I was almost eleven years old and had lived in Lake Tahoe for under a year, a beautiful place and my personal favorite city.  My mother brought the three of us there after fleeing the big pink house in Oak Park, a house full of anger and physical abuse.  The abuse had risen to a new high.  My stepfather, her husband, had previously restricted the physical violence to just my mother and I, leaving both of his ‘real’ children alone.  When, for the first time, he beat my little brother and broke his arm, it seemed to be the final straw for my mother and she fled. 

For years, my mom and I had been the focus of anger and frustration, and I had several trips to the E.R. under my belt by the time I was ten.  There was the time I was pushed from the top of the house for ‘playing on the roof’, dislocating my hip and cracking my tailbone.  When my face was shoved through a dresser, I’d broken the bone in the orbit of my eye and had some facial lacerations.  One time, after being punched and force fed jalapenos, I received a concussion and damage to my lips and throat – it was punishment for lying. 

While I had not escaped my mother’s beatings with the move, I had escaped the worst of the violence, and for two months stayed with her ‘friend’, a man named Steve Jones.  He was kind and generous, and my life improved. 

I was out one afternoon, running through the trees and collecting tree seeds. I had discovered them one day when one landed on my face.  Looking up, I saw that every couple of minutes, they would fall from the trees, spiraling down slowly and landing on the ground. They reminded me of the little toy army men with parachutes on four thin strings, the ones meant to be thrown into the air so the parachute would deploy, and the little man would float to the ground.  They never seemed to work well, not like the seeds that floated in their super thin leaf like covering.  These would spin and spin, floating safely to the ground.  I took to throwing rocks into the trees to shake the limbs and dislodge them in hopes of seeing them fall. The seeds themselves were encased in a bean like shell that, once cracked open, offered up the meat much like a sunflower seed.  I loved to collect and eat them.

Steve’s apartment was on the end of the building, and when I got back to his apartment that day I was not visible to him and my mother when I approached.  As I got close to turning the corner, I heard what sounded like an argument and slowed. It was always wise to measure my mother’s mood before entering a room, and I could hear that she was angry.

“I have enough to move, but you said ten!  You still owe me seven!”

“I know, and I will pay you, Sue. It’s just taking longer than I thought.”

“You keep saying that, but if you don’t have it before I move, I’m taking him with me!”

“I’ll have it.”

They were still talking loudly when I walked away. They both smoked, and it was as gross to me then as it is now.  He smoked Camels, no filter, and she the Salem ultra light something or other. When they finished talking, they went back inside the apartment, and I came in a few minutes later.  They seemed happy to see me.

My mother moved about a month later.  She took my brother and sister to wherever she went and left me with Steve.  It wasn’t until much later and after much pain that I understood that my mother had sold me to her ‘friend’ – a pedophile.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  The above is an excerpt from Jeremy Robinson’s, The Monster Factory, which he is currently revising. Jeremy can be contacted at:
Jeremy Robinson #1313930
Polunsky Unit
3872 South FM 350
Livingston, TX 77351