14 Spanked

One afternoon I had struck my mother.

I don't know why.

"I'm going to tell your father you hit me," she promised.

From that moment on I played in dread all afternoon and into evening. On this night my mother waited until we were seated at supper, my father at one end of the table, she in the middle to my left, I at the other end.

"Robert hit me today."

My father's face turned suddenly pale and glowering he raised his right fist and gestured to me.

His arm shook and trembled with rage.

"If you ever hit your mother again," he said, "I'm going to hit you!"

Was I five years old?

Four?

My mother thinks so.

I believe I was three.

Did I hit her again?

In November of 1946 Ronald was born. In 1948 we moved to Shenandoah, twenty miles southwest of Emerson. After church every Sunday and on Christmas Eve, when we even stayed the night, we drove to Emerson to have dinner with the Andersons Ray and Vera. For two weeks in the summer Ronald and I vacationed in their modest home on Elm Street. When my cousin John happened to be staying with his grandmother Elsie and her husband Arthur, Grandpa Ray's brother who lived on the corner across the street, these were the happiest days of my life.

Every other day?

Knocks, commands, and whippings.

It wasn't long before I was using all of what Dad taught me and more on Ronald, who would tell Dad, who would whip me. Carroll had been "spanking" me frequently, almost every day it seemed. Later I'd take revenge, wrestle Ronald onto his back, sit on his chest, pin his arms to the floor with my knees, and do anything I wanted, from torture to tickling, and threaten to drool in his face.

Ronald remembers making a birthday wish.

"Please, God, for just one day let my brother Robert not pick on me."

A prayer.

Ronald also fought back, once knocking the breath out of me with a punch to my solar plexus, once hitting me with a croquet mallet for cheating, once jamming a door over my big toe, tearing off the nail. On one April Fool's Day Ronald and I decided to see what would happen if we just pretended to fight. I acted and Ronald whined and then howled in mock pain. Though Ronald explained to Dad that it was all just pretending, I got a whipping. On another afternoon Dad left the two of us boys alone for an hour, I don't remember why, and Ronald, throwing a ball, broke a ceiling light fixture. When Dad returned he demanded a confession.

"Ronald did it," I pointed.

"Robert did it," Ronald lied and I got a whipping.

Many times Ronald got a whipping, too. He received dozens though he remembers only one or two. Ronald was my adversary and, though four years younger than I, an equal.

Dad was my tormentor.

He was slender and strong, a handsome young man, and a powerful enemy. He had been changed in the army, according to my mother. For as long as and as often as I was able I stayed away from him. For company I made friends of the neighborhood kids—Pam and Cheryl, Becky and Stephanie, Larry, Duke, Jack, Mike and Sandy, Butch, Roger, Keith, and Calvin. In Shenandoah these Broad Street School friends and our teachers, all women, and my Anderson family circle in Stanton and Emerson, Grandpa and Grandma, Uncle Norman at Christmas, Ronald, and my mother were my whole world. Threatening this fellowship of family and friends—stalking me, it seemed, for eight years—was Dad.