A Man Named Dave

the tea in China. You have no idea …” Mother wandered on.
    Little did Mother know, weeks before enlisting in the air force, the day I had my records sealed, my juvenile officer, Gordon Hutchenson, allowed me a few hours to read through my files, which were in two separate folders and over ten inches thick. I spent the entire day reviewing reams of county paperwork, various forms, and even scribbled legal sheets. One report claimed that after I was removed, a social worker had made several attempts to visit Mother, to the point of pleading just to have Mother open the door. All efforts by the county were met with Mother’s numerous excuses until she escalated to threats. Once, she slammed the door in the face of a social worker before laughing from the other side. Back then, as a teenager with the report in my hand, I could not believe her gall, how she seemingly got away with everything. I turned to Mr Hutchenson, asking how Mother could get off scot-free when the county should step in, rescue my brothers, and either have Mother arrested or be given some sort of psychiatric help. I wasn’t out for blood, but I felt that if everyone within social services had told me how outrageous my situation was before I was placed into foster care, my brothers wouldn’t have to live through the same hell.
    Gordon had told me, “I agree with you, David, but back then in 1973 things were very different; your mother was never brought up on a single charge. We couldn’t get her on assault, willful harm against a minor, failure to provide, or, in my estimation, attempted murder. Understand, there weren’t a great deal of PCs to protect kids back then in ’73. Even now, as we enter the 1980s, there are a majority of folks who are in total denial or believe parents are doing nothing more than ‘disciplining’ their children. Believe me, this whole thing’s gonna blow up in our faces – these kids are gonna grow up, go on a rampage, wreak havoc on everything and everyone, contaminate themselves with every substance known to man, whack their kids as they were; then at the end of the day, when they face the judge, these people will either blame their deeds on society or plead that they were abused as kids, which of course made them the way they were. That’s when there’ll be an outcry from society to change the laws to protect children like you. Mark my words, it’s gonna happen. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a ways to go.”
    “What are PCs?” I inquired.
    “Penal codes. That’s why we couldn’t remove your brothers or even slap your mother on the wrist with a warning. So in essence, as you say, she got off scot-free. On the flip side, because of cases like yours, there are now laws on reporting abuse, intervention, the works. A lot has happened in the last six years since you’ve been ‘placed.’ Nowadays your mother would be hooked, booked, cuffed, and stuffed, if you get my meaning,” Gordon had stressed.
    Digging further through the file, reading a rare interview Mother had given before my court hearing, I came across an official form stating one of the reasons she “may have” been distraught was she suspected her husband was having an affair with a woman who was one of Mother’s closest friends. Her defense also included how difficult it was for her to keep up with the housework while being left alone to raise four boys –the report corrected that it was five – while she worried sick when her husband was either at work or “God knows where”, whenever Father disappeared for days at a time drinking with buddies from work. Being alone with no one to console her might have, Mother claimed in the report, made her tip the bottle and fly off the handle a little more than she normally would.
    As I rubbed the dried sweat from my forehead, I still could not fathom even now as an adult, over eight years after reading the documents, that my father had had an affair. As a mature person, I fully understood that anyone was capable of anything. So, as Mother continued to play the role as the helpless victim in her never ending life tragedy, I felt the affair accusation was another sinister excuse she had strung out for so many years.
    “You still have no idea of what I’ve been put through,” Mother repeated, but this time with reddened eyes. “You think you had it bad? Well,” she huffed, “back in my day, my mother, that person you’re staying with, well … when I was a girl, she’d … she’d lock me in a closet for hours at a