THWACK!
A short, true, and deeply personal story spanning five decades
THWACK!
All is black.
GASP!
I struggle for breath. “Inhale. Exhale,” I exalt myself.
Moments prior, I was running a desperate race toward safety and understanding.
Blinking, my eyes regain vision. My hands are muddy, leafy. My body lies — perpendicular — upon a recently fallen tree in mid-April woods.
Across this newly rotting log, I’m 11. It’s 1982. This late afternoon, the surrounding woods lurk just beyond the city limits of Raleigh, North Carolina.
I was forced onto this spot.
These trees will fall to an apartment complex in a decade. Today, they spectate my confusion, despair, and abuse.
At 11, I don’t know much, but I think — maybe — my ribs are broken.
Importantly, I know that the tyrant who shoved me down onto this log won’t help me find out if my ribs are, in fact, snapped — not yet, not until he’s exacted his punishment.
Rex, the tyrant — and, incidentally, my dad — growls, “Get up!”
THWACK!
A screen door snaps closed as Rex enters back into my life. It’s about six weeks before the scene in the nearby woods.
Rex, my mom, and I are standing in our duplex’s living room. He’s been gone nearly one year — wrestling western oil derricks and drowning inner demons.
I am a tempest of combatant feelings as I watch Rex hug my mother.
He turns to me, “Hey, Regi!”
We hug.
“I’ll never hit you again.”
THWACK!
Rex drags the backside of his hand across my cheek. We’re back in those mid-April woods.
“I said get up!”
Minutes later, we exit the woods. I lead, wincing, weeping.
Rex has my right arm twisted behind me. My fingers feel my left shoulder blade.
“You’re hurting me,” I plead.
“Ha! I haven’t begun to hurt you,” retorts Rex through a snicker.
We stand, waiting to cross, at the edge of Old Wake Forest Road, a two-lane strand of asphalt that sees regular traffic on weekdays like this.
Nobody stops to help me. Hell, nobody even looks.
BOUNCE!
At age four, upon Raggedy Ann and Andy sheets, I come to rest, belly-first, on my bed. It’s August of 1974.
Rex stands in my room’s doorway. He tossed me here.
“Stay there! And pull your pants down,” he dictates.
Swiftly, Rex beats his fist into the door’s frame as he exits.
Confused, I begin to follow his order, undoing my shorts. I move slowly and watch the doorway.
I can hear Rex stomping and angrily riffling things. His belt buckle clanks, and I know enough at four to dislike that sound in this moment.
Suddenly, he starts talking to someone. We’re the only two people home.
“You know. I don’t know. He’s just a boy!”
Rex walks around our living space and talks to himself for the next — well, look, I was four, so it may have been several minutes, or it may have been an hour.
Mercifully, I never got struck that day. He eventually told me to pull up my pants and go outside. Frankly, it was quite odd. I had already been struck many times before. Yes, many of my earliest memories feature violence inflicted upon my small body.
SMASH!
It’s October of 1976, and a toy car shatters under Rex’s work boot.
“See what happens when you’re in my way,” he shouts.
I bawl.
“Shut up before I give you something to cry about!”
CLINK-CLANK!
Weeks later, milk evolves from white to pink in a glass as a spoon stirs it.
I sit in my grandmother’s breakfast nook. She’s a classic, doting grandma, and she brings the glass to me.
“Here you go, Sweetie,” she says.
“Oh, yes! Pink chocolate milk! Thank you, Grandmother!”
Yes, I called it “pink chocolate milk” back then. Look, I already told you I didn’t know much.
“Grandmother?”
“Yes, Honey?”
“Why does Daddy hit me with his belt?”
Grandmother chews on my question for a moment. “Well, I guess he just wants you to be a good boy, so you can make it to Heaven one day.”
THWACK!
An empty, crumpled Sprite can ricochets off the back of my nine-year-old head in the summer of 1979.
“Ow,” I cry.
Rex smoothly replies, “I told you to point your toes out.”
We’re on a paved recreation path beside a Raleigh lake. It’s a clear day, but no passersby exist.
“I’m gonna keep throwing cans until you learn to walk straight. Now, walk.”
You see, I walked pigeon-toed throughout childhood. Medical professionals working through the public school system pulled me out of class one day to examine me. They suggested a medical plan to address my situation.
Rex’s answer was chucking cans.
THWACK!
Speaker wire — that’s right, speaker wire, probably from Radio Shack — wounds my bare body’s backside, from my thighs to my shoulders.
It’s that late-afternoon, mid-April day in 1982 again. The plastic-coated wire also binds my hands and feet to my bed’s frame.
Rex whips — and whips — me with the speaker wire.
This was my far-worse punishment for running from my previous punishment, which was related to my poor grades — but I hope we can agree that shitty parenting played a role there.
CLANG!
Ten months later, my mom flagrantly returns our mango-orange telephone to its wall-mounted base.
“That was your Social Studies teacher,” my mother informed me. “She says you’ve gotten seven-straight zeros. Wait until your father gets home!”
THWACK!
THWACK!
SMACK!
POUND!
Minutes after my mother’s warning, I’m 12. It’s 1983. I’m in 7th Grade. Currently, I doubt I’ll see 8th Grade. I doubt I’ll see the morning.
Seated on my chest, 185-pound Rex punches my face relentlessly.
I blubber insanely. “Stop! Please stop,” I beg.
“Shut up! Shut up,” Rex yells!
To this day, I can’t understand how anyone can punch their child.
SLAM!
SLAM!
One month later, in my pitch-black room, I awaken to the sounds of our duplex’s interior doors opening and shutting in succession. My mom wails!
The outer door slams. Our screen door scrapes and smacks.
Rex’s footsteps pound down our stairs.
I hear his car’s engine crank and rumble.
My mom bawls! She’s shattered. I do not go to her.
On this night, I still don’t know much, but I know Rex has finally left us, and — despite my mother’s grief for her marriage’s death — I am exuberant!
RIP!
Wrapping paper reveals a bicycle seat in the summer of 1983.
“Happy belated birthday,” Rex bids me and smiles.
I turned 13 one month before. On this July day, Rex made me the proud owner of a Mongoose Supergoose BMX bike.
Once he left our home for good, Rex stayed in my life. He finally kept his promise and never struck me again. Over time, I forgave him. Alas, he could not forgive himself, and more trouble would enter his life and our relationship.
Like most humans, Rex was multifaceted, a complex mess.
BUMP!
“Watch it,” a male postal employee commands Rex, who is 43 now.
It’s 1995, and we’re flies on the wall in the guts of Tacoma, Washington’s main Post Office. Rex is a seasoned electronics technician, but he hasn’t fared well since recently transferring with his second family from Raleigh.
“You watch it, motherfucker,” replies Rex.
The pissed man and Rex get right in each other’s faces.
“See! That right there is why the supervisors don’t like you,” says the man.
Rex responds, “Mind your own business, shitass!”
“Yeah,” replies the man, “well, suck my dick!”
Rex momentarily stares at his adversary, then snickers. He pulls an imposing pocketknife from his jeans and reveals its threatening blade.
“If you’re man enough to whip it out,” says Rex, “I’m man enough to cut it off.”
Soon, Rex lost his career.
CLANG!
Rex’s metal marijuana pipe teeters on his new house’s glass coffee table. He sits on his sofa. It’s the fall of 1989 in Raleigh. Rex’s second wife is at work.
It’s nighttime, and the lights are low. I enter the living room from the home’s bedroom area, where I’ve just put my sleepy, one-year-old sister in her crib.
“I — uh,” Rex stammers.
“What’s going on,” I inquire.
“I don’t know how to say this, but I — I mean, I’m your dad and all — ”
“Yeah?”
“Okay. You know I use drugs, and I know you smoke pot.”
“Sometimes, I guess.”
Rex continues, “Well, I know we don’t normally party together, but I got some hash, and I wanted to offer to smoke some with you. I mean I don’t know if you’ll ever have the chance to try hash again.”
What a gift, right? Don’t get me wrong. We totally smoked that hash, and I got pretty high.
Everybody needs milestone memories with their parents, right?
THWACK!
My smartphone hits my bedside table in South Burlington, Vermont. It’s 2012, and I’m three weeks short of turning 42.
I drop my head into my hands. Thankfully, my deeply empathetic spouse enters.
“What’s wrong, Honey,” she asks.
Slowly, I raise my eyes. “That was Rex. I know why we couldn’t find him to celebrate his 60th birthday.”
“Why?”
“He called to say that he’s been addicted to meth for at least a year.”
BUZZ!
I’m looking at my phone’s screen in June of 2020. It’s Midnight.
As the phone vibrates and the interface displays an incoming call, I see Rex’s number.
I’ve been ignoring his late-night calls for awhile, letting them go to voicemail. Sometimes, he leaves meth-addled rants, which I delete after hearing the first bit of mishmash.
Tonight, I decide to draw a line. I press Accept.
“What!”
The succeeding hour featured rants, incoherence, yelling, frustration, and — despite my recent 50th birthday — not one birthday wish.
That was our last conversation, and I was the only person truly present for it.
THWACK!
The sun shines in 1960 as a switch from a nearby thicket reigns repeatedly down on Rex as a young boy.
“Ow!”
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
In his bedroom, a leather belt hits adolescent Rex’s legs in 1963.
“Ouch! Mom! Please stop!”
Violently, younger, my beloved grandmother wields the belt.
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
HONK!
THWACK!
It’s June 9, 2021, about 12:30 a.m.
Rex’s body smacks — empty — on the asphalt of a two-lane highway in Graham, Washington.
Moments earlier, his emaciated figure clashed with a pickup truck traveling at highway speed.
He may have walked out there by choice, or he may have simply been chemically irresponsible.
Either way, he’s gone, free.
THWACK!
(Well, maybe it’s more of a thump — or even a low-key thud. You choose!)
My foot hits the forest floor, as does the next foot. These happily pigeon-toed feet repeat.
It’s today. I’m running on a trail I chose — at my pace!
My heart is light. I’ve mourned Rex and what could have been. Yet, I’ve smiled because his pain has dissipated — from his life, and from mine.
I’m not running from anyone. There’s nobody chasing me to push me down onto a dead tree.
At 51, I still don’t know much, but I’m not running toward safety.
I am safe, and I can finally breathe.
Author’s Note: I loved my dad. I adored my grandmother. Growing up, I was struck by nearly every elder in my family, on my mom’s side, too. Violence toward children leaves lifelong damage. Yes, spanking is violence. Rather than perpetuate the cycle of abuse, I reason, I live, and I thrive. Join me!
According to CDC data, 1,840 children in the United States died from child abuse or neglect in 2019. Every child deserves a future where they can thrive. Let’s all learn prevention strategies.