15 Dad

One night upon his arriving home I was marched to the gray, dark basement of our house on Clarinda Avenue. As he whipped me with his belt I stifled my panic and realized I did not have to cry.

"You'd better cry," he said, "because I'm going to whip you until you do!"

I hollered and cried like crazy, unsure if I was acting or not.

He never spanked me again.

I was fourteen, I realize now, and not ten. I had stopped abusing Ronald when I had entered junior high two years before—for the same reason I had never abused our little brother Richard. I was utterly indifferent to their existence and could not have cared less about them. I loved girls, my friends, my mom and her family, and "Bob," my ownself.

Period.

"Get up, Robert."

Dad made me work Saturday mornings at Genuine Parts, where I swept the dust and dead insects from the store window displays, washed the windows, swept the aisles, floors, and the shop where Elmer worked, took inventory, stocked shelves, filled batteries, carried mufflers to the basement, and stored tailpipes in the attic.

"Get up, Robert."

I buried my head in my pillow.

By 1959 I hoped Dad would give me my weekly allowance, pay me for my A's, let me use the car, and leave me alone.

"Get up, Robert."

On these grounds Dad and I gradually developed cordial relations.

Détente.

My girlfriend Leigh and I had a long, nonverbal courtship which began when we were sixteen and ended when Leigh got pregnant in the early spring of our senior year in high school and we had to get married. When I was eighteen I spanked my infant daughter Donna because she would not stop crying. When she was a toddler I shook her not realizing how dangerous this was till I saw.  Donna remembers a time she had welts on her legs and buttocks from my whipping her with a Hot Wheels track. I felt shame first one afternoon and then dread as I spied on Donna in her room spanking the dickens out of her doll.

Mirror.

I asked my son Devon, a year and ten months younger than Donna, how many times I had spanked him. You can't imagine how relieved I was when he said he could count his spankings on the fingers of one hand. It was Devon who made me stop spanking. Ten years old, Devon refused to cry. When I gave up he went to his room and stayed there, silent, all day long, hating me I imagined. I didn't stop spanking immediately, though, and even after I had discontinued spankings I threatened them. I didn't know any different.

I was Dad.