I was born on September 11, 1976 at 11:28 AM at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey. I was a hefty 7 lbs 4 ounces and 21 inches long. And although it should have been a happy occasion, it wasn't. I was born to a teenaged mother who was 16 when she had me. And in that time, unwed teenaged mothers was virtually unheard of. From the moment I was conceived, you could tell that it was an unpleasant elephant in the room. I was unwanted. I was told that many times through my life. But, for the most part, for the first year of my life, it was ok.
But, I think that Ive always known that I was unwanted. Aside from my Great Grandparents. My great grandparents saved my life. How did they save me you ask? By demanding that my mother not have yet another abortion. See, my mother tells me that she had an IUD in when she got pregnant with me, but that it failed. She never wanted me. She told me on various occasions that she was forced to have me and that I ruined her childhood.
Prior to her getting pregnant with me, she had gotten pregnant and had an abortion at the tender age of 14. You'd think that would have maybe stopped her from having sex before she was ready to be a mom, but, I digress. Around a year and a half later, she got pregnant with me. Obviously Im meant to be here.
When I was born, my great grandmother wouldn't let my mother take me out of the house until I was baptized because she was UBER Catholic. Ya know, the whole limbo thing. Funnily enough though, my mother is the LEAST religious person that I know. Well, maybe not the ONLY one. But at the point, she was. So clearly, that was my Grandmothers doing. And I guess it was the beginning of my spiritual life and journey. But we'll get to that later on.
I am forever in-debted to my grandparents because they saved my life. They let my mom and I live in their big victorian house in Cramer Hill, Camden, NJ. My grandparents meant the world to me because although my mother didn't want me and my biological father was nowhere to be found, my grandparents took care of us and treated me like a princess. Presents and toys and love and hugs…It was a great time in my life. When they died, it was the biggest blow to my heart that Ive ever felt in my life. One of the first chips in my heart that Ill feel.
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When I was about a year old, my mother met a man who later became my Step Dad. When I was 18 months old, at the urging of my mother, I started calling him Daddy. I didn't really know what that meant but, I did it anyway. He wasn't my Daddy but I didn't know that until later on in life when he wanted to adopt me when I was ten. Unfortunately, it never happened because my mother said she couldn't find my biological father. This was way before internet and the super duper high speed highway and search engines. I grew up not knowing him. But at that point, unless my Daddy yelled at me for something, I didn't really think about him. I had a Daddy. And he loved me. He treated me really well.
When I was around 11 or 12, after the whole adoption thing had faded, I was going through my mothers record collections. They were the big ones. I remember seeing all the names of the bands on the covers. The Doors. The Beatles. JanisJoplin. And a bunch of others I can't remember. But, on one particular one, I saw the name "SPIDER" written on one. And it was clearly the nickname of someone. I just shrugged, thinking it was probably the name of one of my mothers friends.
Until one day when I was laying on my moms bed next to her and I asked her, "Mom, who's Spider?"
And I saw the color drain from her face and her eyes get this terrified look in her eyes. She stammered a little bit and then she said in a huffy kinda way, the way she usually did when I asked her a question that she either wasn't ready to a newer or, she didn't WANT to answer it, "He's your father."
That was the start of me wanting to know who my father was and where I came from, outside of her. I asked her if she had a picture of him. She curtly told me no. I asked her about my name and if what it said in my baby book was true, that she named me after the month he was born in. She said yes. When I asked her why she named me that, and she said "*huff* I don't know April, I was 16, I didn't know what else to name you."
But yet she gives me the middle name of Jeanette. Huh.
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During this time, at school, I was miserable. Of course, most girls at 11 or 12 are going through that weird awkward stage in life. But I was going through even worse.
I was the new girl at school. I was pretty. And I was starting to develop faster then the girls in my grade, so I was getting a lot of attention from the boys that the other girls didn't like. So I was teased. And gossiped about. And bullied. BADLY. And it continued to get worse all the way up til graduation in 8th grade.
My grades started to slip. Things at home were increasingly bad as well because after my brother was born, I was suddenly not the little Princess anymore. The second he was born, I became "april who?" and he became the little Prince and got everything he wanted.
There was also a lot of fighting amount my parents. Vicious fights. Abusive fights. Nights where I would hide in my brothers room and hold him, scared out of my mind, while my parents beat the shit out of each other. Terrified they were going to come in and start beating us.
Then came the bombshell.
My mom and Dad were getting divorced. He left. And my world came crumbling down.
I became the insta-babysitter to my then extremely hyper, a.d.h.d., 5 year old brother. I would get up in the morning, make sure he ate, got him and myself dressed. Then we'd walk to school in freezing cold weather while my mother lounged around in bed. Most days, we were lucky if we had food for breakfast or lunch money.
She much rather would have spent money on designer dresses and suits and shit for my brother then food for us. There were many nights shed call my Daddy to put oil in our tank because it was freezing, she didn't have any money and we had none.
When my Daddy left, I became a punching bag for her. It was my fault he left. And Im not talking about spanking. Im talking full out hitting punching and screaming obscenities at me a mother should never say to her teenaged daughter. She started drinking heavily.at that time, she was also smoking pot, which i didn't know what it was until later on in life.
I remember the first real brutal beating i took from her. She had gone out with her friends, again. She had really started partying and going out til all hours of the night, leaving me at home with my young brother to baby sit him.
My uncle had come over that night to check on us. I ha asked him to light the pilot light on the over so that I could make cookies for her as a present. A desperate attempt at getting her love back. I didn't understand what I had done to make her hate me so much.
I had made the last batch and put them in the oven. I fell asleep, because it was late. I woke up to her screaming at me and pulling me off the couch by my hair. The house was full of smoke, because they had burned into a black char of what they were supposed to be. She screamed at me how stupid i was, how clumsy, that I could have burned the house down. I was screaming and crying to stop and begging her that I loved her and i didn't understand why she was doing this to me. I kept telling her that I wanted her to love me. But, she kept on. All the while hitting and punching me til I was crumpled in a hysterical ball.
When shed finally stopped, I was left to clean it up in the middle of the night. So much for the gift I was making for her.
On many nights, this was the same exact thing that happened. It got to the point that I was walking on eggshells to avoid the beatings. But, they'd happen for stuff I didn't even do.
Around this time, she ran into my biological father at a night club she was at. When she told me, I was over joyed. I thought that I was finally going to have a Daddy again that was going to save me. I thought he would come and rescue me.
But, she kept him at arms length.
Then I found out i had a sister. I was again overjoyed. I had always wanted a sister. And then I found out that I had a niece. I was happy as a lark. I got to meet them all and things started looking up. I started spending a lot of time at my sisters house, spending time with my niece and babysitting her. Happy to get out of the house, away from the devil.
Until we moved.
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