I went to live with my grandmother and grandfather, who lived in the same town. My father went to jail-he was sentenced to a seventy month mandatory term, and custody of me was taken away from my mother, since she had done little to stop my father from beating me. It was a small town, though, and, although I had moved, I still went to the same school. Everyone knew what had happened to me. Kids can be cruel.

“Hey, there. It’s Ronnie, the ball-less wonder. Say something for us, Ronnie.”

They kept expecting my voice to change to how it had been before I went through puberty. I didn’t bother to explain that, even if I hadn’t been getting testosterone injections, my voice wouldn’t have changed back. One day, at lunch, a group of boys grabbed me, formed a ring around me, and pulled down my pants.

“Jesus, will you look at that,” one of them said. There’s nothing at all below his cock. He’s completely smooth.”

“Shit-no pussy for him, not with out balls.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet he can’t even beat off. Can you beat off, Miss Ronnie?”

I didn’t tell them that the testosterone injections allowed me to be as sexually aroused as any of them. I had morning erections, and masturbated. Eventually, the novelty wore off, and they stopped bothering me, but I had no friends. I kept to my self-and, of course, I had no girl friends. Even if any of them would have wanted a ball-less boy, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask one out.

Finally, after graduating from high school, I left my home town of Mineola for college at TCU in Fort Worth. There I met Susan, who, I think, literally saved my life. First we became friends; then we became lovers; but, by the time we did, I had told her about my condition-about what my father had done to me. She loved me anyway. For the first time in my life, I felt worthwhile-that I mattered to someone.

We were married before we finished college. Of course, we can’t have children, but, on Monday, we’ll bring home our son. His name is Jamie. He’s five years-old. Oh, everyone advised us to adopt a baby, instead of a child like Jamie, who was abused by his father-a child, who, undoubtedly has problems, but-for myself-I need to love a child that was abused like me-a child that needs to be loved.