Youngest* did not sleep very easily or very well. Not long after his birth Mrs. Troll* told all of us we needed to be quiet while he slept because noise would wake him up and that would be bad for him. But I was too hungry and cold to contain the fury that burned inside me. Once when he was sleeping and I stood in the middle of the living room and screamed to bring the walls down. Among the beatings, starvation, molestation, poisonings, and freezing, I had had enough again. As I screamed at the top of my lungs, Mrs. Troll came running into the room, yelling at me that I was going to wake the baby with my noise. She grabbed my arms and shook me, yelling at me to calm down. Youngest did not wake up until she started shrieking and shaking me. (Who woke up the baby?) Then Youngest’s cries added to the general cacophony. She poisoned me and, during the ensuing panic, she sat with me, telling me everything I was doing was bad and that I had to stop.

Then next major incident (starving and beating me and telling me I was bad and unlovable were constants) occurred soon after when the molestation escalated again. In addition to the touches which I hated, Mr. Troll* started to put his finger into my vagina. I hated him even more. Then when I tried to hit/kick/push him away, he beat me, told me I was bad, and poisoned me. While panicking, Mrs. Troll actually pulled me onto her lap to “comfort me.” She was wearing a warm green sweater and, for the first time I felt warm. But she wasn’t comforting me, she was lying to me. She told me I needed to find (or make) a nice, safe place in my head, make-believe, where I wouldn’t feel the pain anymore. I mistook the warmth I was feeling for affection and caring because I was starving for attention as much as I was starving for food and I had never been warm. The general start to my insanity began here as I started to tell myself that I was bad and had to be good, that I was unlovable, that I could create a place in my head that was safe from all of the pain.

Over the summer, as my vocabulary increased, I talked to one of our neighbors about the pain I was in. Mr. Troll caught me and “explained” that I had a tendency to “exaggerate.” He had only “spanked” me for being bad. Once he had convinced the neighbor I was lying, he took me inside and beat me again, telling me I was going to make myself sick and scared by being bad and not being quiet. Then he poisoned me and I was sick and panicking.

That year was the first year I got presents for Christmas. Inside a box that came in the mail was a toy for me from a Grandmother I had not yet met: a brightly colored wood dolphin that came apart in sections and could be put back together. It quickly became my favorite toy followed only by the white teddy bear I received at a Christmas party. I don’t know who held the party but there was a Santa Claus who handed out present to all of the children who were there. Come to think of it, these are the only two toys I remember having at the time.

In January there were dog sled races on the frozen river. As a “family,” we went to watch them. When a stranger asked me how I was, I told him “I’m hurt.” When he asked why, I told him “When my daddy gets mad, I get hurt.” The stranger turned to Mr. Troll and asked him if what I said was true. Mr. Troll gave him the same bullsh*t story about how I was “exaggerating.” I had been bad and he had spanked me. That’s all. The stranger asked me if that was true and, since Mr. Troll always told me that the beatings were “discipline” for being bad, I felt I had no choice but to agree with him. Once back at his house, he beat and poisoned me every day for a week afterward, constantly repeating I needed to be quiet, I needed to be good. During this time, Mrs. Troll held me again, trying to ”comfort me” and told me I shouldn’t be saying anything about Mr. Troll. She told me “You shouldn’t be lying like that. You know better than to make him angry.” Two weeks later he started yelling about the incident again, beating and poisoning me for another week repeating again I needed to learn how to be quiet, how to be good. This time I was left alone in my sickness and panic. I had just turned four.

*Not there real names (can't you tell?)

We three children were all peacefully coloring one day and I stopped coloring in the books and started experimenting with the different colors, noticing how they interacted with each other and which ones looked good together. Mrs. Troll* got very upset that I wasn’t “coloring right” and shook me, yelling at me that there was something wrong with me. Also, Mr. Troll* decided to home-school First Born* because, according to him, he couldn’t trust the Alaska school system to teach us well. I now think he did it to make sure no one found out what he was doing to the children. I started to teach myself to read from First Born’s books. Mrs. Troll freaked out again at my behavior and shook me yelling at me “What’s wrong with you? There’s something wrong with you!” All of this happened before the birth of the Youngest* two months after I turned three years old.
Before we left for the hospital, Mr. Troll beat me, telling all three of us (First Born, Princess*, and me) that we needed to be quiet and not talk to anyone. All of us recognized that he would beat any one of us who “acted up.” Although I was the only one he was starving, freezing, and molesting at the time, he did shake and beat the other two. We all knew he would do it again.
At the hospital, he reminded/warned us to be quiet and good. Again, he berated the nurse, telling her we were anxious about our mother and the birth, “leave the children alone.” He was rude and abrupt. Then Mrs. Troll gave birth to the Youngest relatively quickly and easily. We were all called in to see our new baby brother and Mrs. Troll made a fuss over him similar to the one she made over Princess. Why hadn’t she paid that kind of attention to me?
When we got back to their house, Mrs. Troll again told me “This is your baby brother. He’s going to need you to help take care of him. It’s going to be your place to protect him because that’s what older brothers and sisters do, take care of younger ones. That’s how families work.” She was always telling me about how families were supposed to work. Supposedly it was also my place to help keep the family together. Especially important was to keep the family’s secrets.
Poisoned and panicked, they both told me to be “good” and not to ask any questions, to be quiet. They told me taking care of Youngest would be “good.” I locked into my brain that I had to protect Youngest from Mr. Troll. I never asked why First Born wasn’t protecting me nor did I ask why she/they weren’t taking care of me. They kept telling me I was unlovable because I was bad and that no-one would take care of me or want me.

*Not their real names (as if).

After the first time I panicked, I began panicking more, always feeling sick as well. It was always after the Trolls* prepared the food where I couldn’t see them. Mr. Troll sat in with me the first few times I was panicking, observing how what happened to me and telling me “You’re bad. That’s why you are so sick and scared.” (This hyper-panic could hardly be called “scared”).
He was still essentially starving me, feeding me infrequently and not enough. He kept beating me. When I was 2 ½ , I was playing quietly in the living room when he came in, already drunk and angry. “Come here,” he said to me. “You’re making too much noise.” He proceeded to beat me, yelling “You need to be quiet and good.” (I hate those two words.) Mrs. Troll was sitting on the couch in the living room with her hands in her lap, doing nothing to stop him. I was enraged.
First Born* tried to stay out of Mr. Troll’s presence when he was angry (i.e., any time he was home) but acted up other times to get Mrs. Troll’s attention. He was nowhere to be found when Mr. Troll was beating me. I still resented that Mrs. Troll was constantly feeding and fawning over Princess*. I attacked Princess. Mrs. Troll pulled us apart yelling at me for hurting Princess, shaking me and telling me “You’re bad. Stop.” Another reason I resented Princess is that her first word was “mama,” something Mrs. Troll was teaching her as she fed and held her. I did not understand why Princess had a special word for this woman when I did not. When Princess started to walk, First Born tried to knock her over. Mrs. Troll yelled at him for hurting Princess. When Mr. Troll did knock her over and she was crying, Mrs. Troll yelled at him “Stop! You’re hurting Princess.” She never stopped them when they did this to me.
(I know this jumps around but my perception of time then is episodic.) The molestation escalated beyond his pinching of my labia, to him running his hands over my body and telling me “The nuns ruined your mother.” I did not understand what he was saying and I hated him touching and pinching my chest, butt, and labia.
Just after I turned three (I did not realize about birthdays until I was five.), he started yelling at nothing about nothing, and yelling at me about being bad. He beat me and fed me some soup. First I started to fell sick and anxious, then the panic hit. While I was panicking, he locked me in a closet for without light, food, water, or a bathroom. I was panicking in the dark and could not calm down. I’m not sure how long he left me there, at least one day. It was horrible, this alien panic from which I could not calm down. And I was still furious. After he let me out of the closet, he yelled at me for making a mess of myself and the closet. The panic, however, had run its course. He told me that if I acted badly he would “have no choice but to lock me away again. I believed him when he said he’d do it.

*Not their real names this time either.

The Trolls* kept saying Princess* was pretty, she’s pretty, she’s pretty. When I asked Mrs. Troll if I was pretty also, she said “No. You’re not.” Then she started telling me because I had dark hair and dark eyes I was ugly (Note: photographs of us taken as children show Princess and I as having almost the same color hair). She also told me that because I was the older sister, I had to help take care of Princess. I was one year old, what could I do? Especially when I resented her.

Between the ages of one and two I learned to walk better, I picked up a larger vocabulary, and he continued to brutalize me more while she pretended not to see. She also continued to hide in her room, still trying to deny she is in Alaska. Mr. Troll became more violent in his outbursts toward me and they were happening more frequently. He kept yelling that there was nothing wrong and there was nothing wrong with him and he was never wrong. The worst days were the days we were snowbound and trapped in his house. Tensions and tempers ran high and I was attacked and I was still cold because I had insufficient clothing. When I could walk, I started physical fights with Mr. Troll hitting, kicking, biting him and he still beat me. It felt good to be fighting back.

Then before I was 2 ½ years old I was called him a “worthless piece of white trash ghetto shit”. He went ballistic, yelling at me it wasn’t true and I was to never say it again. I had heard him say it about his own father who had died of alcoholism before I was born. It felt really good to call him that even though I didn’t understand all of the words. He hated it and that was good enough for me.

When I attacked him I usually was screaming incoherently in my fury, trying to hurt him for starving me, hitting me, touching me, yelling at me, and always telling me I was bad (regardless of what I did). After all of the attacks, either him on me or my retaliations, I was left on my own without even Mrs. Troll taking care of me. First Born* always hid when Mr. Troll attacked me. There had been some days when he came home drunk I hid under the bed knowing he was looking for someone/something to hit.

I overheard them talking about me. The Trolls were discussing me. He said he knew how to control the children but I wasn’t afraid and didn’t respect him. After several weeks, and more outbursts by me, he fed me some toast that tasted bad. When I asked why it tasted bad, he told me that because I was bad, the food would taste bad. I was starving and ate it. Soon afterward I started to feel sick and very anxious and then the anxiety turned to panic as my heart started racing. I could not calm down. I could not calm down. Mr. Troll told me that I was feeling bad because I had been bad (angry) and I knew it. This reaction was my body’s way of telling me I had been bad (angry). Mrs. Troll, trying to play good cop to his bad cop, told me it was my fault but if I was quiet and good I wouldn’t do this to myself. I didn’t understand the panic because I had never been afraid of anything before. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t calm down. Then it seemed to run its course and I fell asleep.

Mr. Troll started telling me that it was better for the “good of the family” if I didn’t say anything, if I didn’t fight him. But I saw when he said “family” he only meant himself. Mrs. Troll’s advice: listen to him, appease him, and you won’t hurt yourself. She also started telling me to play a game of pretend: pretend it doesn’t hurt, pretend you’re not angry, pretend it isn’t happening, it’s all a game, make-believe.

Amid considerable stress, tension, and beatings the Trolls* moved to Alaska. Neither of them was happy with the situation and they were both taking their frustrations out on me. He especially was yelling all the time, pinching and shaking me as his drinking grew more excessive. In the move, Mr. Troll started hitting, yelling at me “This is all your fault. Your bad and I wish you weren’t here.” He insisted to her that there was something wrong with me, had been something wrong with me from birth, that’s why she was suffering. Mrs. Troll, when she noticed me at all, started yelling at me about it being my fault also that they had to move. Mrs. Troll, still postpartum, compounded by her pregnancy, despaired and raged alternately. Once they arrived in Alaska, the isolation preyed on her depression and, often sick, she hid in their room for days at a time trying to deny she was in Alaska. This gave Mr. Troll free reign to rage and attack, beating First Born* and me. Mr. Troll continued to molest and starve me, pinching my arms, legs, labia. When she did venture out, she was angry and yelling. First Born started acting up, looking for more attention. I was still crying and furious. I began crawling but was still trapped in that house, often in the crib. He also left me in unchanged diapers for days at a time and beat me for the mess. I would start screaming when he came into the room that I was in. Once, while I was in the crib, I threw my rattle at him and it felt really good. He beat me, yelling at me to stop screaming and telling me I was bad.

I began walking at about 11 months and both Mr. Troll and First Born were knocking me over. Mr. Troll stepped on my left foot, breaking bones. I screamed in pain and he told me, yelling at me to shut up and stop making so much noise. The pain was intense and they did not acknowledge it nor did I receive any medical attention. I started talking at about the same time. The first word I learned to say was “stop.” Obviously it was the word I heard the most often. My first birthday came and went unmarked.

Then Mrs. Troll started telling me I was going to have a baby brother or sister, wasn’t I happy? NO!! I did not want another baby in the house. I knew that it would be bad for another child. Suddenly she started to seem happy about the baby coming even though she still suffered from serious bouts of rage and depression. For the baby’s birth we all flew to the hospital. Mr. Troll did not go into the room with her. He stayed in the waiting area with First Born and me. When a nurse asked us how we were, Mr. Troll verbally attacked her, telling her our mother was giving birth and we were anxious and worried, stop bothering the children. He was mean and nasty to her and then turned on First Born and me after the nurse left accusing us of calling attention to ourselves to get the nurse to talk to us.

And then there it was, my so-called little sister, Princess. We were taken into the room where Mrs. Troll was recovering, holding her. “This is your sister, Princess. Isn’t she pretty?” NO!! From her birth they insisted she was blond haired and blue eyed (actually she has light brown hair and gray eyes) and they treated her as if she was a princess (Note: they are of Germanic heritage and idealized the Aryan look). I hated her/resented her from the first time I saw Mrs. Troll holding her and cooing over her in the hospital. I wanted to be the one held not the one tortured and starved.

*And still not their real names