An excerpt...2 chapters.
Cry Until You Laugh
Brittany Barefield
“I don’t want to be pregnant. I’m too old to have another baby.” ~ My thirty-four-year-old mother on learning of my conception in the early 1980s.
Chapter 1
The year of nineteen hundred eighty something, when no jewelry was too big, no makeup too bright, no experimentation off limits. No mismatched ensemble or hairstyle was too absurd. Finishing a full can of hairspray was a must until the side tresses blew out like giant bird wings, making you look like you stepped out of a speed boat (traveling in reverse) and fell face-first into a box of melted crayons.
The pictures from back then are burned out of shame, except for those few living in denial who think they looked good. You see them walking around with their thinning mullets or green eye- shadow with blue lid liner, trying to hold on to bygone glory days. Today, those photos would be plastered all over social networking cites under the title, “My Dumb-ass Friends.”
We forget that in 1982, the first artificial heart was transplanted into a human and Time Magazine’s machine of the year was the computer. How did the shut-ins of yore live without internet, or nerds without online gaming? You can’t shake a stick these days without hitting somebody talking obnoxiously into a cellular telephone glued to their ear or an iPhone in their hand.
Due to the deficit-building Reaganomics of that era, cable was an expensive rarity, so people yucked it up at David Letterman’s new late night talk show on their local NBC station. They could’ve just as easily laughed at the fashionably-challenged people dressed in leg warmers and oversized shoulder pads. Where would one go in such?
Movie-goers watched teenagers smoke and poke in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and saw Dustin Hoffman don a sequined dress in Tootsie. Readers enjoyed Rita Mae Brown’s Southern Discomfort. Dancers got Physical with Olivia Newton-John while Joan Jett was loving rock-n-roll.
John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. Perhaps a gaming console with Call of Duty would've helped Hinckley redirect his anger, or maybe just made him a better shot. Either way, mind-numbing technology is a necessary evil for inadequate losers who want to exercise their frustrations on others, like the killer who scared Tylenol-taking citizens shitless after seven people died from poisoning in the Chicago area.
Closer to my home of birth, Illinois Central Gulf Railroad freight train, hauling toxic chemicals, derailed 43 cars on the single main track in Livingston, Louisiana. Toxins were released into the atmosphere and contaminated the soil, costing millions in damages. People across the U.S. needed a reason to laugh.
I was born in autumn in the sportsman's paradise, the youngest of three, give or take my parent's kid(s) hidden from our knowledge. I was also unplanned. I was a normal baby in an abnormal environment. My life wasn’t merely a southern discomfort. I’ve lived a life of comedic tragedy and hope that my retelling it will have made it worth something.
Before we get all weepy, I’ll reassure you that there is somewhat of a happy ending…eventually. I’m not dead or maimed, nor have I been committed to an asylum. Although, this decade is still young.
Let me now introduce my parents. First, my mom was the third girl born to an unhappy family: two spiteful older sisters, a younger brother crippled from polio, a religious fanatic mother with too much free judgment time on her hands, and a father who was (supposedly) prone to violent outbursts-- mostly directed as his nutty wife who knew how to push his buttons. I don’t condone this antiquated idea of home correction, but this woman needed some sense slapped into her. If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “he/she needed killing,” it applies here. My grandfather was always decent toward me though. He was a hard-worker and had my respect and love. If someone had issues with him, they probably deserved his wrath.
From such an ugly family, inside and out, my mom was the sole beautiful one-- the Dorian Gray on a smaller scale. You see, no matter how attractive on the outside, she suffered from a dark, inner turmoil that afflicted them all. She was jaw-dropping beautiful. She knew it, yet still loathed herself.
I’m not referring to the kind of pretty everybody thinks their mother is because they have a genetic bias. I don’t have a prejudice because my mom could be awful to me: degrading insults, embarrassing public face-slaps and physical scoldings, magazines thrown into my face, temporary disownership, locking me and my brother out of the house one winter night when we were kids, lying to us, and so on; however, through gritted teeth I must admit my mom was Hollywood beautiful-- a combination of Elizabeth Taylor and Vivien Leigh gorgeous: a slender frame, deep blue eyes, black hair, high cheek bones, straight white smile, melodious southern voice, beautiful.
She was so pretty that her own mother seemed jealous and it led to bitter resentment from both parties. Maybe that’s why my mother hated her birth name, or the way my nasally, Fran Drescher meets Dwight Yoakam, sounding grandmother would pronounce it. It’s the name of a song, it’s not ugly, but out of respect (and a nod to a Queen that both Ms. Taylor and Ms. Leigh played) I’ll give her a new moniker-- Cleo.
Some say I favor Cleo, my mother, but I probably look more like my father’s side of the family. Which isn't good either way because both sides of the family is shithouse-rat crazy. I’m talking Mommie Dearest, “no wire hangers” Joan Crawford crazy. More about them later.
My dark-haired father also had blue eyes, a milky blue. This is important because I have dark green eyes and so did my older brother. I asked, “Dad, why is it I have green eyes, but you and mom both have blue?”
“Ask your mother,” he said.
I have no scientific answer. As much as I tried to counter-disown them, they are my biological parents. Other than hair and eyes, I don’t really know what my father looked like. I know who he is, but his physical appearance was altered years before my birth.
When I was born, “Jim” was already forty-four and badly scarred from a work-related injury. In the 1960s, he worked as a lineman in a small town. After a storm, the repairmen were repairing electricity outages and downed power lines. While my dad was perched in the bucket beside the top of a pole, a live line broke loose and fell across his chest. He was severely burned, his right arm blown out from his shoulder and dangling at his side.
Jim was pronounced dead at the local hospital, but his skeptical father demanded that he be taken to the medical center in the next biggest city. When I say demanded, I mean my grandfather threatened and cussed a blue streak until the paramedics relented. Dad was saved by doctors at the larger hospital. My brother said the electricity somehow added years to dad’s life.
He stayed comatose for about a month or more, learned to walk again, and left the hospital to discover certain family members had drained his bank account. Not the most optimistic bunch. Of course, I can't declare with 100 percent certainty if that story is true, since I learned years later that my parents, often prompted by others, had lied to me regarding many things. Then again, I discovered first hand the same crimes happened to him again decades later by his extended family while he was on his deathbed. You see, I have insanity running on both sides. Sometimes I wonder, when my husband cuts his eyes a certain way, is he asking, when will she snap and burn down the house? My response is, don’t fret darling, you’ll never see it coming. Oh, I digress....
Chapter 2
Things in my life have been so ridiculously terrible, a relative once said, “If you wrote a book about it, no one would believe it.” I agreed with him, especially since I can’t say it ends happily, as of yet. And nobody wants to read that.
When I was a kid, a malignant cancer formed in my world. It consumed anything good and destroyed it, growing larger all the time. It was my parents’ first born. She was an infection in their brains that stopped them from doing what was right. It ate away at their retinas until they no longer saw the truth. It clogged their hearts so that they couldn’t love us. There was only room for her, the infection, and it began to spread.
One of my early childhood memories is my parents waking me and my brother and dropping us off at my grandparents’ house in the middle of the night. With our cousin, we would catch the bus in the morning to go to elementary school. At first, we didn’t understand what was happening, but there was always a feeling of fear. After several times of this, we eavesdropped on our distraught parents. They left us to go search crack houses for their eldest child, now a young adult and a high school dropout. They left us to get her out of trouble. They left us to bail her out of jail. They left us for her, again and again.
My mother was so ashamed of her first born that she would say to us, “Don’t tell anyone you have an older sister.” It was an embarrassment for our family. I realized after so many years of keeping secrets, the cancer was allowed to metastasize. My mother began making excuses for it, as if it would get better, but there’s no treatment for a selfish drug abuser who doesn’t want help, who enjoys lying and manipulating others.
The terror hanging in the air, once a fear for her, became a fear of her. My parents were afraid Crackhead would lead drug dealers to our house and that we’d all be robbed and murdered. My mom was also scared that everyone would find out that her oldest child, her favorite, was a dangerously violent, drug-addicted criminal.
Their failed solution was to deny everything and throw money at the problem. Due to that, Crackhead remained a constant financial drain, whether stealing or begging, and their inability to say 'no' enabled their pet spawn to continue her sociopathic existence.
Cancer doesn’t go away when ignored. It demands attention by getting worse. This included more crimes besides buying, possessing, and using illegal substances. To list a few of her misdeeds so far, in no particular order, check fraud, breaking and entering, burglary, burglary of an inhabited dwelling, possession of stolen things, stealing, lies, DWIs, traffic offenses, more lies, driving without a license, causing her grandmother's car to be impounded, running from the police, resisting arrest, time in jail, menacing, physical assaults against relatives. Yet of all that, the worst crime committed was not done only by her or because of her mental illness, but by her own father's younger brother (RWB), who while dad lay dying & heavily medicated, this thief swooped in and took advantage. Using techniques of isolation, manipulation, and control, he drained bank accounts, stole life insurance, & robbed children of their grandfather's legacy. The heartbreaking truth is, he did it while completely sober and without any diagnosed mental instability. He plotted in sound mind to betray his own family for financial gain. This is unforgivable.
Brittany Barefield
“I don’t want to be pregnant. I’m too old to have another baby.” ~ My thirty-four-year-old mother on learning of my conception in the early 1980s.
Chapter 1
The year of nineteen hundred eighty something, when no jewelry was too big, no makeup too bright, no experimentation off limits. No mismatched ensemble or hairstyle was too absurd. Finishing a full can of hairspray was a must until the side tresses blew out like giant bird wings, making you look like you stepped out of a speed boat (traveling in reverse) and fell face-first into a box of melted crayons.
The pictures from back then are burned out of shame, except for those few living in denial who think they looked good. You see them walking around with their thinning mullets or green eye- shadow with blue lid liner, trying to hold on to bygone glory days. Today, those photos would be plastered all over social networking cites under the title, “My Dumb-ass Friends.”
We forget that in 1982, the first artificial heart was transplanted into a human and Time Magazine’s machine of the year was the computer. How did the shut-ins of yore live without internet, or nerds without online gaming? You can’t shake a stick these days without hitting somebody talking obnoxiously into a cellular telephone glued to their ear or an iPhone in their hand.
Due to the deficit-building Reaganomics of that era, cable was an expensive rarity, so people yucked it up at David Letterman’s new late night talk show on their local NBC station. They could’ve just as easily laughed at the fashionably-challenged people dressed in leg warmers and oversized shoulder pads. Where would one go in such?
Movie-goers watched teenagers smoke and poke in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and saw Dustin Hoffman don a sequined dress in Tootsie. Readers enjoyed Rita Mae Brown’s Southern Discomfort. Dancers got Physical with Olivia Newton-John while Joan Jett was loving rock-n-roll.
John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. Perhaps a gaming console with Call of Duty would've helped Hinckley redirect his anger, or maybe just made him a better shot. Either way, mind-numbing technology is a necessary evil for inadequate losers who want to exercise their frustrations on others, like the killer who scared Tylenol-taking citizens shitless after seven people died from poisoning in the Chicago area.
Closer to my home of birth, Illinois Central Gulf Railroad freight train, hauling toxic chemicals, derailed 43 cars on the single main track in Livingston, Louisiana. Toxins were released into the atmosphere and contaminated the soil, costing millions in damages. People across the U.S. needed a reason to laugh.
I was born in autumn in the sportsman's paradise, the youngest of three, give or take my parent's kid(s) hidden from our knowledge. I was also unplanned. I was a normal baby in an abnormal environment. My life wasn’t merely a southern discomfort. I’ve lived a life of comedic tragedy and hope that my retelling it will have made it worth something.
Before we get all weepy, I’ll reassure you that there is somewhat of a happy ending…eventually. I’m not dead or maimed, nor have I been committed to an asylum. Although, this decade is still young.
Let me now introduce my parents. First, my mom was the third girl born to an unhappy family: two spiteful older sisters, a younger brother crippled from polio, a religious fanatic mother with too much free judgment time on her hands, and a father who was (supposedly) prone to violent outbursts-- mostly directed as his nutty wife who knew how to push his buttons. I don’t condone this antiquated idea of home correction, but this woman needed some sense slapped into her. If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “he/she needed killing,” it applies here. My grandfather was always decent toward me though. He was a hard-worker and had my respect and love. If someone had issues with him, they probably deserved his wrath.
From such an ugly family, inside and out, my mom was the sole beautiful one-- the Dorian Gray on a smaller scale. You see, no matter how attractive on the outside, she suffered from a dark, inner turmoil that afflicted them all. She was jaw-dropping beautiful. She knew it, yet still loathed herself.
I’m not referring to the kind of pretty everybody thinks their mother is because they have a genetic bias. I don’t have a prejudice because my mom could be awful to me: degrading insults, embarrassing public face-slaps and physical scoldings, magazines thrown into my face, temporary disownership, locking me and my brother out of the house one winter night when we were kids, lying to us, and so on; however, through gritted teeth I must admit my mom was Hollywood beautiful-- a combination of Elizabeth Taylor and Vivien Leigh gorgeous: a slender frame, deep blue eyes, black hair, high cheek bones, straight white smile, melodious southern voice, beautiful.
She was so pretty that her own mother seemed jealous and it led to bitter resentment from both parties. Maybe that’s why my mother hated her birth name, or the way my nasally, Fran Drescher meets Dwight Yoakam, sounding grandmother would pronounce it. It’s the name of a song, it’s not ugly, but out of respect (and a nod to a Queen that both Ms. Taylor and Ms. Leigh played) I’ll give her a new moniker-- Cleo.
Some say I favor Cleo, my mother, but I probably look more like my father’s side of the family. Which isn't good either way because both sides of the family is shithouse-rat crazy. I’m talking Mommie Dearest, “no wire hangers” Joan Crawford crazy. More about them later.
My dark-haired father also had blue eyes, a milky blue. This is important because I have dark green eyes and so did my older brother. I asked, “Dad, why is it I have green eyes, but you and mom both have blue?”
“Ask your mother,” he said.
I have no scientific answer. As much as I tried to counter-disown them, they are my biological parents. Other than hair and eyes, I don’t really know what my father looked like. I know who he is, but his physical appearance was altered years before my birth.
When I was born, “Jim” was already forty-four and badly scarred from a work-related injury. In the 1960s, he worked as a lineman in a small town. After a storm, the repairmen were repairing electricity outages and downed power lines. While my dad was perched in the bucket beside the top of a pole, a live line broke loose and fell across his chest. He was severely burned, his right arm blown out from his shoulder and dangling at his side.
Jim was pronounced dead at the local hospital, but his skeptical father demanded that he be taken to the medical center in the next biggest city. When I say demanded, I mean my grandfather threatened and cussed a blue streak until the paramedics relented. Dad was saved by doctors at the larger hospital. My brother said the electricity somehow added years to dad’s life.
He stayed comatose for about a month or more, learned to walk again, and left the hospital to discover certain family members had drained his bank account. Not the most optimistic bunch. Of course, I can't declare with 100 percent certainty if that story is true, since I learned years later that my parents, often prompted by others, had lied to me regarding many things. Then again, I discovered first hand the same crimes happened to him again decades later by his extended family while he was on his deathbed. You see, I have insanity running on both sides. Sometimes I wonder, when my husband cuts his eyes a certain way, is he asking, when will she snap and burn down the house? My response is, don’t fret darling, you’ll never see it coming. Oh, I digress....
Chapter 2
Things in my life have been so ridiculously terrible, a relative once said, “If you wrote a book about it, no one would believe it.” I agreed with him, especially since I can’t say it ends happily, as of yet. And nobody wants to read that.
When I was a kid, a malignant cancer formed in my world. It consumed anything good and destroyed it, growing larger all the time. It was my parents’ first born. She was an infection in their brains that stopped them from doing what was right. It ate away at their retinas until they no longer saw the truth. It clogged their hearts so that they couldn’t love us. There was only room for her, the infection, and it began to spread.
One of my early childhood memories is my parents waking me and my brother and dropping us off at my grandparents’ house in the middle of the night. With our cousin, we would catch the bus in the morning to go to elementary school. At first, we didn’t understand what was happening, but there was always a feeling of fear. After several times of this, we eavesdropped on our distraught parents. They left us to go search crack houses for their eldest child, now a young adult and a high school dropout. They left us to get her out of trouble. They left us to bail her out of jail. They left us for her, again and again.
My mother was so ashamed of her first born that she would say to us, “Don’t tell anyone you have an older sister.” It was an embarrassment for our family. I realized after so many years of keeping secrets, the cancer was allowed to metastasize. My mother began making excuses for it, as if it would get better, but there’s no treatment for a selfish drug abuser who doesn’t want help, who enjoys lying and manipulating others.
The terror hanging in the air, once a fear for her, became a fear of her. My parents were afraid Crackhead would lead drug dealers to our house and that we’d all be robbed and murdered. My mom was also scared that everyone would find out that her oldest child, her favorite, was a dangerously violent, drug-addicted criminal.
Their failed solution was to deny everything and throw money at the problem. Due to that, Crackhead remained a constant financial drain, whether stealing or begging, and their inability to say 'no' enabled their pet spawn to continue her sociopathic existence.
Cancer doesn’t go away when ignored. It demands attention by getting worse. This included more crimes besides buying, possessing, and using illegal substances. To list a few of her misdeeds so far, in no particular order, check fraud, breaking and entering, burglary, burglary of an inhabited dwelling, possession of stolen things, stealing, lies, DWIs, traffic offenses, more lies, driving without a license, causing her grandmother's car to be impounded, running from the police, resisting arrest, time in jail, menacing, physical assaults against relatives. Yet of all that, the worst crime committed was not done only by her or because of her mental illness, but by her own father's younger brother (RWB), who while dad lay dying & heavily medicated, this thief swooped in and took advantage. Using techniques of isolation, manipulation, and control, he drained bank accounts, stole life insurance, & robbed children of their grandfather's legacy. The heartbreaking truth is, he did it while completely sober and without any diagnosed mental instability. He plotted in sound mind to betray his own family for financial gain. This is unforgivable.