No Love
Deanna Salser
©
Copyright 2018 by Deanna Salser
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I have spent
practically my whole life with strangers. Since being taken from my
mom after I was burned at age 7 months, I bounced from foster home to
foster home, joined by my baby brother when he was taken away as
well, it was stipulated we not be separated. Different homes wanted
to keep me or him but never us both, so we were moved again. The next
home was of a Southern Baptist Preacher and his wife and four kids
who were looking for more children to care for. It should have been
the ideal situation for us. Turns out it was only ideal for my
brother.
I
knew from the first day I spent at the foster home that it would
never be home to me. The mom lost her smile as soon as we pulled out
of my own dads’ driveway. Her face without it was cold and
distant and her eyes were as shards of ice as she looked at me. My
brother brought the smile back to her face as her glance passed over
me, to him. He was clinging to me and looking back at her
distrustfully from under my arm as I held him tight. She continued to
make eyes at him during the drive home and I could see that she
disapproved of something, but she kept her silence in the car. As
soon as we got to the home, we were separated and told that in this
house, male and female children didn’t cuddle together like
that. Like it was somehow dirty and that's how it made me feel. I
remember trying not to cry as my brother had to be physically peeled
away and restrained from me. His panicked cries flew out behind her
as if they traveled along his little arms, spraying from his
outstretched hands as they reached back over her shoulder towards me
as she carried him out of the room. One of the other children was
holding me back from following and none of them appeared to think
this was strange, so I kept my feelings to myself. My young heart was
heavy with dread as I tried to sleep that night in yet another
unfamiliar bed. Time did not endear this home to me but it did to my
brother, so I pretended to be okay for him. I was far from okay. The
mother and I had a tense relationship from the very beginning. I
might have rejected her earliest advances because, even at that that
tender age, I knew what I wanted and did not want. I was four years
old.
I
hadn't been there a year when one of the boys in the home, one of the
mother's natural children, (they had four of their own kids), began
slowly grooming me, sexually. The family had an old blue Chevy
station wagon, the kind with three seats. The third seat was the
least desirable because it faced backwards. Anytime we would go
anywhere, he would maneuver until he was sitting next to me in that
third back seat. Then, with the adults unable to see what he was
doing, he would try to get me to put my hand in his pants and fondle
him while we traveled. He was very persistent, offering me treats I
didn't normally get. As a five year old, I knew what we were doing
was wrong but he hadn’t hurt me and I had no intimacy with the
mother that would make me want to tell her, so I went with it. It was
attention. It continued and progressed until he was putting his
fingers inside me and making me give him oral sex. For the next seven
years he played with my body and made me play with his and by the
time I was twelve he was trying to get me to have sex with him. He
tried once but he was large and I was small and I started to make
noise, so he stopped. He did apologize to me years later, after we
were grown up, and he seemed sincere so I forgave him but I still
suffer from trauma during certain sex acts.
The
next five years passed slowly and painfully as I tried hard to
conform to the rules of the home without much success. The rules were
different for me and changed often. I was almost always in trouble,
despite my best efforts, and as a result, became withdrawn and wary.
I began to be depressed and cried every night in private, having
learned that public displays were forbidden to me at great personal
cost. I had been badly burned over a large part of my body as a baby
and my scars were still very painful and prominent. My complaints of
pain were scoffed at or ignored altogether and I went through surgery
after surgery without the comfort of a mother's arms. In fact, I
remember her turning a look of satisfaction my way when the nurses
came in my room one day with a huge needle that scared me. I realized
very quickly that I was on my own emotionally. Somehow I knew that I
shouldn't be treated that way and wished every day that I had a
mother who cared about me and would cuddle me on her lap. I spun
elaborate daydreams of being rescued by my real mother who visited on
occasion. I never told her what my life was like because I knew I was
watched while she was there and that I would get in big trouble after
she was gone, if I did.
There
is a memory I have of my mother. She had come on one of her
rare
visits to us, Mike and I, where we lived behind the Colfax high
school. We were sitting side by side in what must have been my
room that I shared with Judi but it was the first bedroom and that's
the only memory I have of being in there. Anyways, we were
sitting on the bed and I was just breathing her in, a little shy of
her and wanting so much to touch her but knowing I needed to be
careful what the other mother would see me doing. She always
chided me later about being "all over her" or "trying
to get attention" when after all, she was there to see me, and
Mike too of course, but I was in there. She was my real mom
and
I was desperate for her and when she did come, the time seemed to
just fly by. I could never get enough of her and I felt rushed
and watched and so achingly lonely for her all at the same time,
every time she came so I would hover, hoping she would hug me and
touch me and pick me up onto her lap and then I wouldn't get in
trouble later, or not as much trouble, anyways. So, I was sort
of leaning close, not against her, but touching and I was giddy with
it. She was talking to me about something, I don't know what
but
then she started talking about some of the ways I was like her and
she asked me if I could scrunch my toes and I showed her I could. We
sat and scrunched together, looking at our toes and then she laughed
and hugged me and rubbed her nose on mine and I was in heaven.
I
never told her how I felt and how hard things were for me and lonely
I was. I knew she had enough things hurting her and didn't
need
any more. I was supposed to take care of my brother and be a
good girl and do well in school. I couldn't have been more than five
or six in this memory but I already knew that I could take more and
was stronger than other people, and I knew somehow that she couldn't
bear the knowledge of my pain. She said she was trying and
that
someday she would be able to take us home, and I wanted that so badly
that I wouldn’t even let myself think about it not being true.
And then they told me she died and my world descended into an
inescapable hell of no more hope. I was nine years old.
Four
more loveless years passed. No one ever touched me except to punish
me. No hugs or cuddles or even verbal approval. I became so starved
for attention that I felt like I might fade away. All the feelings
stored inside me unable to be expressed kept piling up and I kept
stuffing them down. I had to be okay for my brother. I felt he still
needed me. I very carefully kept our mother’s memory alive for
him. It had to be a secret because we were forbidden to speak of her.
I didn’t really believe that she was dead. I thought it was a
lie to make us forget her. I lived much of the time in my daydreams
of her and of being loved. I would craft long fantasies in my head
and used them to distract myself with, and to make time pass more
pleasantly for me while I did my many chores or while I was in
trouble or being punished. I created contests in my head and tried to
do my chores quickly and well as if I were competing. I was always
the best and fastest bed maker and dish washer and furniture duster
and chicken feeder and weed puller and paint scraper. You get the
point. It didn’t matter how well I did my chores. It was never
good enough for her. I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion about
anything. I had to do everything her way and even brushing my teeth
or blinking my eyes my way was not tolerated. And I was watched
closely and my every move reported back to her. I learned that no one
cared how I felt and I began to actively wait out my childhood.
The
year I turned 13, a new foster boy came to the home. His name was
Joseph Salser. He was my age and there was an instant attraction when
we met. He was beautiful with his long blonde hair and blue eyes. By
that time I was very good at not attracting the mothers’
regular attention. I kept my nose clean. It didn’t keep me from
getting into trouble, far from it, but it kept the punishments to a
minimum. I made her work hard to come up with a reason concrete
enough to be punished for. So I didn’t act on my attraction to
Joe and at first, I actually tried to avoid him. But he had fallen in
love with me and was persistent and I couldn’t resist that
level of devotion for very long. I was starved for love and touch, no
one hugged or held me, even when I was sick or hurt and I craved it.
After what I had been through with the other brother, it took some
time before I let him touch me, though. As soon as I did I was
addicted. This was different, this was right. The way Joe touched me
was reverent, as if I were holy. Swept along by new emotions, we had
our first sexual experience together. I fell in love with him that
night. He was so patient and sweet. He kept kissing my neck and chest
and apologizing for hurting me and he treated me so gently and
lovingly that night. I hadn’t been held in love since I was a
very little girl. It felt like it was us against the world.
Then
the mother found out about our relationship and started keeping us
apart, telling us that plans were in the works to transfer Joe to
another foster home. In a panic of desperation we ran away. Managing
to stay ahead of our searchers for nearly a week, we relied on each
other and he took care of me. We walked at night and hid during the
day, making love and talking for hours at a time. It was the best few
days I had had since I went to live at the home. But it was not to
last as we were tricked into giving ourselves up. We agreed not to
run again if we didn’t have to go back to the home and the
adults agreed only to abruptly separate us as soon as they had us in
custody. I went back to the home and Joe went …somewhere else.
No one would tell me where and I wasn’t allowed to use the
phone, so he was lost to me and I was devastated.
I
ran away again as soon as their vigil of me relaxed and this time I
stayed gone for several months. I roamed around Auburn as a runaway
for the whole summer that year. The next time I was caught and
brought back, I couldn’t get away and had to stay for over a
year before I was able to escape. Finally I found my opportunity to
run again when I was 16 and I eluded capture until I turned 18. But I
never heard from Joe again. Unbeknownst to me, he had tried to get
back to me repeatedly for the next few years but the mother never
relented. She kept it from me that he called and told him I wasn’t
there when he did. I never forgot about my sweet Joe and thought
about him often over the years but I had no way of looking him up.
Thirty three years would pass before I would find him again.
The
divorce was final. It was my second marriage, the first one having
ended when he punched me as I held our baby daughter. I had one
relationship in between him and the second husband, but we never got
married. I did have two sons from that relationship but no children
from the second marriage. I hadn't thought about Joe for years.
I
had tried dating but none of the men I dated were interested in a
commitment with me. Men didn't ask me out. My scars had followed me
into adulthood and it took a special kind of guy to find me
attractive; he had to get to know me. I had gone online to meet some
new guys and I had a profile pic taken from an angle that didn't show
the scars so I was able to attract them initially. But when they met
me, most of them were unable to get past the physical. It started to
seem to me that I would never find anyone again and I became
depressed.
One
night after a particularly depressing date where the man had rude and
persistent interest in only one thing and it wasn't my mind, I began
to think about the men who had loved me. I thought
about the
circumstances of each courtship and relationship and I realized that
the men who had loved me had pursued me from the
beginning.
Men that I had pursued had not treated me well even if I had been
successful. I thought back over the men who had wanted me first and
sadly, there weren’t that many. Then I remembered Joe. As I
thought about him, I had a strong feeling that I should look for him.
Thankfully, Facebook was just starting to become popular and I had
grudgingly made a profile a few years back. I went to my page with a
prayer in my heart.
I
found him in the middle of a long list of Joe Salsers. I wasn't sure
it was him but the picture was somewhat familiar. His profile was
sparse and he only had two other pictures but his features pulled at
my memory so I left him a message. 'Hey did you spend a year
or so
in a foster home in Colfax, Ca. when you were 13 or 14?' That
was
October 31st 2011 and I didn't hear back from
him until
December 28th. 'Oh my God, how are you
doing? I was
just thinking of you the other day and this is the first time I've
been on Facebook in a long time and here you are!!!!!! Yes it's me
and believe me I thought about you for so many years after we were
separated. Where are you? What have you been doing? I want to hear
everything. Call me, Joe.' He messaged me back but because of
life, we didn't really connect until that next April. We had texted a
few times but I was reluctant to open myself up again and didn't
mention my feelings until then. We were texting and I casually asked
him if he thought there was another chance for us. He immediately
responded.
"Of
course there is." And we began to make plans.
Joe
was on probation in North Carolina. He had a long record of criminal
activity, including several felonies. The probation had been going on
for years past the original termination dates merely because he
couldn't pay his fines. They were astronomical and there was no way
he was going to be able to pay them on his salary. So the probation
continued even though there had been no violations for years. As far
as he was concerned, that was going to be his life. He had a daughter
he was raising but he had been single for years. He had a good job
and a few good friends and he had only recently found and reconnected
with his brother, but now and then he would slip into bouts of
depression from sheer loneliness. He hadn't been able to find anyone
real either.
When
we decided to try and be together, I suggested flying out for a
visit. I wanted to know if the chemistry was still there. He agreed
and I booked a flight for June. The six weeks leading up to the day
of my flight were filled with anticipation. I could already tell from
the way I felt during that time that the feelings were still there
but Joe was being careful. He didn't want to get his hopes up in case
we weren't able to make it happen. We knew the first thing we had to
do was apply for an interstate transfer. I had just bought my first
house and my children were still in school so we agreed he should
come to me. He put in his first application and we waited. The next
month he had a new probation officer. It soon became apparent that
the old one hadn't turned in the application so he applied again.
This happened another time before the ball was fully rolling, but by
June when I flew out to visit, we were waiting for a reply.
The
four days we had together in June solidified our desire to be
together. We conducted a hand fasting ceremony in private, tying our
hands together and pledging ourselves to each other forever. We made
love desperately, knowing our time together was limited. At the
airport on my way home, I struggled to keep from crying as I said
goodbye to him. After I passed through the line and was waiting at
the gate for my plane, I let the tears stream down my face as I hid
it next to the windows. I missed him already. Six months would pass
before we would have the answer we both desired. Another two before
we could pull it together enough to get him out here to California.
It
hasn't been easy but through it all, the love we began as kids has
endured. He is my husband, the love of my life and the only man who
has ever been my equal. I thank God every day for finally allowing me
to feel what being truly happy feels like.
My name is Deanna
Salser. I am currently working as a Drafting Tech for a company in
California that makes crash cushions, among other things. I've always
loved to read, in fact, I don't feel right if I don't have at least
one book going. I've always had a fantasy about being a writer and I
actually had a few good book ideas but I never felt like I had the
time to write a novel. About seven years ago I had a story coming out
of me so I decided to write when I had time and see how it went. It
went slow but great. My first story is finished and I am doing what I
can to get it published. In the meantime, I thought I would enter a
few contests and see where it would get me. I need the publicity
after all. So, here I am.
(Unless
you
type
the
author's name
in
the subject
line
of the message
we
won't know where to send it.)
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