A Man Named Dave

months since I’ve been able to escape through my dreams. As hard as I try, I cannot go back to sleep. I’m too cold. I cannot stop my knees from shaking. I cautiously rub my feet together because I somehow feel if I make any quick movements, “The Mother” will hear me. I am not allowed to do anything without The Mother’s direct authority. Even though I know she has returned to sleep in the bottom bunk bed of my brother’s bedroom, I sense that she still has control over me.
    The Mother always has.
    My mind begins to spin as I fight to remember my past. I know that to somehow survive, my answers are in my past. Besides food, heat, and staying alive, learning why Mother treats me the way she does dominates my life.
    My first memories of Mother were caution and fear. As a four-year-old child, I knew by the sound of Mother’s voice what type of day was in store for me. Whenever Mother was patient and kind, she was my “Mommy”. But whenever Mother became crossed and snapped at everything, “Mommy” transformed into “The Mother” – a cold, evil person capable of unexpected violent attacks. I soon became so scared of setting The Mother off, I didn’t even go to the bathroom without first asking permission.
    As a small child, I also realized that the more she drank, the more my mommy slipped away, and the more The Mother’s personality took over. One Sunday afternoon before I was five years old, during one of The Mother’s drunken attacks, she accidentally pulled my arm out of its socket. The moment it happened, Mother’s eyes became as big as silver dollars. Mother knew she had crossed the line. She knew she was out of control. This went far beyond her usual treatment of face slapping, body punching, or being thrown down the stairs.
    But even back then Mother developed a plan to cover her tracks. The next morning, after driving me to the hospital, she cried to the doctor that I had fallen out of my bunk bed during the night. Mother went on to say how she had desperately tried to catch me as I fell, and how she could never forgive herself for reacting so slowly. The doctor didn’t even bat an eye. Back at home, Father, a fireman with medical training, didn’t question Mother’s strange tale.
    Afterward, as Mother cuddled me to her chest, I knew to never, ever expose the secret. Even then I somehow thought that things would return to the good times I had with Mommy. I truly believed that she would somehow wake up from her drunken slumber and banish The Mother forever. As a four-year-old child, rocking in Mother’s arms, I thought the worst was over and that Mother would change.
    The only thing that had changed was the intensity of Mother’s rage and the privacy of my secret relationship with her. By the time I was eight, my name was no longer allowed to be spoken. She had replaced “David” with “The Boy”. Soon The Boy seemed too personal, so she decided to call me “It”. Because I was no longer a member of “The Family”, I was banished to live and sleep in the garage. When not sitting on top of my hands at the bottom of the staircase, my function was to perform slave-like chores. If I did not meet one of Mother’s time requirements for my task, not only was I beaten, but I was not allowed to receive any food. More than once Mother refused to feed me for over a week. Of all of Mother’s “games” of control, she enjoyed using food as her ultimate weapon.
    The more bizarre things The Mother did to me, the more she seemed to know she could get away with any of her Games. When she held my arm over a gas stove, she told horrified teachers that I had played with a match and burned myself. And when Mother stabbed me in the chest, she told my frightened brothers that I had attacked her.
    For years I did all that I could do to think ahead, to somehow outwit her. Before Mother hit me, I would tighten up parts of my body. If Mother didn’t feed me, I would steal scraps of food anywhere I could. When she filled my mouth with pink dish washing soap, I’d hold the liquid in my mouth until I could spit it in the garage garbage can when she wasn’t looking. Defeating The Mother in any way meant the world to me. Small victories kept me alive.
    My only form of escape had been my dreams. As I sat at the bottom of the staircase with my head tilted backward, I saw myself flying through the air like my hero, Superman. Like Superman, I believed I had two identities. My Clark Kent personality was the child called “It” – an outcast who