This is a bittersweet write. Time does not heal wounds. Those that tell you it does are lying. It offers perspective and temporal distance from the situation, which grants the ability to moderate thoughts and actions. Perhaps acknowledge where assessments were wrong. A way to refocus. This one needed all that time had to offer.
Number 2 was Pearl’s sister, my aunt. Number 2 was the youngest of my mother’s siblings, my mom was the second eldest. Number 2 was also my stepmother because Mick was a manipulative asshole. Yep, he was married to my mother for 17 years, got her pregnant with my sister while they were separated, and then left my mother while she was pregnant, and then married my aunt, who became Number 2.
It is vitally important to turn back the clocks and go back in time to the place to before she was Number 2. She was incredible in my youth. My earliest memories of her are when I was around 10 or 11 years old. She lived in the Great Lakes area with her two kids, my cousins, and lived just minutes from her soon-to-be ex husband. Number 2 has a daughter that is roughly 5 years my junior and a son that is, well, I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t have fond memories of him, it’s that he was never really involved with me. He was a toddler in the background of my memories, stained with Kool Aid lips and dirty from days outside playing.
I remember visiting her house, without Mick or Pearl, one summer. I don’t remember how I travelled there. She was saucy, fun, and energetic. Number 2 was significantly younger than Pearl. In fact, she was closer in age to me than she was to my mom. She would have been in her early/mid-twenties when I visited her at roughly 11. She had recently separated from her first husband, who I suspect was kind of a bumbling idiot. Not because of a lack of smarts, but because of a total lack of emotional quotient. He seemed affable enough, a nice smile, but preoccupied. He was, in my mind, the guy that would come home from a hard day with stained hands and grab a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I imagine him sitting in an Archie Bunker-style chair wasting away the night watching TV while he ignored his wife and kids.
In retrospect, he didn’t give off abusive vibes, but definitely neglectful ones. Though I could be totally wrong. Thing is, I don’t usually remember the benign or any mediocrity in life and I can sniff out the assholes with razor-like precision and memorize the most minuscule facts. This explains my lack of detail about the man that was my uncle. If a person or event didn’t reside in the extremes, they become cerebral vapor to me. I think Number 2’s first husband was a mechanic or HVAC tech or something. Whatever he did for a living, it was manual labor done solely with his hands. He had a thick mop of wavy dark hair and a chronic messy bed head. I seem to remember a round face and that’s about all my noggin will proffer up.
My first trip to see Number 2 resulted in an immediate trip to get my ears pierced, a second piercing a little higher up my ear. She didn’t ask my parents for permission, and I don’t think she gave a shit to even consider it. She was the baby in the family with a gaggle of girls, so I think she was used to doing what she wanted and when…as the youngest typically does. For the duration of my stay, about 2-3 weeks, we never mentioned the ear piercing to my parents, even during our nightly phone calls via a wall mounted Western Electric rotary dial. It was a dingy creme color and had an extended cord so she could talk in on the other side of the kitchen while cooking.
The cord on that damn phone was knotted and twisted to Kansas and back; I spent many nights with my younger cousin literally stretching the cord out from the front of the trailer to the back to rid it of knots. And yet, the very next day, they’d return as if Number 2 had spent the previous 24 hours dancing to Abba while on the phone. But, back to the earrings, it was our secret and I loved it. Number 2 had taken me to some cheap mall ear piercing place and I got little red studs. Sparkly but understated. Pearl was never into flash and she passed it down to me. Number 2 taught me to clean them nightly with peroxide, twist the posts “to get the gross stuff out” and then cover each with Neosporin. I hung on every word she said.
For those weeks I spent with Number 2, I had a family. My biological sister had yet to be born but I had two cousins to engage in general mischief and merriment alongside me. Living in a trailer park, there were tons of other kids nearby and we were outside all the time. No need for hanging indoors when it was pre-fab with brown wooden panelling and felt like the inside of an airplane. Booooooring. We were free range Gen-X kids, the summer was our playground from sun up until the street lights flickered on.
My first indicator that things were really different was when we used water to mix with powder to make milk. To make milk? I had never seen this, but little did I know that in a few short years I’d become masterful at shortcuts to making it taste more like the real thing. Pearl and Mick were not rich, not even rich-adjacent, but we didn’t need public assistance. Number 2 and her family did. I learned about things like welfare cheese, WIC programs, spreading your dollars for the final days of the month, and then hitting the grocery store like it was Christmas when the food stamps replenished. It was grand. I was young, away from Pearl and Mick, and enjoyed life.
I seem to remember cats. Number 2 loved cats. Her cat, a meatloaf with a head, was a large tank with ears and a wispy tail that frequented her trailer and the one next door. Maybe it was a shared cat. I liked the idea of an animal that was totally self-sufficient because Ding Dong required walks and constant entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Ding Dong more than life itself, but Number 2’s walking rotund had sass, a tail that flicked back and forth in the shape of a question mark, and it engaged in cool stretchy-paw exercises called biscuits. Like a boss. It would make biscuits on my lap and purr and also killed bugs. Score.
Once I got home I didn’t love my new earrings anymore because Mick went off the hinges, I think Pearl did, too, but for entirely different reasons. The thing is, Mick was violently mad…at me. I was, I believe, 11 years old with no more control over the situation than any other kid my age. How was I supposed to know that she didn’t ask my mom or dad for permission? She was an adult and I was in her care. It honestly never occurred to me to ask if they knew what we had done. I was locked in my room and had my bed taken away. Mick made me sleep on the floor for what seemed like weeks. But I got to keep my earrings because Pearl went silent psycho on Mick. Silent psycho was the mental state Pearl frequented when she had a vendetta to plan. And Mick, stupid motherfucker, was no match for her. He was brute, she was brains. And he knew it. She may have been livid with Number 2 for piercing my ears, but what Mick did to me was unthinkable.
Fast forward…
A year-ish later, I got to see Number 2 again. Pearl talked to her frequently but miles meant they didn’t hang like sisters do. I hadn’t seen her since my trip when my ear piercing sent Mick into a tailspin. This was during the height of tension and marital strife between my parents, and Number 2 was in town with her second husband. They were long haul tractor trailer drivers and spent their days moving various sundries between the East and West coasts. Living along I-70 meant that, on this haul, it would be easy to pop by.
When I asked where my cousins were, her eyes sank. She looked sad, dejected. Reflecting back on that moment, now with the experience of motherhood under my belt, I know she felt like a failure. Like she was somehow failing her children. I do not know the exact details why her ex-husband got custody of the kids, but I suspect it had something to do with financial stability and mental health considerations. The hallmarks of major depressive disorder and anxiety lace every memory of her.
Number 2 looked thin. Tired. She had naturally thick and dark hair. It was styled in what I’d call a lady mullet. Huge in the 80s. She frosted the tips and the contrast between the rich hickory color and the brassy yellow was a hallmark of the time. She did her hair herself and was damn proud of it. I loved the inventiveness of it all. Plucked eyebrows. Never too much makeup and always lipstick. Frosted and kind of loud, but distinctly her. One of her top, front teeth leaned slightly into the other. I’m not sure why I remember this detail. She always had well-kept hair and nails, all the rave of the 80s, but she fell on the campy side of style. She did her own acrylics and I suspect it was because she could let her brain wander while she worked on her fingers. She craved nice things and it showed, mostly because she could never afford name brand products and used cheap knock offs. It didn’t matter to me. Number 2 was cool and I was thrilled she was visiting us.
Her husband was what I’d now call a garden variety bully. Let’s call him Jackass. I remember Jackass wanted to give me a hug when they first arrived and I said no; instantly got the creepy vibe from him. Mick forced me to. He was foreboding, but not because of a sizable physical stature, he had a look similar to the BTK serial killer. I would later learn that he beat the crap out of Number 2, and he damn near killed her. With his fist and a pipe. He ended up in prison, she later moved to my home state, only I didn’t know at the time.
Number 2 and Jackass left after a few days with us and it never occurred to me when or if I’d see her again. Home life wasn’t terribly stable so I never counted on anything or looked forward. Plus, what kid looks into the future at that age for anything other than Saturday morning cartoons? I didn’t.
The next time I would see Number 2 would be when my parents were separated, maybe 2-ish years later. I was likely around 14 or 15 years old. Pearl had recently given birth to my younger sister. Mick had moved out and we were alone. I snuck out when I shouldn’t have, crossed a major street to meet friends that were forbidden, and it was late…past my bedtime. I was hanging with the cutest boy in town, and looked up to see them holding hands. My father and my mother’s sister. This was a mind fuck like no other. Were they on a date?!? Why was Mick, who was unable to come home to bring food, see me, my baby sister, or my mother, out walking at the little pizza joint ½ mile from home holding her hand? What the hell was happening?
I wanted so desperately to run up to question her and Mick, but that would have gotten me in trouble like never before. So, I sat there, sick to my stomach. Gut punched by my favorite aunt and the man that contributed half of my genetic material. The interesting aspect of this memory is that it is not visceral, harsh, oversaturated by colors, sights, and sounds. It feels almost subdued, muted and I don’t know why because, for obvious reasons, this is a significant part of my history. Every other recollection that falls into this weighty of a category is almost too much for my brain to process. But not this one. Bizarre.
Because of what I had already endured, I was far from naive or stupid. I knew enough to be aware of the birds and the bees without ever having being taught thanks to hearing the forced sex sessions after my parents’ arguments. I knew my Mick was gone and the circumstances under which my sister had arrived. Seeing Mick’s hands around Pearl’s neck while both were naked in the bathroom was enough to shape my views of human sexuality for the next century and more than I ever wanted to know about martial relations.
The rest of my story with Number 2 is complex, riddled with emotion, and is extraordinarily painful. The details are sordid and, if I’m honest, are the stuff of a good Hollywood movie. Number 2 is, for better or worse, too deeply entwined with the remainder of my experience; she can no longer be compartmentalized in her own narrative space but she deserved a proper introduction. It’s the least I could do.
She was an integral force in the demise of my relationship with Mick, and that is a good thing. Anyone that helps you break free from abuse deserves recognition. She pried my eyes open and forced me to see Mick for the person he truly was, at great risk to herself. While her tactics might be questioned by some, those who live with abuse know that you do whatever you can. And Number 2 did that for me.
So much of who Number 2 was, and thus her imprint on my life, was defined by her as an extension of Mick. She would also succumb to the same abuse at Mick’s hand…just like Pearl did, but in different and nuanced ways. Some of my interactions with Number 2 were ugly, physically violent, calculated, and manipulated…by her. The thing is, time allows perspective. I can see, quite clearly as a grown woman with children of my own, the lengths to which you go to protect those you love. Because, despite my relationship to her vis-a-vis Mick, I was always a favorite niece. I can see that now.
She deliberately made me hate her, and it worked. Played me like a fiddle, hit me at my weakness for Pearl. And in doing so, she gave me the ultimate gift…freedom. She infused me with enough anger to leave. In hating her, I could be free from the pain Mick inflicted on me, much of it I didn’t even see at the time. Looking back, she had so much remorse for becoming ensnared by her brother-in-law. I think helping me was the only course correction she was able to make. Maybe it was her amends.
In the name of emotional integrity and fairness, she was also a victim, of the worst kind. My readers need to know that. She paid physically, emotionally, mentally, financially, sexually, and more. As you read through future installments, know that she isn’t the villain she crafted herself to be though she played a damn good one. While she was no savant like Pearl, they nevertheless shared DNA, intuitiveness, and craftiness. Where Pearl was able to fight in discreet ways to make my father question himself, his state of mind, and his memory, Number 2 did it like a battering ram. Different approach, same end result.
Move away, Stuart. You have to go. I’ll never forget the conversation. She packed my car for me and quite literally pushed me out the door. In doing so, the backlash from Mick must have been crushing. It is a debt of gratitude I will never be able to fully repay.
