My Personal Mother Road Journey
Content Warning: Child abuse, alcoholism, sexual abuse, murder
In 2019 I wrote the book, My Mother Road. It was about Matilda Banks. She received letters written by her mother, who disappeared when she was an infant, and she sets off to follow her mother along Route 66. Would she be able to solve the mystery surrounding her mother’s disappearance or lose herself along the way? In My Mother Road, some journeys only happen once in two lifetimes.
In the real world, I had already taken this journey to try to find my own mother.
My mother, Betty, was an Army brat. She and her brother were the only children that survived to adulthood out of their 10 siblings. Illness, birth defects, and snake bites (yes - snake bites) had taken the lives of the others. My mother didn’t talk about her childhood unless she was drinking - which she usually was. She would talk about living in other places - better places- like Germany, Austria, Seattle, Los Angeles, and so on.
If you got her drunk enough she would tell you about her other husbands and other children - the ones that didn’t make it. Her first husband was an abusive military man that had beaten her so badly that he killed one of the twins she was carrying. James Patrick, the infant, had lived outside the womb for a few hours, and resulted in her husband being charged and sentenced for his murder. *
Betty’s second marriage was short lived, and barely mentioned by her even though he lived close by.
Her third marriage was to my father, and where my story begins. Their courtship was brief, and their marriage may have overlapped her second marriage by a few months. She thought that was funny, because her brother, Joe Bill, was known for his penchant for moving to a new state, and marrying the first woman that would put up with his hard partying ways. He would get bored or sober, and move on to the next place and woman without ever bothering to get a divorce.
Let’s jump ahead to 1992. I was 21 years old and married with 2 young daughters. My husband and I lived in a tiny, shitty rental house that was overrun with all manners of vermin including my own personal demons. I was watching Oprah, and the episode was about being Adult Survivors of Child Abuse. One of the guests was talking about getting the courage to confront your abuser, and even filing charges against them years later. This episode sat on my heart for days. Before I could even consider filing charges I would have to say out loud the things I’d hidden since I was 3 years old.
I tried to get the courage to confront my father, but I couldn’t. He was terrifying. Instead, I loaded my daughters into a stroller, and walked to the police station while my husband was at work. Everything after signing the witness report was a blur. I didn’t realize at the time, that this decision would throw my life into turmoil for years. I walked to my mother’s motel room to let her know what I’d done. The need to protect her was overwhelming.
Me: I need to tell you something.
Her hungover: What?
Me: Do you remember when you caught my dad raping me when I was 12?
Her: What? Why?
Me: You remember how you made him promise not to do it again?
Her very angry:
Me: He never stopped.
Her: Ok?
Me crying: I filed charges against him.
I hear this conversation in my head a lot. Mostly, it happens when I’m just getting ready to fall asleep. I was trying to warn her that I was about to destroy their idyllic life in this filthy motel. I was trying to protect the woman that stood by as her husband took young children into their bed in broad daylight for “therapeutic massage” behind closed doors. This was the woman that turned her back on me as my father hit me with the buckle side of his belt leaving life long scars on my skin and brain. And, this was the woman that left my brothers and I for years on end as she and my father would leave to find themselves.
My mother asked me for a ride to a nearby town a year or so after my father received his plea deal. It shouldn’t have surprised me that she wasn’t planning to come back. It’s what she’d been practicing for her whole life. Her children were gone - through emancipation or adoption.
It was more than 20 years and thousands of dollars later when I finally found her, because she hadn’t wanted to be rescued. She told me she’d had a stroke that caused her to lose her memory. It became clear that the only things she had forgotten were the ones that made her culpable. She remembered holding my hand after my son died while I was still in a coma. She remembered buying my daughter a stuffed monkey. But she didn’t remember the lives that were laid waste at her feet, because she chose to wallow in beer and filth and codependency.
I’m not good at forgiving. I don’t forgive my father or grandfather for their actions. My father served 15 years for his crimes. My grandfather is hopefully serving his time somewhere harsher. But, now I’m choosing not to forgive my mother. For too long I’d given her victimhood as a martyr’s mantle, but I’m over that nonsense. She is accountable for her lack of action that harmed so many.
As I drove Route 66 in 2018 with my husband plotting, My Mother Road It wasn’t lost on me that I’d driven down this road 20 years earlier to follow a lead that said my mother was holed up in Vegas. Writing the fear and anger that Matilda felt during her journey helped me to process my own.
Footnote: * I was never able to find evidence that her first husband was charged for this crime.
Also available on Medium.
