They were my only true friends, the books. Comic books. Fairy tales. Nancy Drew. I read incessantly, hoping to create a shell and a safe zone from the chaos all around me. I would get lost in the books. I loved having a world where I could go. 

They were at it again. The walls seemed to shake as the angry words bounced off of them.

I sat in my little chair in my bedroom, my head buried deep in a book. Books were my savior and my balm. Lost in imagination, I treasured fairy tales and comic books. The books made the shouts of my parents less harsh and provided a retreat.

I often quip that I have learned everything from books as I had no functional adults to teach me anything. Are books a good way to learn about human nature? Possibly to an extent, but authors may exaggerate certain character flaws, for the sake of the narrative, I still remain puzzled about human nature and enough books probably don’t exist to help me grasp the details.

I was 6 years old, skinny, blonde, and very much in my own world. In 1956, our family of five moved from a modest bungalow built after World War 2 to a more upscale part of town. The old neighborhood, where we had a tennis and basketball court in our backyard, was a child’s dream. I remember the day my dad, with the help of neighbors, poured the concrete. Dads in Levis, screeding the flattened poured concrete into a smooth, flat layer. Laughing, joking, and spreading the concrete smooth with their floor trowels. It was like an old-fashioned barn raising. 

After we left that neighborhood, we never again experienced that kind of camaraderie with neighbors. And I only saw my father do manual labor one more time.

An alley where kids would run wild until dusk ran behind the houses in that old neighborhood. The posh neighborhoods did not have alleys.

On this side of the alley, in the backyard, my brothers had a big clubhouse and I had a small one. I walked into my clubhouse, and there I found a doll in my clubhouse with her head torn off. I was not particularly fond of that doll. I didn’t much like dolls until Barbie came onto the scene. I could relate to Barbie: a disproportionate mockery of an adult female body. Barbie inspired me to become an adult woman. Maybe then I would have some control over my life. I could wear those little shoes and all those clothes and everybody would love me. But it wasn’t Barbie that was decapitated. It was some other kind of doll, not particularly beloved, or she wouldn’t have been in the clubhouse.

Nonetheless, even at 4 or 5 years old, I was aware that violence had been done to this doll and this violence was a stand-in for violence meant for me. I felt sick and shaken. I stayed quiet, sitting on this secret for several days.

I knew my brothers did this thing to the doll, and I eventually reported the carnage to my parents. Nobody said a word about it. My parents never intervened, even when my brothers’ teasing crossed the line into cruelty. No wonder our sibling bond was irreparably ruptured later in life. I understood that beheading the doll was a threat. I was sufficiently cowed and retreated further into myself.

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Madelon Wise

Gardening grandma riddled with radical biophilia in the nice Midwest. Animism. Permaculture. Social Justice. Beauty. Dogs. Photography. Retired Writer-Editor working to raise awareness of child abuse, child neglect, and CPTSD.

I am writing my memoir.