August 12, 1968 – First Day of School.
I was excited to start school. I couldn’t wait to see what it was like since Sander had talked so much about it. I wore my prettiest pink dress with little yellow flowers. It was one Grandma had bought for me.
I walked into the classroom and saw my name tag, letting me know where to sit. We each got an apple, a box of crayons, and a few books. Since it was the first day, we were only in school for one hour. It was to introduce us to the school and to our new teacher. I was glad to see my friend, Tina, in my class. She was a girl who lived in our apartment building.
A few days later, Tina’s mother watched Sander and me for a few hours. While she was watching us, I overheard her tell a neighbor that she felt sorry for Sander and me because our mother never spent any time with us. I believed it was true, and I couldn’t wait to tell Mom what I had overheard. Mom got upset and made me go back with her to Tina’s apartment.
When we got there, Mom told Tina’s mother not to talk about her behind her back, especially in front of her children. Tina’s mother said she was only speaking the truth. She asked Mom why she only spent time with her boyfriends and gave them all her attention.
I thought it was brave of her to ask. I had often wondered that myself. I was curious to see how Mom would respond. She said, “These two kids will grow up and leave me, and then I will be left alone unless I have a man to be with me.” Tina’s mom said, “You should pay more attention to your kids, rather than chase men the way you do!” Mom got furious, and the two of them got into a heated argument.
When we left, I was glad the lady had given Mom her opinion. Mom, however, wasn’t so impressed. After this happened, I was never allowed to play with or talk to Tina again.
After-School Center
Now that I was in school, I no longer went to daycare. Daycare was only for children up to age seven. After school, I would go to an After-School Center. When Sander and I finished school, we biked there together.
On the way, there was a tree with a big hole in it. Sander told me that in the hole, there lived two squirrels. He said one of the squirrels was stupid, and the other was smart. He told me I was the stupid one, and he was the smart one. I protested, but I finally agreed because I was afraid he would hurt me.
Whenever we passed by the tree, Sander told me we had to stop and see if the squirrels would come out. I’d watch for a while and then get bored and look away.
When I would turn my head, Sander would say, “There they are!” I looked back but didn’t see anything. I finally realized they were just make-believe. Sander kept insisting they were real, but I knew he was only doing this to torment me. I went along with it so he wouldn’t hurt me.
Stitches
When Sander and I were at the after-school center, we were usually the last children to be picked up. Since all the other kids had already gone home, Sander and I started to get bored.
Sander decided we should play together on the playground. Most of the caretakers had already left for the day, so no one was outside to watch us. Sander got a bike and tied a wagon to it. He said he was a taxi driver, and I was to sit in the back while he drove me around.
It sounded like fun, so I hopped in. I lay in the back of the wagon and looked up at the sky. Suddenly, Sander stopped. I asked him why we weren’t moving. He said, “This is where you get off.” I was having fun and asked if I could have a longer ride. Sander insisted this was my stop and told me I needed to get out of the taxi. I stood up and was about to get out when Sander started moving again.
I lost my balance and fell forward, hitting my head on the steel bar around the edge of the wagon. I felt a thump and passed out.
When I woke up, I was lying in the arms of one of the caretakers. He was holding a cloth to my face. It hurt, so I pushed it away. The worker told me to lie still because the cloth was there to help stop the bleeding. He said an ambulance was on its way to take me to the hospital.
At the hospital, I was taken into an operating room. I was terrified. I looked around, hoping to see a familiar face. The nurse in the room told me to lie still. Then she gave me a shot to numb the area where they would put the stitches. While they sewed up my cut, they kept telling me I was a big girl to be able to lie so still so they could do their job.
When they were almost finished, Mom ran into the operating room. She was hysterical and crying as if she were the one who had been hurt. The doctors told her I was fine, and I could go home as soon as they finished. When I got home, Sander told me he was sorry I got hurt. I was surprised that he cared.
October 1968
When Sander and I were at the after-school center, as usual, all the other children had already been picked up. Sander and I started to wonder if Mom would ever come to get us. It seemed like she had forgotten us. One of the caretakers waited with us. After a while, she said it was time to lock up the center because she needed to go home. She told us to go home. She assured us that our mom would be there.
When we arrived at the apartment, we rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Sander and I started to worry. We didn’t have a key to get in, and it was cold outside. Then Sander asked me to kneel with him in front of the doormat so he could say a prayer. He asked Heavenly Father to watch over us because we were scared.
When he finished the prayer, a peaceful feeling came over both of us. We both felt reassured that everything would be fine. Then Sander said, “Let’s go down to the playground and play in the sandbox. I am sure Mom will be back soon.”
As the weather grew colder and darker, the peaceful feeling never left us, and we continued to play in the sandbox.
Three hours later, Sander and I saw a car with its headlights shining toward us. A police car pulled up next to the playground where we were. We were surprised to see Mom get out of the vehicle.
Both Sander and I ran toward Mom to ask her where she had been and why a police officer had driven her home. Mom told us that when she was on her way to get us, she had been hit by a car and had been in the hospital.
A few days later, Mom said it was time for Sander and me to get our own apartment keys. We both received a chain with a key on it so we could let ourselves in whenever we needed to.
The Race
One day, on our way to the after-school center, Sander went ahead of me. He said that we were having a race. I called and told him to wait up for me, but he just kept going. I didn’t want him to get mad at me, so I did all I could to keep up.
In my efforts, I slid into some gravel and scraped up both my knees and the side of my face. It hurt, so I sat down and cried.
Sander finally came back to see what was taking me so long. I thought he would be upset with me. To my surprise, when he saw I was hurt, he walked alongside me. It was hard for me to walk, and since our apartment was closer than the after-school center, Sander said we should go home.
When we got home, Sander lifted me up and put me on the counter. He cleaned out my wounds with alcohol, and then he put Band-Aids on my scrapes. I was surprised by how he took care of me, and I was grateful he showed me compassion. I wished it could always be like this between us.
November 1968
Now that Sander and I had a key to the apartment, Mom decided we were old enough to go home from the after-school center and watch ourselves. Some evenings when Mom had school or other plans, she wouldn’t be home till after we had fallen asleep.
Sander and I both hated being left home alone. We didn’t mind when it was daylight, but when it started to get dark, we would get scared. If we needed to go to the bathroom, we had to walk down a long hall. Whenever we used the bathroom, we went together.
One day, just for fun, I told Sander, “I think I see a man at the end of the hall!” I was about to laugh and say I was joking, but I didn’t get the chance because Sander started crying. I got scared because I realized, if he was afraid, who would take care of me if there really was a man hiding at the end of the hall? We both ended up crying and hiding under a blanket until we fell asleep.
At other times, when we were alone, we would pass the time by watching TV until we fell asleep. We had only one channel, which often featured boring topics like politics, sports, and other adult subjects.
Once a week, there was a TV show called Sherlock Holmes. We wanted to watch it, but every time it started, it had scary music and wolves howling. Sander would rush to turn off the TV, and we would hide again under a blanket until we fell asleep.
Since there was hardly ever anything good on TV, we got bored. We would try to play together. I wanted Sander to play house with me and my doll. Sander said that was a stupid idea. He insisted we play cars instead. I told him I didn’t want to play with his cars.
Sander then agreed that if I played cars with him for a little while, he would play house with me. While we were playing with his cars, he complained the whole time. He said I didn’t know how to play right. When he got tired of playing cars, Sander said he had changed his mind about playing house with me.
I fell for this more than once because each time he would promise to keep his end of the bargain, and every time I believed him, hoping that this time he would be honest with me.
Instead of playing house, he grabbed my doll and started banging her into the wall, shouting, “See, it’s not crying! It is not real!” I hated it when he hurt my doll.
I really wanted to play with Sander when we were home alone. I would do what he asked, but often he would get mad and hit me. He said I couldn’t do anything right because I was stupid.
I told Mom I was afraid to stay home alone with him becausehe would hurt me. Mom told me to stop provoking him, and everything would be fine. Sander’s beatings got worse. He would punch me in the stomach, making me fall to the ground, unable to breathe. When he started hitting me, I would beg him to stop.
The more I fought back, the more excited he got, and the worse the beating became. I would try to run away, only to have him catch me. He would then lie me on my back, sit on top of me, while holding my arms to the side of my face so that I couldn’t defend myself. Then he would spit in my face. The more I begged him to stop, the more he laughed and kept spitting.
A couple of times, I pretended to be dead during the beatings. It scared him at first, but once he found out I had fooled him, the beating got worse.
I learned not to fight back. I found that if I went limp, he didn’t enjoy beating me as much, and it didn’t last as long.
It always ended with him sitting on top of me, holding my arms to the sides while spitting in my face. When he ran out of spit, he would tickle me. It was pure torture!
One evening, while Sander and I were home alone, he wanted to see what was in the top cupboard in the hall. Sander used a ladder to reach the highest shelf. I asked him what he was doing. He responded excitedly, “Look at all this stuff,” as he pulled out Christmas decorations.
It looked exciting. Just as I was about to climb the ladder for a closer look, Mom came home from work. She became angry when she saw what we were doing and started yelling. Sander was standing on top of the ladder, frantically trying to put everything back. Mom stormed up the other side of the ladder and then slammed the cupboard door shut. Sander tried to pull his hand back, but it was too late!
His thumb got smashed, and he started to cry. He was in a lot of pain. When he got off the ladder, Mom looked at his thumb to see how badly it was hurt. His thumb was swollen, and his nail was crushed into pieces. Mom realized she needed to get him medical help.
The hospital was nearby, so we rode our bikes there. Mom didn’t want Sander to tell the doctor that she had slammed the door on his thumb. She made up a lie about how it got smashed. During the trip, Mom rehearsed the story with him repeatedly. Sander wondered why he couldn’t just tell the truth. Mom asked, “You don’t want Mom to go to jail, do you?” and then continued to review the story with him.
When we arrived at the emergency room, the doctor examined his thumb. As planned, Sander told the story they had practiced. The doctor numbed Sander’s finger so he could remove the broken pieces of nail. Then he wrapped it up and put Sander’s arm in a sling.
When we got home, Mom told Sander how proud she was of him for sticking to the story she had invented. She was relieved that the doctor seemed to believe it.
December 24, 1968
Mom invited her brother, Ole, and his family, as well as Grandma Helfred, to spend Christmas Eve with us. While Mom and Grandma were in the kitchen cooking, Sander and I were excited about Uncle Ole and his family coming because then we would eat dinner and open presents.
While we waited for Uncle Ole and his family, Sander said to me, “Let’s play a game.” I asked, “What do you want to play?” Sander responded, “Look at the different foods on the table. You have to close your eyes and open your mouth. I will pick one thing off the table and put it into your mouth, and then you have to guess what it was I gave you.” I said, “OK, I will play, but only if you don’t put the pepper in my mouth.” Sander promised he wouldn’t. I trusted him.
I closed my eyes. Sander put some sugar on a spoon and poured it into my mouth. I guessed it was sugar. Then it was my turn to put something into his mouth. Sander sternly said, “Don’t give me the pepper!” I assured him I wouldn’t. Then I gave him some sugar too. It was Sander’s turn again.
This time, he insisted that when I closed my eyes, I tilted my head back and opened my mouth as wide as I could. He shook the sugar container, making me think he was going to give me sugar again.
Sander had unscrewed the cap from the pepper container and poured as much as he could downmy throat. It burned, and I had trouble breathing. As I struggled for air, I thought for sure I was going to die! Sander laughed as if it were the funniest thing he had ever seen.
When I had caught my breath, I started to cry. Mom wanted to know what was wrong. I told her what just happened. Then Mom shouted, “Stop crying, it’s almost time for dinner!” She didn’t say a word to Sander. I did everything I could to pretend I was fine so that Mom wouldn’t yell at me again. I felt sick from the pepper, so I didn’t eat much. What I did eat didn’t taste good.
That Christmas Eve was hard to enjoy. To make it worse, every time Sander looked at me, he would break into laughter. I don’t understand how making someone else feel so miserable could be funny.
When I was about 40, I asked Sander why he had poured pepper down my throat. I thought he would apologize. Instead, he broke into laughter all over again and acted so proud of himself. For as long as I live, I will never understand him.
To this day, whenever I see a container with pepper, it brings me right back to that awful night. I have and will never put pepper on anything I eat.
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