Not long after I recovered from “chicken pox,” Mr. Troll* received word that a position was open for him in Michigan. It would be a promotion and an escape from Alaska. He became excited about the chance to get out of Alaska and Mrs. Troll* became even more excited. It didn’t stop him form hitting me during this time and telling me I was bad.

I wanted to take my dolphin toy on the plane with me but Mrs. Troll insisted on packing it away for the move. I noticed that everything else was packed with things that belonged together except for this one box. It was not a last minute box but Mrs. Troll packed it with things that she didn’t like: some children’s clothes that they hadn’t bought, some cooking dishes, a few kids’ books, and some gardening tools. I cried about not being able to carry my dolphin toy, especially since Princess* carried one of her dolls with her.

The day came that we went to the airport. At the airport, I had to get away from the Trolls, away from the pain they were causing me. I walked away from them. I found another woman dressed all in black and told her “My mommy’s in Ohio. Please help.” She looked horrified that there was a child wandering loose and started to ask me questions: “What is your mommy’s name? Where in Ohio is she? How did you get here?” As she was asking, an airport attendant, maybe a security guard, came up calling my name. I responded to my name being called and he told me “Your family is worried about you. I’ll take you back to them.” I didn’t want to go with him, trying to hold onto this woman. She told me I should go back to my family, they were worried about where there daughter is. He mostly dragged me back over to the Trolls, and I began crying and screaming when I saw him. First Born*, Princess, and Youngest* were there and quiet, anchored to the Trolls.

The guard asked Mr. Troll “Is this your child?” Mr. Troll said yes and knelt down to me putting his hands too tightly on my shoulders, hurting me as the guard stood right there. He told me “We were getting very worried about what had happened to you.” I was sure he was going to beat me right there. I saw the coldness and anger in his eyes that meant he was going to beat me. When the guard told him I had told the other woman my mommy’s in Ohio, Mr. Troll told him “She has a very active imagination and is always making up stories and lies.” He got me alone into a side room, yelling and screaming at me that I had been bad. He shook me violently and told me this isn’t the end of it. The rest of the time until we got onto the plane, he had a tight grip on my arm, giving me bruises before we left. I knew he was going to beat me later. We got on the small plane that took us to the Lower 48. We drove across the country I think from Washington state to Michigan. I tried to make myself as unnoticeable as possible during the very tense ride, he was still yelling about how bad I was and shaking me often. I hated being in the car with him, didn’t want to go into the motels at night, and balked at going into the new house in Michigan.

*Not there real names (too good to be true if they really were)

Several incidents occurred in Alaska that stood apart from everything else. In the middle of a blizzard one year, Mr. Troll* ran out of cigarettes. He turned to Mrs. Troll* and told her to run out and pick up a pack for him. She told him “Get your own damn cigarettes.” She refused to go and he wasn’t going to brave the storm to get them for himself. He quit cold turkey but we found it impossible to live with him while he went through withdrawal even more edgy and angry than usual. He beat me more severely (he couldn’t really beat me more often).

One day Mr. Troll came home from work in the middle of the day. He dug around in his closet and came out with a gun, the first time I had ever seen it. He explained that a bear wandered too close to the work site and he had to do something about it. He had a .22 caliber pistol that he took to shoot a bear! After a few days he came home with the bearskin. His co-workers and he had given the bear to a Native American group who had prepared the bear: skinned, gutted, etc. Mr. Troll claimed the skin as he said he had killed it. The bear only had one bullet hole in it and it wasn’t from a .22.

One time we went to a Native American art exhibit, Mrs. Troll started to have some kind of problem. She became edgier and angrier the longer we stayed at the exhibit. I didn’t understand why because I thought the exhibit was fascinating. We knew, however, not to say anything to her when she had become “monster.” This pattern repeated itself every time we went to an art exhibit.

Some time before we went to the dog sled races, Mr. Troll had told First Born* that dogs can tell when a child is bad and they will attack those children. Mr. Troll also had told First Born that he was bad, not as often as he told me but frequently enough. The day of the dog sled races First Born did not want to go, thinking that all of the dogs would attack him.

*Not their real names (now or ever)

By this time First Born*, Princess*, and I had learned that there was “mother” and there was “monster” and how to recognize when Mrs. Troll* was “monster.” Her energy shifts when she shifts from one to the other and it is noticeable, like the energy shift before a storm hits. The change is also visible: her face distorts and twists, her posture becomes threatening, and even her voice changes, becoming shriller and shrieking, louder. We tried to hide from her when she was “monster” because she raged and shook us, especially me and I didn’t want to be hurt by her anymore. I hated her. When she couldn’t find us, she raged and threw dishes, smashing them. It could be hours before the episodes passed. She was like this the entire eighteen years I lived with them.

Mrs. Troll insisted First Born go to kindergarten. She said he needed to be among children his own age. Mr. Troll resisted, angry at her and determined that “his kids” were not going to school. They yelled and argued for several weeks and she threatened him (I don’t know exactly with what) before he finally gave in. I thought my turn for school couldn’t come soon enough because First Born got to leave the house for several hours at a time without Mr. or Mrs. Troll. The spring I was four years old, First Born came home from school with chicken pox and promptly gave it to Princess and me. I was miserable from the sickness. Mrs. Troll took care of First Born and Princess, feeding them and putting calamine lotion on their spots, but she ignored me. She told me that the chicken pox was my fault for being bad and that everyone blamed and hated me for it. I was furious. I complained to Mr. Troll* that she was taking care of them and not me. He didn’t respond to me. Soon after he told her, she had another one of her fits and, enraged, flew into the bedroom we as children all shared, shrieking and yelling all kinds of things about how bad I was, what was wrong with me, and I was bad for complaining. She shouted it was hard to be a good mother to a child who is this bad. Then she started hitting and shaking me, repeatedly hitting my head on the wall behind the bed. Although I tried to fight back and protect myself, I was too weak to do much. While she attacked me, I remember hearing Princess crying. I have no memory of Mrs. Troll stopping. I heard a loud popping noise and suddenly felt numb from the neck down. I believe she broke my neck. I passed out from a hard blow to the back of my head which also caused a bad concussion. I know I was very already weakened from the starvation and beatings and now the illness and concussion. I remember going down a long tunnel and seeing a bright white light and remember seeing a small, beautiful woman who told me I had to go back. I didn’t want to go back to the Trolls’ house.

I passed in and out of consciousness over a period of time (I’m not sure how long) and was not able to move when I was conscious. Mrs. Troll told me during a point of consciousness the reason it was so bad for me and not the others is because I was bad. I had curious pricklings in my hands and feet for a while even though my body seemed numb. At some point I was strapped to the bed to limit my movements. I remember her feeding me a few times with a baby bottle. She used diapers on me in an attempt to keep me and the bed clean. She seemed more concerned with the bed than me. At one point when I was conscious, First Born came over to my bed, very quietly and showed me the bruises on his arms and told me, in hushed tones, we’re not supposed to talk about this. I was furious about his bruises. I heard her telling Mr. Troll that I was “recovering” much more slowly than the other two. “In fact,” she said “she might not recover.” Mr. Troll came in to see me on a few occasions. He told me it was my fault for making her look like she was a bad mother. I told him “I hate her.” He responded I was bad and bad children are not loved and are not lovable but that I had to love Mrs. Troll because “she’s your mother”. (I still did not love her.) It took me several months to recover from the paralysis. Never, at any point, did I receive any medical attention.

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).