Chapter 2 Unholy Matrimony #2
“Mindy,” I said flatly. I could tell it bothered her, but I didn’t care.
Mindy used to play a manipulative, dramatic game where she’d pretend her feelings were hurt to get what she wanted.
She’d curl her bottom lip and make her eyes tear up.
It was hideous. You guessed it—the waterworks started. So Dad came over to investigate.
“She won’t call me Mom,” Mindy said.
“Alisa. You don’t have a mom. Just call her Mom,” he said, trying to be the hero for his new bride. I gritted my teeth and balled my fists. Rage also came early for me. But he was my pops and the only person I respected. I did what he said. Reluctantly, I started calling Mindy Mom.
They held the reception at a bar in an old train caboose. We were all there—family, Mindy’s friends, Dad’s crew of uncles, partying like crazy. I was still pissed and spent the event running around like a wild banshee.
What a sight to see. The misery I felt came across loud and clear.
My dress was torn, and my face was puffy from crying.
I went into the bathroom to sob my eyes out some more, and when I looked up, I saw the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
She had thick, jet-black hair and sparkly blue eyes.
She leaned down so she was face-to-face with me.
I’ll never forget the way I felt when I looked at her face.
I’d never seen someone so beautiful, and I was transfixed.
My disdain for Mindy must have been seeping through my pores.
“You’re not happy your dad married her, huh?” I shook my head. This lady knew me! I felt seen! We were connected. She was an angel sent from above.
“She’s mean to you, isn’t she?” My eyes went wide, and my jaw dropped to the floor.
How did she know about that? How did she know how Mindy already talked to me like I was lower than dirt?
That she’d already raised her voice to me and threatened her hands and then sweetly pretended nothing had happened?
How did this stranger know what I’d already intuited: that once Mindy and Bill were married, she was only going to get unimaginably worse? I nodded.
“Do you want to come home with me?” she sweetly asked.
“Yes,” I said. I was a kid, and she was so beautiful and warm. I just needed someone to be nice to me and to take care of me. I had never felt that kind of motherly love. She felt like that. And she was a way out. An escape. Fuck yeah, I’m going with you.
My new mom took my hand and we walked out into the bar. There was a back kitchen with an exit door, and she started leading me in that direction. This was it! Home free, fuck you Mindy—yank!
Someone grabbed my new mom by her hair so hard her feet flew off the damn ground. The next thing I knew, Mindy picked up a wineglass and smashed it over the beautiful lady’s face. Blood poured everywhere, and Mindy beat the living shit out of her.
Knowing how Bill operated, I’m guessing that beautiful, nice lady was one of his ex-girlfriends or side chicks who was just as pissed as I was about the new nuptials.
Putting two and two together all these years later, it’s clear that she was trying to use me as some kind of pawn against my dad, the prettiest, gentlest kidnapper you ever saw.
But till the day he died, Bill still swore he didn’t know who that woman was.
He said she was just some random lady at the bar. Sure.
I don’t ever think about what would have happened if we’d made it out the door.
God wanted me to have this life. But in the bar that night, I was scared and angry and hurt.
Mindy was kicking that woman’s ass, everyone was fucked up and rowdy, and Dad scooped me up, took me outside, and threw me in the car.
We ended the night running like hell from the cops, and when we got home, Bill spanked me to hell and back and grounded me. Knowing what I know now, it was the perfect start to our new life together as a family.
* * *
BILL HAD A KNACK FOR marrying jealous women, and he didn’t do much to make them trust him.
Mindy hated that I was from another one of Dad’s relationships, and so she tried to separate us as much as possible.
It went from just Dad and me against the world, to Mindy lying about things I’d done to get me in trouble and drive a wedge between me and the only parent I’d ever known.
Her parenting style was less Mary Poppins and more Mommy Dearest. She was five ten, platinum blond, and meaner than a junkyard dog.
The abuse started early, and it started with Mindy.
She’d go on to introduce me to her sister, who joined in on the abuse, but we’ll get there.
And the line continued from there: I, too, was abusive and picked one abusive man after the other—whether it was emotional, mental, or physical.
And if my man wasn’t already abusive, I made him abusive.
Eventually, I got to the unholy grail of vile men, the final wannabe boss who almost ended my life. But it all began with Mindy.
If I knew Mindy was evil from the start, she must have thought the same thing about me, even though I was just a kid.
Remember, I was five. Right away, she put me to work.
Anything she wanted done around the house was my job.
She screamed all the fucking time and ruled with her fists.
Was this motherly love? No, thanks. But she was the only mother figure I’d ever had, and even though I feared her, I looked up to her in a twisted way.
She taught me that love meant violence. And like the men who would put their hands on me later, she would always come crawling back after hurting me and say she was sorry.
But looking up to Mindy made things confusing, and as much hell as she put me through, she also taught me how to be a woman. Every morning—even when she wasn’t working—she would get up, do her hair, and do her makeup. I would sit and watch her.
“Every morning that you get up is a new day,” she’d say. “You make sure you do your hair. Do your make up. No matter what happens throughout the day, you’ll feel good.”
She taught me to cross my legs when I sat, something I’d teach our daughter when we got custody of her years later.
Mindy would put books on my head and make me walk so I learned to stand up straight.
She taught me to be poised. She taught me how to keep a house.
She taught me how to keep a man. For those things, I’m grateful.
I guess if she was going to make my life a living hell, the least she could do was teach me to be “the perfect wife.”
* * *
MINDY WAS BEAUTIFUL. SHE WAS a busty blond cowgirl with a Southern drawl.
But she was also seventeen when she married Dad.
He was thirty-seven. Like I said, he liked his girls young.
Insert side-eye right here. Her chemical engineer dad and over-the-top beautiful mom sent lavish gifts, held money over their kids’ heads, and pretty much hung them out to dry.
The fact they let a seventeen -year-old child marry a thirty-seven-year-old man speaks volumes.
She came from a severely abusive home, and I saw that firsthand. I know what type of hell Mindy came from. And I feel for her, ironically, because she brought that same hell to me.
Years later, Mindy apologized.
“I was a child raising a child,” she said.
“I didn’t know any better.” I know there’s truth to that.
She was so fucking young. But the years of abuse she inflicted on me made it damn near impossible to trust a word she was saying.
I still can’t help but wonder if she only asked for forgiveness because she knew that I was becoming someone worth a damn, someone who got out of the life she made for me.
I wonder if she saw my star rising and figured she better get right with me.
I forgave her—for myself. But I never forgot.
I’ll never forget the first time Mindy really flipped out on me.
She had taken me with her to a doctor’s office visit, and somehow in the middle of the waiting room, some old man picked me up and put me on his knee.
Now, why the fuck we’re letting strange men hold our daughters I’ll never understand.
He asked me if I had a favorite song, and of course I did!
Madonna raised me. And then he asked me in front of everyone in the waiting room to sing it to him. So I did.
Ahem. I cleared my throat.
“Like a virginnnnn, touched for the very first timeeeee. Like a virrrrriiiiirrrrrginnnnn—”
“ALISA ANDREA!” Mindy shrieked, yanking me off the old man’s lap and smacking my ass right there in the waiting room.
I had no idea what I’d done wrong. I was six at the time.
I had no idea what the hell a virgin was.
I just knew it was a jam. The entire way home, she slapped me across my legs.
How dare I humiliate her like that? It didn’t matter to her that I’d been humiliated—picked up onto some strange man’s lap and then having my ass beat in front of everyone for doing something I didn’t understand.
But as much as Mindy ruled with an iron fist, she protected me too.
Talk about confusing. If a boy came around who she didn’t like, she’d go get the shotgun.
If someone talked shit about me, she’d fight them without a second thought—even if she’d punish me for her trouble with closed fists when we were back home.
Over the next twenty years, I’d confuse that kind of fierceness with love.
I hated her, but I respected her. And I’m grateful to her too.
If it weren’t for her, I’d still be eating those raw hot dogs from Dad’s coat pocket.
But as much of a monster as Mindy was, she was nothing compared to her sister.