My brother was murdered when I was 2 years old and he was 3, by my mother and possibly my grandmother. I spent my childhood being raised by an extremely abusive grandmother who used religion to justify her actions. I was never told of my brother's f...
My room wasn't heated during the winter and most of my childhood I slept in the same bed as my grandma. Often times we would call into bed before the sun set, sometimes before 7pm. I would lay awake and watch my grandmother's knick knacks. In the dim light and my bad eyesight the porcelain figures mouths and eyes would move. The big window on my side of the bed lit up the room and cast strange shadows on the walls. This room gave me many nightmares as a child. The shadow stairway letting up to the corner of the room where my grandma and all my family would walk up to heaven to leave me there alone on earth. Headlights from the rare car turning and driving by would light up the room as if I was being abducted by aliens, trapping me in a sleep paralysis. My nightmares were often fueled by religious trauma and my grandmother watching Unsolved Mysteries.
One nightmare that has always stood out to me was the blonde boy by her bedside. I heard a boy in my dream tell me to wake up and turn around, and I thought it was my friend Junior from across the street. I was eager to play with him since I was no longer allowed at his house since his dad took that shower with me and his mom was very mad. I rolled away from the window to turn to my grandmother's side of the bed to find it empty but a small boy head barely above the bed looking at me smiling. I screamed and then there was my grandmother coming in the doorway very angry that I would make such a sound this late at night. "But there was a little boy by my bed" "A what?" Her tone changed from anger to fear in an instant. "It was a little boy with white hair like mine" At this point she had turned on the bedside light and her face had completely changed like she knew exactly who I was speaking of. "No no you had a nightmare you must have seen me standing by the bed while you were still asleep" "No Grandma, he told me to wake up, he was right there." "That's enough, you know what happens to liars" and with that the light was off and we never spoke of him again. No matter how old I get I still remember how her face changed upon me describing his hair.
I'm not going to lie I was a snoopy child. Everything in my room wasn't mine, it was my grandmother's. She would always remind me that it wasn't my room but "the room she let me use" Her life was very secret but mine was supposed to be an open book, I often snooped around trying to find a place to hide things I knew my grandmother would destroy. One day I found a picture of a white blonde haired boy laying in a coffin along with a funeral card. There he was the boy from my grandma's bed side! Forgetting I found these while sneaking around, at the bottom of a dresser under a drawer and took them into my grandma. I held it up and said "Grandma I found a picture of that boy that was by your bed" She had never snatched anything out of my hands that fast before, and had begun to rip it into shreds. "That is none of your goddamn business! How dare you go through my things you little brat?!" "I just found it I'm sorry, but who is that Grandma?" "I said it was none of your goddamn business. Always going through other people's things. You are a theft! Just like your mother, and you are going to end up just like her!"
I didn't even know why my mother was in prison. I didn't know that little boy, but I did know he had the same last name as me. I wouldn't figure out who he was until years later, spending cold nights in a hoarded garage, sleeping on the couch he was laid down on after he was severely abused and murdered.
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