The Taft Family’s Before and After - 1. Introducing Nick Taft

Hi, I’m Nicholas Taft, but you can call me Nick. Everyone else does, except for my parents when they’re mad at me. That happens a lot, as you’ll soon find out. My story starts when I was four, mostly because I don’t remember much that happened before then. I’ll generally tell it like it’s happening right now, although this isn’t a diary or anything.

I was four the first time I remember being punished. We lived in a house that used to belong to my grandparents before they died. That happened before I was born. Dad said they died in a car accident. That always made mom roll her eyes, so I guess there was more to it than that, but she never said anything about it. My big sister Jill always said dad had a pretty good job, so why he made us use candles instead of lights lots of times didn’t make a lot of sense. She’s eight years older than me, so she knows a lot. I do remember him saying things like ‘I’m not paying the g.d. electric company any more than I have to.’ I said g.d. because I’m not allowed to repeat what he really said.

Anyway, I was clumsy as long as I can remember. Most of the time I would fall, drop something, or knock something over. I guess mom got tired of me knocking things over when finally, it was a candle. That had to happen sooner or later. I was coloring at the kitchen table and the crayon slipped out of my hand. I did that a lot too. Anyway, the crayon was rolling toward the candle and I reached for it. Big mistake. I caught the crayon but knocked over the candle. The tablecloth was fabric, and it started to burn. I yelled for mom who was at the stove cooking dinner.

She turned around and said, “What the f did you do?” Although she said a word that started with f and rhymed with truck. Then swatted the fire with a towel.

“I accidentally knocked over the candle.”

“And you accidentally burned my best tablecloth. Your dad’s sister is coming over with her latest boyfriend. I wanted to make a good impression for her, but you f’d that up.”

Again, with the truck rhyme. She re-lit the candle and grabbed my arm and held my wrist over the candle.

“Maybe this will teach you how to be more careful.”

I screamed because it hurt a lot. When she let go of my arm, there was a red spot on my wrist. I couldn’t ask her why she did that because I was crying so hard. She told me to stop, and when I couldn’t, she grabbed my arm again and dragged me to the bathroom.

“You’ll stay in here and think about what you did.”

After a few minutes I tried to come out, but she must have put something against the door, because I couldn’t open it.

“When can I come out?”

I had to ask it a few times, getting louder each time. I guess she wasn’t close enough to hear me right away, but she finally answered.

“In the morning.”

“What about supper?” No answer. “Mom?”

“You lost supper when you burned my tablecloth. I don’t want to hear another word from you until I open that door.”

After that, there was a second lock on the bathroom doors. I lost count after around ten, but I spent lots of nights hungry, sleeping on the bathroom floor. About half of them from knocking over candles, along with the accompanying burn.

I turned five before I dropped something breakable. That was when I knocked over a glass and it fell on the floor and broke. I saw that look in her eyes and thought I was getting the candle treatment again. I thought wrong. After she wiped up the juice, she put a piece of the glass into my hand and squeezed it closed. I screamed and cried again. I was bleeding, but just a little. Into the bathroom I went.

“Hold a tissue over the cut until it stops bleeding.”

The lock clicked. I missed lunch and supper that day and night. I kept good track of the things I broke and had my hand squeezed around a piece. That happened eight times. But only a couple before we moved.

But before we moved, I got locked up once again. This time I didn’t even do anything. At least I didn’t think so. One night, it was New Year’s Eve, and I thought maybe because I was five now, I could stay up late with them. When Aunt Eve, my dad’s sister came over, mom put me in my heavy coat and brought me out back. She shoved me into the shed and closed and locked the door. “I’ll come back to get you later.”

I don’t know how long I was in there, but I was nearly frozen when she came to get me. She put me in bed, threw an extra blanket on me, and said good night. Steven was already in his bed, curled up in a little ball. I think he was crying, but I was too cold to get out of bed to ask him what was wrong. He seemed different after that. He even started stuttering. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

I was still five, but I remember it well. I had just gone to bed when mom came into my bedroom. Well, our bedroom. I shared it with my brother Steven. He was almost ten, but not in bed yet. Mom put a coat on me with my socks and sneakers.

“Where are we going?”

All I got was, “Shut up,” and she dragged me out to her car. Steven and Jill were already in the back seat. Mom dumped me into my booster seat and told Jill to buckle me in. She got in the car, and we drove away. I never saw that house again.

I woke up in a motel room the next morning. Jill was on one side of me in bed and Steven on the other. I asked what was going on, but they didn’t know either. Jill said mom was out getting us breakfast. We stayed there for a few days. Maybe it was a week or more. I lost track, there was nothing to do except watch TV, eat, and sleep.

Dad finally showed up. Him and mom were talking quietly a lot. Another few days went by, but this time dad stayed in the room with us at night. One day, he came back from somewhere and told us he bought a house.

I asked, “What happened to the old one?”

“I sold it.”

Then I heard him say, quietly, “For a lot less than it was worth.”

We left the motel and drove a while. We pulled into a driveway and mom asked, “Here?”

Dad’s answer was “Yes. It was the only thing I could get fast.”

He turned to us kids, “You’re not to go into the back yard until I say it’s okay.”

We agreed, because what else could we do? We walked into the house, and all of our furniture was there. Mom continued her questioning why there. Quietly, but we still heard.

“We can’t live in this town. HE lives here.”

“We don’t have a choice after what happened. If you had kept your hands off the neighbor’s kid, we wouldn’t be here at all.”

We settled into the new house. Mom signed us up for school, and things were normal again. Normal meant I was still clumsy, Jill was sad all the time, and Steven didn’t talk much. And when he did, he stuttered.

I was able to take a guess about Steven’s stuttering a few weeks after we moved. Dad was at work, mom called me into their bedroom. I immediately got scared. If I broke something in there, I’d really be in trouble. I didn’t stay long enough to break anything. But I was really confused.

“Your brother is sick, so you’ll have to do. Pull down your pants.”

“Are you going to spank me? What did I do?”

“I’m not going to spank you. Go ahead.”

“Why?”

“Pull your f’n pants down or you will get a spanking before I put you in the bathroom.”

I didn’t know why she wanted me to pull down my pants, but I decided that was better than a spanking and a trip to the bathroom, which I knew meant overnight. I pulled them down.

“Underwear too.”

I hesitated, but that got her madder.

“Now!!”

I pulled down my underpants too.

“What the f? I can’t suck that, it’s too small. Go to your room.”

I wasn’t sure if I should or not, but I pulled up my pants and left. She didn’t complain. She never asked me to pull my pants down again. But since Steven was sick, I guessed he had to pull his down before and she sucked on his pee-pee. I didn’t say anything to him about that for a long time.

Time went by, I turned six, and that summer, I broke a clock. Mom got mad like she always did. Except, I didn’t have to hold a piece of it or get locked in the bathroom right away. She took me out back. We were allowed to go out there by then, but had to stay away from the hole dad had dug, saying he was going to put in a pool. It was only ever a pool after it rained a lot. I guess that made it a lake. When I walked up to it, there was a ladder down into the bottom of the hole. Mom made me climb down and took the ladder up. After a little while, dad walked out the back door, screaming.

“Damn it, Kathy. You can’t put him in there.”

He put the ladder back in and told me to climb out. I got inside and mom locked me in the bathroom. It was the first time I didn’t have to squeeze what I broke.

I was almost seven when I got brought out to the hole again. I had broken a vase that mom said was her great grandmother’s and it was worth a lot of money. Second time I didn’t have to squeeze a piece. But I was dragged out back and told to climb down the ladder. There was a new high spot in the dirt in a corner, so I sat down on it. By then, there was a wood roof and a door. Mom pulled up the ladder and closed the door saying I had better be quiet, or she wouldn’t come let me out. I was scared. Was she going to let me die because I broke her vase? It was dark after she closed the door. I couldn’t see anything.

After a long time, I got thirsty. I remembered seeing a bottle of water by where the bottom of the ladder was. I felt around in the dark, found the bottle, and drank a little of what was left. I was able to take one more drink before it was empty. I had nothing to do, so I laid down. After a while, I needed to pee. I didn’t want to stink up the hole, so I peed in the bottle and closed it back up. That ended up being a sort of good thing, because I got thirsty again. I waited as long as I could, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. I drank some of my pee. I gagged but was able to swallow it. A long time went by, and I had to drink it a couple more times before the door opened. The ladder came down, mom said, “Come up.”

I climbed out, she told me to take a bath and put on pajamas. When I was done with that, she gave me some cereal and said I needed to go to bed early because the next day was the first day of school. It was Friday morning when I broke the vase. School starting tomorrow meant it was Sunday evening. I spent nearly three days in the hole. Before I went to bed, I dug through my nightstand for the old night-light I used to use. I didn’t want to sleep in the dark.

After another candle burn, I tried to be more careful. But the more I tried, the clumsier I got. A few days later, it got the worst it would ever be. Usually, when I knocked over a candle, I would call mom or dad to help if it lit something else on fire. I didn’t do that this time. I was drawing in the dining room. The dining room table had this kind of lacy looking material as its tablecloth. I shifted my paper and hit a candle. It fell over and right away, the lacy thing caught on fire. I dumped my juice on it, but it kept burning. I started to cry. Dad heard me, ran into the room, and saw the fire. He grabbed another tablecloth and swatted at the flames a few times before the fire went out.

I guess mom heard the noise and came running in.

“What did you do?”

Dad said, “He tried to burn down the f-ing house again.”

“I’ve had enough of this. I can’t take any more of these accidents.”

Dad said, “Get the f out.’”

Mom added “Now.”

I didn’t know what to do, but mom solved that.

“Go pack some clothes and get the f out of our house.”

I looked at her like she was crazy. I decided she was, and I’d better listen. I had no idea where I could go. I thought of her address book. So, on my way to my room, I took it out of her purse. I looked through it for maybe a familiar name, but didn’t see any. Then I saw an entry for a Brendan. I had no idea who he was, but his name was marked with a circle with a line through it. I figured it was someone she didn’t like. If she didn’t like him, maybe he’d be safe. The address said Gainesville, which I knew was where we lived, so I tried to memorize it.

I put a pair of sweatpants over my jeans, added a couple shirts. It was summer, but sometimes the nights were cool. I threw her purse back into her bedroom and went downstairs. They were both standing by the front door. It was open, and when they saw me, they pointed outside. I didn’t want to get spanked, burned, or I didn’t know what else, so I left. The door slammed behind me, and I started running.

I walked and ran for two days before I finally came to the street. The first night, I slept in a doghouse at a house that was for sale. I didn’t want anyone to find me, since they’d send me back home, so being in a back yard worked.

The next day, a Thursday, I happened to go past a Burger King. While the tactic didn’t work at Wendy’s, I had to try again, I was so hungry. This time there were some kids there. I asked them for food. They offered to buy me a kid's meal if I would show them my pee-pee. I didn’t want to, but I was hungry, so I said okay. They teased me for being dressed for winter, and said they would help me cool off. It wasn’t a nice way to cool off. They took off my sweatpants, cut the zipper out of my jeans and made me show them my pee-pee. I hesitated, so they tore my underpants right off me.

They punched and kicked me. One of them was trying to put his pee-pee in my mouth when another that went in to buy the kid’s meal came back out. He told the other boy to stop. Just then, someone came out with a garbage bag. He didn’t see my pee-pee, but he chased the rest of them away. I’m guessing he didn’t see me at all. I stayed and ate the kid’s meal.

I wandered around more, looking for Brendan’s street, but didn’t find it, so I found another empty house and crawled under the porch to sleep.

The next day, I finally asked a girl in a little store where the address was. I told her it was my house, and I was lost. Besides the kid's meal at a Burger King the day before, I hadn’t eaten anything. I was staring at the donuts while she was drawing me a map.

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes. But I don’t have any money.”

“Don’t worry about that. I throw a bunch of them away every day when I close up. I’ll just say I threw away one more than I do.”

She gave me a powdered one and a cup to get some water. I ate and drank, thanked her, took the map, and left. The map wasn’t very good, but I finally found Brendan’s house. Or what I thought it was. I mixed up the numbers in my head. The house I thought it was sounded like it had a big dog. I was scared and tired, so I just gave up and laid down on the porch next door. I hoped they’d tell Brendan about me. I fell asleep, and afterward, I soon found out I had the right house anyway.

Next Up - “Staying With Brendan and Beyond”