Dragons to Butterflies: The Metamorphosis of a Man

The First Chapter of My Memoir.

My story is one of forgiveness, of the unforgivable. Therefore, this dedication must be a part of this introduction to the real Johnnie Calloway.

Dedication

Dragons to Butterflies is written in dedication to my dad for all that he taught me about the durability of the human heart. His teachings did not come in the traditional sense. Most of what he taught has taken a lifetime for me to understand. I believe that he and I made a pact, perhaps many lifetimes ago, that he would help me learn forgiveness of what most would deem as unforgivable circumstances.

First, he taught me about hatred in all its glory but in the end he taught me about forgiveness and love, and became my friend. To him I am very grateful for playing such a tremendous role in my becoming the man I am today.

Perhaps if you stay with Dragons to Butterflies through to its end, you will see how the ogre of my youth became the reigning angel of my life.

With much love,

Johnnie Calloway

The Guilt

Standing on a chair and drying the dishes as my momma washed them is my first memory of her. I remember folding towels with her after she had done the laundry. I loved helping her. I also remember the day they were burying President Kennedy. I was really upset that I couldn’t watch Captain Kangaroo. The procession was on every channel. Yep, all three channels. She stood in the hallway with a broom in her hand and explained to me the importance of what was happening. I think she cried.

I remember walking to and from work with her, holding her hand and feeling safe. It seems like she always rubbed my back until I went to sleep at night. I always felt secure when she was around. I was totally a momma’s boy. I went everywhere with her and making her happy was all I cared about. I would fight to the death for these memories because they are the only ones I want to remember.

But then came the day she had to go to the hospital for a checkup. I begged her to let me go. She just said, “No, Momma will be right back.” I didn’t understand. I went everywhere with her, so I pleaded, “Please let me go.”

“No,” she said, “It’s just a checkup. I will be right back.” But she never came home!

I’ve been told that she was in the hospital about six months. When they finally realized that she was dying, she decided she needed to see her boy, so my grandmother and sisters sneaked me up the fire escape. (At that time you had to be fourteen years old to visit in a hospital). It was about six floors up. That fire escape was scary, but not scary enough to keep me from going to see my mom.

I remember how heavy the air felt and how cold it was when I entered that hospital. It also stank, and the color of the walls was this ugly, dull, and depressing off-white, almost yellow color. Thinking back, it was probably because they were stained with tobacco smoke. There was a horrible energy and everything was so drab and dreary that I immediately wanted to leave. This was before we were even in her room.

The day she left for the hospital she had looked as healthy as anyone, but when I walked into that hospital room, full of anticipation to see her, what I saw was horrific. This woman did not look like my mom at all. I did not know what death was at the time, but even to this five-year-old it was obvious that she was not long for this world. She was very pale with a chalky-white complexion and was very thin. But worst of all was that huge blister on her lip. I can still see it like it was yesterday; a big yellow scab on her upper lip. It actually looked like snot. It was disgusting. I turned my back on her and walked to the end of the bed. I was so incredibly disappointed. I had come to see Momma, but she wasn’t there.

I wanted more than anything to just leave. I remember her saying something like “Please get him out of here. This is too hard on him”, and “He shouldn’t have to see me like this.” Then she said, “Come give Momma a good-bye kiss.”

I just said, “No, I don’t want to.”

I had no idea what those five words were going to do to my life. I was so confused. How could anyone say that this person was my mother? My mom was very pretty, and she laughed and smiled a lot. This woman couldn’t have laughed or smiled even if she had something to laugh or smile about. Somewhere inside me, though, I knew she was my mom and that something was very wrong.

When we got home, my sister, Jackie, told my drunken dad what had happened. He became very angry and pulled off his belt and spanked me, all the while screaming at me, “Here your mother lays on her deathbed and you, her only son, won’t even kiss her good-bye”. Not even Alzheimer’s could erase that memory from my mind.

The next time I saw her, she was in a box in a funeral home, lifeless, with a powdery mask of makeup that someone had put on her. It was horrible and smelled putrid. To the best of my memory, Momma never wore makeup.

Everyone, even my dad, was dressed up. All the men had on suits and ties, the women wore their church clothes, and they had dressed me and my sister in our Easter outfits. I hated those clothes and to this day I won’t wear a tie. We were there for the viewing. What a stupid thing to do! I still think that the whole viewing concept is insane and morbid.

There was a long line of people that kept walking by her, most of them crying, saying all these really nice things. What was really crazy is that they kept saying, “Doesn’t she look nice?” My thought was, ‘Hell no. She doesn’t even look like my mom!’ Someone mentioned how honest she was and how much she loved her children. Even at the age of five, I thought, ‘I hope when I die people can say, “At least he was honest”.’ I became acutely aware of the importance of what is said about you at your funeral and somewhat obsessed with what legacy I would leave.

Next was the slow ride in that long line of cars to the cemetery. There were so many people there. Again, I had no idea what was happening. But what came next would stay with me forever. Everyone was gathered at this big hole in the ground. Almost everyone was really crying now. My sisters were sobbing terribly, and I didn’t understand why. Soon they were lowering the same box that I knew had MY MOM in it and the preacher was saying all this gibberish. Then he asked someone to throw the first shovel of dirt on it and people kept doing so until I couldn’t see it anymore. And then she was gone. It took a long time for me to understand the finality of it all.

The driveway to my grandmother’s house was gravel, so you could hear immediately when someone pulled onto that drive. I was eleven years old before I stopped going to the front door to see if it was Momma coming home.

As time passed, I began to see the result that her not being around was having on my entire family. And it was all my fault. I was the one who didn’t kiss her, and that was why she left and why I got spanked. It was my fault that my dad beat my sister and would do things that made her make those horrible sounds from her bedroom when he went in there and closed the door. Most of the time when he went in there, I would hide in the closet and wrap my arms around myself and rock while I cried, saying over and over again to myself, ‘You chickenshit. You should protect her. You should stop him! You’re just a coward. A real man would stop him.’ I would do this until the screaming stopped.

There were also times when I was missing my mom that I would go into my grandmother’s bedroom and close the door. I had to hide since I was a boy. Boys weren’t supposed to cry. For some reason, I needed to see myself cry, so I would look in the mirror while I did it. To this day I do not understand the importance of that. All I know is that seeing my own tears comforted me.

While crying, I was constantly apologizing to her, saying, “Momma, I am so sorry I didn’t kiss you. If you will just come home, I will kiss you forever.” And inside I was screaming, ‘Momma, please come home!’ The pain wasn’t just emotional; it was physical as well. Because I couldn’t let anyone know I was crying, I held back making any sound and would just do it silently. This caused my throat to hurt all the time and my stomach stayed in a knot. I would stay in my grandmother’s room until all the tears were gone and then pull myself together and try to act as if nothing happened.

Momma had kept a log of my life in my baby book. Everything I ever did was recorded in there: my first steps, my first word (Momma), who was at my first birthday… everything. Often I would get that book down and read it. It was like Momma was reading it to me, and I felt loved. My baby book allowed me to feel connected to her.

My mother’s dog, Bridgette, nearly grieved herself to death. She would not eat. She just laid on the porch and looked sad. I would talk to her and try to get her to play with me, but for the longest time, she just laid there. I would walk off and she still just laid there. I would talk to her and say things like, “Momma didn’t leave us, girl. God just took her home. She still loves us. We will be okay.” At least this is what the good church folk were telling me. Then one day I got up to walk away and Bridgette got up and came with me. From that day until she died, she followed me everywhere. We were the epitome of the dog and boy story. She walked me to the school bus every morning and would be waiting for me when the bus brought me back.

She was always having puppies. I mean all the time. It made my dad very angry that she had so many. Most of the time we would just give them away but she had so many that we ran out of friends to give them to. Then my dad would take them down some old country road and drop them off.

Even that wasn’t enough. One day I got off the bus and Bridgette wasn’t there. I immediately freaked out. I ran all over the neighborhood calling her name. I shouted until my voice was gone. No one had seen her, or knew where she might be. My best friend was gone! She was the only one that understood the pain. I could let that dog know the truth. I could go off into the woods or into some isolated place and cry with her. She understood and she was now gone too.

I found out later he had taken her and dropped her off too. According to my grandmother they had taken her down to the ‘bottoms’ where we had to go to get legal liquor because we lived in a dry county. The bottoms were twenty six miles away! She was gone, never to be seen again. GOD had taken her too, like the good church folk had said. I was constantly asking myself, ‘What did I do that was so bad? Now I don’t get to have a mother or a dog.’

One week later … she came home! Bridgette had found her way twenty six miles and come home! I was so excited! ‘Maybe God did like me.’ Even my dad said, “I don’t care how many ‘fuckin’ puppies that dog has, she’ll never leave here again.” The very next day, she was run over in front of the house. She had come twenty six miles, down roads she had no way of knowing, only to be run over in front of the house. I was so angry. People say kids can be mean, well so can adults. One of our neighbors just had to tell me that when she was run over puppies were scattered all over the road. They buried her while I was at school. Everybody told me that no one knew who ran her over. It wasn’t long before I found out … it was my neighbor. Before that I had really liked him. He was a really good dad to his children, and tried to be as nice to me as he could. After he ran over Bridgette and lied to me about it, I literally hated him. Trust, for me, was getting more and more difficult all the time. No one ever told the truth, no one ever did what they said they would do, and no one could truly be counted on.

I took responsibility for everything. It was my fault that my dad had to drink so much. After all, I had taken his wife from him, which meant it was my fault that he was so angry that when he was drunk he would beat up the people I loved. I remember at least three times that he broke my grandmother’s arm. He would beat my sister with his big thick leather belt until there were welts on her back. Then sometimes after he beat her, he would take her into the back room and close the door. To me, none of this would be happening if I had only kissed my mom. Everyone said that God had taken my mother to be one of his angels but I knew the truth … ‘He didn’t take her, I did!’ What God did do though, was take Bridgette as more punishment for me holding back that one kiss.

Once during the rainy season in Western Kentucky, there was a tornado that devastated one of our neighboring counties. I was riding around with my grandparents and the man on the radio said that a little girl had been killed during the tornado. I was in the back seat when I heard this and I started crying, trying not to make any sound and whispering, “What did I do now?” My grandmother heard me and asked, “What’s the matter Son?” I responded, “I don’t know what I did now but I didn’t want that little girl to get hurt.” She told me, “Johnnie, you didn’t have anything to do with that girl dying.” Somehow in my guilt-ridden mind that tornado and that little girl’s death were my fault. Everything was that way.

I started acting out very early. I was caught stealing the first time when I was six. Coming home from school on the last day of the school year, the bus stopped for refreshments at this little country store. All the kids but me and my sisters had money for treats. I stole some baseball cards and other candy and got caught and in trouble. I do not remember the consequences, but whatever they were, they didn’t even slow me down. Soon after that I started breaking into people’s houses and stealing stuff; just anything, it didn’t really matter what it was, although baseball cards were usually my focus. I was about nine or ten when the stealing got really bad.

All this and I was still getting good grades in school. I made straight A’s and A+’s until halfway through the fifth grade. The day I got my report card for the first semester of the fifth grade one of my dad’s drinking buddies and childhood friends came by to visit. When he saw my report card, he went on and on about how good I had done and then gave me a quarter for each A. I thought almost immediately, ‘If he knew I killed my mom, he wouldn’t give me these quarters.’ My next report card was all D’s and D-‘s. No one noticed, not even my teachers.

I started acting out in class, being the class clown and wrote a lot of sentences for talking during class. I almost never got to go to recess, got at least one paddling a week and became very popular with all the wrong people. According to my teachers and other peers, I was just being another Calloway. I heard the phrase often, “One of those damn Calloway’s that will never amount to anything.” I set out to prove them right. I had already acquired a ‘What the fuck.’ mind-set. I cursed a lot, and I could not complete a sentence without the f-bomb. Cursing made me one of ‘the guys’.

After my mother died, my sister, Jackie, who was five years older, took over the mothering role for me. She was very protective. When my dad’s fits of rage would come and he would be beating grandma, Jackie (my ten-year-old sister) would grab me by the arm and lead me to grandma’s closet where we would sit on granddad’s trunk and cry. One day Jackie stood up and said, “I have got to get out of here. I am not going to live in this closet anymore.” I pleaded, “Sissy, please don’t go.” She just had to go; she couldn’t bear the thought of hiding anymore. From that day forward she would always try to protect my grandma, even though grandma would often turn on her and throw her under the bus.

I was the only kid in school that the bullies avoided because they were afraid of my sister. She always had my back. There was one day in particular, in the fourth grade, when I was in a big argument with an 11th-grader over her. He was telling me how good the sex was with her and I was trying to fight him. He just placed his hand on my forehead and held me back and laughed. Then, out of the blue, there was this big thud. She had come into the gym and saw what was happening and clocked him in the head with a softball. His ear bled. That was just one of many times she stepped in to protect me.

She was kissing a boy in the back seat of the bus once and I didn’t like it, so I hit him on the back of the head with my huge social studies book. I didn’t know they had their tongues in each other’s mouths. They almost bit each other’s tongues off. That is what it seemed like at the time. The guy came after me and Jackie stopped him.

Another time I had stepped on my Aunt’s toe, accidentally. I didn’t have a shirt on and she slapped me on the back. According to Jackie, she left welts on my back bad enough that you could see the finger marks. Jackie flew into her like her life was at stake. Even my dad said later that he thought Jackie was going to pull out every hair in our aunt’s head.

Unfortunately, when she became my mother she also became my dad’s wife; cooking, cleaning and constantly being taken into the back room. He always closed the door. All I could hear was her crying. The whole house would become dark and cold while they were back there.

As a result of what was going on for her at home, Jackie became very promiscuous at a very early age. She dressed really provocatively. At that time miniskirts and make-up were very popular. My sister wore her skirts very short and her make-up very thick. She never needed the make-up. Just to add insult to injury, she was very beautiful and therefore all the guys wanted her. Just to add to my guilt and confusion, so did I. I loved her now more than anything, and the fact that she was so attractive didn’t help matters. What was happening to her with all the guys and with my dad left me really mixed up about right and wrong, when it came to sex. For me to want my sister, I knew was wrong; although no one ever told me it was. And being jealous of her boyfriends made me feel sick inside.

Most of the memories of my childhood are very vivid. But my memories of the sexual things that my dad did to me are more like hazy shadows or silhouettes. My mind has not allowed me to clearly remember much detail when it comes to that. In fact, I am so committed to putting only the truth in this book, that I am a little hesitant to talk about what I don’t clearly remember. But to leave it out entirely doesn’t seem honest either. So, what I do have are a few very vague memories of physical sensations, like gagging, and an incredible uneasiness and dread about having to share the same bed with him. Also, I felt really ashamed because I can kind of remember that there was a degree of pleasure in what my dad was doing to me some nights.

The fact that my own dad was doing sexual things with both me and my sister was way more than my young mind could make sense of. So in the same way I blamed myself for my mom’s death, I turned all this confusion into even more self-hatred.

I was consumed with guilt. ‘If I hadn’t killed my mom none of this would be happening to my sister.’ Even my mom’s dad was constantly telling me that momma wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t given birth to me. “The pregnancy was just too much for her.” Two of my aunts also echoed this remark. I heard one say to the other, “Janie knew she would die if she had another child. The doctor told her she wouldn’t survive it.” … or something to that effect. My thoughts after hearing that were, ‘Momma loved me so much even before I was here that she was willing to die for me and I wouldn’t even kiss her goodbye.’ I ran immediately to the old milk barn down the street and berated myself and cried for I have no idea how long.

We lived in a small two bedroom mobile home where privacy was non-existent. My sister had a bed in the back of the trailer and my dad and I shared the smaller bedroom in the middle of the trailer. It was a single bed so it was very small. I will never forget the closet built into the wall (my second home) over three drawers. He always made me sleep against the wall so I couldn’t sneak out of bed and go sleep on the couch. I had to learn to sleep without moving, I never knew what kind of mood he would be in when he woke up. If he had come to bed drunk anything could happen.

I always considered myself an Indian. My senses were so magnified. I could lie in my bed and tell what mood he was in by the sound of his footsteps. It was vital to know his mood so I could know whether it was time to hide in the closet or not. If I could get to the closet and get in it before he got to the room, there was a chance of safety. The phrase ‘Out of sight out of mind.’ was very real. I always slept with the proverbial one eye open. The truth is I do not think I ever really got to sleep. The fear was overpowering and it made breathing almost impossible.

I will thank you in advance for reading. Your thoughts, especially if you can identify or relate and sharing will help you connect and fine hope.