MEMOIRS OF AN AMERICAN GIRL
I know that I am only an ordinary girl, but I have something to say.
I promise not to lie, I promise to let everything out right now, and right here.
I am a product of the people and experiences surrounding my life. I’m not an important person compared to
some nor am I particularly
Pretty; I am really no one to the people who do not know me. I am average in too many ways. The people
that have been in my life are greatly
Important. It is at this very moment that I understand the connection with friends and enemies alike that creates a past, present and
future. It is the relationships that I have with these people that mold the existence of my being. This is my personal ode to them, the wicked, the angelic, the cowardly, the brave, and the rest
That lies in between.
These people are locked in my brain and play in my own personal play from time to time. I have apathy, and respect for all of them. Would it seem strange to loathe and love someone at the
Same time? But that is the way it is, I can’t help it. I can’t explain it either. I believe that if it was not for a certain time, a certain place or a certain person that I would be different. Now
These people that have been in my life do not necessarily make me a better person or smarter, or any closer to perfection but I could not be the same without any of them and maybe that
Frightens me a bit. I can’t imagine being anyone else but me.
Then I start to think that I want to be the person that I was ten years ago, this has nothing to do with vanity this has to do with a mindset. We all have this mindset in our youth. Children fear nothing; they stop to apologize for no one. As children we were allowed to be and to say what we feel, and nothing could ever hold us back. The world was limitless, expectations boundless and trust was never a concern. Our parents even helped us to buy into this make-pretend scheme by saying that we could do or be whatever we wanted. In some cases that may very well be true, but not every one has that life. There will always be the ones that remain left behind to watch everyone else go by.
We all know what we want, we may not know how to get what we want but in our youth there is still the hope that it can happen. As we become older we lose our imagination of what could come to be, and we watch all of what we had wanted for so long fall away from us and then hope is lost.
You know this and I am sure of it, but if we take away all that was or will be corrupt in our lives we will never know true joy. We will never know when something or someone truly unique is standing before us because how would we know the difference? You must know sadness to appreciate bliss.
I want to tell you a story about truths and deceptions and while I am doing that I hope to immortalize the ones that I have come to know, it is the least I can do for them after all that they have done for me.
I am not sure how I am perceived in another persons mind nor do I know their version to this epic; I do know that everyone has their own memory of how something has happened. I will only tell you how I remember it.
In the beginning there was pandemonium.
My father and his father before him and his father before him and so on and so on were all named Rudolph Bert Sedlaczek. I am my fathers’ only natural child and therefore I stopped the Rudolph chain the day I was born. I was a girl to the disappointment of my father, and ruined a tenth generation Czech tradition. It was my mothers’ daughter, Katarina that named me Renee Elise Sedlaczek, because mother and father had never thought of a girl’s name, I was to be a boy and my name had already been decided. I’m a girl, surprise everyone!
To make up for the fact that I was a girl I acted out in various ways, I did not want to be a pain in the ass but I couldn't’t think of any other way to get my father’s attention. Many times I would beg to go on the famous fishing trips that consisted of all of my boy cousins and uncles, I would never be able to go, instead I would sit in my room and rip the heads off of my Barbie Dolls and hide the heads under my bed.
Life in the Sedlaczek house was always dangerous. Chaos would not be enough to describe it. Father was angry, he would deny this and say that everything couldn't’t have been better but again this is my version not my father’s.
For many years dad suffered with alcohol. He would drink alone and on many nights in the den you could find him playing records and drinking. If you listened long enough by the door you could hear him sing, which is something that he did quite well. His dream was to be a musician but, his life had been more than unfair to him and he was not able to accomplish this.
Dad was severely abused as a child. At one point in his life his father beat him so bad that he was hospitalized for three months. Whenever his other brothers or sisters would misbehave in the household he would be the one that was beaten because he was the oldest male and it was his job to make sure that they behaved.
Father would tell me at least twice a day how much he loved me. I never felt it though. I am sure it must have been hard for him to show love or compassion when he was never shown any himself. He could have told me a million times a day that he loved me but no words could ever make up for the fact that he took his frustrations out on all of us. He was a bully in the house. If he said jump you jumped and then say, “Is there anything else I can do for you?” He commanded respect and love and he did not have to give anything back to any of us. The fact that there was food in the house and clothes on your back was enough in his mind to show that he loved you. Now, I’m not saying that these things are not important but don’t most good parents provide these things anyway? I wanted more than that. I am still not sure what I was searching for. Maybe I still don’t. Maybe what I wanted was to really feel love or any other emotion except hatred and anger. Being afraid of a parent is the worst way to live.
I remember the day that I truly feared Daddy. The day I watched him kill mine and Katarina’s dog was when the link between father and daughter was severed for years . I loved Freeway. Hi name was Freeway because we found him on the outskirts of LBJ Freeway in down town Dallas. Freeway had been hit by cars and was lying bleeding on the side of the road. I remember father pulling over to the side of the road and barley avoided being hit his self and lovingly picking Freeway up and placing him in the bed of the truck and racing off to the veterinarian’s office. Father had him treated, vaccinated, gave him a warm home and plenty of food to eat. The only bad thing is that Freeway wanted nothing to do with a warm home and food. He wished to be the tramp that he was and would run away as often as he could. On some occasions Daddy would get nasty calls from neighbors about his roaming and would even have to leave work to come and find him. Father would have to chase him down in the neighborhood and then tie him up in the yard. He only tied him up as a form of punishment and it never went any further than that. Dad would walk away and leave him tied to the old pecan tree, Katarina and I would wait until Daddy was gone before we would take the rope from off of him and remove him from the tree. But, oh, how I wish I could forget the day that he got out and Daddy refused to let it be. It would be the last time that Freeway would roam the streets as the free spirit he was. There was no tolerance for disobedience in the household not even the family dog had a chance of surviving.
One afternoon Daddy was called at work to come and get Freeway out of one of our neighbors’ yard. Father lost his job in a result of too many absences due to Freeway getting loose.
Katarina and I heard yelling and howling coming from the back yard. Her I ran to the kitchen window to see what he was screaming about. That is where we saw father holding Freeway’s face down in a bucket of water in the backyard. He would bring him back up ever few seconds to punch him in his snout and then shove him back under. We watched, horrified unable to do anything. If we had interrupted or asked him to stop, it would have only been worse. Katarina cried and held on to my hand. We watched our father kill our dog. After he drowned Freeway, we ran to the other side of the house and hid in my bedroom closet. I could hear Katrina crying underneath the clothes in the closet floor. I wanted to cry at that moment but I couldn't’t. I was still unsure what had just happened. My father just killed my dog and all I wanted to do was to hurt my dad. Yes, I was fucking angry. He loved Freeway, or so I thought. It makes no since to me why he would hurt something that he loved? At dinner that night father told us that the dog had been hit by a car and that he passed away. Katarina and I knew the truth. When we tried to tell mother she said that we were liars and to never say such horrible things about our dad. It was never brought up again.
Everyone claims to have a terrible childhood, right? Maybe except for Iggy Pop, he claims that his childhood was perfect, yet he cuts himself onstage. I didn’t cut myself; I gorged my body on food and television. If I could eat from the time I got home after school until the time I went to bed I could feel my stomach was full, at least the pain in my stomach would take my mind off of the screaming and hitting. Hey, there were no hugs or words of encouragement in my house but there was always food.
My sister Katarina was naturally loved by anyone that met her. Katarina was beautiful, intelligent, and all of her friends looked up to her. I guess in some way I did too. But, I also feared her. I never wanted to make her angry; everything was fine as long as the insults and the blows were coming. It was when she would be nice to me is when I became more afraid. She had a way of pretending to be nice, which is when I would trust her, maybe tell her something that I shouldn't’t, this would always backfire on me, and she would use my words against me. Most of the time I tried to run as my far as my fat little legs would carry me or just try hiding from Katarina but she would catch or find me nine times out of ten. Sometimes it would be best to just let her dominate me and beat the fuck out of me. It would be over as soon as she wore herself out. I got good at blocking her fists where it would really hurt, my face, my stomach and my vagina.
During the summer months her cruelty would rear its nasty head. It was harder during the hot days, there was no school and unfortunately there were no parental guardians either. Mom would work longer shifts and dad would be who knows where. I wanted so much to stay with my grandmother but she had to work too, so it was my sister and I all alone in the house together. I would cry and beg my mother to take me with her; I would sit in the car and read. She would ask me why I would want to do that, and I would see Katarina glaring at me behind mother’s back. “Never mind”, I would say.
She would wake me in the morning by kicking me repeatedly with her boots or hitting me with various objects packed tightly in a pillowcase. I would just have to lie there on my side holding myself until the pain went away. If I would have tried to fight her or move she would have just pinned me down and it would have been a much worse beating. I tried to lock the door at night before falling asleep but she always managed to get the door open. She did not beat me every morning, on some mornings she would just throw ice water in my face.
She would wake me up only to take her frustrations out on me. Sometimes, she just wanted me out of the house so that she could fuck her boyfriends; sometimes she would have as many as three different men a day. I have nothing to comment about this except at least she had good taste, they were always beautiful, well dressed, always had money too. Maybe she was a prostitute and I just didn’t get it. Although, I do not have proof that she was a prostitute, it is just a thought in my mind is all.
She also enjoyed playing the quiet game. The quiet game was tying my hands behind my back and my feet were then tied and connected to my hands, Hogtying as she called it. She would then place socks or a wash rag or whatever she could find at that moment in my mouth then place duck tape over my mouth. She would roll me to the middle of the living room or my closet and leave me there for hours. If I used the bathroom on myself she would rub my face in it.
On the summer days that she would let me outside I would fill up my little wading pool and play with my bath toys in the back yard. This was her opportunity to lock the doors and keep me outside for nearly 8 hours in the Texas sun. I would beg and ask her to let me in; she would close the blinds so that I could not see in the windows. Of course before mother got home she would let me in. I remember standing in the kitchen crying one afternoon, I was so sore and sunburned that the bathing suit had literally stuck to my skin; I had to peel it off. Katarina thinking that this was the most hilarious thing she had ever seen decided to rub cooking oil all over my naked sun burned body. She said that the cooking oil would take away the burning. I had blisters all over my body for weeks after this. If I dared say anything to mother it would have been worse, Katarina would have seen to making my life even harder than it already was. I could never explain the black eyes, rope burns, the bloody noses, or the goose eggs to my mother. She would demand that I tell her who was hurting me and I would simply say that I fell coming up the stairs on the back porch. I always wondered if she did know and did not want to punish Katarina or was it that she couldn't’t believe that one of her own children could be so fucking evil.
I never knew how much she really despised me until the day that I had started to choke on my lunch. She was sitting at the kitchen table with me, having lunch herself. I had taken a bite of my food; I was in a hurry to get back outside to get away from her that I was eating as fast as I could. This was my own fault. The food became lodged in my throat. I was unable to breathe; I fell to my knees on the floor. I remember being light headed and starting to lose consciousness. Lucky for me, and miraculously I was able to cough up my food. When I was sitting on the floor and starting to breathe once again and staring at what I had just coughed up, what almost claimed my pathetic little life, she said, “Too bad you didn’t die.” She looked right at me; her eyes were so cold, I was more afraid of her than of choking to death on my lunch. Maybe she was right, “Too bad I didn’t die.”
When Katarina and I became older she would apologize to me. She told me that I had invaded her territory and, that mother only needed one child but still that was no excuse she said for hurting me all those times.
Honestly I do not see it this way. I think or I believe that because father would use Katarina many times as a punching bag she wanted to take it out on me being that I was “his” child.
Katarina left home in January 1991, I was 11 years old that year. She had gotten pregnant and moved out on her own with Stephanie my niece. Stephanie’s father had been murdered that same year. Supposedly he was sleeping with a woman whose husband was in the pen. When her husband was released from prison, he went straight to his wife’s house and found Jacob fast asleep in his bed. Jacob’s neck was cut ear to ear. They say Jacob never even woke up. When Katarina found out about this, it did not faze her in the least. She wasn’t sad or felt loss in any way, for God’s sake I wanted to say at least feel something for your daughter, she just lost her father. No, she was only worried about how she would get money from Social Security for herself, she had never worked nor will she ever work a single day in her life. Katarina is all about instant self gratification. Never get in her way, she will chew you up and devour you.
Communication between my sister and I ceased to exist after she left. For years I would only see her only on holidays. Stephanie on the other hand I saw all the time. I was Stephanie’s babysitter after all. Instead of Katarina physically harming me she decided to make me her daughter’s part time mommy thus taking away all my free time. Mother said it was my duty to watch Stephanie because Stephanie would look up to me. Bullshit, she didn’t want to watch her either.
Honestly though I loved being with Stephanie. I treated Stephanie with love and care something that Katarina could just not do. Katarina is incapable of love at least for other people, she loved herself very much.
Brenda Kay Sedlaczek is my mother. I love her whole heartedly. I have no real complaints. We are all human and we are all going to fail ourselves and our loved ones at least a few times. She was truly a great mother. She helped me win many battles in my child hood. When she saw that I had an over eating disorder she helped me. Although, she was a few years too late, but still she caught it as soon as she had the time. She gave away much of herself after she saw that she could not leave me to my own devices. She had even enrolled me in dance classes. Can you imagine a fat ballerina? That was me the first fat ballerina.
Mother was a true workaholic. It’s not really that she loved to work, no, she hated her job. The reason why she worked so many hours in hot stinking factories was to make sure that bills were paid and enough money left over to give things to Katarina and I that she never had.
Mother is the best thing that ever happened to dad. Dad would agree with me on this fact. She was nurturing to all of us. With dad she showed utter fucking patience and humility. When dad broke down when my uncle killed himself she was there. When he decided to stop drinking she helped him. She forgave him for his infidelity and his inability to hold a steady job and the fact that he was an abusive fuck for so many years, this doesn’t paint a nice picture for dad but mother loved him, which is why she stayed. Who was there to help my mom? She never confided in anyone, dad was not really her husband or her friend he was merely there to share a bed with when he was home; he could have been just another child in her eyes for all I know, just another defenseless creature for her to care for.
I can recollect many things about my mother and father together but the one thing that sticks out in my mind is how they always managed to pull together when things were the most miserable.
The Christmas of 1991 my mother and father lost a place to live. We had been staying with my father’s mother but an argument forced them to leave the house and take me with them. My grandmother refused to let me go and sleep in the car with them, but it was not her decision to make it was mine and my parents. We drove and sat underneath a lit Christmas tree in a shopping mall. I was watching intensely as the lights flickered to different colors and fell upon the windshield of the car. It was eerie in a way to be seeing such a beautiful sign of Christmas festivity at that precise moment. Mother and father had to tell me that there would be no Christmas that year, which it didn’t really bother me all that much neither did it surprise me. I understood, even at that age I truly understood about finances and responsibilities. I was not angry or bitter about this, this is just the way things are, and there is no way to change it. I dropped my eyes to the floor board to find a blanket. It was dreadfully cold that night. As I lay down in the back seat of the car I peered in to the front seat to see that instead of the two fighting they held hands and cried together. It’s moments like that, that inspire me. I wish I had that kind of strength. To cry is strength in my opinion. I never once showed my tears in front of them. Well, not at that time even though I had a lot to cry for. Unlike other children my age I did not worry about who liked who at school or the next pop quiz. I wondered when I would take my next shower and when I would be able to wash my clothes. I really had nothing to look forward to, but yet I was hopeful and comforted by the thought that things may get better. Still I never cried in front of mother or father if they had seen me cry at that point in time it would have made them feel worse, I think. The only thing that I can compare it to is by pretending that you still believe in Santa Clause even though you have known the truth for years it is only to keep your parents happy, so, that they do not feel that they have grown old or that you are uncontrollably growing up or that they could no longer fool you with presents from Santa clause that were always made out to you in mother’s handwriting. There is no since in disappointing the people that you love the most. It’s mean and just not worth it. You can do much more good by hurting yourself in the long run, and think about what you had done to contribute to the path that you are now walking on.
My mother believes in keeping herself distant. She never had any stories about her childhood. I never met her parents; they had both died at an early age. She had mentioned this fact to me only once and how the two of them had met their demise at the bottom of a bottle. Therefore, I never truly understood her or what had happened in her life. To this day I still don't know who my mother is. But, it was on one night that I lashed out at her that I discovered a few of her secrets. We had vacated out of the car a couple of weeks after we lost a place to live. My dad had found work in a really bad part of Dallas; he was doing maintenance work in at all hours of the night in an apartment complex. The only bonus to all of his efforts was a free apartment to live in. It was a small one bedroom, roach infested apartment and the three of us shared the tight quarters together, our pallets even lined up together in the only bedroom. Even though it was much bigger than the Delta 88, I still found myself stifled, Closter phobic even. I wanted out; I had taken enough of it. I had no bed, no radio, no television and no phone. I had no possessions for myself, I had no way to escape my reality, and the harsh truth was that I was poor, trash left over to be discarded. The children at my school had noticed this and never once failed to remind me. At one point in my life I had everything that I needed. It was my dad's recreational life that put us here. So, why am I being punished for his mistakes? That's when I told my mother that I hated her, that she was an awful human being for letting me grow up in such a filthy and degrading way, and in my mind she was no better than my father. I wished that she would just leave, die or let me live with my grandmother. Her eyes were not wet from tears when she came at me from around the kitchen counter, I inched away from her but she came at me full speed with the intensity of Gail force winds. The pan that she had been washing at the sink fell with a loud ting on the floor at the same time my mother's hand hit me with a scorpion sting. The noise echoed in my ear and made me tighten my eyes and hold my face in my hands. Mother grabbed me by my throat and slammed me down on the bare naked floor. She sat on top of me, digging her feet into my chest and pushing all the air out of my lungs. All that I could see were her eyes, the black, soul abandoned eyes, and there was no light to be seen from them. The smell of decaying teeth and nicotine oozing from her open mouth forced me to want to turn away from her but she had her grip on me. There was no way I could turn loose; not now. “Listen to me, and you listen good." For the first time in my life I was really afraid of her I had never made her angry before, I wasn’t sure what she was going to do to me, it was this moment and this moment only that mother reminded me of my older sister Katarina and all the torture I had endured from her over the years. I wanted to spit in her face, I wanted to hurt her. She spoke slowly but never loosening her shaking hands wrapped tightly like a snake around my throat. “I didn’t have a mama and daddy, they didn’t want me, and all they cared about was booze. I couldn’t even fall asleep in my bed at night afraid that some drunk man was going to rape me as soon as I fell asleep. I was on my own by the time I was your age. I had no one that gave a fuck about me." She banged my head down on the floor and rose to stand above me, looking down at me as a predator would fixate on its prey, she had won this one and she was mocking my loss of merit. I felt my head start to swim and the lights blurring in my eyes as I tried to stand. I began moving toward the bathroom, my only sanctuary. "You should count your blessings little girl because I do care about you, I will be damned if I will let you go and live with that grandmother of yours. You be thankful for what you have.” She is still yelling at me as I stumbled to the door. I fell down upon my knees and crawled in the bathtub. As I climb in I eye the rusty razor perched on top of the white Ivory soap. It was the soap that I was eyeing more than the razor. Soap can clean even the most contaminated of bodies, and how awkward it looked compared to the dirty, dingy tub. I wanted to tell mother that it didn’t matter anymore, I was no longer effected by her guilt trips and that I could care less about her. This was about me. ME GODDANMIT, NOT HER! I had thoughts of drifting down in the tub and never returning. Death had to be better than this. Then again I could pretend like I was Peter Pan, if I slash my wrists right here and right now I could leave to exist in my own fantasy world, I would never grow up, and I would be away from here forever, except my never land wouldn't be anything like Peter's it would be closer to purgatory because if mother taught me anything she taught me that killing myself was a mortal sin. Are we all doomed? How do you feel with the knowledge that we really are a product of our parents? God, would I have the same limitations, the same experiences when I reach adulthood? Is this really what being an adult is all about? I can’t say I blame mother for lashing out at me. I felt bad but maybe this is what she wants me to feel, if this is the case than I refuse to feel anything anymore.
To mom Katarina and I were her real accomplishments in life. Is that enough, can children really be enough to fill any voids? Mom had children for three reasons, to have a meaning to her life, to feel needed, and also for the first time to be loved unconditionally. These are all the reasons to not have children. You have children to add something to the world, not necessarily a part of yourself, that is a little vain don’t you think. No, we have children to add something positive to the world. However, it is always the unworthy people that breed and that is why we are in the state that we are in.
Mom had the right idea though she wanted nothing more than to see her children excel in all the ways she had not. She was not sure how to accomplish this, but she tried her best. Mom needed proof that her own flesh and blood could do the things that she was not able to do; this would be her way of doing it herself. She never made it seem that she was living vicariously through us, but I am sure that that’s what it was.
All of what I am telling you is important. You now understand the influences in my early life. I do have some good memories. I just wish I could think of them right now.
So now you understand all of what is grand and the dysfunctions that are involved. I want to start you off in the year 1992. 1992 was a very strange year for me. It is when I finally realized that I was my own person separate from my parents. It was the beginning for me of being a “real” person and not just a series of reactions to actions.
In all its entirety, the banging in my brain begins, let’s start now.
(I promise to post more soon.)
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