Nobody Remembers Me

For twelve years I thought my aunt and uncle were my parents.  They lead me to believe such a lie and tried to hide it from me.  But treated me like sewer.  I could not tell anyone outside of the home because no one would believe me because they went to church. I use to walk upon them saying cruel things about me and they kept talking about me.  They said things that made me wish I had died when I was a baby.  I heard momma telling a neighbor one day that I was greedy and never got enough to eat. Momma said when I was about two or three years old I ate feces.  Momma would tell any kind of lie on me and this is one of the time she was lying to cover up how bad she treated me.  Momma might have tried to give me feces to eat because she said I was so greedy.  She did not say if it was human or dog feces. We stayed in the country and had an outdoor toilet. Even if the lie was true I never understood why momma needed to tell anybody such things.

As far as I know I had been wetting the bed since I was a baby.  I remember from the time I was three years old when daddy would go through the room waking up all of the children to use the pot each night.  When he got to me I had already wet the bed.  If he had got me up first I might not have wet the bed.  It was like daddy just came to the bed to see if I had wet the bed not to take me to the pot. The house was very dark and we could not see the pot if we had gotten up by ourselves. I did not know if any of the other children had wet the bed because I was gotten up last. Daddy got me out of the bed with his belt and started beating me, he beat me until I ran out of the house into pit black darkness and found my way under the house and cuddled up with the dogs.  I slept under the house with the dogs the rest of the night. The dogs kept me warm. There I found refuge each time I wet the bed.  My parent never tried to stop me or make me come back inside. They never came out to look for me. This went on the whole time we lived far into the country with no close neighbors.  

As I grew older I was not allowed to drink water after supper because I yet wet the bed sometimes.  We usually ate supper between six thirty and seven o'clock each evening.  I wanted water so bad I use to get the wash pan to wash my face and when I put the water in my hand in an effort to wash my face I drank the water.  Even if I did not drink the water I yet wet the bed sometimes.

Momma used to call me anything that came to her mind, bastard, bitch, lazy, no good, or pee-baby.  My daddy referred to me as gal, good for nothing, lazy, and you are "Just like your momma" with a funny laugh. Again I was confused as to who my mom really was.  Whoever she was I never learned what, "Like your momma" was supposed to mean.  The cruel things my parents use to say behind my back, they began to say them in front of my face, and in front of the other children and adults, talking as if I was not there.  The other children picked up the habit and started calling me names and talking badly about me. They made me seem like a very bad child, which was not true I was just the victim of their cruelty.  They made me do most of the chores, and I was not to complain. If I was caught crying from the name-calling I was beaten.  I was called so many different names I could not remember what name to answer to.