Chess

“Stay in the truck,” says my dad. Thick, black and grey smoke made my dad’s six-foot-three-inch stature look small. I sat there like he told me to. I stayed in the truck. Racing thoughts immediately took hold of my brain. Where is my dad? I should get out of the truck, but he said stay in the truck, but after all morning of being told, “Tina, get out of the truck.”

That day, I had my doll with me. She wasn’t just any doll, she was my best friend. Standing nearly as tall as me. I often held conversations with her. I say “her” because out of all the tarnished memories I have, I cannot remember that damn doll’s name! I had no brothers and no sisters, just “her.”

For what seemed like a million years to me at five years old, finally, my dad opened the driver’s side door of the truck, casually slipped into his seat, and began to cry. The ride to my grandma’s was quiet. No music. No jokes. Not even a whisper.

We pulled into my grandparents’ driveway. As I awaited my dad’s instruction, I couldn’t help but notice his clothes were black and grey, like the smoke from the place we just left. My dad’s skin was that color, too. “Get out of the truck, Tina.” I did as I was told. I always did what I was told by my dad. But normally at this point, I would have been told to go play as the adults talked. But not this day. I didn’t speak. I only listened. My dad wasn’t crying because he was sad. He was crying because he was overwhelmed by his emotions. My dad had saved an entire family that day from a house fire! I smiled so big. I always knew my dad was a superhero! Now, everyone knew!

And just as abrupt as it was that day when he became a hero, my hero, he just as quickly became an unidentified monster. A monster with no name. Maybe Ray, sometimes, only sometimes. At the same time of discovering my dad was a superhero, I also discovered that my dad, Ray, was a monster.

He wasn’t like the monsters I had seen on TV. Not like King Kong. Not like a vampire. But a shell of where my dad used to live.

Ray had an genius IQ mind. He could speed read, too. They actually taught speed reading at his grade school. Once, he read the entire autobiography of Jimi Hendrix in two hours. And he could comprehend it as well. Everything my dad did he did it to the best of his ability. And when that wouldn’t be good enough, he would take all of his frustration out on my mom.

My mom and dad were only fifteen when they had me. My dad wished I had never been born. Even so, he wished that at least I would’ve been a boy.

My dad beat my mom everyday after the first time he beat her. He beat my mom for twelve long years. He once broke her jaw with one hit! She had to have her mouth wired shut for six months.

At our home, on a normal day, the contents of our refrigerator were as follows: tea (unsweetened), a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper, a jar of mustard, and a giant bottle of 357 magnum diet pills. My mom needed to stay thin for him, Ray.

Expectedly, at twelve years old, my parents divorced. They both used me as a weapon against one another. My dad would take me on dates with him and some young, beautiful girl. Through my child brain and mouth, that’s how she would find out. CHECK! My Mom retaliated by cutting off all of my hair. CHECKMATE! I don’t know who was more traumatized by that, me or my dad.

After a long custody battle, my dad was awarded custody of me, only to return me to my mom after two weeks. But this wasn’t my mom! This woman was smiling. Her smile could light up the room. Her head was held up instead of the usual looking down to the ground as if she couldn’t see. Her clothes were no longer hiding her shape. She had make-up on. She was cool. My mom had made big changes in her life since divorcing my dad. She was free to be whoever she wanted to be. She was beautiful!

Shortly after, she met my stepdad and he moved us to Florida. He said it was because of better job opportunities for himself. He wanted to show my mom a different life. And he wanted to save me from the impoverished world I was drowning in.

But then, the day came when he too hit my mom. I wanted no part of it. My mother had already decided twelve years of my life. I certainly wasn’t going to watch this strange man do it to her, not even once. Immediately, I moved back to Oklahoma, leaving my mother behind.

My most impulsive, worst decision was made that day to move in with my dad, Ray. Since mom and dad’s divorce, my dad lived at his parents, my grandparents, and with his younger brother Steve.

For the next year, me and my uncle watched the monster come out of Ray, daily. And when he came out, whoever got in his way was destroyed. Ray mostly targeted his mom. The monster that lived inside of Ray was schizophrenia.

Having a hard time distinguishing between fear and respect for my dad, I always stood by his side. I was always by his side. Never did I believe any of his rhetoric, but if I watched and played along, hoping this monster would go away.

My dad started to become “cool.” He would take me with him on his dates with young women and allow me to bring a friend along too. One time, he even allowed me to bring a boy with us.

Everyday, at the end of the day, it would be the same conversation with my dad. Everyone was out to get him except for me, I was on his side. I know the day it all went wrong. He was taking Xanax heavily at the time. He allowed me to skip school. A lot. In fact, so much that he once had me alter my report card to show my grandparents and my mom in Florida that I was making straight A’s. Eventually, through the Xanax lens, my dad kept me home everyday, and he no longer called me Tina. My dad called me Lorie. That was my mother’s name.

At the time, I didn’t even know what the word grooming was. But if I had to define it, I would tell you I was groomed by my own father at the age of twelve.

It got way worse before it got really bad! At nineteen-years-old, I received a call from my stepdad, saying I needed to get to his house asap. The whole ride there, I anticipated what this urgency was. Was someone hurt? I walked in through the front door and he just said it. “Tina, your Grandpa Bisbee has just shot your dad twice in the head and they do not expect him to live.” Wait! What? The monster is dead? Wait! Am I supposed to be upset, cry, show sadness? I didn’t do any of those things. I went into autopilot. My mom said, “Here’s the keys to my car, go now to your grandparents’ house and call me when you get there. “I drove for an hour and forty-five minutes. My grandpa was in the back of a police car. His head down. He was crying tears as big as November rain drops. His hair was disheveled. He had been such a meek man his entire life. And there he sat, in the back of a police car. I believe I was feeling sensory overload. I didn’t call my mom. I just pressed on into the house. Emergency teams were working on my dad. Doing CPR compressions, attempting to insert an IV in his arm. I could see his face, his eyes wide open. I could hear the muffled sounds through his oxygen mask. He was lying in the kitchen, reaching his arms, legs crawling in all directions. I could see the bullet entry holes in his forehead. He lived for six more hours. Yes, I stayed by the monster’s side, yearning to hear, “Tina, I was wrong to you, and I am sorry.” But that didn’t happen. That pretty much sums up my entire life up until that point. And those events set me on the path I’m on today.

I could finally breath. I didn’t have to be on his side. I had been my father’s dirty little secret for so long. For years after that, I still felt like his dirty little secret. But I had to forgive him. If I didn’t, I was going to be dead in the ground, next to him.

Many tragedies, many happy occasions, many celebrations have gone by since that cold day. I persevered. I survived my monster dad. Many had not survived the monster; my mom, my grandfather, my cousins, all of those young girls.

But I survived Ray. Surviving Ray was like being swallowed by a storm and then discovering I was the calm inside of it.

Tina Laney is a student at San Carlos Apache College.