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My Father’s Keeper
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My Father’s Keeper
Julie Gregory
A powerful and compelling memoir of growing up with a schizophrenic father, who hid his mental illness behind a charismatic larger-than-life, gluttonous personality and found logical explanations for the most bizarre ways of thinking. From the international No.1 bestselling author of Sickened.As a child Julie was close to her father. More friend than parent, he would belt her into their tiny car and they'd punch through yellow lights, scarf down candy bars before supper and had their own way of making fun of Julie's mother in a secret language of eye-rolling. She adored her father for his exuberance, and pitied him when he broke down in suicidal desperation. But as she neared 10, a darker side emerged: her father could switch instantly from squeaking out a tear as they harmonized to "Hey Jude" in the car, to pulling his loaded pistol on the black man that asked for change in the McDonald's drive-thru as they waited.The isolation that came with the family's move to the country saw the wacky, unorthodox elements of her father's denied mental illness take a back seat to paranoid fear. Her father would tell her any boy who befriended her was just pretend-acting until he could rape her, and Julie came to fear all boys and men. He fell ever deeper into paranoid delusions that his daughter was sexually active, prostituting herself, sneaking out at night to sleep with black men.When Julie was 14 her father attempted suicide and was placed in a locked psychiatric ward. Julie was made to testify against her father, and when he was released he became convinced she had turned on him. Julie became the target of his ever more paranoid delusions.Julie left home before 18 but her father's schizophrenic behaviour bled over into her own life: if she couldn't find the hairdryer, she would check for signs of entry. When it later turned up, she would wonder how the thief broke back in to return it.Confused, lost and damaged from years spent as the only confidante of her paranoid schizophrenic father, but determined to survive, Julie was finally able to come to terms with her father. She was her father's keeper, and always would be.
My Father’s Keeper
Julie Gregory
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#uca193dfb-5334-5ae9-8074-bebf48cc2cbe)
Title Page (#ub7e40160-cba3-5d0c-b580-6a98e15ff152)
The Children of Happiness (#ub082cd08-2de4-55ee-ba19-9cc5d9c7df2e)
Chapter One (#u5536c8bd-784c-5312-85c0-5ca29a638d81)
Chapter Two (#u3636f629-16ec-52ca-806d-87f4b15ec168)
Chapter Three (#u60d69d9b-8452-5c6a-a23c-3729aa3ec6d5)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
The Children of Happiness (#ulink_e8ce0614-72d3-5e8a-9af6-706ade7f8793)
They are to be cherished and protected,
Even at the risk of your life.
They know sadness but will overcome it.
They know alienation
For they see past and through this reality.
They will Endure where others cannot. They will Survive where others cannot. They know love even when it is not shown to them. They spend their lives trying to communicate the love they know.
Chapter One (#ulink_6e230bc6-0e08-5ea8-b840-47864956c677)
I was born on the day of Liberace, May 16th to be exact, The Day of Outrageous Flair. In the Big Blue Birthday book, Outrageous Flair is appropriately illustrated by a snapshot of Liberace himself soaking in a marbled bath as bottomless as deep dish apple pie, the round of the tub one white solid bubble. The showman and pianist was in his golden age, as plump and gaudy as Elvis in those final days of Vegas. Marinating in bubbles, his stout fingers spread by thick, jewelled rings, he flashes that champagne smile, beaming squarely at the camera from between two gilded swan neck faucets.
At the time that picture was snapped, I was a stick figure tweeny living in a trailer out in southern Ohio, on the back woods edge of a dead end country road that held as many secrets as it lacked street lights. My tub was shallow and rectangular and moulded of the same gold plastic as the trailer’s doorknobs. The bentnecked swans my mother had gold leafed were also plastic and hung slightly ajar on the bathroom’s wood panelling. The constant burning of bacon in the kitchen had infused our trailer’s hermetically sealed air with a sort of permanent tack that coated the curved backs of the swans and caught whatever floated through the bathroom, making a sort of three-dimensional dust. It gave the swans a hairy appearance—not unlike the very chest of Liberace himself.
My father’s baby blue polyester suit hung in the closet and his white Vegas-style loafers lounged beneath, their tight backs ready to snap around his heels and rub blisters. I can still see him wince as he hobbled along after only an hour in them. My mother’s cubic zirconia rings sat in an Avon dish on the back of the toilet, next to the Stick Up.
There was no cameraman and certainly no smiling.
As a young girl, I was taller than I was wide. Long, cool and lanky, I took my strides with the measured gait of an Arabian filly. It wasn’t something I tried for, it just happened. And when I walked the halls as a new Jr. High student, the senior boys called me highwater for the long legs that seemed destined to greatness. I should have been a ballerina, or a model, or at least a prima donna. But sometimes the stork drops you in the wrong place.
Because for all the feel and longing inside me to be a noble child of royal descent, even of the Liberace kind, there was no way around the blaring, honking reality of my daily life: I was shackled to a family of losers.
There was my dad with his Mork from Ork suspenders worn long after it was cool and his battery-operated bull horn that he snuck into football games. And Mom with her outdated fringed western gear making me couple skate with her to Peaches and Herb’s “Reunited” at the Make-A-Date Roller Skating Rink in Amanda, Ohio.
Thank God it was the next town over.
And I guess it wouldn’t have been so bad if my dad wasn’t ooga-ing his horn every time a junior in tight Jordache jeans walked in front of the bleachers. And the girls, with their sixth sense, would slow in their tracks for instinctual preening, pulling Goody combs from back pockets to feather long layers back along the sides of their heads, all the while tilting gently parted mouths in just such a way as to showcase their teeth. Then they’d dart glances up into the bleachers trying to catch the eye of their suitor.
I could have died.
And so could they when they spotted my dad; large, hairy, menacing, looking a cross between Jerry Garcia and Charles Manson in rainbow suspenders, wiggling his fat fingers, “Yoooo-hoooo,” at them like he would to a baby. They bolted and my dad would raise his megaphone and blitz the button for the Dukes of Hazzard’s car horn, blaring the confederate tune into the crisp fall night, adding his own “Charge!” at the end and springing to his feet. I wedged my body down into the foot bleachers and unfolded my turtleneck in triplicate up over my nose, hoping this alone would shield my identity.
And when I wasn’t saddled with him on game Fridays, I was stuck with Mom on the Saturdays, dragging me out under the swooning lights of the rink just so she wouldn’t have to couple skate alone. She was upping her chances to catch a wink from the married owner by getting out on the floor when it was least populated.
I held her sweaty hand and we coasted with locked knees around pitted wooden corners, while dancing polka dot lights spun me dizzy on the dark floor.
Reunited And It Feeels So Goood.
Trust me. No kid wants their 40-year-old mother asking them if her butt looks okay in the skating rink bathroom.
I was desperate. Desperate to get out of the hollow where I lived with the big trucks with gun racks in the back and bumper stickers that read “Boobs, Booze, and Country Music”, where at least one hand-lettered yard sign on the way to town scolded with a twang:
This is God’s CountryDon’ drive through it like Hell
Julie Gregory
A powerful and compelling memoir of growing up with a schizophrenic father, who hid his mental illness behind a charismatic larger-than-life, gluttonous personality and found logical explanations for the most bizarre ways of thinking. From the international No.1 bestselling author of Sickened.As a child Julie was close to her father. More friend than parent, he would belt her into their tiny car and they'd punch through yellow lights, scarf down candy bars before supper and had their own way of making fun of Julie's mother in a secret language of eye-rolling. She adored her father for his exuberance, and pitied him when he broke down in suicidal desperation. But as she neared 10, a darker side emerged: her father could switch instantly from squeaking out a tear as they harmonized to "Hey Jude" in the car, to pulling his loaded pistol on the black man that asked for change in the McDonald's drive-thru as they waited.The isolation that came with the family's move to the country saw the wacky, unorthodox elements of her father's denied mental illness take a back seat to paranoid fear. Her father would tell her any boy who befriended her was just pretend-acting until he could rape her, and Julie came to fear all boys and men. He fell ever deeper into paranoid delusions that his daughter was sexually active, prostituting herself, sneaking out at night to sleep with black men.When Julie was 14 her father attempted suicide and was placed in a locked psychiatric ward. Julie was made to testify against her father, and when he was released he became convinced she had turned on him. Julie became the target of his ever more paranoid delusions.Julie left home before 18 but her father's schizophrenic behaviour bled over into her own life: if she couldn't find the hairdryer, she would check for signs of entry. When it later turned up, she would wonder how the thief broke back in to return it.Confused, lost and damaged from years spent as the only confidante of her paranoid schizophrenic father, but determined to survive, Julie was finally able to come to terms with her father. She was her father's keeper, and always would be.
My Father’s Keeper
Julie Gregory
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#uca193dfb-5334-5ae9-8074-bebf48cc2cbe)
Title Page (#ub7e40160-cba3-5d0c-b580-6a98e15ff152)
The Children of Happiness (#ub082cd08-2de4-55ee-ba19-9cc5d9c7df2e)
Chapter One (#u5536c8bd-784c-5312-85c0-5ca29a638d81)
Chapter Two (#u3636f629-16ec-52ca-806d-87f4b15ec168)
Chapter Three (#u60d69d9b-8452-5c6a-a23c-3729aa3ec6d5)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
The Children of Happiness (#ulink_e8ce0614-72d3-5e8a-9af6-706ade7f8793)
They are to be cherished and protected,
Even at the risk of your life.
They know sadness but will overcome it.
They know alienation
For they see past and through this reality.
They will Endure where others cannot. They will Survive where others cannot. They know love even when it is not shown to them. They spend their lives trying to communicate the love they know.
Chapter One (#ulink_6e230bc6-0e08-5ea8-b840-47864956c677)
I was born on the day of Liberace, May 16th to be exact, The Day of Outrageous Flair. In the Big Blue Birthday book, Outrageous Flair is appropriately illustrated by a snapshot of Liberace himself soaking in a marbled bath as bottomless as deep dish apple pie, the round of the tub one white solid bubble. The showman and pianist was in his golden age, as plump and gaudy as Elvis in those final days of Vegas. Marinating in bubbles, his stout fingers spread by thick, jewelled rings, he flashes that champagne smile, beaming squarely at the camera from between two gilded swan neck faucets.
At the time that picture was snapped, I was a stick figure tweeny living in a trailer out in southern Ohio, on the back woods edge of a dead end country road that held as many secrets as it lacked street lights. My tub was shallow and rectangular and moulded of the same gold plastic as the trailer’s doorknobs. The bentnecked swans my mother had gold leafed were also plastic and hung slightly ajar on the bathroom’s wood panelling. The constant burning of bacon in the kitchen had infused our trailer’s hermetically sealed air with a sort of permanent tack that coated the curved backs of the swans and caught whatever floated through the bathroom, making a sort of three-dimensional dust. It gave the swans a hairy appearance—not unlike the very chest of Liberace himself.
My father’s baby blue polyester suit hung in the closet and his white Vegas-style loafers lounged beneath, their tight backs ready to snap around his heels and rub blisters. I can still see him wince as he hobbled along after only an hour in them. My mother’s cubic zirconia rings sat in an Avon dish on the back of the toilet, next to the Stick Up.
There was no cameraman and certainly no smiling.
As a young girl, I was taller than I was wide. Long, cool and lanky, I took my strides with the measured gait of an Arabian filly. It wasn’t something I tried for, it just happened. And when I walked the halls as a new Jr. High student, the senior boys called me highwater for the long legs that seemed destined to greatness. I should have been a ballerina, or a model, or at least a prima donna. But sometimes the stork drops you in the wrong place.
Because for all the feel and longing inside me to be a noble child of royal descent, even of the Liberace kind, there was no way around the blaring, honking reality of my daily life: I was shackled to a family of losers.
There was my dad with his Mork from Ork suspenders worn long after it was cool and his battery-operated bull horn that he snuck into football games. And Mom with her outdated fringed western gear making me couple skate with her to Peaches and Herb’s “Reunited” at the Make-A-Date Roller Skating Rink in Amanda, Ohio.
Thank God it was the next town over.
And I guess it wouldn’t have been so bad if my dad wasn’t ooga-ing his horn every time a junior in tight Jordache jeans walked in front of the bleachers. And the girls, with their sixth sense, would slow in their tracks for instinctual preening, pulling Goody combs from back pockets to feather long layers back along the sides of their heads, all the while tilting gently parted mouths in just such a way as to showcase their teeth. Then they’d dart glances up into the bleachers trying to catch the eye of their suitor.
I could have died.
And so could they when they spotted my dad; large, hairy, menacing, looking a cross between Jerry Garcia and Charles Manson in rainbow suspenders, wiggling his fat fingers, “Yoooo-hoooo,” at them like he would to a baby. They bolted and my dad would raise his megaphone and blitz the button for the Dukes of Hazzard’s car horn, blaring the confederate tune into the crisp fall night, adding his own “Charge!” at the end and springing to his feet. I wedged my body down into the foot bleachers and unfolded my turtleneck in triplicate up over my nose, hoping this alone would shield my identity.
And when I wasn’t saddled with him on game Fridays, I was stuck with Mom on the Saturdays, dragging me out under the swooning lights of the rink just so she wouldn’t have to couple skate alone. She was upping her chances to catch a wink from the married owner by getting out on the floor when it was least populated.
I held her sweaty hand and we coasted with locked knees around pitted wooden corners, while dancing polka dot lights spun me dizzy on the dark floor.
Reunited And It Feeels So Goood.
Trust me. No kid wants their 40-year-old mother asking them if her butt looks okay in the skating rink bathroom.
I was desperate. Desperate to get out of the hollow where I lived with the big trucks with gun racks in the back and bumper stickers that read “Boobs, Booze, and Country Music”, where at least one hand-lettered yard sign on the way to town scolded with a twang:
This is God’s CountryDon’ drive through it like Hell
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