Friday, February 18, 2011

About Me (chapter 1)

I was born in Northwestern General Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Wedensday, April 16, 1969, at 5:30 am (or so) to a 16 year old girl by the name of Susan.  I weighed 9lbs and 5 oz.
Susan wasn't the typical teen mother.  She had actually PLANNED for me.
I half-jokingly say I was a spite-baby rather than a love-child, as so many kids born in the 60's were.
Susan didn't want a baby to love, or to offer her unconditional love as so many young girls seem to think they'll get if they make a baby... Susan wasn't that naive.  She wanted a baby so her mother would kick her out of the house, and she could get welfare.  It didn't work.
Instead, Nanny all but kept Susan under house arrest until I was born.  According to Susan, Nanny shoved adoption papers under her nose as she laboured with me, insisting that I must be put up for adoption, even as she was bleeding almost to death. (she required a blood transfusion, she had lost so much blood)
Susan refused to sign those papers.
My biological father, a man by the name of Arnold, was refused access to me... Nanny didn't want him to 'interfere' with her plans for me, and I'm sure Susan feared that he would try to take me from her, but my aunt, my mother's sister Lorraine, told me she called him when I was born, and snuck him into the hospital to see me... he held me for a few minutes even, before Nanny caught them, and sent him away.
Three months later, Susan finally called him herself, and graciously allowed him to visit me.  I didn't see him again until I was almost 9 years old.
Susan met another man around this time, and became engaged just about the time of my first Christmas.  She also got pregnant with my brother, Kenny, whom she named after his father, Ken Sr.  They were married on Valentines Day, 1970, and my brother was born on Sept. 12, that same year.
According to Susan, I was potty trained by the time I was 13 months old, and was changing Kenny's diapers by the time he was a month old, and I was 18 months.  This unusual behaviour was attributed to the fact that Susan generally had better things to do than to take care of her children, a pattern that continued and began to include physical, verbal, and emotional abuse as we grew up.
The marriage was over well before I turned 3.  Susan met Steven around that time.  He was a "bad boy", just out of jail where he had spent much of his teens and very early 20's.  He and Susan were into drugs like heroine and speed, and he was prone to express his anger in violence, though he never harmed Kenny or myself in any way.  It was Susan who earned his ire with her wanton ways.  On numerous occasions he returned from work to find Susan hanging out with hookers and pimps, while Kenny and I were left with one of Susan's aunts, and at least once, he caught her giving head to the drug dealer who lived next door, so she could get her next fix.
Around the time of my 3rd birthday, Susan got pregnant with my sister.
According to family lore, I had had an imaginary friend from the time I was born until I was 3.
This friend is attributed with my learing to read by the time I was 3, as well as telling me things that I couldn't have otherwise known, such as when people were coming to visit, and the like...
At the time that Susan became pregnant, this imaginary friend left me.  Apparently, I told family, when asked, that she was gone to be my new sister, and that mommy had a baby growning in her belly.  This was, of course, well before Susan knew herself that she was pregnant.
My earliest memory is of Susan, her belly big with Janie, giving herself a fix of her drug of choice.
Susan of course, denies this, and swears that Steven forced her to accept needles in her veins... my memory gives the lie to that.  Susan swears that many of my memories are false, but I have many doubts as to her verasity, due mostly to the fact that I bear scars that she gave me, as do Janie, and Kenny, but also because many other people remember as I do, and deny her version.  Only she remembers things her way.

I'll end chapter one here.

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