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A Brother's Journey
By Richard B. Pelzer Warner Books
Copyright © 2005 Richard Pelzer
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-446-53368-8
Chapter One
THAT WAS THEN ...
Daly City, California, 1970
In the beginning, life was fun, life was exciting, and life was good. As a five-year-old, I was tender in age and yet I was cruel and mean. I was happy to watch my brother as he was beaten or forced to perform some disgusting punishment. It was exciting to watch. It is horrifying to remember.
I WANTED TO BELIEVE that we were a middle-class family in a middle-class San Francisco Bay Area suburb. The house was modest, as were all the houses on Crestline Avenue. There were four or five different styles of houses on the street. Each one was painted differently, and yet there was a pattern on the street that reminds me of the famous pastel houses of San Francisco's Rainbow Row. Our house was bright pink. The outside trim was pink; even the concrete steps were pink. Next door had a slightly different layout and was painted in two tones of brown. As you walked down the street, the colors of the houses would eventually repeat themselves to form a pattern. Every family on the street had pride in their yards and their houses.
There were two dozen kids on the street, and most of them were within a few years of me in age. The boys all had bicycles and who knows what the girls had. Who cared? They were girls. They didn'tplay football, basketball, or dodgeball; they were just girls. The boys would often ride bikes around the street in packs. Mostly to show off the new seats or handlebars they just got.
I recall particular early memories about Mom but very few about Dad. He just was seldom there. He was almost invisible. I remember Dad occasionally being in the house, but always in the background. I don't know if he had already moved out or if he was just never there anymore. It's almost as if he was a tenant, not participating in the lives of his kids. I'm not sure if it was always that way. Perhaps before I came along things were different. Maybe Dad and Mom were happy then. Maybe they were a real family then. I don't know. I don't have many other memories about my father. I simply didn't know him.
Mom made a show of nurturing "tradition" and "family." She worked very hard at making elaborate dinners and setting the table with Hawaiian tablecloths or Chinese dishes, stemware, and tableware, depending on what she created for dinner. I used to love sitting at the table with my own Chinese teapot and decorative dishes that only I used. Each of us had a set, and each one was a different pattern and color from the rest. Those table settings always made each of us feel special. From Hawaiian to Chinese to German themes and cuisine, Mom made dinner a special event. The table was usually set better than in most restaurants in San Francisco. Candles, linen napkins, and silver always made the dining table sparkle.
One of my best memories was constantly fighting with my younger brother, Keith, over a certain table setting. Whenever dinner was just plain baked ham, sweet potatoes, bread, corn, and applesauce, the table was set with the everyday dishes. There was one particular plate that had a chip out of the flower pattern and one fork that had a line near the top of the handle, as if something had melted a mark across the handle. Over the years Keith and I would fight over who would set the table. The rivalry over whose seat was set with the broken plate and fork was never-ending. Always in fun, but completely serious, we would swap knives and plates ten times behind each other's backs-even after the table was set. We mocked each other in defeat as dinner eventually started. The victor (whichever one of us ended up with the "broken fork" or "broken plate") shamelessly repeated:
"I got the broken fork. I got the broken fork."
Drive-in movies were always special events. One of the first movies I recall seeing was Disney's Bambi at the drive-in, and I was happy with the togetherness we shared as brothers. But camping was even more fun. We camped as a family-Mom, Ross, Scott, Keith, and me. Dad never camped with us, and I recall David on a camping trip only once. Nonetheless, their absence didn't change the fact that "the family" was camping. The five of us were "the family."
Mom had a habit of spontaneously announcing that we were going. Within two hours of the announcement, Mom and the boys had the car loaded and were off to one of the local campgrounds. Ross, Scott, Keith, and I would be sitting in the car waiting for Mom in high anticipation. It was always fun to be spontaneous; so many of my camping memories are vibrant and so real that they seem as if they occurred only yesterday. But sometimes, when I think back to those times, I can't recall the color of our sleeping bags or the color of the tent.
Some weekends, Mom would take us on day trips to the beach. The drive to Thornton Beach on the Pacific Ocean was short; it was only about twenty minutes from our house. The anticipation was too much for any five-year-old, and was overwhelming for me at that age. The beach was one of the few places we went as a family in public and were allowed to exercise the normal relationships shared among most brothers. Tossing a football from brother to brother was always part of the beach experience for us, and deliberately skipping one brother's turn just to start a fight was inevitable. Ross was about eleven, Scott was about eight, and Keith was a newborn.
When I think back to when all of us were living together, it is not clear if there were five boys or four. It was normal for Ross, Scott, and myself to be involved in some sport or game or brotherly challenge. David was rarely there. He was never allowed to play or speak to us. He was expected to be silent and only watch as the other boys played and shared with one another. Sometimes I remember David being there, and other times I don't. So many times he was left behind in the house, just not part of our daily lives. He was part of the background-something that you know is there but isn't important.
It has been difficult for me to force myself to remember David because I have buried those memories for so many years. As an adult, I am shocked to remember what was being done in that house. I am deeply ashamed of my own childhood participation in the horrific events. From my earliest memories, unspeakable acts of violence were happening in our family that I couldn't understand at the time. As a child, I didn't know that these acts never should have happened or been allowed to happen. The violence was a part of daily life before I can even remember.
The harsh truth is, my childhood was a lie. Beneath the surface our family was anything but normal. There were horrible secrets in the backs of each of our minds. We all knew what they were and yet never talked about them. We were afraid to.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Brother's Journey by Richard B. Pelzer Copyright © 2005 by Richard Pelzer. Excerpted by permission.
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