Voices Behind the Razorwire

VOICES BEHIND THE RAZORWIRE

Copyright 2013 by Davonna Livingston. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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ISBN 978-0-9727639-1-2

VOICES BEHIND THE RAZORWIRE

is dedicated to:

My mother, Kathy Livingston, for teaching me the importance of being myself. To the memory of Father Brendan Timmins, who taught me that doing what’s right isn’t always easy, but it is always right. To my husband, Nickolas Jordan, for being the kindest, most loving man I’ve ever known. To all of my children, who make me laugh and remind me that there is still much joy to be found in the world. To my dear friend Mark Rothwell, for so often being my biggest fan. And to the women in this book, who had faith in me and our project. Thank you for your strength, your dedication and your bravery. It has been an honor to work with each of you.

Editor’s Acknowledgement: Amy Alday-Murray

When you clearly envision a victorious outcome, engrave it in your heart and are firmly convinced that you will attain it, your brain makes every effort to realize the mental image you have created. Then, through unceasing efforts, that victory is finally made reality. You are the playwright of your own victory.

Provided by Gloria Smith

INTRODUCTION

For quite some time now I’ve been aware of the fact that I have an anxiety condition that on occasion causes me some problems. Consciously I’m fine, but I have a habit of internally turning a stressful molehill into a full-fledged mountain range. Once the stress gets started I can be assured of two things: One, some part of my body is going to randomly and inexplicably start hurting. And two, the panic attacks are soon to follow.

By the spring of 2010 I’d made the decision to get to the bottom of what was causing me so much anxiety. Unfortunately, I’d been actively working on solving my problem for a while and gotten very few tangible answers. Medications, counseling appointments, and trips to the doctor’s office had all left me knowing one thing for sure. What I was experiencing was somehow related to me having been abused as a child. But how? That’s the part that didn’t make sense to me.

How did being molested as a child have anything to do with the life I was living as a forty-four year old woman? A current work situation was causing me a great deal of stress, but that couldn’t have anything to do with me having been molested, could it? And what did any of it have to do with the weird pain I was experiencing?

One night, as I was having a glass of wine, I remembered a technique my mother and I had used when I was a teenager. During those inevitable times when she and I would butt heads and communication would be at a standstill she would tell me to write her a letter and explain how I felt. She would, in turn, write back, and instead of screaming at each other we were able to communicate our true feelings.

I couldn’t argue with it. It had been a great way to communicate what I couldn’t say out loud. So I began to consider a new way I could express what I was experiencing through writing. I knew whatever I decided to do it was going to call for an incredible amount of self-exploration, and somehow I suspected that wasn’t going to be a whole lot of fun. As a writer, I am always interested in what makes other people tick. I am not nearly as interested in finding out what makes ME tick! And yet, instinctively, I knew that it was this lack of intuitiveness that was holding me back from living a better life.

After weeks of struggling and getting nowhere, I began to entertain the idea of taking the focus off myself by writing an article on the long lasting effects of abuse on women. For it, I could interview other women and see how their abuse had affected their lives. My thought process was that perhaps I might be able to understand more about myself by interpreting the experiences of others. I had to admit it sounded like a lot more fun than spending hours in my own head! So I jumped at the chance.

For my research I would need to find a concentrated number of women who had been abused to interview. Having known several people who’ve worked in the corrections industry in both Scotland and the United States, I knew that a prison would certainly fit the bill for what I was looking for. How I was going to find and introduce myself to these women was going to be something else entirely.

Flying by the seat of my pants, on May 26th, 2010, I began my first of many evenings doing what would affectionately come to be known as inmate shopping. Technically, I was searching each state’s department of corrections website looking for women to invite to be a part of my new project. I had a relatively good idea of what I was looking for. I wanted a good cross-demographic of women from all over the country. And of these women, I wanted ones who had been in prison for a few years, but who still had several years to go.

The reason for this was multifaceted. One, I figured women who had been in prison for a while would be more likely to have had time to reflect on their lives. And two, I wanted to make sure that the inmate was not going to be released in the middle of my interviewing them.

The crimes the women had committed weren’t at the top of the priority list, however the more serious ones did allow more time for the interviewing process. With these parameters in mind I clicked my way through pages and pages of women. I looked up information about the ones I could on the internet. However some of the women’s convictions predated the technology, and I could find scarce more than a few court papers for appeals. With those, I relied on what I thought I could read through their eyes. Not very scientific, I know, but how a person reveals themselves through their eyes can be quite telling.

Once I had a good sampling of women I thought would work, I attempted to compose the letter I would send them. With still only a vague idea of what exactly I was going to do with the information I was asking for, I created a letter that said I was working on a project to raise awareness for abuse, which was true. I was planning on doing an article or two. What I didn’t mention up front was my own need to sort myself out along the way! I figured that would come out as I got to know the women, and it did.

Every woman I had the opportunity to interview had encountered some sort of maltreatment in her life. Whether it was bullying, sexual/physical abuse, or abandonment, its effects had been just enough to force these women off what’s considered the normal path in life. Not one of the ladies could ever have imagined a day when they’d be incarcerated, and yet every single one of them were.

I couldn’t help but wonder what turn of fortune’s wheel had led me to a different fate. I didn’t know it then, but getting the answer to that question was about to change me in ways I could never have dreamed of and would ultimately lead me to a new life.

I shared with the ladies a bit of my own past and promised them that nothing they told me would ever be used without their permission. Likewise, I gave my assurance that I would never judge them based on anything they told me. I stated upfront that only their first names would be used so there would be no chance for notoriety. I also let them know that there would also be no monetary compensation.

Anyone wishing to have their stories told did so knowing their only payment lay in doing something to try to help someone else. In return, I guaranteed the ladies that any revenue the information might generate would be used for the sole purpose of education/prevention and raising awareness for abuse. I couldn’t guarantee them that I could get our project published, but I could assure them that they, and their stories, would always be treated with respect.

As I mailed out the letters, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of answers, if any, I would receive. I had no idea what to expect, really. To my surprise, many ladies wrote back eager to get started right away with no questions asked. Others said that while I had piqued their interest, they needed more information before they’d commit. Each of these women asked that I please not be offended by their need for more information, and I never was; it was well within their right to ask.

All who responded thanked me for inviting them to be a part of the project, and all were equally as enthusiastic about being able to help others. Many ladies said they were humbled, and a few even declared that it must have been fate that had brought me to them. While I didn’t know what force it was that was steering me towards these women, I did know that whatever it was, it was definitely something powerful and I began my work with a sense of renewed energy I had not felt for quite some time.

For more than two and a half years the ladies and I have corresponded. We aren’t celebrities. We aren’t rich. We are simply a group of women who have joined our voices to tell our stories in the hopes that by doing so we might be able to make a difference. This book comes to you from our tears, from our hearts, and from a place of pure love. We hope you enjoy Voices Behind the Razorwire.

Chapter One

Davonna

I had been working on the project for over a year when I seriously started considering including my own story. I had hemmed and hawed about it for months; starting and not finishing various incarnations of the story of me. And as I sat down and began to write what I was determined was going to be the final rendition, I became aware of just how many different versions of my story I have told throughout my lifetime.

It certainly comes as no surprise to me that so many children of abuse go on to become writers and actors. We learn at a very early age that we have to create an alternate reality in order to exist in the world. It’s not like we can go to school or work and tell everyone our family’s dirty little secrets.

And being the quiet kid isn’t always the best alternative either, because being the quiet kid automatically sets you up as a target, and no-one wants to be that kid! The trick, I learned, was to be inconspicuously conspicuous. In other words, I told whatever version of my story I thought would work and I usually made it through with no problems. To me, it has always just been much safer to give everyone a good story than to let them into my real world.

My anxiety escalated as I sat and contemplated what revealing my true self actually meant. To do so was to do the one thing I’ve spent a lifetime trying to avoid, and that was to allow myself to be judged. I could circumvent the whole thing and not put my story in the book, but to be honest I really didn’t feel like that was much of an option. If I was going to ask others to reveal themselves I had to be willing to do it myself; so I continued.

With that resolved, I also recognized that there were going to be some other things I needed to really consider before I began writing about them. For instance, how far was I willing to go in describing my own abuse? How many dark corners of my life did I really want exposed? How were people going to respond to what I had written? And more importantly, how was my family going to take it? I was, after all, going to be airing a lot of our dirty laundry.

When I thought about my story in those terms, I couldn’t help but ask myself the most important question of all. Where was my heart while I was writing my story? And the answer to that was that my heart was in many places. It was with every young child who has had to grow up with the life sentence of sexual abuse. It was with every woman who has had to endure the thunderous fists of someone who never really knew how to love her. It was with every person who has ever felt the cut from a bully’s tongue, or wished they knew how to fit in.

I knew that I wasn’t going to lie about anything to try to sell books or to gain publicity. I wasn’t going to make up any stories to try to hurt anyone and I wasn’t speaking for the rest of my family. I was simply going to write about what I have experienced and add my own voice to what the ladies were trying to do with theirs.

As I spent weeks and then months working on my story, I realized just how daunting of a task I had assigned the women I’d interviewed. It is one thing to have lived your life, but it’s another thing altogether to see your life written down on a piece of paper. I had always known that my childhood had not been a pretty one, that’s why I’d kept it hidden. But when I’d put it into a narrative I realized just how powerful a role my early life had played in creating the woman I would eventually become. This is the story of me.

You Can’t Lose What You Never Really Had

My parents met in 1949 on an unseasonably hot day near Tacoma, Washington. As my mom tells it, she had been left behind at a popular swimming place by her sister and her friends. Stories vary as to exactly how that actually happened, but it had inadvertently put my mother on a path that would change the rest of her life. That afternoon a group of soldiers from the nearby Army base of Fort Lewis pulled alongside my then fifteen year old mother as she walked home. All four of the men were cordial, but one young soldier stood out amongst the others. That soldier was the twenty-two year old prototype of my one day father.

Six weeks later my parents were married. In less than six months, my mother had gotten married, moved across country to my father’s hometown in South Georgia, and become pregnant. But it was not until January 1966, that I would join the family as the youngest of what we thought were five children.

I wish I could describe my childhood home as being the safe, loving haven it should have been, but it wasn’t. Violence, abuse and uncertainty prevailed over the seldom seen love and respect. My father controlled every aspect of our lives and his authority was as punishing as it was absolute. In the fourteen and a half years that I lived with my father, I cannot remember one time when he told my mother or any of us kids that he loved us. I never remember seeing my parents hold hands or even kiss.

As a child I watched TV shows like The Brady Bunch and marveled at how the family communicated with each other. The children, even when acting out, still managed to know right from wrong. The parents were always firm but loving and spoke in caring tones while disciplining their children. There were no threats of anyone getting hit and no family secrets to keep hidden. The mom was confident in herself as a woman yet loving and supportive of her hard working, very respectful husband. I remember knowing even at a young age, that the family I belonged to was in no way like the one being portrayed on television.

Instead of confidence, my mother hid her strength. She was a firm disciplinarian, but it was never to excess and was rarely unwarranted. A loving, caring mother, she was always attempting to make up for her husband’s shortcomings as a father. She spent her time in a relentless attempt to placate my father’s every wish and was the first of us to learn not to question his authority. Undoubtedly, however, even if his instructions were followed to the letter, my father would still find fault in whatever she did. Captive in her no-win world, my mother knew little peace.

Instead of being the much loved head of our family, my father was an unpredictable authoritarian that touted his control over us. A consummate victim, according to my father, someone, somewhere, was always trying to take what was his or cheat him in some way. Because he was a tenant farmer of sorts, my father oversaw the land and cattle of the man who owned the shack we called our home.

Other than that, my father did not work. I’m told that some sort of accident he’d been in shortly after I was born, along with a bad heart, had left him unable to work. That is unless it was something he wanted to do, or if he could get paid under the table. Then, he was perfectly fine. The rest of our family’s income came from the Social Security disability payments my father received and from the great State of Georgia’s welfare system.

I can still feel the humiliation of going to the Piggly Wiggly with food stamps and having to sign up for free lunches at school. Please don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful for the help that we received, but I knew my father could have worked had he really wanted to and I was embarrassed.

Because my mother is still alive, and no doubt going to be reading my book, I am not going to go into great detail regarding my abuse. It happened. It was horrible. And it was wrong. It’s as simple as that. Because I was so young, I am unsure as to exactly when the abuse with my father began, but I can definitely tell you the day that it ended. It was during the summer when I was thirteen. I’d once again been called inside to rub daddy’s feet, and I don’t know what was different about that day, or what had caused the change in me, but when my father sent my mother out of the room to fetch him some more coffee, I dug my nails as deeply as possible into the tops of his feet.

When he jerked them away, I turned around as calmly as I could and told him that if he ever touched me again I would kill him in his sleep with one of the many guns he had in the house. Guns he himself had taught me how to shoot.

At the time there was a part of me that was absolutely terrified at what I’d just done. After all, everyone knew that it was a really bad idea to stand up to my father, and I doubted very much if my youth was going to carry anything in the way of safety for me. At least it never had in the past. Shortly after I said it and before he could respond, my mother came back into the room and I got up and went outside to resume my playing.

To my disbelief, my father never responded to the incident. He also never touched me again, nor asked me to rub his feet. I have no idea if I would have been capable of carrying out my threat or not, but I know that at the time I said it I meant every damned word.

I have been asked many times why I never told anyone around me about the abuse I was suffering. To be honest, up until the end I didn’t really know that these things weren’t supposed to be happening to me. And by the time I did, I did something about it myself, and it was over. I remember going to school one day in the seventh grade and telling my friend Tracy (Williams) Roberson, that there was something that I was going to tell her our last day of school of our senior year. I guess the rationalization behind that was that if I waited until then to tell her, if she reacted badly, I wouldn’t have to see her again? I’m not sure, but Tracy is the only one I ever thought to tell. Fate would intervene however, and I never got the chance to tell her until now.

When I was seven, my parents gathered us all together and told us some rather surprising news. Randee, my father’s twenty-three year old son from a previous marriage, was going to be coming to live with us along with his wife and two daughters. At the time none of us knew anything about our father having ever been married before; much less about any half-siblings that might be involved. My parents had apparently been aware of Randee since he was born. However, they only decided to tell us about him when he’d written indicating he was moving to Georgia. We were told he’d grown up in Seattle, Washington, and that he’d be arriving within the month. Needless to say, we were surprised.

At six foot one, with broad shoulders, Randee was the tallest member of our family and seemed every bit the embodiment of what a big brother should be. He was funny and had a gregarious laugh that was infectious. Making things all the more exciting was the fact that Randee and his wife were hippies. This, of course, provided for countless hours of culture shock on both sides. They were fun and accepted us into their lives as openly as we’d accepted them. I loved my new brother immediately and was delighted by the idea of becoming an aunt.

After Randee’s arrival, I could tell that my father wanted to impress him and it was interesting to sit back and watch him as he crafted a caring persona for himself. For a few short weeks after Randee and his family got there, our house came as close as it would ever come to any semblance of a normal home. There weren’t any violent episodes. No one pealed out of the driveway in anger. No one had to explain a bruise or cover up a mark. As naïve as it sounds to me now, I actually began to think that maybe, just maybe, Randee’s being there had caused a shift in the way our lives would be from then on and it only served to make me love my new big brother even more.

Not surprisingly, the respite that Randee’s arrival had brought us was as brief as it had been noticeable. I remember sitting outside in our backyard with at least one of my sisters, and Randee’s wife, Patricia. As we sat there under a tree, we could hear my parents thrashing about in the house. I still remember the sound of shame in my sister’s voice as she tried to explain to Patricia that this wasn’t an isolated event. This is how life at our house usually was.

As we sat and listened to the sounds of my mother’s screams, any hope I’d had for a better life was swept away by the wind off the Georgia Pines. I was embarrassed for Patricia to see the ugly side of our family, and I was afraid that if she knew how we really were she’d want to leave; eventually she would, but not without much heartache of her own. I can only imagine what Randee and Patricia thought about coming to live with the likes of us. No-one was surprised when, as soon as they could, Randee and Patricia got a place of their own. And who could blame them?

After they moved out, my brother Patrick and I were the only two children left living at home with our parents. Patrick is nearly seven years older than I am, and when I