The House that Benny Built

A house is often associate with a home, is it not?

“Home is where the heart is.”

“There’s no place like home.”

“A man’s home is his castle.”

Most of the television series of the early 1960 -1980’s made home seem like the best place a kid could ever want to be. The dad would be coming home from work or hanging out in the garage building a birdhouse or some shit like that while the mom was in the kitchen cooking up a roast with pearl onions and homemade fresh baked bread while wearing high heels and an apron.

The inside of our home did not look like that at all. We were very poor and had the bare minimum. My mother worked two jobs while my father galivanted around the lower Eastside with his mistress. Papa was a rolling stone……..and we never wanted him to lay his hat at are home. When he graced us with his presence he was often coming down from a drug bender. It was a horrifying time. We walked on eggshells, hoping against hope, that he wouldn’t decide to use my mother or my brother and I as human punching bags. My mother did everything she could to pacify him. Waited on him hand and foot, fed him and made him the center of her universe but it was never enough. We was man of few words because he let his fist do most of the talking. Home was not a safe haven for me as a child. It was building were the devil visited. You see, my father never actually lived with us. He preferred to reside with his mama, my grandmother. The woman that placed him on a pedestal as high at Jack’s Beanstalk all while ironing his underwear. Seriously, his fucking underwear???

We lived on government assistance. WIC and food stamps were our best friends. My mother broke her back to raise the five of us all while trying to raise a man boy to be a husband. The older I became, the more resentful I became of my mother. A child’s thought “You love dad more than you love us. He hurts us and you forgive him.” I promised myself that any home I created would be filled with love and hugs and kinds word and TRUTH. In any house that Benny built, there were walls of secrets that surrounded it. “Don’t tell anyone that Daddy hit you. Don’t answer any questions about what happen to mommy’s face.” As I type this paragraph I am haunted by the sounds of my childhood and I thankful that I am able to share with readers that I survived. I am thriving at fifty three years old because I am telling the story of my eight year old self. I do not share to disparage. I share to cleanse my soul of the pain I have carried all these years. In Benny’s house we were mere pawns in chess match between a very timid mother and a father that wanted only for my mother to be his beck and call girl. We were an afterthought, an inconvenience. Five different reason why Benny could not have my mother full attention.

Because of the house that Benny built, we have five lost souls, six if you count my mother, that each have their very own distinct set of issues. Mine? Textbook. I do not trust men. I manage to sabotage any relationship that is evenly remotely healthy for fear that at some point I will lose myself to this man or he will show his true colors and show me how much he loves me by rearranging my face. Unrealistic I know, but the little brown girl did not know any better because in Benny’s house she never knew her worth. Never fear friends….. I am well aware of my worth, present day and every day.

The little brown girl is unpacking in her own house and throwing out all the unwanted memories. I am loving myself for first the time in my life. It is quite honestly the hardest thing I have ever done but I AM worth it.