A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.

After my parents split, we went through a dark time. My mom cried a lot. In those days it was safe to walk to school, and we did. It was about a twenty minute walk each way and I used to pass by a bunch of stores on the main drag. One was a florist. One day I stopped in on the way home and bought a single white rose for my mom because I wanted to cheer her up. When I got home, I gave it to her and she started to cry. I was bewildered. I said, "mommy, I bought the rose to cheer you up, not to make you sad." She said, "I'm not crying because I'm sad, I'm crying because I'm happy." I guess it was one bright spot in a very bad space.

There came a time not too much later when my mother's friend Barbara set her up with a blind date with a man Barbara and her ex-husband were friends with. I remember how nervouse my mother was. Apparently the date went well, because they began to see each other and, eventually, she introduced us to this man, Bob. Bob seemed like a nice guy, especially to a kid whose dad had up and disappeared. He would always treat us kindly when he came by the house, and would sometimes bring us stuff. My mother must have thought God was smiling down on her to bring her this person in a time of great sadness. I was happy for her, because she seemed to be her normal self again.

Bob was divorced with two daughters and he lived alone in a skanky apartment complex in our town. He was out of work and seemed not to have the ambition to get back in a hurry. Once he met my mother, though, things changed and he went back to work and began to put on the appearance of propriety.

Eventually, Bob moved in with us. It seemed like the natural progression of things. I couldn't believe how easily we had transitioned from one father to the next. It was like when they changed Darrins on Bewitched. One day my dad was there, the next day it was Bob. Things continued along this cheery path and eventually Bob proposed to my mother. Like a bad B movie, this facade of joy was to fall apart once the marriage occurred.

As soon as my stepfather was entrenched in his position as "head of household," he began to change. He began to assert his "authority" and it became all too clear that the four little children he had just added to his family were going to learn to bow to his will. My stepfather is a first generation American of a German father, and we soon learned why the Nazis were both feared and hated. Bob apparently had an inferiority complex and low self esteem. Nothing pleased him more than to impose rules just for the sake of causing friction in the household, and when he came home from work at night the supper had to be on the table or he had a fit. He would also find any excuse to start an argument either with my mother or with my brother and I. My sisters were still too young to be the object of his venom.

At first, we continued at Catholic school, probably for the sake of continuity. But the following year, we transferred to public school and moved to a new house. My mother had equity in the house my parents had bought, but Bob had not money, so my mother used her funds to put a sizeable downpayment on the new house. This also meant that we now had a new neighborhood and had to make new friends. It was all a big culture shock, both at home and outside. My first experiences at public school were horrific. Because I had been groomed with manners and showed respect to the teachers - even holding the door for them - I immediately became the object of scorn and ridicule. My first day in the lunch line I chastised another student for cutting in line and told him that we never cut the line in Catholic school to which he replied that I should go back there then. It was awful and I felt like a stranger in a foreign land.

The only bright side was that they taught languages in public school and I was able to enter the French division. The kids in the French division didn't seem to be as rough as the general populace and, as it turned out, we would remain together through grade school, junior high, and high school, since French was taught for the remainder of our schooling.

I remember at the end of my first day of fifth grade in this new, hostile place. We all reassembled in "home room" at the very end of the day for dismissal. The bell rang and kids swarmed out of the classroom doors like bees bent on a target. As I avoided elbows and book bags, I felt a tug on my arm. A red-cheeked, smiling face appeared from behind and he introduced himself as Tim. Even at this age I was readily attracted to boys, and his warm brown wavy hair, blue eyes, and pleasant visage immediately tugged at something deep inside me. This was the beginning of what would become my first love. More on that later.

As the years passed, Bob became increasingly more verbally and physically abusive. Every day was like a mini hell, with the acid in my stomach churning as the hour approached when he would come home. His abuse took the form of belittling attacks on my brother and I and eventually turned from the vocal to the physical. He would poke us in the chest with his finger, backing us into corners, pushing us, hitting us. I remember one night my brother became embroiled in a particularly bitter argument with Bob. My stepfather became so engraged that he threw my brother down into a wood framed chair which had belonged to my great grandparents. It had a very heavy frame with vinyl cushions. The violent force caused the chair to crack into pieces, and represented an escalation of the tension that had grown steadily over the past couple of years. It was, unfortunately, a representation of the status quo which would taint the remainder of my childhood.