It's OK to Tell by Lauren Book

Author:Lauren Book
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Easton Studio Press, LLC
Published: 2011-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

April, 2001

We’ve come to the day I call Black Monday, the culmination of the bad things that have been building up for years in our household. It starts the Sunday night before, with Mom going into

Sam’s room while she’s asleep to chastise her for something. Sam wakes up pissed off and tells Mom to get out of her room. In the process of Sam slamming the door on her, Mom collides with a shelf and knocks something heavy onto Sam’s head. By the next day, Sam has a black eye. In the morning, their tussle escalates. Mom tells Sam the black eye is her own fault and goes after her, smacking Sam across the face. Sam hits back, and it takes Waldy to separate them. Then Mom goes after Waldy, but Waldy is much stronger than she is, so she manages to restrain her. Mom pulls away from Waldy’s hold and tells her she’s fired—again. But this time Mom escorts Waldy to the door and tells her never to come back.

That leaves us alone with an out-of-control Mom. She and Sam are still at it, yelling and threatening each other. Chase is so freaked out, he’s got his head in the clothes dryer in order to get away from their yelling and screaming. I can hear him talking to himself saying, “Stop yelling, please” and “I want Waldy back.”

I can see this going from terrible to worse. I call Dad in Tallahassee and tell him what’s going on. “I told you,” I say to him, barely able to talk because I’m coughing and crying. “I told you this would happen. You’ve got to do something, right now!”

“I’m sorry. Calm down, Lauren,” he says. “I’ll call Dr. Levin and see if he can get to the house.”

When Dr. Levin (because he was our family therapist and the person to whom I finally reveal my abuse) is called in to give a deposition for Waldy’s trial, this is how he describes what occurred on Black Monday, when he gets to the house in response to Dad’s call.

Dr. Levin: Pat was very agitated. She was pacing back and forth, and I had some trouble getting her to calm down. I was on the phone with Ron and telling him I didn’t think it was safe for the kids to be in the home with her, alone without Waldy being there. So Ron agreed to that and said he would make arrangements to get a plane chartered and a limo to pick up the kids.

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