Chapter 3 Not a Fucking Disney Movie
Not a Fucking Disney Movie
ANDI WAS MINDY’S YOUNGEST SISTER, AND SHE WAS model gorgeous.
I swear to God, she stood six feet tall with the most perfect, beachy blond hair and the longest legs—all natural.
She had big brown eyes that looked straight out of a magazine, and when seventeen-year-old Mindy became my stepmom, Andi had just become a teenager.
But to my child’s brain, she didn’t seem like a young kid.
She seemed like a full-grown adult with all the power.
I’d watch her put her makeup on and brush her long, perfect hair as she got ready for dates. All the boys lined up for her, and she knew she had that it factor they all wanted.
Growing up in the same household Mindy grew up in, Andi experienced the same abuse. A lot of it.
Being a survivor of abuse herself, it was only natural that she’d inflict her pain on someone else—isn’t that how pain works?
You bleed on the people who didn’t cut you?
I know what she found with me: a way to feel some kind of control.
He abused her, so she’d abuse me. It was all she knew.
She’d been taught that love hurts, so she taught me the same lesson.
Andi would come to Mindy and Bill’s house to babysit me while they were out at work or partying, and we had a routine.
She’d pour some of my parents’ cheap boxed wine into one of our many crystal wineglasses and hand it to me.
My parents made sure we always had a fully stocked bar wherever we lived.
“Drink,” she’d say, and I’d take a sip, even if it tasted like rubbing alcohol and burned my mouth. Even if I was only barely five years old. Then she’d put me on the couch and smirk.
“Okay, Lizard,” she’d say sarcastically, using the nickname my father so lovingly gave me. “Let’s watch a Disney movie.” I knew she wasn’t talking about fucking Cinderella. We’d been through this plenty of times.
I’d keep sipping my wine, and she’d put on the movie.
It was always porn, usually lesbian porn with women not too much older than her.
Nowadays I wonder if she was experimenting with something, or if she had some kind of deep hatred of men after what her dad did to her and didn’t want to watch them get off.
But back then, I didn’t understand what I was watching.
I didn’t know shit about sex or lesbians.
I just knew this wasn’t a fucking Disney movie.
I knew something was wrong, and that it made me feel funny. I wanted it to stop.
I don’t remember Andi ever molesting me.
She didn’t touch me like that. That’s not to say she didn’t lay a hand on me—she definitely did.
I didn’t say a word about the porn to Bill or Mindy, because Andi threatened to beat my ass like she had over and over since the day we met.
She would also threaten me while hanging me upside down by my Achilles tendons on both ankles.
It was torture. And she did it all the time.
But when she’d put on those Disney movies, we’d just sit on the couch next to each other, watching, like she was showing me her favorite movie and I was drinking Hi-C in my sippy cup.
It was our thing we did together. I guess this is what families do?
When my parents got home from wherever they were, I’d lie and say we’d watched the Fairy Godmother turn Cinderella into a princess.
Andi would beat the dog shit out of me when she was bored or angry or frustrated. It didn’t take much. And then she’d love on me like nothing had happened. Mindy was the same way: They’d hurt you and then flip the switch to turn on the Southern charm. Oh honey. You know I love you, right?
I couldn’t wait to get out of that fucking family of two-faced fakers. To this day, I can’t stand fake people. Be real or don’t talk to me.
* * *
IF I DO THE MATH, Mindy was probably pretty damn pregnant with my little sister, Baby Sis, when she married Bill.
This chubby-cheeked cherub we later would lovingly call Burger showed up in August 1985, and I was officially a big sister.
I was excited to be a big sister, but Mindy made it clear that I was no longer a part of the family.
I wasn’t worth shit, she told me, because my own mom was a stripper who showed her titties to men in clubs.
It didn’t bother me at all that my mom danced.
I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.
Sounds like she was just like one of the women in the movies her sister made me watch. It even sounded fun.
But Mindy said we were trash, and in the family of Mindy, Bill, and Baby Sis, I was the wicked stepchild who was a constant reminder that there were women before her.
* * *
I WAS FIVE WHEN THE son of a family friend who was visiting got into bed with me and started me down the path of sexual trauma.
He was so much older—about sixteen or seventeen. For some unknown reason, my parents thought it would be a great idea to let him sleep in my Strawberry Shortcake–themed bedroom. They even let him sleep in my bed, and I had to sleep on the floor.
I was a water baby. If it was summertime, I had a bathing suit on—especially my aqua one with ruffles.
I’d played my heart out that day at a family barbecue and must have just passed out in this bathing suit.
Suddenly, I snapped awake. Someone was tugging at my bathing suit from the bottom.
He slid it to the side, and I felt fingers on my vagina and someone spreading my lips open.
I opened my eyes just a little bit. I was too scared to react, but I saw who was touching me.
As he poked and prodded around, all that was flashing in my mind were the porn videos Aunt Andi had shown me. This is what they do? Why does it feel so scary? Surely the people in the video don’t feel like this?
He flipped me on my stomach, and as I pretended I was still asleep, he spread my cheeks open and ran his fingers over my asshole. Fury started building up inside me. Why is everyone so fucked up?
Remember how I’ve said God has always divinely protected me? He didn’t let me down this time either.
Suddenly, my ear burst into pain. It felt like my ear drum had popped.
I screamed so loud that it scared the shit out of him, and he got back into bed.
I ran to my parents’ room, hollering from the pain.
And in front of Bill and Mindy, I was so focused on my ear and wanting the pain to stop that I didn’t tell them what he’d done.
To this day, I regret keeping quiet, because years later I found out that he had been violently raping his own sister.
He did it to her for years. It broke my heart when she and I got closer later in life and shared our traumas.
Mine was nothing near what she’d gone through. I wish I could have saved her.
* * *
IN TEXAS, WE LIVED IN a duplex with a huge front yard, and Bill and Mindy used to throw me outside and lock the door so they could party, drink, do drugs—whatever they wanted. Baby Sis was just a baby and got to stay inside, but they left me to entertain myself for hours on end.
We had a boat out on the side of the house, and I could kill a whole afternoon alone out there sailing the high seas.
My imagination was my best friend as a child, and I always made my own fun—even as lonely as I was.
I didn’t think about whether or not I was safe outside.
With Andi’s weird antics, that fucking family friend, and Mindy’s temper, I wasn’t safe around anyone older than me. Alone outside, I felt free.
But it’s not surprising that some sick, twisted men saw an opportunity when they came across a little girl like me all alone.
It doesn’t take much to tell that a kid is vulnerable and easy prey.
It’s exactly what happened at Bill and Mindy’s wedding with that beautiful, dark-haired woman. I guess I was an easy target.
When a rusty brown van pulled up and two guys got out, they pulled the same thing.
“Do you wanna come play with us?” one of them asked. I can’t remember what they looked like, just that they made me queasy with anxiety.
“You look like you need a friend,” the other said, as they stalked closer to me.
I remember the fear as clearly as if it were happening right this very moment.
They’re going to take me away. They’re going to hurt me.
Like I said, my gift is seeing people for who they are.
It was the kind of fear that’s so intense, you feel like your feet have been lifted up off the ground. Something inside me said run.
I took off sprinting toward my parents’ house.
The door was locked like always, and I could hear their loud music from inside.
I pounded on the door with my little hands, terrified the men were right behind me.
Someone finally answered and I fell inside, but when I told them men had tried to take me, Bill and Mindy didn’t believe me.
They rolled their eyes and went back to whatever they were doing.
They kept on locking me outside, and now I was scared. I got back in the damn boat and played my games. There just weren’t any other options, so I was going to make it work.
One afternoon on the boat, a crusty old bearded man came up and knocked on the deck. I eyed him and stood back, disgusted by his sick smile.
“Do you wanna play milk-the-snake?” he asked.
“What’s milk-the-snake?” I asked. I must have been about six, and I guess first grade hadn’t covered milking snakes yet.
“Milk this snake,” he said, stepping back from the boat and showing me his dick. “Have you ever milked a snake?”
I’d never seen a penis in real life before, only in the pornos Dad watched and the ones Andi showed me, but it absolutely repulsed me.
He was jerking off—not like I knew what that even was—and when he came, my whole body rebelled.
I started screaming my head off, and the dude pulled up his pants and ran.
I screamed and screamed and ran back to the locked door and pounded again, and this time Mindy actually believed me when I described what happened.
She must have figured someone had made me scream like that.
And how would I know what ejaculation looked like?
Mindy let me stay inside that day, but come the next morning, I was out in the boat with the door locked behind me.
Over the next few years, they’d put me to work more and more.
It would become my job to pick up the dog shit in our yard, but they wouldn’t let me use a shovel, because the whole point was to keep me occupied and out of the house.
Mindy gave me barbecue tongs, and I had to pick up one tiny piece at a time over an acre of land.
Yup, you heard that right. BBQ tongs that flip chicken.
Did I mention we had thirteen dogs? Those cocker spaniels wouldn’t stop fucking each other.
If I so much as looked at a shovel, I’d get in trouble.
I was like any kid, and I wanted to be normal.
I wanted to go play. But I had jobs to do, so I started making all my chores into a game or a challenge in my head.
How fast can I get this done? Then after that, it was off to weed and mow the lawn.
I swear they thought I was their servant.
While I was outside tweezering dog shit, my dad would sit on his computer all day every day.
He had two screens going, and he’d pretend to be trading stocks, but I know he had a secret online life of chat rooms and weird shit.
He was obsessed with porn, and he even watched it on our living-room TV.
I’ll never forget the time I saw him sitting at the damn dining-room table, craning his neck at the TV in the living room.
From my own room, I could see the TV and the naked women getting plowed.
I told Mindy what I’d seen the next day, and you better believe Bill grounded me for snitching him out.
I don’t know what he was doing at the dining-room table, and I sure as hell don’t want to know.
Those early years were a fast track to adulthood.
There weren’t any moments of just being a kid—those weren’t allowed.
Plus, who was going to clean the house? Who was going to make sure Bill and Mindy didn’t kill each other?
Being a child just wasn’t in my cards, and it affects me to this day.
I struggle to relax or do the things I wished I could have done as a kid.
I’m not programmed to have fun. I’m programmed to work. It’s all I’ve ever known.