Bonnie Johnson-roehl:  

Today, I am retelling my story. I tend to be wordy and more forgetful since my car accident in 1977 and three strokes I had this past summer. I can be easily distracted at times. However, my story I remember like an old elephant. A few years ago I thought I had all of the answere but life tells me different. There is only one person who has all of the answeres and that is God to me. I lived modestly as a young girl not really realizing that we did not have what our friends had. By this I mean parents who loved each othe and their kids. My mother was a child abuser both physically , emotionally and psycologically. In fact, we lived in a war zone. My other three sisters. I was beaten by my mother's hand, any object she could find and my high heal which leaft a whole in my leg. Dad could only pace back and forth telling my mother she was being to harsh on me. It was in dad's best interest to not interveen when mother was being crazy because she would turn on him faster than I have ever seen. Dad was a baker by trade so he slept during the days while my selfish mother would yell and scream at him to wake up. Eventually he did when he had a solid coffee mug broken over his head or glass broken over his head. My mother would start all of their fights by her nasty words. She liked the money he brought into the home but did not like that he had to sleep before he went to work. I do not know how my dad lived through our childhood. He was always in bed sleeping or awaken by how my mother's day went. On her good days, Dad could sleep in, on her bad days, he could either have a cup broken over his head or wake up to swearing. I learned the F word from mother, imagine that. I had my own special role in life and that was to keep my mother happy. Now, that was utterly impossible because Dad expected me to intercept mom's moods. Mother was either happy as a bird or want to kill you if she saw you. He expected a child to take mom on, Wow, he expected to much of me. I was the adult in my family. My role was to make mom happy as I have just mentioned. I had to babysit my two younger sisters at age twelve. Feed them and put them ot bed. My sister Claudia was two years younger than I but she had some learning issues and mild retardation, my sister Pam was seven years younger than I so babysitting her was a breezee. Claudia was the one person who I did not like or want to be around. Not because of something she did, it was a rebellion that I did not want to be a babysitter to her. I made enough noise that my mother believed I hated her. Mother did not force me to take care of her. Claudia went somewhere else or my cousin would watch us. When I was almost sixteen, my mother had her last child, another sister, I know my dad was expecting a boy but when he found out he had anitger daughter, he took it on the chin while mother decided four kids were more than she could handle. Birth Control was a lack of sex the kind that lasts forever. Dad told us girls she kept him out of her bedroom after she had Cherri. Now, to the baby, for the next eight months, she kept yelling, screaming and swearing about how dad got her pregnant. I would never dare to say if she did not have a few drinks on New Years Eve, there woul never have been another sister. Oh, Cherri was suppose to be born in Sept like I was and Claudia. So figureing back nine months told us that their annaversity on New Years Eve was the night that Dad got lucky. Since Pam was in April, I have not figured out how she was able to be concieved. Maybe the mailman came that day, oh hum.......... Anyway Cherri was born Aug 21, 1964. Since Cherri was a premie at birth, she spent two weeks in the hospital or until she was five pounds. When she came home, mother was so protective, we were not suppose to look at the baby or hold her. My Aunt Georgis came over to see the baby and it was Aunt Georgis who told mother I was old enough to heod, feed and bathe the baby. So that was my job until I moved out of the house at eighteen to marry my childhood sweetheart Cal who was also eithteen. Back to my baby sister, I took care of her from the minute I got up in the mornig then again when I came home from school. I bathed her, fed and bottled her everyday until she met certain plateau's in life, for example, potty training. I got out of school to take my baby sister to the doctor for herphysicals and baby shots. Everybody thought Cherri was my child and I never disputed that. She was adorable, cuddlie and sweet. I tried to take the roughness out of my mother towards Cherri by giving Cherri to my mother when Cherri was smiling and generally happy. Cal and I pretended Cherri was our child which we told her a hundred times a day. I wanted to take my sister with me aftr Cal and I graduated from school but that did not fly. Cherri still thining she belonged to Cal and I, wondered why we did not take her home with us especially when our own daughter was born almost four years later. We kept telling her she belonged to us but never did I believe she really thought she was our daughter. Cherri told us when she was ten years old that she went to our mother demanding to see her birth certifacate. Then she came to Cal and I indicating that her birth record ifored Cherri that she was my parents child. Itold her that in those kinds of adoptions, that the real parents did nt have her birth certificates anybore because the adoptive parents had a new one with their names on them. My poor sister. She and my daughter tami do look alike as well as my youngest son Shane, they also look alike. I still tell her I am her natural mother. I wonder what she will do when our mother passess away. I love her like my own daughter, Tami and Shane as well as Cherri do look alike but I spent so much time thinking that Cherri was mine that it si so unreal to think of her as anybody else. Cherri asked me once when she was yeal young why she had t go home with strangers, my parents. Cherri did get spoiled by my parents as well as her children. That never bothered me. My other sistrs would talk to me about how spoiled and disrespectful she was towards our parents. This was Cherri survived living with a psycho mom and dad, Us women had family's of our own and she was left with our prents and without protection. Cherri and I had many discussions about this issues and I tld her to come home instead of staying there. Cherri had graduated from High School and on a good path towards independence. She stayed with Mom and Dad until she got Married which I do not remember anymoe. She was beartiful in her wedding dress and Dave, her husband looked so handsom. It was to bad when they got divorced, the had three great kids and I wonder what would have happened if they tried couples counseling. With that in mine, Cherri met antoher man who became her seconc husband of many years. Charlie has brain cancer that at preent is in remission. His brain injury became noticeable in his behaviors and spreading thints out about my sister that were not true. I once confronted him about the issues I heard about a pendng divorce to whch he quickly denied. Charlie put cherri through hell, they had a son togeather which Ben is being very protective about his mother. Ben has been put in a position he shold not be in ...Expand for more