Crush (The House On Glass Beach, Book 1)

this book is dedicated to:

My parents who love me as I am

My Uncle Lionel Clyde Bob Purkey

To the memory of Matthew Shepard

And to all of the Tammys and Jamies out there.

* * * * *

author’s notes:

It should be noted that although there may be similarities between Crush and the true story of Matthew Shepard, whose brutal attack in Wyoming made headlines in the Autumn of 1998, Crush is entirely a work of fiction. Like many bystanders, I had heard about the hate-crime by watching CNN, but I never learned any of the details or followed the trial of his killers. I have only recently read Judy Shepard’s inspiring tribute to her beautiful gay son, The Meaning of Matthew: My Son’s Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed, two months after the completion of Crush. Any similarities to Mr. Shepard’s story are completely coincidental.

There are four hospitals in this book: UC Davis Medical Centre is a real hospital and is located near downtown Sacramento, California, not in the town of Davis, CA. For clarity’s sake, I created the fictitious Davis Hospital to which Tammy drives Jamie, after Jamie is attacked by classmates. Saint Paul’s Hospital, also a fictitious creation, is located in West Sac, CA. Yolo County Hospital in the city of Woodland is also fictitious.

Laura Susan Johnson

* * * * *

book one:
love’s first kisses

* * * * *

prologue:
thames lee mattheis
(december 30)

Interrogation room, Sommerville Police Department

Please state your full name, the first officer says, and I do, as it reads above.

It’s like the English river, pronounced Tems. Everyone calls me Tammy, but it’s not the girl’s name, it’s pronounced Temmy (as if they even sound all that different from one another!). Mom’s made life a lot harder than it has to be. First of all: she named me after a river. The woman isn’t even English! Our ancestors were French, Greek and Irish. Second: she decides to nickname me Tam or Tammy, which is an Irish form of the name Thomas. Third: I get teased constantly that Tammy is a girl’s name. And fourth: the way it’s pronounced Temmy. My life has been spent spelling it for people, teaching them to pronounce it correctly, and fending off the guys calling me, Tammy, Tell Me True! Mom could have named me Thomas, so I could be nicknamed Tommy. She could have named me Timothy, so I could be nicknamed Timmy. But no, I’m named after a river, with a weird nickname that’s perceived as girlish, which everyone has to be taught isn’t even pronounced phonetically.

As I sit here in this claustrophobic grey cubicle, my eyes tracing each graffiti-carved inch of the metallic table before me, I contemplate how much my life has changed in the past few weeks since I came home from L.A. to help Mom.

How different I am.

In spite of how love once touched me in high school many years ago, and before discovering an unforeseen tenderheartedness for stray cats not many years ago, I used to have only one true goal driving me, and that was to hurt people. It was my only real source of joy and fulfillment.

Disregarding the chill in the air drawing this year to a terrible close, a conclusion I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined, large beads of clandestine sweat are forming on the nape of my neck.

No, it wasn’t.

I only wanted it to work that way.

And since it didn’t, I couldn’t keep it up. Deceiving women and men didn’t really give me the thrill I wanted.

I had become evil.

And I wanted to be happy being evil.

But I could not.

I continued to love someone I’d left behind, and I saved a kitten from certain death. Saving Bootsy was a catalyst, an act of kindness that sparked my heart back to life.

And I could not ignore the real me, the longing in my heart to be human again.

To care, to love.

To love and to be loved back.

I didn’t love being mean. I didn’t love hurting people the way I’d hoped I would.

And I missed my friend. I didn’t get away from him by moving three hundred miles away. He was always with me, day after day, year after year, always in my dreams, asleep and awake.

I missed him. I had never stopped missing him, from the day I left him behind to try to find myself, to the day I was called home.

He means more to me than anything.

No matter how mean, selfish and narcissistic I had wanted to be, I loved him.

I still love him.

And he loved me.

I want him to love me, present tense.

But I think he’s going to die.

I want to go back in time, not years, just hours, just a day. I want to do what my instinct told me to do.

I can’t. I can’t do what I want to do. I can’t go back in time.

I didn’t try to end his life, contrary to what the police think, but he wasn’t safe to be left alone that night. I had a premonition.

I failed him.

Dozens of bodies at my feet, in a wasteland I’d created, women and men, crawling blindly and weeping for me to assuage their pangs. I sat above, smiling down at them like an evil goddess, like Kali, luxuriating, listening to them wailing their misery, their cries dying slowly until every last voice quieted and all the bodies stilled.

Address? the policeman barks.

He’s just my type, or what I had once thought my type. Big, tall and craggy like Huey Lewis. No delicacy about him. I had fun once or twice, bringing down a guy looking like this. It gave me a heady feeling, to conquer the kind of man book two that everyone assumes, by his looks, is manly.

I’m pretty. I don’t mean to sound conceited. It’s just something I’ve been told too many times not to believe.

Jamie’s pretty too. Prettier than I am.

Because he never has cared about that kind of thing. Not like I have.

And I used my prettiness to harm people.

The first time I took down a man’s man, I was twenty-eight. I thought I’d have a hell of a challenge. I thought he’d beat the shit out of me for hitting on him. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. He fell like a leaf in October, the big brute.

But by then, the thrill of soul hunting had passed. I had thought that I could resurrect it, and find nothing more titillating and satisfying than snatching him, body and soul, and then leaving him desolate and aching for more of me.

Deliberate, precise, just plain heartless, I’d made capturing and collecting people’s love without giving anything back my supreme objective in life.

I’d toppled many women, the number somewhere in the sixties or seventies, before I’d moved on to men. I hadn’t had more than maybe four or five guys before I decided I was finished playing games with their lives and mine.

It was those kind of men…players, fratboys, meatheads, the kind of men who eat like pigs and burp loudly, drink beer and then piss on pavements, worship both playing and watching football and stack themselves on ’roids until they become butterball turkeys in their later years, that I’d practised on.

But always, there was something in the way of me enjoying myself totally.

Always that beautiful little face in the way, obstructing my view. That delicate, refined visage, the face of an angel, the face of a child-man, a face so exquisite, so unique, so unforgettably beautiful, that not even the most glamorous movie-star can begin to compare…

Please state your current residence! squawks the second cop.

809 Truckee Street, Sommerville.

The tape recorder in his hand has a little glowing red light on top. I lick my lips, knowing that the words that are about to slip through them will be sucked onto the shiny entrails of the audio cassette. Forever.

My mouth is dry, tastes bitter, like I’ve been chewing on a bar of Ivory soap.

I fell in love for the first time, ever, sixteen years ago. I ran away from that love. And I stayed away, for a long time, before Mom fell, before I was called home.

Please, can I have a soda? I’m so thirsty. The moisture trickles down my back, cooling it, before being absorbed by the elastic of my Jockeys.

I’d never been in love with anyone before him, and I’ve never been in love with anyone since.

I finally received…no…I finally accepted, truly accepted his love only days ago.

The second police officer leaves for a moment and returns with an ice cold can of Dr. Pepper. This okay?

Anything, I mutter through sticky lips, popping it open with a refreshing sssst! sound and gulping several freezing swallows before releasing a quiet belch.

So, begins the rugged-faced cop, These… uh… journals…

Now, I’m in jail, accused of a violent crime.

Pretty sick stuff, wouldn’t you agree? Rugged Cop asks.

Yeah, the second cop shudders.

I tell the cop that I didn’t do it, that I didn’t hurt Jamie, that I’ve never hurt anyone, at least not in the way they’re thinking. Guilt rears its head again, and I begin to confess my sins. I tell them that I’ve killed many people emotionally, not physically, that I was a serial soul stealer.

"A what?" sneers the Rugged Cop.

I repeat myself and he says, "No, what you are is a pathetic piece of shit who deserves to burn in hell." I wonder if it’s because of the crime I’m being accused of, or because of who the victim of the crime was… is…

"I wrote in those diaries when I was twelve, thirteen years old… I was angry… I was a kid…"

The way these are written, the second cop says with a repulsed shiver, I’d say you’re capable of committing a crime this violent.

I was only a kid! I reiterate angrily.

Keep your temper, warns Rugged Cop.

I didn’t do this, I swear it…

I’d like to ask you about the bruise on the back of the victim’s neck, Rugged Cop scowls. What’s that from? It almost looks like a hickey or something.

They don’t laugh, they don’t spout innuendoes. Still, under the surface, I feel the attitude, and it has me wondering just how many allies we even have around here in the wake of this brutal beating of which I have been named the chief suspect. Do they care about Jamie? Do they care about him at all? Or do they think he deserves it, like I deserve to burn in hell?

I try to tell the police that I love my boyfriend, present tense, that I’d never, ever hurt him.

That I’m not that boy anymore.

That when I was that kid, I was in pain, and, yes, I acted out, but I’ve never hurt anyone… not physically.

I try to tell them, but my despair muzzles me. My natural propensity to blame myself for all that has gone wrong, even after I tried to get Jamie to take the fateful night off, even after I begged him to let me go to work with him, asserts itself, and my uncooperative lips crumple.

I don’t think they believe me anyway.

* * * * *

two:
james michael pearce
(aged three to thirteen)

I never find out why they hate me. I’ve always wanted to know. I love them. Why do they hate me? I am three—that’s my earliest memory—when they start hitting me. My Mom reaches back and slaps me hard at the table during breakfast. I don’t know what I’ve done to make her slap me. When I am old enough to be in school, I remember my preschool teacher taking me aside and asking about the bruises, welts and burns. Nothing comes of it, or my life would be different than it is.

My kindergarten teacher calls a meeting with Mom and Daddy because I’ve slapped a boy in class for calling me an ashtray.

Before the Child Protection people come, my parents cram me into the car and drive north, from our house in south Sacramento to Oregon, to live with people on Mom’s side of the family. Arguments erupt between Mom and a lady I believe is my Grandma. None of the people in that house talk to me or pay any attention to me.

I prefer never to be left alone with Mom and Daddy. I always am.

From what I can scrape together from my memories, Mom is dark-haired and slender, with bright blue eyes. In earlier years, she is elegant, projecting an image of a well-groomed professional at her job as a secretary for an attorney somewhere in Salem. Later, she turns stringy-haired and wild-eyed. She scares me.

Daddy is fair-haired with large brown eyes. He’s quiet. I never hear him raise his voice, but he’s susceptible to suggestion and battles several addictions.

The folks in Oregon kick us out after Daddy gets busted shoplifting at a Payless, and we move back to the Florin neighbourhood of Sacramento. My first grade teacher calls the cops when she sees how I look one morning—a black eye and blood drying in my hair. I have no idea how my parents manage to sneak me out of the police station.

We move to the small town of Sommerville, a hamlet of less than eight thousand people, just east-north-east of Davis off the interstate, into a two bedroom house that has some measure of privacy. It is on a corner parcel surrounded by weed-infested, loamy-soiled reject lots. The walls are of plaster, which has much better soundproofing than sheetrock.

That’s when they decide that in order to avoid having to move around, I should stay hidden. I’m locked in my room. At first, I get fed two or three times a day. Then there comes a time when I don’t get a crumb for at least four or five days. I remember crying for them to let me out to go to the toilet. They bring me a bucket, and they beat me because I have to use it, because they have to dump it every now and again. They lug it out to the real toilet across the hall, cursing me and covering their noses at the stench I’ve caused.

Once a week, sometimes every other week, they let me out to shower and stretch my legs. My muscles ache. Daddy begins to make me accompany him when he showers. He tells me I mustn’t run away and to do what he asks. I’ve tried to forget that first shower he made me take with him, and I do try to run. I prize open the stubborn, splintery window in my room, and I have almost wriggled halfway out when they catch me. Mom rips chunks of my hair out while lashing me with a thick black belt with round metal studs in it. When it’s over, I try to hide from the hot, throbbing pain by curling in a ball and rubbing my bloodied body against my filthy bedsheets, praying for another chance to escape.

Why you wanna run away, Pretty? asks Daddy with sad, dark eyes. "I love you."

And then they put the chains on my legs, and I can’t even leave my bed to see what time of year it is, what colour the sky and leaves are.

After the first shower, Daddy shows me how to do the things he likes the right way. At first I close my eyes. I don’t want to watch what he’s doing to me, but Mom yells, Pay attention! So I have to watch. I watch, and I learn, but I hate the sight of him down there… the weird, crazy, scary faces he’s making at me. I hate that part of my body… I hate it even more when he’s down there, because he’s doing things that feel good, and my body begins to do funny things in response.

I’m afraid.

I know this is wrong.

It’s so wrong.

I hate myself.

***

When I’m seven or eight, they begin to make the videos, usually one or two a month.

I’ve tried to bury those years deep inside my mind. I’d be lying if I said I don’t remember. I remember liking some of it, and feeling dirty and guilty. I remember hating other things. The truth is I remember so much that I shudder and cower down like I’m caught in an ambush. Any moment, a deadly memory will strike home and kill me. When I’m awake, it’s easier to be in control. I can shoo the memories and the visions away. I can stay busy at work, with friends. Asleep, the nightmares are brutal, impossibly as graphic and horrific as the real thing so long ago. I relive those seven years every night in my sleep, my senses functioning perfectly in dreamstate. I see everything, I hear everything, I smell everything, I feel everything, I taste everything. Every so often, when I’m just waking, cozy in my bed, the dreams seemingly over, I’ll see it, and it’s so real, and I’ll hear his soft voice. Come on, pretty baby… show Daddy you love him… show Daddy…

I should die in that room, but I don’t. When Daddy’s not loving me, I feel so alone. When I don’t see him for a few days, I cry and beg him to come. Of course, he never comes in without her. Sometimes they ignore me. Sometimes my cries only anger them, and Mom hits me with the studded black belt until I’m covered with glowing red welts for days after.

So I try harder to please them. I’m so hungry.

I want to die, but every day I’m still breathing. The food they bring me becomes less and less in amount and frequency. When my Daddy finally returns to my bed I’m so happy I readily service him, loving his presence, his warmth, his soft solidity, the closeness, the way I feel so safe…

My skills improve and I not only get used to it, I want to do it. Because I don’t want to be left alone. He can’t stay away from me very long, he says, I’m too good. He taught me so well.

Mom videos Daddy as I do the things he showed me, and then he puts me on my stomach… I wish she would stop recording, stop watching and go away. But she stays. You’re a nasty boy, Jamie, she says, her mouth pulled into a snarl-smile that still scares me in my dreams, her vulva wet. After Daddy comes, he takes the camera from Mom and she uses the big flashlight on me, or the whisk broom, or whatever she can get her hands on that’s shaped right.

I get used to what Daddy wants, and pleasing him is second nature. And he always praises me when I’m finished. He’s as gentle as he can be, unless Mom tells him to do it harder.

The flashlight I never get used to. It hurts. They trade laughs and comments like they trade the camera. It hurts when they say those things about me, even worse than when Mom uses the flashlight.

And when he videos her burning me with her cigarette, calling me names as I scream, I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong. I’m doing what they tell me to do. I don’t want to, but I love them. Why does she burn me? Why doesn’t Daddy make her stop?!

They only ever change the sheets when they want to make a new video. Otherwise, my bed stays soiled. While Mom tucks in the nice smooth clean sheets, I huddle down on the floor as far away as the chains will let me go. I don’t want to do this. It’s the same every time, a story they have to tell over and over again. When he has all his clothes off, Daddy squats down naked beside me. You ready to make another show with Daddy?

No, I cry. I don’t want to do the show. I really don’t. Though I’ve said I’ve gotten used to it, even gotten to like it, I really don’t like doing these videos. I’m so mixed up inside. I want Daddy to love me, but I don’t want to do things to him, I don’t want him inside of me, and I especially don’t want Mom to do the things she does with her flashlight, belt and cigarettes.

But when Daddy smiles and kisses me, and says, I’ll bring you mac and cheese, your favorite, my stomach clenches and churns… I’m so hungry.

How about green beans? And Ding Dongs for dessert! With the creamy stuff in the middle!

So I do the shows with him. Sometimes the mac and cheese is hot and creamy, with plenty of salt and pepper. It’s so wonderful that I beg them for seconds and thirds. Other times it’s cold and tastes like it’s a few days old, but it stops the cramping in my tummy.

I’m the centre of their attention a couple of times a month. Otherwise, I’m a nothing behind several locks and chains, they ignore me except to bring food now and then, and to dump my bucket into the toilet.

It takes a few more years, but I learn to stop screaming. If I stop screaming sooner, she’ll stop burning me sooner. I learn other things too. If I don’t scream, they’re not as fun to watch. They finally stop making videos when I’m eleven or twelve, when I become too skinny and weak to do what they like. I’ve become so weak I don’t even care when Mommy hits and burns me. So they stop. They no longer come into my room, not even when I beg them to bring me food.

I’m in a dark forest. I can see myself, my skin reflected in the meagre light. I can’t see ahead or behind me. There are no sounds in the wood, not even the howling of coyotes or the hooting of owls. I’d rather hear anything than this thickening silence.

No-one is here. No-one, and I’d rather have to do the videos, and I’d rather be burned with her cigarettes, than be here with only myself.

But I’m too skinny and weak to make their friends happy now.

I’m all used up…

They don’t come back.

April 23rd.

My thirteenth is my last birthday in that room. Daddy opens my door, peeks in at me for a second. I don’t notice him. I haven’t eaten… I’ve lost count after six days or so.

He hasn’t brought food. He doesn’t come in. He just closes the door softly.

There is no mirror in my room. I’ve never liked mirrors. I see my father in my hair and my mother in my eyes. Now, even without a mirror I look down, and I see myself. My hair is falling out. My eyes are about to sink into my brain. My skin is grey. I feel so light.

The loud reports from outside my room are the last sounds that make my body jump, the last stimuli I respond to in that house. And then the house is quiet. I’ve been praying to die. I’m crying. I’m in pain. I’m unbearably thirsty. I hate the silence. It’s horrifying, the silence.

Please God, let me die. Sleep drapes itself over me like a heavy wool blanket, and I surrender. The endless hours in that stinking bed meld together, the chains eating into the skin of my ankles forgotten.

I’m alone in this thickly wooded wilderness. The trees close in around me, as always, but the difference now is, they seem friendly, like they feel sorry for me being all alone, and are bending down to tell me everything is going to be okay.

I stop being hungry. I stop being thirsty. I stop being afraid of the deafening silence. I stop being angry at Mom and Daddy for leaving me for so long without food, for not emptying my commode so I can use it.

I stop loving Daddy. I did everything I could to let him know how much I loved him, how much I needed him.

And still, he left me.

Alone, in the dark.

I hate him…

My most recent and frequent companions come to visit, buzzing in through the slit of the open, screenless window that I once tried to crawl through to freedom… shiny green flies that have followed my repulsive aroma for miles. As I sleep, their tiny black tongues lap at the sweat, vomit and other ungodly waste that’s leaking out of me unbidden.

I stop praying for God to come get me.

* * * * *

three:
tammy mattheis
(aged four to fourteen)

The memory is there. It’s buried far, far below millions of grey and white molecules, beneath bundles upon bundles of nerve fibres and synapses. It’s there. But I don’t remember it right now.

I’m in a grocery shop with my mother, somewhere in Sacramento. I’m going to be five in a few months, so I’m too old to ride in the baby seat. I’m a big boy now, and a good boy, for I never run off on my own when I’m shopping with my mom. I walk beside her quietly, like the good boy I am. We get in the checkout line behind a dark haired lady dressed in a powder blue business suit and shiny patent high heels. Her black hair is piled neatly on her head. She never looks to see any of the people around her. She has a baby in her trolley. He’s sitting in the baby seat like he’s supposed to be, his curly blonde hair like a halo, his soft baby legs dangling, one chubby little hand holding the railing in front of him, the other clutching a piece of Red Vine liquorice. He’s looking at me, his face and hands coated in sweet, sticky liquorice residue. The woman with him finally turns to face us briefly, a red vine hanging out of her mouth as well. Her sour face doesn’t match her nice clothes and pretty hair.

The little boy reaches out for me as if to say, Come here! And I go to him, which is something I never do. I don’t talk to strangers, no matter how old, or young, they may be. But I go to the little boy in the trolley. I don’t even like Red Vine liquorice, but I go to him. You have big eyes! I tell him, and he smiles and laughs at me. How old is he? I ask his mother.

"Two, the woman grunts, grabbing several more packs of Red Vines, along with a bunch of beef jerky packs. These too," she tells the cashier. She seems unfriendly. She won’t look at me. I glance backward to my own mom, who smiles gently.

I turn back to the blue-eyed baby boy and he reaches for me again, the little pink bow of his mouth curling up in a smile. I shake his gooey hand, I’m Tammy. How do you do?

The baby giggles. What’s his name, please? I ask the woman whose eyes match his. She ignores me. My heart stings, and I look at my mom again. She just smiles and shakes her head. I turn back when the baby babbles musically, his relatively new and unabused vocal cords manufacturing the loveliest sounds I’ve ever heard as he jabbers and coos like a magpie. He’s so sweet! my mother exclaims. The baby’s mom continues to disregard everything we say and everything her baby does.

I wish I knew what he was trying to talk to me about! I stand on tiptoe and take his sticky pink hand in my own. You don’t say! I gasp. Is that right? The more I respond to him, the more the baby loves it, filling my ears with enchanting gurgles and coos of delight.

His mother finishes paying for her groceries and says flatly, Come on, Jamie. Let’s get out of here.

"Jamie? Is that his name? I ask desperately. The dark-haired woman blinks her blue eyes rapidly at me and in her grown-up-irritated-at-annoying-child voice, says, Yeah, Jamie… what do you care? You won’t ever see him again!" Tears crowd in my eyes as I turn back to my mother. She looks like she’s likely to say something to this rude, haughty, dark haired lady who now turns to look for the bag boy. As her attention is taken from us, I stand on tiptoe again and kiss the baby’s liquorice-coated cheek. He smiles, leans down over the safety bar in front of him, and kisses my mouth.

Love’s first kisses.

Then she takes him away from me.

In the car on the way home, I cry, tears mixing with the sticky stuff on my face. I wish I could be his friend forever, I sniffle.

"I know, honey," Mom says.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget those blue eyes.

But I do…

By the next day, I stop thinking about the baby in the trolley.

I forget about him for a long, long time.

But it won’t be forever…

***

From the moment I am able to put words together, I realise people like me. They can’t help themselves. People like pretty kids, and I’m pretty. I’m told often too, even when I get older. Oh, they don’t use the word pretty for me. Somehow to call a man pretty is a huge no-no. Everyone thinks men squirm when they’re described in that word. Not me. I know I’m a pretty boy. I’m a masculine version of my mom. I have thick black hair and eyebrows and bluish-green eyes. The girls love my lips. Killer smile too.

As long as I can remember, I’ve believed myself photogenic enough to have a career in the spotlight—a movie star, a music star on MTV, or better still, a famous news anchor on CNN or ABC or something. I love to watch the news, even as a very small child. My heroes are Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Wolf Blitzer. I also get to see the last few years of Cronkite’s heroic reign.

In the third grade, I have several friends from church and school: Ray Battle, a big stocky boy a year older than me, Stacy Pendleton, a girl who’s in kindergarten, and Benny Feldman, a tall, lanky fifth grader. After school and on Sunday afternoons, we chuck our clean clothes and dig forts out in Benny’s backyard. Later, we make videos of ourselves doing commercials and newscasts. It’s great practice. I’m always the leader, and I love the attention I get from Stacy, and from Ray’s sister Yvette.

I spend childhood practising my smile, the one Uncle Price likes so much. When he and Aunt Sharon come to visit, he steals me away and we go to the movies or ball games, or to see the ocean. He even takes me to Marriott’s Great America a couple of times, just us two.

I’m lucky to have him. Mom’s worked in the meat department at Lucky’s for many years, but she’s had to take a year off because of carpal tunnel in her hands from wrapping meat eight hours a day. She gets disability now, and can never afford to take me places anymore. What little she gets has to go for bills and the payment on our bluish-grey wood paneled house on Truckee Street that we’ve lived in since she bought it after my first birthday. It’s a smallish three bedroom house, built in the thirties or so. The front lawn is really small, not even two yards, separated in the centre by a red cement walk that doesn’t match the three wooden stairs that go up to the smooth, glossy white concrete porch. The front porch is cooled all year round by the shade of an ancient live oak. Around each window, deep pink camellias bloom, and Mom parks her feisty old Ford Granada in the unpaved drive to the right of the house.

We’re not as close as we used to be. She used to take me somewhere almost every weekend. Or, if we stayed home, we’d watch funny old shows together, like I Love Lucy, The Three Stooges, or Bugs Bunny cartoons. Now she’s in pain all the time, both arms in braces. We live on frozen waffles. I butter for both of us and pour her coffee. I look after her quite a bit during this year. I don’t get to play with my friends as often as I used to because Mom needs me around to help. It’s a lonely life, and I blame her. She’s always popping pain pills, so she’s always drowsy and out of it. I have no-one to talk to.

I’m thrilled when Uncle and Aunt move up from Stockton so we can see each other more. He’s glad to have a nephew, he always says. Aunt Sharon can’t seem to get pregnant so they can have a beautiful boy of their own, he tells me, so he’s awful glad I’m here. I’m happy they can’t have kids. I have him all for me, and he tells me, all the time, that he loves me. His attention makes me feel special. He asks me to do things with him, but I’m afraid and say no. He just says, Okay, and holds me close to him while we watch Scooby-Doo or Tom and Jerry. He’s a good-looking guy, about six years older than my mom, tall, shares our almost-black hair and dark green eyes. He’s not as cute as Christopher Reeve in Superman, but he’s close.

I tell him I want to be special, famous, loved the world over. "You are special, Tammy… you’re beautiful, smart… you’ve got it all… don’t forget that."

He takes pictures of me in all kinds of costumes… a football hero in big shoulder pads, a pirate with an eye patch and a sword, and an army soldier all painted with green and black camouflage. He tells me that when I’m a man I’m going to be a knockout, a lady killer. When he tucks me into bed he kisses me with his tongue in my mouth. I’m scared, but I like it too.

As I grow into the years just before teenhood, he lets me watch porn with him. Sometimes he holds me and makes me make out with him while people have sex on his TV. He unzips his fly. Wanna touch? he asks, and suddenly, yes, I do! I do everything he asks, and I love it. I love him.

Whenever we can, we sneak away, saying we’re going to a show or to get pizza or to a ball game. We go to the Motel 6 off of freeway 80 in Sacramento. He never puts it in me, he just lets me touch it. Then he sucks mine. I think it’s silly, him wanting to suck me. He looks ridiculous down there. I laugh sometimes, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He asks me to put my mouth on him, and I’m scared. He keeps asking, and eventually, I do what he wants. I don’t want to keep hurting his feelings. I want him to know how important he is to me. I don’t want him to ever leave me.

Even after Mom is back to work and can afford to take me places again, I prefer the company of my Uncle. Mom’s glad he’s part of my life.

I’m not special to my dad. I don’t know him. He didn’t leave his wife when he slept with Mom. He’s never even sent money to Mom after he got her pregnant. He doesn’t acknowledge me, not even when he sees me in church. That’s where he and my mom met. He’s the Reverend Mark Sellers, pastor of the Southern Baptist church of Sommerville.

Mom feels an increased need to attend church because of her illicit affair with a married man, a man of God