The Letter
So i've spent the last few weeks going over all the shit that I've recently come to terms with and struggling with the desire to confront the Elf face to face in front of those she calls her peers and tear down her pedestal one brick at a time. would that i could do this in person without getting over emotional and irrational, which would be very hard to do as you all know that her nimble mind and malicious ways would entice me to smack her across the mouth every time she tried to defend her self and have me screaming obscenities and my favourite descriptions of the selfish self centred self absorbed shallow vapid, vile and maliciously manipulative and contemptible cunt-rag. also about 3500 miles stand between me and her at the moment, so i resorted to the letter. I'm posting this rough draft for two reasons. I want the people who had loving caring families as children to know what a blessing they had and to cherish that fact every day. in fact i hope all of you from Dave to Beth to Tyler, call your parents this weekend and tell them you love them and you are grateful for what wonderful parents you had. please feel free to add comments or corrections where you see fit.
K******,
This is not a teen angst letter. In point of fact I wish I could deliver these words to you in person but sadly distance and your irrationality make this impossible. The letter feels cowardly to me even but logically the only way to get all of this out in a way that won't be misconstrued or twisted about by that agile mind of yours before I finish my piece. Besides I like records of facts. That's what this is. A record of all the stories I was told as a kid and all the stories I have to tell about my childhood set down to be passed around and shared. I have spent the last 8 years coming to terms with a lot of the things in this letter though most recently the majority of my time was spent fact checking a few stories you told me about your self. In order to be as chronologically organised as I can be, allow me to start with your stories.
Remember the summer we took A.J. to Gainesville for camp and you mentioned attending collage in that town? It clashed with the tale of you attending Loretto Heights in Colorado. There are some fascinating things about Lo-Hi you might not know. It was founded by Mother Pancratia Bonfils, S.L. in 1891, the Sisters of Loretto started a private elementary and secondary Catholic school for girls they called Loretto Heights Academy. Located on one of the highest points in the Denver metropolitan area, the school was very successful. For the much of the last century it was the premier woman's Catholic school in Denver.
In the early 1900s the school began its transition to a women's college. Then in 1988 it was absorbed by its sister school Regis University. (Taken from their website and wikipedia)
They also have no record of a K****** M***** or a K****** S**** attending between the years of 1975 and 1985. I must have spent an hour on the phone with their records department. John was very helpful.
So I called the University of Florida in Gainesville. Kevin spent about 45 minutes on the phone with me as he wandered back into the paper records to look for anything resembling what might be your files. Again we have a grand total of zero K******* M***** or K****** S**** attending the University.
I must commend you on your Corel-Draw skills. Diplomas are fun to make aren't they?
I also looked up your modelling career. No such thing. You may have attended a modelling school but you never did any print or runway work.
With my long standing contacts in the adult industry I looked for any records of you performing in that capacity. Nope. I was in the adult industry for 3 years with more than 300 titles to my name. I have an IMDB.com listing as well as an IAFD.com listing (internet adult film database). Don't believe me; look up Keiko performing in the years between 2003 and 2006. It’s not like I don't know that in order to perform in the adult industry you must fill out a model release with information such as your legal name, birth date and SSN. No record in anyone's files of you ever performing, though.
Now we move on to when you met my father, your first husband. One of the stories I heard you tell more than once was the story of how he tried to shoot you with your father's gun and when it didn't fire, due to the filed firing pin, he pistol whipped you with it. In my search to find him, I also looked up both yours and his criminal records. My guess is that this is the same gun that was confiscated by the FBI at the Stanford airport because you tried to take it in your carry on luggage to Dothan, Alabama. Since that was before you were even dating my father, I'm going to hazard that the story of him training it on you is also fabrication.
You told me many tales of how my father wanted nothing to do with me, how you spent night after night cooking one handed with me on your left arm while my father was busy being horrid in the living room. This is somehow contradicted by the fact that when you and he were first getting divorced you were all gung-ho to give me to him and start over fresh with Mark. You might call it conspiracy against you that I have so many confirmations of the next string of facts but when a half a dozen people tell the same thing over and over again with consistency and conviction you have to take it at face value.
Gary had called his mother in Mansfield and told her he was moving home and bringing baby S******** with him. My grandma Sandy cut back her hours at the lawyer's office to spend the evenings with me. My aunt Bonnie Kay switched to second shift at the plant to spend afternoons with me. My dad had even gotten his old job back in that little town. It wasn't till after you spoke with Pam Goldberg and were told that my dad would have to send you money every month if you took me. Suddenly you fought fiercely to keep me. So my grandmother who was apparently picking out new wall paper for the room that was going to be mine went back to full time at the office and my aunt went back to first shift at the plant and my dad stayed in Denver, so as to get visitation rights. And then he brought me back one Sunday morning to find a Mayflower truck in the yard and we were off to Florida.
The stories of how Gary beat and abused you were part of your daily dialogue for a while as you attempted to brain wash me. I remember the fights you used to have when picking me up or dropping me off with him.
I remember the visits I got with my dad in the intervening years where I was met at the gate with pink daisies and roses and there were piles of presents for me in his living room. Or when my grandparents could get me up there every now and then and they'd give a stewardess $20 to keep an eye on me. I remember being spoiled rotten and loving every minute of it. The memories have a soft warm feeling like towels right out of the dryer when you climb out of the pool after dark, scented with lavender.
Then one summer after we moved to Saint Cloud I have a very clear memory of you sitting me down at the kitchen table and telling me that my father had done something very bad, had gone to jail for a very long time and I'd probably never see him again.
For the record, having looked up both his and hers criminal records during the great search, I discovered that my father was never arrested for doing anything “Very Bad”. He was taken in once for failure to appear after being caught drunk driving. He spent a night and half a day in jail over a case of mistaken identity.
In the intervening years stories about Gary became darker and more dubious. My dad became the boogie man from the stories my uncle Dave used to tell. I think what made the stories that were told about my dad all the scarier is that you were the one telling them and I was terrified of you. He must be terrible if even in your eyes he was a horror.
I have vivid memories dating back to the very beginning. Of lying on the floor looking up at you through the tears as your hand came down upon me over and over again. Your screeching yells and the timpani of my heart in my throat a sound track of fright.
There were children who had it far worse than me. I had food in my belly and clothes on my back. I had a roof over my head and toys to play with. I was not abused. I got this speech twice in my life. Once as I was chased from the back yard into the house and down the hall and once after we got to Florida after I threatened to go to the school resource officer about the way I was treated. I was not abused. I was beaten and humiliated, unloved and blamed, but not abused. Abused means broken and tolerant. I have never been broken. I will never be tolerant. I was used, yes, but never abused.
I don't even remember why, you were in one of your rages. The week before you had sprained my wrist in a Kmart parking lot, saving me from being hit by a truck. I was already injured, wearing an ace bandage on my left arm. I was chased down the hall screaming and yelling, by the time I got to my room I'd already been hit a handful of times, across the face, the back, the legs. I closed the bedroom door, but that only made you more angry. The door burst open, hitting me in the face. I was hit again across the face. I was petrified. I made for the only space I knew I couldn't be followed, the gap between the drawers and the wall under my bed, where I could just squeeze my shoulders in. Half way in I was kicked hard, my already purple jaw making blunt force contact with the frame of the bed. The pain was excruciating. I ate grits and cream of wheat for a month, as chewing made me want to cry. A month later I saw a dentist about the abscess on my back teeth. Medicine that tasted like pepto bismol and bubble gum cleared that up but my teeth haven't been straight since. The horrors of being 8 years old.
This might be unrelated to anything but I hold it as a grievance anyway. According to receipts when I was nine my grandma sandy bought me an E-Z Bake Oven. Something that has been on my wish list for so long it's still written in crayon (next to the pink satin ballet slippers). The messages you sent back to my grandmother was that you had sold the “inappropriate toy” and bought something more suitable. Cards and Christmas presents were sent back. I was cut off from the lavender scented little white house on the hill above the forest and the people in it who loved me. I missed trips to Italy and Paris, Germany and England. I missed birthday presents and trips to cedar point. I missed horseback riding and swimming. I missed out on hugs and kisses, family dinners and camping trips. I missed having a normal life.
I was dressed in second hand clothes as my savings bonds were cashed to buy things for you. Because of my attire I was ostracised from my peers. Even in St. Cloud I was a fashion disaster. I was an outcast at school and a black sheep at home. There are dozens of stories like the ones above but I feel no need to recount them all. Suffice it to say I knew that I know I was only tolerated so you could continue to collect that monthly check from my dad. Having your horrible social interaction skills as the only example to follow I was socially awkward and suffer severe social anxiety now. I have learned to make friends and get over my own emotional outbursts but it took lots of therapy and time. I had to want to work on it. Heavens forbid I turn out like you.
Heaven's forbid that my daughter be scared to ask me anything. I hope that I have the sense to try and be there for my little girl when she needs me in the capacity she needs me in. I am forever envious of all my friends who could just talk to their parents about anything. Whenever I was asked around for dinner, and it really struck me when I was at Matt's one evening, when he and his brother's just started asking their mom, the nurse, questions about women. I wished I could talk to my mother like that. For example when I needed your womanly advice on the subject of hitting puberty and my talk was “You really need to stay away from boys now.” Like when I called you from the hospital when I was seventeen and having a miscarriage and you hung up on me. Or when I tried to come out of the closet (when my Aunt Jhamie (Cindy) would have been a GREAT help). At least when the guy I was with at the time decided to try and beat the shit out of me, you were there. The monster from my nightmares fighting on my side for a change. I forever thought this was because you had been on the receiving end of a man's irrational anger because of the way you talked about how my dad mistreated you.
Then during the Christmas season of 2006 when you tried to admit to me that you were once in adult films and were now suicidal, trying to blame it on Gary, Mark turned to me just as you were out of ear shot and said “The way she talks about your dad, you know no one is that evil.”
This intrigued me. As it was Rob had been trying for years to get me to look into finding my dad and getting the other side of the story. This little aside from his successor was the nudge I needed. I started searching, a little bit here and there, still scared to actually take the plunge. A few weeks passed and I had come up with a list of people that could be the same Gary Smith that you were once married to but as they didn't come with pictures I wasn't sure which was which. I asked you for his birth date and you offered his social security number off the last child support check you had received shortly before my twenty-first birthday, never mind that I moved out at seventeen. While you pulled the paperwork from the file cabinet I mentioned that one of the candidates was deceased. And you said “Well if he is dead you can go to collage, that's how I went.” Now I can only shake my head at that comment.
I finally got in touch with my dad late February of 2007. When I first called I got an answering machine for Lester. So I called the number I had for my Aunt Bonnie. I got my Grandma Sandy, who nearly had a heart attack when I told her who it was. Turns out she had been on the other line with my dad when I tried calling him (Rob actually dialled and handed me the phone).
I called my dad's number back while my grandmother called most of Mansfield and half of Toledo to tell everyone I had called. When the phone was answered it was a woman on the other end. Mary Ann, the woman my father has been with since I was 6 or so, politely told me that Gary was in the shower but she'd take a message, who should she say was calling. When I told her that it was Gary's daughter, S********, she told me to hold on and I could hear her running down the hall, knocking down the door to the bathroom, the sound of water running against the distant tub and the soft echo off tiled walls as Mary Ann's voice urgently passed the phone to my dad and said “S********!” in that hoarse squeak of someone who can hardly believe it herself. I don't know if you've ever heard the sound of a panic attack hit by a bullet train but that's the sound my father made when I said “Daddy?”
We must have spent a week on the phone. He went out that afternoon and bought a Verizon phone so we could talk as long as we wanted. Granted I'm sure there are holes in everyone's memory but I am biased to the records of my father's memory because to my mind they are more rational.
In a way it's kind of nice to see the ways that even though he didn't raise me, I am in every way my father's daughter. I now take it as a compliment every time you told me I was just like him. Higher praise there isn't.
I spent a week this summer in Mansfield with my family. When you were all gung-ho to give me to my dad he arranged to move back to Mansfield, with my grandmother to raise me. My grandmother who cut back her hours at the office to be able to spend time with me in the evenings, my aunt bonnie Kay that switched to second shift to spend the afternoons with me. The room in my grandmother's house that was to be mine. The schools I would have attended. The town I would have grown up in. the love that would have been lavished upon me by people who wanted and cared for me. I looked upon all this for a week, and I wept for what I was denied. I wept for the life I could have had. I wept for you. For all the effort you put into trying to break me, to bend me to your will, to make me just like you and your failure. Your failure to cherish what you had and be a good mother, your failure to be a bad mother and abuse me. I was never abused. I was never broken. My will is my own and my spirit is whole. Your failure is complete. Not only were you not a good mother, but you were not a bad mother. You weren't a mother at all.
~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm thinking of adding something here to the effect that since she wasn't a mother she has no right to call me her daughter and should infact never call me again. consider herself officially estranged.
~K
K******,
This is not a teen angst letter. In point of fact I wish I could deliver these words to you in person but sadly distance and your irrationality make this impossible. The letter feels cowardly to me even but logically the only way to get all of this out in a way that won't be misconstrued or twisted about by that agile mind of yours before I finish my piece. Besides I like records of facts. That's what this is. A record of all the stories I was told as a kid and all the stories I have to tell about my childhood set down to be passed around and shared. I have spent the last 8 years coming to terms with a lot of the things in this letter though most recently the majority of my time was spent fact checking a few stories you told me about your self. In order to be as chronologically organised as I can be, allow me to start with your stories.
Remember the summer we took A.J. to Gainesville for camp and you mentioned attending collage in that town? It clashed with the tale of you attending Loretto Heights in Colorado. There are some fascinating things about Lo-Hi you might not know. It was founded by Mother Pancratia Bonfils, S.L. in 1891, the Sisters of Loretto started a private elementary and secondary Catholic school for girls they called Loretto Heights Academy. Located on one of the highest points in the Denver metropolitan area, the school was very successful. For the much of the last century it was the premier woman's Catholic school in Denver.
In the early 1900s the school began its transition to a women's college. Then in 1988 it was absorbed by its sister school Regis University. (Taken from their website and wikipedia)
They also have no record of a K****** M***** or a K****** S**** attending between the years of 1975 and 1985. I must have spent an hour on the phone with their records department. John was very helpful.
So I called the University of Florida in Gainesville. Kevin spent about 45 minutes on the phone with me as he wandered back into the paper records to look for anything resembling what might be your files. Again we have a grand total of zero K******* M***** or K****** S**** attending the University.
I must commend you on your Corel-Draw skills. Diplomas are fun to make aren't they?
I also looked up your modelling career. No such thing. You may have attended a modelling school but you never did any print or runway work.
With my long standing contacts in the adult industry I looked for any records of you performing in that capacity. Nope. I was in the adult industry for 3 years with more than 300 titles to my name. I have an IMDB.com listing as well as an IAFD.com listing (internet adult film database). Don't believe me; look up Keiko performing in the years between 2003 and 2006. It’s not like I don't know that in order to perform in the adult industry you must fill out a model release with information such as your legal name, birth date and SSN. No record in anyone's files of you ever performing, though.
Now we move on to when you met my father, your first husband. One of the stories I heard you tell more than once was the story of how he tried to shoot you with your father's gun and when it didn't fire, due to the filed firing pin, he pistol whipped you with it. In my search to find him, I also looked up both yours and his criminal records. My guess is that this is the same gun that was confiscated by the FBI at the Stanford airport because you tried to take it in your carry on luggage to Dothan, Alabama. Since that was before you were even dating my father, I'm going to hazard that the story of him training it on you is also fabrication.
You told me many tales of how my father wanted nothing to do with me, how you spent night after night cooking one handed with me on your left arm while my father was busy being horrid in the living room. This is somehow contradicted by the fact that when you and he were first getting divorced you were all gung-ho to give me to him and start over fresh with Mark. You might call it conspiracy against you that I have so many confirmations of the next string of facts but when a half a dozen people tell the same thing over and over again with consistency and conviction you have to take it at face value.
Gary had called his mother in Mansfield and told her he was moving home and bringing baby S******** with him. My grandma Sandy cut back her hours at the lawyer's office to spend the evenings with me. My aunt Bonnie Kay switched to second shift at the plant to spend afternoons with me. My dad had even gotten his old job back in that little town. It wasn't till after you spoke with Pam Goldberg and were told that my dad would have to send you money every month if you took me. Suddenly you fought fiercely to keep me. So my grandmother who was apparently picking out new wall paper for the room that was going to be mine went back to full time at the office and my aunt went back to first shift at the plant and my dad stayed in Denver, so as to get visitation rights. And then he brought me back one Sunday morning to find a Mayflower truck in the yard and we were off to Florida.
The stories of how Gary beat and abused you were part of your daily dialogue for a while as you attempted to brain wash me. I remember the fights you used to have when picking me up or dropping me off with him.
I remember the visits I got with my dad in the intervening years where I was met at the gate with pink daisies and roses and there were piles of presents for me in his living room. Or when my grandparents could get me up there every now and then and they'd give a stewardess $20 to keep an eye on me. I remember being spoiled rotten and loving every minute of it. The memories have a soft warm feeling like towels right out of the dryer when you climb out of the pool after dark, scented with lavender.
Then one summer after we moved to Saint Cloud I have a very clear memory of you sitting me down at the kitchen table and telling me that my father had done something very bad, had gone to jail for a very long time and I'd probably never see him again.
For the record, having looked up both his and hers criminal records during the great search, I discovered that my father was never arrested for doing anything “Very Bad”. He was taken in once for failure to appear after being caught drunk driving. He spent a night and half a day in jail over a case of mistaken identity.
In the intervening years stories about Gary became darker and more dubious. My dad became the boogie man from the stories my uncle Dave used to tell. I think what made the stories that were told about my dad all the scarier is that you were the one telling them and I was terrified of you. He must be terrible if even in your eyes he was a horror.
I have vivid memories dating back to the very beginning. Of lying on the floor looking up at you through the tears as your hand came down upon me over and over again. Your screeching yells and the timpani of my heart in my throat a sound track of fright.
There were children who had it far worse than me. I had food in my belly and clothes on my back. I had a roof over my head and toys to play with. I was not abused. I got this speech twice in my life. Once as I was chased from the back yard into the house and down the hall and once after we got to Florida after I threatened to go to the school resource officer about the way I was treated. I was not abused. I was beaten and humiliated, unloved and blamed, but not abused. Abused means broken and tolerant. I have never been broken. I will never be tolerant. I was used, yes, but never abused.
I don't even remember why, you were in one of your rages. The week before you had sprained my wrist in a Kmart parking lot, saving me from being hit by a truck. I was already injured, wearing an ace bandage on my left arm. I was chased down the hall screaming and yelling, by the time I got to my room I'd already been hit a handful of times, across the face, the back, the legs. I closed the bedroom door, but that only made you more angry. The door burst open, hitting me in the face. I was hit again across the face. I was petrified. I made for the only space I knew I couldn't be followed, the gap between the drawers and the wall under my bed, where I could just squeeze my shoulders in. Half way in I was kicked hard, my already purple jaw making blunt force contact with the frame of the bed. The pain was excruciating. I ate grits and cream of wheat for a month, as chewing made me want to cry. A month later I saw a dentist about the abscess on my back teeth. Medicine that tasted like pepto bismol and bubble gum cleared that up but my teeth haven't been straight since. The horrors of being 8 years old.
This might be unrelated to anything but I hold it as a grievance anyway. According to receipts when I was nine my grandma sandy bought me an E-Z Bake Oven. Something that has been on my wish list for so long it's still written in crayon (next to the pink satin ballet slippers). The messages you sent back to my grandmother was that you had sold the “inappropriate toy” and bought something more suitable. Cards and Christmas presents were sent back. I was cut off from the lavender scented little white house on the hill above the forest and the people in it who loved me. I missed trips to Italy and Paris, Germany and England. I missed birthday presents and trips to cedar point. I missed horseback riding and swimming. I missed out on hugs and kisses, family dinners and camping trips. I missed having a normal life.
I was dressed in second hand clothes as my savings bonds were cashed to buy things for you. Because of my attire I was ostracised from my peers. Even in St. Cloud I was a fashion disaster. I was an outcast at school and a black sheep at home. There are dozens of stories like the ones above but I feel no need to recount them all. Suffice it to say I knew that I know I was only tolerated so you could continue to collect that monthly check from my dad. Having your horrible social interaction skills as the only example to follow I was socially awkward and suffer severe social anxiety now. I have learned to make friends and get over my own emotional outbursts but it took lots of therapy and time. I had to want to work on it. Heavens forbid I turn out like you.
Heaven's forbid that my daughter be scared to ask me anything. I hope that I have the sense to try and be there for my little girl when she needs me in the capacity she needs me in. I am forever envious of all my friends who could just talk to their parents about anything. Whenever I was asked around for dinner, and it really struck me when I was at Matt's one evening, when he and his brother's just started asking their mom, the nurse, questions about women. I wished I could talk to my mother like that. For example when I needed your womanly advice on the subject of hitting puberty and my talk was “You really need to stay away from boys now.” Like when I called you from the hospital when I was seventeen and having a miscarriage and you hung up on me. Or when I tried to come out of the closet (when my Aunt Jhamie (Cindy) would have been a GREAT help). At least when the guy I was with at the time decided to try and beat the shit out of me, you were there. The monster from my nightmares fighting on my side for a change. I forever thought this was because you had been on the receiving end of a man's irrational anger because of the way you talked about how my dad mistreated you.
Then during the Christmas season of 2006 when you tried to admit to me that you were once in adult films and were now suicidal, trying to blame it on Gary, Mark turned to me just as you were out of ear shot and said “The way she talks about your dad, you know no one is that evil.”
This intrigued me. As it was Rob had been trying for years to get me to look into finding my dad and getting the other side of the story. This little aside from his successor was the nudge I needed. I started searching, a little bit here and there, still scared to actually take the plunge. A few weeks passed and I had come up with a list of people that could be the same Gary Smith that you were once married to but as they didn't come with pictures I wasn't sure which was which. I asked you for his birth date and you offered his social security number off the last child support check you had received shortly before my twenty-first birthday, never mind that I moved out at seventeen. While you pulled the paperwork from the file cabinet I mentioned that one of the candidates was deceased. And you said “Well if he is dead you can go to collage, that's how I went.” Now I can only shake my head at that comment.
I finally got in touch with my dad late February of 2007. When I first called I got an answering machine for Lester. So I called the number I had for my Aunt Bonnie. I got my Grandma Sandy, who nearly had a heart attack when I told her who it was. Turns out she had been on the other line with my dad when I tried calling him (Rob actually dialled and handed me the phone).
I called my dad's number back while my grandmother called most of Mansfield and half of Toledo to tell everyone I had called. When the phone was answered it was a woman on the other end. Mary Ann, the woman my father has been with since I was 6 or so, politely told me that Gary was in the shower but she'd take a message, who should she say was calling. When I told her that it was Gary's daughter, S********, she told me to hold on and I could hear her running down the hall, knocking down the door to the bathroom, the sound of water running against the distant tub and the soft echo off tiled walls as Mary Ann's voice urgently passed the phone to my dad and said “S********!” in that hoarse squeak of someone who can hardly believe it herself. I don't know if you've ever heard the sound of a panic attack hit by a bullet train but that's the sound my father made when I said “Daddy?”
We must have spent a week on the phone. He went out that afternoon and bought a Verizon phone so we could talk as long as we wanted. Granted I'm sure there are holes in everyone's memory but I am biased to the records of my father's memory because to my mind they are more rational.
In a way it's kind of nice to see the ways that even though he didn't raise me, I am in every way my father's daughter. I now take it as a compliment every time you told me I was just like him. Higher praise there isn't.
I spent a week this summer in Mansfield with my family. When you were all gung-ho to give me to my dad he arranged to move back to Mansfield, with my grandmother to raise me. My grandmother who cut back her hours at the office to be able to spend time with me in the evenings, my aunt bonnie Kay that switched to second shift to spend the afternoons with me. The room in my grandmother's house that was to be mine. The schools I would have attended. The town I would have grown up in. the love that would have been lavished upon me by people who wanted and cared for me. I looked upon all this for a week, and I wept for what I was denied. I wept for the life I could have had. I wept for you. For all the effort you put into trying to break me, to bend me to your will, to make me just like you and your failure. Your failure to cherish what you had and be a good mother, your failure to be a bad mother and abuse me. I was never abused. I was never broken. My will is my own and my spirit is whole. Your failure is complete. Not only were you not a good mother, but you were not a bad mother. You weren't a mother at all.
~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm thinking of adding something here to the effect that since she wasn't a mother she has no right to call me her daughter and should infact never call me again. consider herself officially estranged.
~K