Copyright 1993(c)
                    Question and Answer
                      by Rick Dawson

     "Daddy, what's that scar on your arm from?" It was a
simple question from a four-year-old boy that set off a long
chain of memories. The scar was what was left over after a man I
called "Daddy" a long time ago had finished punishing me for
some forgotten childhood crime. Time has faded a lot of things
for me; the pain of his words lingers only in my head these
days. The scar itself isn't much bigger now than a scratch you'd
get from a cat - a bit lighter in color and tougher than the
surrounding skin, and hair doesn't grow there. Touching it
absently, I remembered some of the names he called me that
night, and the hurt that erupted all over he beat me with his belt.
     His belt buckle caught my arm on one of the early
strokes, before I went away from the pain. I'd tried to protect
myself, but it was a mistake. Every time I tried to stop
the blows, they got harder. I remember him calling me a stupid
asshole, and crying from forever that once again I'd failed to
please him simply by being his firstborn son. I remembered my
mom ignoring the sounds from where she was in the kitchen at the
time, knowing she wouldn't get involved. That was probably why I
went away whenever I got hit, or choked, or screamed at - I must
have figured out that nobody was going to stop it, and she did
her share of hitting, choking and screaming too.
     It was the first time he'd ever drawn blood from beating me,
but he was so drunk he didn't notice it until the next day, after he'd
sobered up some. He even asked me how I got cut; I knew if I
told him that he'd cut me he'd make a joke out of it or pretend
he didn't do it, so I said I got scratched by the neighbor's
cat. Mom looked at me kind of funny when I said it, but before I
could see what else was there she ducked into the kitchen to fix
a cup of coffee. The skin on my arm was really sore and puffed
up where the metal had ripped it open, so I went into the
bathroom to get a Band-Aid to cover it up before I went to
school that morning. 
     Years passed like they always do, a day at a time. I
got tougher from the beatings, and learned to go away a lot
faster. When I was old enough for the service, I had them sign
the papers so I could go far away. I didn't talk about what had
happened to me with anyone because it wasn't okay to say that your
dad and mom took turns killing you a piece at a time. I drank a
lot of booze and smoked a lot of dope to cover the memories over
when they came up, and that was almost every day because people
do things to kids in full view of other people who were kids
once. Trips to the grocery store were like knowingly entering a
minefield, and even amusement parks weren't much better. I met a
girl who hadn't been through what I'd grown up with, we got
married, and I acted the same way around her that my father had
around me and my mother and the rest of the kids. Somewhere
along the line she was able to convince me I needed help, so we
stopped with the drinking and drugging.
     Getting sober wasn't too hard to do for me; I liked
what the drugs did for me, but I never really liked the person I
became when I was messed up. The steps I took to dry out and
change my life around brought up a lot of feelings that I wasn't
ready for though, and it took a long time before I could start
to talk about where they came from, what had happened to me and
who did it and all. She took it all pretty well, even if it was
painful to hear at times. She didn't overreact and try to put a
psychic Band-Aid over the wound once we started opening it up in
therapy, but we never really sat down and figured out what to
tell the kids about my history. They'll need to know it sometime
soon, but we just haven't told them much yet, so when this child
of mine, his face full of four year old curiosity about
everything in the world asked me again about the scar, I told
him the same thing I told my father long ago. It was an answer
that satisfied him, and he forgot all about it when I started
tickling him and playing with him on the living room floor.
     He'll be ready for the truth long before my father will be.
                                END