Door Knob Keys

 seven years ago.........

1st attempt:

 I couldn't believe it, my older sister just left me with her lover in a R.V. park in Dallas, TX!

Ahhhhh, I stumbled for my words.

I guess you can stay with me and I'll drive you back to the Airport? (I was nervously spouting at her Lover)

He said: Are you O.K.?

I said:  _____________

2nd attempt:

How do I tell my story?  It keeps coming out in this poetic verse.   I wonder what would happen if I just.........!!  

Don't think just write?  

Uhmm??????????

3rd time is meant to be a charm:

I was brought up in a closed knit society.  It was dark and filled with negativity.  The adults were part of a church that was run out of the next door neighbor’s house at 811 Balboa Street.  My family lived at 815 Balboa Street in San Francisco, California.  The severe abuse and neglect began in this home.

My mother is actually a cult leader not a minister, as she has had no formal training.  My grandparents were pastors and attended the school of ministry for their official training. I want to say that it was for the 7^th Day Adventists, but I may be wrong.  

Taking up where my grandparents never left off, my mother decided the demonization of her church would simple, inter-denominational. This allowed her to know no greater authority than herself.  Although she would refer to her parents as the senior pastors in her church, they never knew the true facts on how the actual meetings went.  When they visited from Oregon the church services had been so rehearsed it was almost ridiculous.  To see so many people sober up so fast makes me know that they, being the congregation was aware and lucid of the fact the church was not normal.  When my grandparents or strangers were not present in the church on O’Farrell and Divisadero, the sermons that my mother would give lasted six to seven hours long.  Just like Jim Jones did (I met him once), they sounded a lot like that guy on cable t.v. that pays for his spots and just sits and talks forever about nothing. I am sure you all must know who I am talking about, he has been on t.v. for as long as I can remember.  I used to think he must have been related to my mother, only difference was he is to lazy to stand and give his 1000 minute message.  My mother would stand for hours, jumping around and preaching, about what I have no idea.  I could not tell you anything, it was all not in any way understandable to anyone.  Unless you were well versed in what was not being said, if that was the case then you would know that every message was and had only on intent, to brainwash the listener into giving everything he or she owned.  Oh yea, I know more about sexual orgasms than I know any story in the bible.  In fact I cannot even tell you the books of the bible, I know very little about anything biblical. Other than stories about Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Adam and Eve and what I know is, don’t be a kid to people like Abraham and Sarah because they will kill you so that god knows they listen, or something like that, needless to say death was made very real to me with that story, my mother made sure of it because I am meant to be the sacrificial lamb.  Told to me every Easter of every year I can remember. The Adam and Eve taught me all about sex and an apple, to explain how when women eat a red apple they are thinking about making a man think about their vagina.  I never did get that story quite right.  But I am sure you get the point.

 It was odd when my Grandparents visited because the sermons were actually something I could follow.  Oh course we are all going to die when the heavens rain down fire and brimstone on our heads and we translate back to Heaven.  Basically you will die and that is that.  But what really bugged when my grandparents visited was the entire congregation, a whopping 16 people in a place that could hold 175, was that my mother insisted they call them Papa and Nana.  I would fume over this, I used to get so angry, I still am pissed-off that it happened.  It’s bad enough growing up with people that demand your mother’s attention as if she is their mother, let alone, now they steal your grandparents too. 

Nobody ever thinks about the children of a cult leader, you go unnoticed, until there is a cry to arms by the leader to bring drama, excitement and pure unadulterated sin to the table.   This is when you have the attention that you never wanted.  You become the whipping child, and sure enough those new members whipped away on my brother and me.  One particular painful moment happened when my brother tried to get up and leave the dining room table.  My mother screamed, “Hold him down, and do not let him out.”  Several of the parishioners’, conveniently on hand for dinner, not really they were standing like armed guards, jumped to her call and pinned him in his chair.  I was across the table from my brother.  Then my mother said, “Light a fire under his bottom.”  My step-father leaps to the occasion with matches already in hand.  He strikes the match and the flame burns hot, as he puts between the ladders on the ladder back chair he was sitting in.  I had made it to that side of the table by then and blew it out.  He shoved me out of the way so hard I was thrown into the wall.  My step-father strikes another match and I made back up again to blow it out.  By this time the order comes flying through the air, “grab her, stop her, light that fire or he will never learn to be obedient at this table.”  A big man grabbed my arms from the back and held me off the ground. As the next match struck the back of the match case for the third time a match came to life with the flame burning bright.  I watched in horror, struggling, screaming, yelling, kicking, spitting, and trying desperately to get back over to my brother so that his pants would not catch on fire.  They did.  That was that, I failed, they won, again.  I can’t remember what happened after that, I just know he was on fire.  We have never discussed these things, he and I, why bother, we were in Hell and still are living the existence we never asked to live from anyone.  We were not recruits, we did not join, we were not manipulated into some stupid mind-set, and we were just the slave children of a Sociopath mother and a sadomasochistic step-father from England. All we did was survive that which is meant to be not survivable, so the professionals say.

The next time that my brother tried to leave the house was the last time I remember living under the same roof as him.  He made a mad dash for the back door; they had him between two sets of men, in the kitchen at 815 Balboa Street in San Francisco, California where police do nothing for the ones that are truly in trouble.  On the stove there was a pot of boiling water.  As he lunged for the door, my mother grabbed the pot and through it at him.  All the parishioners at the time, again conveniently located at the house, were standing conveniently out of the way of the now pot of boiling water that is being thrown at my brother.  I had been eating at the kitchen table on the very far side of it, near the back wall of the kitchen.  Generally speaking this was a safer place to be. I was always faced to the room which prevented somebody walking up behind you and doing something you cannot see coming.  As my brother was being corralled, I was trying to act relatively normally so I  would not be caught up in the tangle of men.  I sat calmly to try to figure out who was now the next target of entertainment for my mother. Picking the victim to excite her parishioners with that day, was always a big decision I guess.  We were known as the defiant ones, my brother and I.  We were not cooperative with our new step-father and our new found family members in this new found cult of my mothers.  I felt like it was a prelude to how she was going to introduce the same type of behavior that those people would eventually practice on their children and or spouses.  It proved to be correct.  Regardless, for now it was my brother and I firing up the emotions of this cult that she was bringing together.  Did you know that this is how they do it?  You must have the supply or merchandise, ready to die, in order to plant the seed and have something over a stranger.  We were the seed, that became the plant and nobody cared if we lived or died because we refused to pray to God. That was our collective sin.  As I saw once again my brother being attacked I crawled down under the table to get out of the way. The now flying chairs and the table that was being shoved across the room and up against what stopped it, the wall where I had just been sitting. 

I looked up from the underneath of the table that I have now in the next room.  I tried to see the next fist coming or set of hands getting ready to grab me, jerking me out into the open.  I remember seeing my brothers eyes and watching as he shook his head vigorously at me.   He was afraid I was coming out to fight his battle for him again.  This time instead of moving I stayed still not realizing that all the adults in the room did not even know that I was present.  The boiling water reached him, soaking his shirt and pants instantly.  As soon as it did, the scurrying slowed as they seem to watch the reaction of such a horrid act.  My mother whom I could see in plain sight had a look of delight on her face, I’ll never forget it.  She was wearing a silky, long night gown, one that I could l use a match to light on fire and she would go up in flames.  As my brother screamed and I stared, the moment stopped time for me.  It is as if my brother new my thoughts about my mother, screaming, “don’t come out, don’t do it, stay down, stay safe, don’t fight.”  He kept moving towards the back door, it was slow motion in strange time. Everyone had moved out of the way so that the boiling water did get them.  This left an aisle straight out to the back yard.  As he kept on, he looked at me one more time to see if I was looking at Mom or him.  Out the door he went, so quick, crashing down the back stairs, you could hear him pounding the wall for balance.  On his tail were all the men in the kitchen and dining room.  I thought to myself, “go, run, don’t come back, never come back, I’ll remember, I’ll never forget, I will get them back, I will survive with the memories intact.”  It was the last time I remember seeing my brother at all normally.  He never returned to the house.  I have seen him off and on through the years but he was never the same.  Distant, broken, sad and just plain different, he never has looked at me the same.  Almost like his mind cracked that day, split in two.   Surviving was too much for him, yet he still is doing it, he lives on  the streets of San Francisco. Now this is becoming to much for me. Forty-years later, I am tired and worn out with no place to go for safety, for peace, for happiness or for a roof over my head, but until now I have followed my brothers last request of me.

You see when it is your mother and her partner, the sadomasochistic freak that perverts your life into madness, you have not reprieve, no home, so safety in case of danger from life’s afflictions.  My parents are currently millionaires, living in the Sea Cliff area of San Francisco.  The house was purchased after the building for the church was purchased.  The house they currently now own, with only them on title, was originally bought as a place where the ministers live while preaching at the church.  I forget what it’s called, but it is a common thing that happens to pastors or preachers.  You don’t make that much money doing this type of service, so you often are furnished with a home to reside in as you are the leaders of the church. 

The man that bought the church building at O’Farrell and Divisadero in San Francisco, California, committed suicide in the early nineties.  He had bought the building using funds from his family trust.  There was a home in the Sea Cliff area that was purchased for my mother.  Four people went in on this property. They also moved in with us to our new home.  What a nightmare that became in my life.  I did get my own room. I was better off than my older two siblings.  They were pushed out of this home that was nearly 10,000 square feet, supposedly there was no room.   This all took place in the early to mid- seventies. Over the years I watched as each person that had invested their personal trusts in the purchase of properties (there were a few more) was edged out and then removed from the titles of the property.  One at time, quietly, behind the backs of the other.  By the time it was your turn to be taken off the title  you realized that it was my mother and step-father only against you.  They used all that you did over the years to blackmail you into signing the property over to them.  So now on the title of this very large home is my mother and step-father, it looks as normal as normal could be these days.  No history, no evidence of anything, anymore, there is only one original investor left and she is living at my grandparents’ home in Roseburg, Oregon. They sold the building some years back, oh wait, that was exact to the time they came after me again, five years to date I think.  My mother listed herself as president and my step-father listed himself as secretary. They turned right around and bought a duplex directly down the street from their home in the avenues.  They purchased it with the money from the non-profit church that the building had supposedly housed for the past thirty-five years or so.  They bought this new property with my younger half-sister and half-brother, and themselves listed as the purchasers.  At this point I had had enough.  My brother who had been through telling times such as I, lives on the street and has for a very long time.  Never had a home since that day, I know for fact.  So in my disgust that the two golden children of my stepfather were being bought a million dollar home so they could each have a private flat, busted me open. 

All they had to do was get a tri-plex and maybe I would have kept my mouth shut. But the blatant fuck-you was just too much after all the horrors that we both survived.  Before this happened I never intended to write at all.

 Well it went too far, to have my step-fathers children gain from the people that had practiced on us before turning on their own families was over the top.  Greed pushed the envelope and now they had to be very quick with me to shut me up in case I remembered anything of the past. So all they were doing is tying up all the loose ends, and I am the biggest loose end they had left.   I had a good job, owned my own house and car, had great kids in spite of two nasty divorces, I had really moved on in life.  You see they did not know if I remembered anything as a child and they had to know since one of the biggest wills was about to hit and they had just sold the building bought by Jim Mosley, the one who jumped off the bridge.  Oh yea, about Jim, two weeks before he jumped off the bridge my mother told him, “your family would be better if you were dead.”   I guess it put him over the edge, because he jumped and died.  My brother and I confronted our mother saying pretty much the same thing.  Why didn't you just take a gun and shoot him in the head. We both told her she was guilty of murder.  Just because nobody can prove it doesn’t mean we don't know it to be true. I told you live or die, they do not care, and they just do not want to get caught for all the terrors and horrific acts of terror that they have committed together.  Let alone all the money they have conned out of people.

So now...............here I am, finally broke enough to file for Disability and with no way to support myself for the time it takes to be approved. You are meant to be able to have someone to stay with during the three to four month period of time it takes for the approval process.  That is what they suggested to me. Well, I do not.  I won’t break my will and get down on my knees and pray to my mother, step-father, half-sister and half-brother, so they said I deserve to be on the street with my brother.  Since I will not abide by their demand they are celebrating the fact I will be homeless soon............"We know you're a Sinner and possessed with the DEMON of SILENCE!! Karen.....!!"

my entire family screaming this at once.........

I shook my head and said to myself, here we go again, I guess it is the begin.