Where Are We?

Where are we? What kind of place is this? We’ve asked ourselves this question repeatedly over the last few weeks. Unique geography and pristine landscape aside, this community has to be one of the more twisted, dysfunctional places around with an intractable cycle of abuse of self and others. It is unbelievable.

Alcoholism. Drug abuse. Poverty. Child abuse. Spousal abuse. Rape. Incest. Suicide. Reckless self destructive behavior. Murder. Generations of fetal alcohol syndrome. The revocation of parental rights. Despair. Every family. Every house. Every person.

Recent Example #1

A few nights ago, I was away from home. Wifey was home, and Jme had a friend spend the night. We’ll call her S. Wifey was helping Jme and S put highlights in their hair. Before doing this though, Wifey talked to S’s grandmother to get permission to apply said highlights. Wifey had to call the grandmother because S had been taken away from the mother by Child Protective Services (CPS), and S was now in the grandmother’s custody. At some point in the evening, S’s mother found out that she was over at our house and called our house to talk to S. She was drunk and belligerent, and when she found out about the highlights, she flipped out and asked to talk to Wifey. Then she proceeded to verbally harass Wifey and threaten to call CPS on Wifey because she was putting highlights in S’s hair. Irrational? A little. Was Wifey rattled? Yes.

Recent Example # 2

Jme’s has a half sister with two children of her own. We’ll call her A. She is also a chronic inebriate, which seems much more egregious to me because she herself is young and has two young children. The oldest of these is nine. The youngest is a two-month old. Two nights ago, A calls Wifey at past midnight to ask her if she has any Tylenol. A said that the two month old baby had a fever and was crying, and that she needed Tylenol for the baby. Wifey went over there with a thermometer to confirm the baby’s temperature. While taking the temperature, the baby was crying of course, because what two month old understand or likes getting his temperature taken. This didn’t phase Wifey, but A kept telling the baby to “shut up,” and saying, “he’s such a brat!” Did I mention that this is a two-month old? Wifey found no fever, and in her arms the baby stopped crying, but A insisted that the baby was sick and that she needed the Tylenol. Because it’s hard to say no to a mother with a sick baby, Wifey left the Tylenol. She found out today that A has been getting Tylenol from the local clinic every few days, and it is suspected that she is giving the baby high nightly doses to get the baby to sleep through the night.

Recent Example # 3:

I mentioned above that A has a nine-year-old in addition to the baby. We’ll call her C. She went with us on our last trip to town. We were glad to have her with us because she is this sweet, cute kid, and Wifey was sure that this was the first trip to town that C had been on in a while, and the first time in a while that she had had a break from taking care of her newborn brother. Yup… taking care of her newborn brother throughout the night. So we took C to town with us and she had a great time. She was clean, well fed, safe and entertained. She was allowed to be a kid.

When we came back to the village again, there was a gathering going on at A’s house, and she was there, drinking of course. We stopped in to exchange pleasantries (Ahem!). A said something to Jme that set her off. She said something to C that was a verbal slap, and when Wifey asked her if she wanted us to leave C there with her or let her get her things and we’d bring her home in a bit, A said something like “Take her, she’s having more fun with you anyway!” She’s a real charmer.

About fifteen minutes later, I was unloading everything when a pickup pulls up, and A hollers for her kid. She slurred something about, “I didn’t ask you to do all this.” I assured her that it was our pleasure.

Yesterday, Wifey went over to A’s house to deliver some clothes that C had left with us and that Wifey had washed. In the brief time there, Wifey noticed that C had a fading black eye on her right side, and that she would hardly talk to Wifey. It’s so hard to imagine that anyone would do such a thing that sometimes it’s hard to believe you really saw what you thought you saw. It must have been a mistake. But today, Wifey ran into C again around town. Again, the black eye was there. Again, C wouldn’t talk to Wifey.

And we want to be very careful about jumping to conclusions and wrongfully accusing, but it isn’t hard to put things together here. It was not a fresh black eye, but had to be a few days old. We only returned from town a few days ago, so it likely happened on the night we got back. Was C a little too excited about what a good time she’d had? Did she try to tell her mom about the fun things she’d done? Did she get beat because she’d been with us? Damn.

We called Child Protective Services today.