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Guarded by Angels
by D. Culp
By the time I was fourteen we clashed like
titans, but it really started three years earlier when Ray married Moma.
Judy had disliked him immediately, Vic was too young to have an opinion,
and I was ambivalent. But within a short few months my opinion changed.
One day Moma was out shopping and we sat in the kitchen with Ray. He
picked up Vic and held him upside down over the sink. He lowered Vic’s
head so it was resting on top of the garbage disposal, hit the on switch
and began laughing. That moment marked the beginning of our battle. He
threatened the safety of my baby brother whom I had watched over like a
little mother since the divorce.
My 14th birthday was a typical
southern July day; endless blue skies filled with sweltering humid air,
the AC running full blast struggling to keep the house cool. We sat down
to dinner, all of us in summer shorts and barefoot. Moma was quietly
putting food in front of us. Everyone was trying not to do something, to
avoid conflict. There must have been a birthday cake somewhere.
Before we started to eat supper, Ray fixed me
with a long hard stare and demanded that I properly dress, that I go
upstairs and put on a skirt and shoes. I made the brazen mistake of
questioning his demand and so was sent to my room. A few days later, I ran
for the first time and the police made the first entry on what was to
become my long file. It wasn’t planned. I just couldn’t stand it any
longer. One night after another tense dinner I just walked to the back
yard and jumped the fence. I took one change of clothes and had a few
dollars in my pocket. Within minutes I was blocks away at Vicki’s house,
talking with my boyfriend Danny on the phone. Thirty minutes later I was
in his car, passing a joint with him and his friends. Danny was pretty
irritated with me. My parents knew who he was and he realized they’d come
looking for me, and for him. That night we parked the car in a south side
country field beside a moving oil derrick. We spent the night walking the
fields and laying on top of the car, gazing up at the stars, as we worked
on getting seriously stoned.
The next morning Danny hid me at Jan’s house.
Her poor mom thought I was a friend just staying over. Danny thought I was
safely stashed, but a couple of days later he had no idea where I was. Jan
and I hitchhiked to Paseo Street, the official wild kid hangout with
headshops, cafes, and nightclubs. Stoned boys and girls filled the winding
street. It’s a safe bet I was one of the few (if not the only) 14 year
olds. Tall, pale, willowy, with a heart shaped face- everyone thought I
looked like an angel and the name stuck. Angel became my street name. For
years to come most of my friends never knew that I was really Dyanna.
A friend of mine’s older sister just happened
to own the Paseo nightclub with live bands. You needed to be 21 to get in,
but I knew the owners. Not looking a day over 14, scared and excited, I
sat with Jan at a long table surrounded by young men, smoking potent pot,
a drink in front of me, lights bouncing off the walls, rock and roll
vibrating the air. When the bar closed Jan and I left with her new male
friend and his roommate. Innocently stupid, it never crossed my mind that
something might be expected of me. At the house Jan and her guy quickly
disappeared into a bedroom. The other guy sat with me in the living room
smoking more pot. He seemed so nice, so polite, so friendly. Then he made
his move and I freaked. My crying and screaming brought Jan running. My
horrified seducer apparently had no experience with innocent 14 year old
virgins. He kept stammering apologies, but I wouldn’t calm down. Jan
started trying to hunt down my boyfriend Danny on the phone. By sunrise
Danny arrived to get me. He was furious about my disappearing, my being at
that house with two strange guys, my parents being all over him, Ray’s
threats to tear him up into little pieces. Ray possessed a mean violent
streak; his threats couldn’t be ignored. Danny drove me straight home and
let me off at the curb. He didn’t want to talk with Ray.
My parents were waiting. Ray told me to go to
my room upstairs. He followed, a quiver running through his clenched jaw.
He slowly pulled the leather belt from his pants. I knew this meant a
whipping, but I didn’t expect what happened next. He grabbed me and pulled
my pants and underwear down to my knees. He whipped my bare butt with that
belt until I bled. Then he threw me face down on the bed, picked up my
treasured leather handbag and ripped it to pieces. He never said a word,
until he started down the stairs, then he turned and called me a whore.
Lying half naked on the bed, bleeding and embarrassed, I began to cry. It
wasn’t true. I wasn’t a whore. I’d never had sex and Danny had been trying
all summer. The way Ray looked at me had been setting off warning bells
for months. After he pulled down my pants I knew for certain there was
something very wrong. Always careful to make sure Moma was not around, the
nasty looks increased and he began making sly sexual comments.
I’d been gone five days. No one ever asked
where I went, what I did, why I ran away. We didn’t talk about it. They
grounded me to no outside activities. Ray and I spent the days locked in
face to face pitched screaming battles, and I did not back down. Moma
tried to stay out of it, but often found herself caught in the middle. I
didn’t tell her about my fears of Ray, never even considered it. I was
afraid to say anything. I began writing troubled poetry and painting,
anxiously waiting for school to start in the fall. But school turned out
to be just another source of torture.
Preppies and jocks filled the 8th
grade and they hated the new me. My hair, clothes, older boyfriend -all
attracted unwanted attention. Jocks threw spit wads into my hair at
assemblies, cornered me in stair wells, and in general made my life even
more miserable than it had been before. I began spending the mornings with
the “bad” kids. We hung out at the strip mall across the street from
school, smoking Kools before classes started. But none of these new
friends were in my classes or had my lunchtime. During the day I felt
totally alone and at the mercy of bullies, so I started cutting school
once in awhile. We would hang out at someone’s house and pretend to be our
parents as we called in or wrote sick absentee notes. Sometimes we had
pot, but most of those days were really quite boring. I didn’t get caught
until the following spring, but I was up to other mischief which attracted
the attention of the school’s principal and counselors.
“loneliness
though you’re not alone
the phone does not ring
but voices are speaking inside your head
hammering, hammering hard
go way, but don’t
beat, and beat, and tears
tears of life
and as the tears fade
so does life
moon fades into the sky
the sun burns
and you roast
and wonder why
they’re here but not when you need them
open your mind
let them all in
and maybe you’ll find love
the kind that will never leave you”
-Angel
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