Chapter Four Less Than Nothing
Four
Less Than Nothing
In her novel Black Beauty, which I read and reread as a child, Anna Sewell describes horses like this: “We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.” I’ve thought a lot about that idea: that you can be in pain even if you can’t articulate it.
When I was small, I loved that Black Beauty was written from the horse’s point of view.
It took me inside the horse’s mind, describing his memories of his mother (“a wise old horse”) and what she wished for him: a life built on kindness and freedom.
Reading that book, I vowed never to cause suffering when I could help it.
Just like the story’s main character, I wanted to grow up gentle and good, never learning bad ways.
What many people don’t know about horses is that despite their size and power, they are vulnerable prey animals.
They depend on flight—their ability to outrun predators—as their primary means of survival.
That requires that they use their well-honed intuitions to sense danger in their surroundings.
I’ve described how, from the moment I met my horse, Alice, I felt in sync with her.
Little did I know that she and I would soon share even more in common: a reliance on wariness and, eventually, a need to escape.
The first signs of trouble came with a few subtle changes to our family routine.
First, Skydy started sleeping in my parents’ room, leaving me alone each night in the room the two of us had shared.
Then, my mom—who up to that point had usually run my bath, washed my hair, and gotten me in my pj’s each night—stepped back for some reason, and Dad began doing that.
Now, once I was ready for bed, Mom would say a quick goodnight, but it was Dad who tucked me in, read me a story, and cuddled me.
At first, all that felt normal and good.
I loved my dad. He’d taught me to ride Alice.
When I competed in horse shows, which I was learning how to do, he was always my biggest fan.
I saw Dad as capable and even invincible. I trusted him.
Then, during bath time one night, Dad abruptly told me to stand up. “We’ve got to make sure you’re extra clean,” he said. The command felt weird to me. I stayed submerged, the soapsuds hiding my nakedness. I wasn’t sure why I felt embarrassed, but I did. “Can Mom come in?” I asked.
“No, Mom’s busy,” Dad said, impatient. He had a washcloth in his hand. I stood up, and he began to soap me all over, spending extra time between my legs.
That night in my room, Dad touched me in ways nobody had before.
He told me I was his special girl, his favorite, and that this was his way of giving me “extra love.” He used his fingers at first. Then, days later, his mouth.
He called my private parts my “tee-tee” and his penis his “pee-pee.” It wasn’t long before he asked if I wanted to touch his genitals.
I didn’t want to, but he wanted me to. He was my father, so I did.
I tried to stop these things from happening.
“I don’t want bedtime stories anymore,” I announced one day.
“I don’t want cuddles anymore. I can do bath time by myself.
I’m a big girl now.” And so the bedtime rituals ended, but the abuse didn’t.
At night in the dark, I’d wait. Dad didn’t always come in, but every night I feared he would.
The door would open a crack, revealing a stripe of light from the hall, and the hinges would creak slightly—I’ll always remember that soft squeaking sound.
Then Dad would close the door behind him and slip into my twin bed, fondling me, forcing himself on me.
For a while, I tried hiding in the tight space under my box spring, but that didn’t work.
“Get out from under there,” he’d say, “or I’ll take Alice away.
” I couldn’t imagine that. So out I’d crawl.
At this point, Mom—once so warm and loving—became cold and remote, at least when it came to me.
I was already a pleaser; up early, I’d make my bed, trying to help her manage the mayhem of getting three kids ready for school.
Now, I tried even harder to make her love me, offering to go grocery shopping with her—anything to not be left alone with Dad.
But Mom seemed unreachable. The whippings with the thorny rose branches started around this time.
And it seemed to me she was drinking more beer.
Once I had been her beautiful, angel-kissed girl.
But now she told me a story I’d never heard before: she’d always wondered if I was really her daughter.
In the hospital right after my birth, she told me, one of the nurses had briefly given her a different baby girl to breastfeed, but the woman soon rushed back in and took that infant away.
Maybe I’d been switched with another child, she said. Maybe I was just a big mistake.
I was confused. Why was Mom mad at me? Did she know what Dad was doing to me?
I have a distinct memory of my bedroom door opening slightly one night as Dad molested me—I heard that squeaking sound again.
Was that Mom, or did I just desperately want it to be her?
I didn’t see her face. Could she have seen Dad under the covers with me? The door slowly closed again.
I began to get painful urinary tract infections.
Mom took me to the doctor again and again.
The nurses were mystified. After one examination, a doctor told my mother that my hymen had been broken.
My mother didn’t hesitate. “Oh, she rides horses bareback,” she explained.
That was the end of that. I didn’t even know what a hymen was.
My infections were so severe at times that I couldn’t hold my urine.
Mortified, I started tying a sweater around my waist at school so that when I sat down, the sweater would absorb what leaked out.
The other kids recognized the smell and where it was coming from, though, and nicknamed me “Pee Girl.” At home, Mom flew into a rage whenever she found my wet underwear, beating my bottom until it stung.
So I tried to hide the soiled clothes—and, God forbid, the sheets when I wet the bed.
They stank, so she’d always find them. But I figured getting a single beating for a pile of dirty underwear was better than getting beat one pair at a time.
Around this time, Danny was sent away to a Baptist reform school in Washington State.
Dad then changed up his tactics, doing what he wanted to me more obviously, not just in the middle of the night.
If Mom was out, he’d molest me in the afternoon, promising me that afterward, we’d put on a movie—he loved scary films best—make some popcorn, and stay up late together.
By mixing his sick behavior with cozy bonding, he normalized it, at least partly.
I still hated what Dad did to me, but I began to bargain with myself: just get the icky part over with so the good parts of life can go on.
Then something happened that made sure life had no more good parts.
Forrest was a friend of my father’s. He was tall and muscular, with a military bearing, and he had a tattoo on his chest. I knew this because he liked to show off his physique at the pool-and-beer parties our two families began having together.
Suddenly, Forrest—who had his own landscaping business—was around our house a lot.
My dad encouraged Skydy and me to call him “Uncle Forrest” and told me to befriend his stepdaughter, Sheila, which I was happy to do.
She was sixteen—nine years older than me—so I thought she was the epitome of cool.
But she could seem distant sometimes too. I later found out why.
One night Mom, Dad, and I were out on our porch with Forrest, Sheila, and Sheila’s mom.
I’ve corresponded with Sheila about this recently, and she remembers this too.
We think our little brothers were playing somewhere inside the house when our parents—who were drinking beer, as usual—began joking around about how “naughty” Sheila and I were.
Either my dad or Forrest then suggested that they “trade” us for a night.
I recall Forrest glancing at my father and saying something about “a backwards sleepover. Jenna can come sleep at our house, and Sheila can sleep here.”
I didn’t know it then, but by this point, Forrest had been sexually abusing Sheila for two years.
Since Sheila and I have reconnected, she’s told me she was never “traded” to my dad for him to abuse.
I wasn’t so fortunate. I’ll never know the exact date I was first left with Forrest. I do remember that it was with my father’s permission.
I recall being in a bathtub—I’ve always thought it was in Forrest and his wife’s home, but Sheila wonders if it may have been in one of the empty vacation homes whose lawns Forrest was paid to tend.
Forrest walked into the bathroom. I told him I wanted to bathe myself, but he wouldn’t leave.
He sat on the toilet next to me and acted as if this were the most natural thing in the world—a grown man scrubbing the naked body of someone else’s young daughter.
“We’ve got to wash you good. You’re a dirty girl,” he said.