Challice's Journal

I was cut short the other day in my writings so I am now contining this one.  My high school years were one of my down falls.  I began getting wtih the wrong people for the wrong reasons.  Attention.  I had no friends and I had always been a follower not a leader.  Not a good idea.  Mother, again, played a big part in this since I always did what she asked, regardless of what it was.  I trusted her for some Odd reason.  In my head and heart I felt your mother was just that your mother, a guidance, a helper, one to teach their young daughters, a person you "should want to" look up to" but mine was an embarasment.  Mother was really strung out on her drugs and alcohol.  She didn't want to do anything nor did she except drug, drink and sleep.In the 60's during this time, having a Black man for a boy frined just wasn't heard of. Her drug dealer/boy friend was in her life.  I was told to keep quiet about it to my grandparents, and to help her hide it.  She didn't do as well as she thought.  I finaly "told" them since I couldn't stand the state she was in.  I thought I was doing the right thing so she could get help. Wrong.  However, they HAD heard about her behavior and had questioned me about it several times.  At this point both my older sister (the queen) and a younger brother (by 8 years) mother's pride and joy and I were all living with mother since my grandparents were just getting to old to take care of us. I wanted nothing more than to go back and live with them. But this just wasn't ever going to happen again. One day my grandfater had taken my mother to court!!!! I was shocked.  I remember a man in a suit asking me (alone) questions about her outside of a courtroom. What she did, and whom with.  What was her behavior like around us.  Well, I explained what I had seen and what I knew to be the truth about her.This man in the suit questioned each one of us seperately.  My sister (miss priss) lied to him as well as my brother.  They told him she was great, nothing wrong.  I was made out to be a instigator and a lier.  Wrong!!!! At home my sister didn't have to do anything (chors) nor did my brother.  I had them all to do.  This included the cooking, cleaning, laundry, cutting the grass, fixing a water pipe that had broken, painting the house.  We lived on a three story old farm house on a penesula .  385 acres.  My grandfather was a great hunter and the farm was a goose hunting farm in the winter.  Approximately 500 yards from our house was the hunting lodge.  Every weekend and during the season mostly during the week he would have invited "men" down to hunt.  One of my jobs "with" my mother was to get up a 3:00AM and go down to the lodge and cook breakfast for about 13 men.  Once this was done well before daylight I would get in a truck with the decoys and go out into the frozen fields and beat them into the ground around each goose pit, (4 pits), then there were the duck blinds along the shore.  I would have to take a wooden row boat loaded from the night before with duck decoys and place them out into the icy water.  I remember being so cold doing these chors.  When I got that done and went back to the lodge I would have to help make up all the beds.  This was all before school.  Our dirt lane was nearly 2 miles long and the school bus stop was 3 miles from home.  If mother wasn't passed out on the couch she would drive us to the bus, or we would end up walking.  Missed the bus more than once. Then would have to walk back home.  On those days my mother would take my sister to school leaving me home to help her.  My brother was a spoiled brat.  She wouldn't take him and let him stay home and watch TV all day.  While I was out working in the goose pits, picking up the decoys out of the frozen ground and picking ducks and geese by hand. If I didn't do these things I would get beat my mother. The hunters would pay mother for doing the picking.  I never saw any of the money. Of course my grades would be bad since I missed school and never could get caught up.  On the other hand my sister was a straight A student.  There was one day in high school that I went to school and was talked into hooking with some friends.  We got into a car directly off the bus and drove back to mothers since that was a good place to hide/party.  We drank alcohol supplied by mother and played cards with her all day.  She was lots of fun that day.  There wasn't a problem with her and coming to the house to do this since mother just loved it, any time was great with her.  My friends thought she was fantanstic and couldn't believe how great having a mother like her was. Before the end of the school day, we drove back to school and got right on the bus.  The second I sept on the bus, my sister said "your in trouble now".  The first thing the next morming in school, I along with all my friends were called to the princapals office.  BUSTED!!! My mother had called them and told them that we showed up at her house and refused to go to school and were had brought alcohol to her house and were all drunk and loud and she had thrown us out.  I got suspended 3 days. Already in my life by now I was developing the reputation "of my mother". I was just a no good person.  To make it worse, my sister moved to my grandparents and I had to stay with mother.  My sister wouldn't be a "problem" for them but "I" would be.  I became enraged inside, and started to rebel.  I wanted out of the situation so badly.  I began dating a guy in my 11 th grade.  and got pregnant in my senior year.  This was as many youth have done, not the best way out of a bad situation.

My first marriage and the continueing prblem with mother will be in part 3.