Flipping the Coin
CHAPTER 1
HEADS AND TAILS
My life has been like the two sides of a coin. The “Heads” side was my very happy side; the “Tails” side was my sad, angry side.
My earliest happy memory was being in the field behind our house with my mother. I was probably not more than three at the time. I remember I was wearing a little blue and white sailor romper. The sun was warm, the air was fresh, and the aroma of newly cut grass filled me with joy. That day for some reason there were butterflies flitting, diving, swooping all over the field. There were blue ones and black ones, orange ones and green ones. I chased after them laughing and trying to catch them, but of course I never did. Ever since then, I’ve been fascinated by butterflies.
When I was a little older, I got a butterfly net for my birthday. I chased the butterflies happily and I caught some, but I couldn’t get them out of the net again without killing them. In time I learned how to twist the net so the butterfly couldn’t get out and then how to put the butterfly into a kill jar without damaging it. I got butterfly books from the library and began to learn how to mount my specimens. Of course, in the early days, Mother helped me read and understand the directions. Also from books, I learned to identify my specimens. I had angel wings and grass skippers, satyrs and blues, fritillaries, and, perhaps my favorites, swallowtails.
Surprisingly, when I was six, we got a dog. I was surprised because I was sure my father wouldn’t allow it. He did, but he used to kick it, so the dog soon learned to avoid him. Smart dog! He was an amazing little Basset Hound puppy. He had ears so long he kept walking on them and feet so big he constantly stumbled over them. For some reason it became my job to care for him. He became my dog and I loved him. Carl, my older brother, helped me find out about Basset Hounds, and we learned that they were bred as hunters which could get through low undergrowth. Since the dog was a hunter, I named him Orion.
Orion and I were constant companions when I was home. We played in the field behind my house, chasing butterflies together and wrestling in the grass. When I was older and had homework, Orion would sit at my feet and I would pet him with one hand while writing with the other. Although my mother had not thought it was a good idea, Orion soon became my constant companion in bed at night.
Like most Basset Hounds, Orion could be extremely stubborn. If he was on the bed and I told him to get down, he just looked at me. I knew that he understood what I was saying but he was simply refusing. If we were outside and I told him it was time to go in, he would run around the field making me try to catch him. Since he was very low to the ground, he could change directions on a dime and I never could catch him unless he wanted me to. However, usually food would get him to do what I wanted whether with the promise of a treat if he got off the bed or the promise of dinner if he was outside.
One early year, perhaps when I was in first grade, I took some of my mounted butterflies for Show and Tell. Some of the boys snickered when I started talking about collecting butterflies. They were the ones who would talk about nothing but sports. But as I told about catching the butterflies in the field, how I identified them, and how I killed and mounted them, they grew quiet. One of them asked if I could teach them how to catch them, maybe on our playing fields. Of course, I agreed that I would.
My teacher must have told the school science teacher about my hobby, because she wanted me to talk to all her science classes. In the younger grades, kids were fascinated, but the older boys began calling me a sissy or a fairy when they saw me in the school hallways or on the playground.
In second grade, I took Orion for Show and Tell. As we walked through the halls in the morning, with Mom by my side, kids stopped and oohed and aahed over him. Mom had to go with me that day because the school had strict rules about dogs, and she would have to take Orion home with her after my talk.
Even though Orion was stubborn, I had taught him a few tricks, like sit, lie down, and beg. I never could get him to roll over. One of the kids asked why I said, “Lie down” instead of “Lay down.” When I told him it was because “Lie down” was proper English, an argument began among the kids.
“No it’s not,” said one of the girls. “My dad always says, “Lay down.” I looked to my mother and the teacher for support. They conferenced for a moment and then the teacher said she didn’t want to call any parents right or wrong.
A boy offered, “Let’s try it. What would happen if you said ‘lay’ instead of ‘lie’ to Orion?”
I wasn’t at all sure what Orion would do if I said that, but I was willing to give it a try. I looked at Orion, who was sitting obediently in front of me, and I said, “Orion, lay down.” He just looked at me with a puzzled expression. Then I said, “Orion, lie down,” and he obeyed at once.
“Did you teach him not to act when you said, ‘Lay down?’” the boy asked.
“No, I never said that to him before.”
By then, it was time for Orion to leave, so I gave him a few treats and told him I’d see him later. As Mom took him out the door, the class clapped. I was pretty sure the clapping was for Orion and not for my talk.
I was never much of a student, but my favorite subject was reading. Once I had read through the early readers and gotten to real stories, I was happiest in school when I had a book in my hand. On the other hand, I was least happy in gym. I didn’t really understand what the kids saw in playing with balls or jumping ropes. The only physical activity I truly enjoyed was catching butterflies with Orion running beside me. At recess I usually sat and read.
My earliest memory of my father was him holding me at the top of the stairs and threatening to throw me down. Of course, I was terrified. I don’t know now what I had done to deserve that punishment, but he seemed to think it was fitting.
Another time when I was little, he shut me up in the hall closet and locked it, saying he was going to leave me there until morning. I cried and cried. I soiled and wet my pants. Again, I don’t know why he did that, but I began to think that he enjoyed bullying me. So very early on, I learned to hate him as well as fear him.
I believed that my mother loved me, and I couldn’t understand why she didn’t stand up for me. I know now that she was as afraid of him as I was.
Of course, because I loved Orion, my father hated him. He banned Orion from the living room and the dining room. Since Orion wanted to be with me and didn’t understand the ban, I often had to remove him from the forbidden rooms.
As I grew older, the punishments became even harsher. He hit me, and I don’t mean he just spanked me. He slapped me in the face; he hit me in the stomach. When he spanked me, he me made me take down my pants, and he spanked with all the fury in him. Pleading and crying only made him angrier.
When my father found out what I was doing with the butterflies, he was furious, and he destroyed all my specimens. “No son of mine is gonna waste his time catching butterflies when he could be learning to play baseball and football!” he yelled. I cried for days. Then, with my mother’s help, I got more mounting boards and I captured new specimens. After that, I kept the mounting boards in the back of my closet where I hoped my father would never look.
Nothing I did seemed to please him. I tried to help Mom by setting the table or vacuuming. All he said was that that was “women’s work!” Often, he called me names. Among his favorites were baby, sissy, fairy, and queer. At that age, I was too young to understand the sexual implications of some of his words, but I knew they weren’t good, and they hurt.
My brother, Carl, was four years older than I and, by the age of nine, had already turned into a jock. He seemed to have natural coordination and quick reactions. By the age of 6, he had joined Little League, Pop Warner Football, and a beginning hockey team. Mother and I watched most of his practices as my father was working and couldn’t be there. Every evening he asked for an update. Usually, he also said that it was about time that I began playing.
When I was 6, I began T-ball. It should have been pretty simple, since the ball was sitting right there in front of me on a tee, but I could only hit it about once every seven or eight tries. When I did hit it, I was supposed to run to first base. Chasing butterflies had made me a good runner, but usually, when I actually hit the ball, I was so surprised and excited that I watched it with glee, wanting to see how far it went, and by the time I remembered I was supposed to run, the ball was already being thrown to first base. It always arrived long before I did.
The next year we began playing with a modified baseball. If the ball was in the air and I was supposed to catch it, I was afraid it would hit me in the head. If it was on the ground, I was afraid it would bounce up and hit me in the face. So, whenever the ball came my way, I ducked. Various people including the coaches, my mother, Carl, and even my father tried hard to get me over my fear. We worked and worked on it. Then, one day, when a ball came bouncing towards me, I did not turn away but tried to catch it. Sure enough, it bounced up and hit me in the face, giving me a bloody nose. That was the end of my baseball career.
Football didn’t go any better. I began with flag football, so at least there was no tackling involved. We were, however, supposed to block each other. I just wasn’t aggressive enough to be able to do that. I became sort of a blocking dummy on whom other kids practiced. The second year, the coaches began to teach us how to tackle. That was the end of football for me.
As for hockey, since I never learned how to stand up on skates, that was a lost cause.
True, there were other sports. I tried soccer but was hopeless at trying to direct the ball or even stop the ball when it was coming my way. I could chase butterflies with their darting and weaving without tripping, but I couldn’t seem to manage the ball. I was not coordinated enough for tennis. With swimming, I never got over my fear of the water. If I was in very shallow water, where I knew I could put my feet down and touch bottom, I could float on my back for a few seconds, but I could never float facedown.
My brother spent endless hours trying to help me. He showed me how to kick a ball. I couldn’t get it to go in the right direction. He took me to the town pool in the summer and tried to get me to put my face in the water. I could eventually do that, but I could never float face down. As soon as he lifted my legs, promising that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me, my head bobbed back up.
Of course, PE at school was a disaster. From the age where it was no longer just running around and began to involve balls, I couldn’t do anything. Soon the coach was disgusted and just wrote me off as a loser, which I was. On my report cards there was always some PE comment that I was, “Not up to grade level,” whatever that was.
My father was not happy with any of this. I really wanted to succeed, to make my father proud of me. Carl and Mother both tried to help me, but in the end, I decided I was just hopeless at sports. I envied Carl, because it was clear that my father was very proud of him. My father was never, ever, proud of me!
I suppose it’s no wonder I grew up having no confidence in myself and eventually hating myself. I began to see me as my father saw me, weak, womanish, and stupid. In school, I never got A’s like Carl did. Teachers told my mother that I was very quiet and that I did not play with the other kids during recess. If I was put in a group, I always did what the other kids told me to do. I learned to not try to think for myself but to just copy others.
I did continue to love reading. I made my way through every series I could find in the school library. I read all of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series. Then I got into the Harry Potter series. I loved these stories which let me imagine that I was fearless, quick, and smart. More and more I began to live in a fantasy world. My father called me a fairy? “Maybe that would be fun,” I thought. But I was always quickly returned to reality when my father came home and began yelling at me.
One afternoon, as soon as I came into the kitchen through the back door, I heard my father bellow, “Mitchell, get in here!”
I wonder what’s wrong now, I thought, slowly walking towards the living room, where I saw my father standing in front of his recliner. On the recliner, peacefully sleeping, snored Orion.
“Did I or did I not tell you to keep this smelly cur off my chair and out of the living room?!”
“You did, sir,” I replied, “but when I went out, he was asleep in my room.”
My father grabbed me by the front of my shirt, slapped my face hard with an open hand, and then slapped my other cheek equally hard with a backhand. “Next time, do as you’re told! Do you understand?”
I was furious! Instead of answering him I flew at him, grabbing him around the waist and hitting him as hard as I could in his stomach with my right hand. Of course, I was no match for a 6’2”, 240-pound construction worker. He grabbed both my arms and I looked up at him, expecting the worst. What I saw was a look of astonishment on his angry face. Then a slow, sarcastic grin spread across it.
“Well,” he said, “that’s the first time in 14 years you’ve shown any spunk at all! But don’t ever do that again!” With that he shoved me away, picked up Orion, and threw him almost to the kitchen door. I fled with Orion up the stairs to my bedroom, flung myself on my bed, and, with tears in my eyes, pounded on my mattress over and over, saying, “That God damned, fucking, bastard!!!”
When I calmed down, I tried hard to think of a way I could get revenge, but I knew that was hopeless. He was too big, too strong, and always angry. I thought about killing him. I thought about killing myself. I thought about running away from home. But I could not come up with any form of revenge which was sufficiently satisfying. I wanted him to suffer, as I had suffered at his hands for 14 years. I wanted him to feel pain, both emotional and physical. I wanted him to finally accept that he was wrong and a terrible parent.
Finally, I went downstairs, faithful Orion following behind me. My mother looked at me. She could see that I’d been crying; she could see that I was angry; and she knew why, but all she could do was shake her head sadly.