The Taft Family’s Before and After - 2. Staying With Brendan and Beyond

A man startled me awake. He asked my name, and he shared the dinner he came home with. I discovered he was Brendan. I also found out he was really nice. He wanted to send me back to my parents, but I wouldn’t tell him who they were. I did have to tell him a lot of what they did to me. He called child services, but they were closed. He let me take a bath and gave me an extra-large t-shirt to sleep in. I had to sleep on the couch though. He even washed my clothes.

After breakfast Saturday morning, he tried child services again, but they were too busy to worry about a kid who was safe, so I got to spend the rest of the weekend with him. Like I said, he was nice. He took me shopping and swimming. I had fun, he even got me Spiderman underpants, mom always insisted on boring white ones. I had started calling him Uncle Brendan, because just calling him Brendan didn’t seem right.

After swimming, he asked me more questions, and I found out he really was my uncle. I didn’t want to, but he said he wouldn’t take me back home, so I gave him our phone number. He called to talk to my mother, who at first said she didn’t know me. After they talked some more, he called her a name that rhymed with rich and hung up. Then he called the cops.

He let me have nachos for dinner. A friend of his came over, who was really nice too. When the cops arrived, we told them what had happened with my parents. He also had to tell the cops he was gay. Mom had kicked him out of the house once, too, because of that. He bought me pajamas after the police left and since I was afraid the night before, he let me fall asleep in his bed. I knew gay meant he liked boys, or I guess men, but he never did anything to me that was like that. He never even asked to see my pee-pee, like mom did.

The next morning, he woke me up and said we had to go to my house. I didn’t want to, but after he told me Jill said our parents were getting arrested and wouldn’t be there, I said okay. He talked to a lady from child services, had us all gather up clothes and other things we wanted, and he took the three of us out to breakfast.

Jill and Steven told him more things our parents did to them. We went back to his house so he could make some calls and then we went out to lunch. After lunch, we went to look at a couple houses to possibly move into with him. After a couple nights in a hotel, we actually went to live in one of them. Stayed there until we all grew up, too.

It was cool living with Uncle Brendan. The house had a pool, so we got to swim a lot. We even found out we had another uncle who was a pitcher for the Braves. Uncle Brendan took us to a game, and Uncle Rich got us a tour of the locker room and bought us ice cream after the game.

We all had to tell Uncle Brendan more things mom and dad did to us. It made things worse for them with the police. Then it got even worse when they found a body half-buried in the back yard. It creeped me out, knowing I was probably sitting and laying on top of the dead kid for the three days I was in the hole.

After the cops found the body, mom got shot by the kid's father. She didn't die right away, but I pretended she did. I hated her. Brendan went to see her at the hospital a couple times. The first time, he asked if we wanted to go. I said no. I didn't want to see her ever again. I was fourteen when she finally did die for real. Brendan made us go to the funeral, but I didn't go up front to say goodbye. We were sitting in the first row, and I heard Steven say, 'I'm glad you're dead, you f'in bitch.' I guess if I said bitch, I could say fucking too. Jill was just as mean, she said 'I wish you had suffered longer, you cu...' That word I'm not saying, but it rhymed with hunt.

A year later, dad died. None of us went to his funeral. We actually found out a couple weeks later, after he was buried in the prison's cemetery. None of us thought it was a great loss missing it. Jill was a little angry because she didn't get a final chance to tell him how much she hated him. She wrote him a letter and burned it. Apparently, some believe that’s a way to talk to the dead.

One other thing happened while I was still a kid that is worth mentioning. When I was in sixth grade, and twelve, we had a school field trip to Washington D.C. I had to go to the bathroom, and it was on a different floor of the museum we were in. The teacher let me go by myself as long as I promised to come right back. I wasn't able to go right back. There was a power failure or something and the elevator got stuck. There was a little light, I guess for an emergency, but it was still pretty dark. After some time, maybe about an hour, the light went out. I guess its battery ran out. It reminded me of being in the hole. I imagined the little boy was in the elevator with me. I was scared. By the time the power came back on, I'd been crying so long, I ran out of tears. When the doors finally opened, I was huddled in a corner, with my eyes closed tightly. If the boy did do something to me, I didn't want to see it. I've been afraid of the dark ever since. Uncle Brendan, who was my new dad by then, took me home. I couldn't sleep with the lights off anymore, either. After a few days, he brought me to a doctor who talked with me about the dark. It helped a little, but even after I grew up, I was still afraid of the dark. I had a different doctor by then too. The first one only had kid patients.

The day Uncle Brendan became my dad, Jill and Steven gave me a medal that said, 'The Bravest Boy Ever.' They said I probably saved all of our lives when I was kicked out of the house and found Uncle Brendan. Considering they killed that other boy; I suppose maybe I did.

I had met one girl in high school that I liked a lot. We dated a few times, but when she wanted to get closer, and started playing with my dick, I freaked out, thinking it was my mom who was doing that to me. She didn't understand why I wanted her to stop, and I couldn't tell her why, so she broke up with me.

Otherwise, mostly things were good growing up, other than girls, and the elevator incident and its impact on me. I graduated high school near the top of my class and even went away to college. I had a few different roommates before I finally found one who didn't care about sleeping with a light on. I guess he didn't care because by the time we went to bed, most nights he was drunk. He didn't last very long either, though. I woke up in the middle of the night one time and he was standing next to my bed. He had one hand on my dick and with the other, he was jerking himself off. I told the RA, Resident Assistant, what happened. He was expelled and I never needed to have a roommate after that. That was fine with me. Who knew what the next one might have done to me?

I found another girlfriend after college graduation. I had gotten a job as a teacher's assistant by then, with the idea of being a full-fledged teacher after a year. I got a little further with that one. I got past my issue of her playing with my dick, but when she wanted us to give each other oral sex, I couldn't and broke it off with her. Mom wanted to suck me, but didn't because she said I was too small. I guess I wasn't too small for Denise, but I couldn't go though with it. That pretty much was the stopping point a few more times before I finally gave up. I didn't like guys, like Uncle Brendan, so I stayed single.

After I finished my time as a teacher's assistant, I moved on to being a teacher of seventh-grade students. I was always really good at math, so I had a number of different classes, two each of basic math, for the kids that needed a little extra help, algebra and geometry. I guess the kids liked me. The first full year, I was voted favorite teacher by the seventh-grade students. After that, the awards kept coming, both from the students and the school district. I enjoyed teaching the kids. After eight years teaching middle school kids, by then it was seventh and eighth graders, I took a job at the high school. I didn't have the basic math classes anymore, but they were replaced by trigonometry.

A year into my high school career, I met a woman that I wasn't as afraid to be with. She had been married once before and had a son who was five. Her first husband was a complete asshole, her words, so she didn't want to marry again. I was okay with that, thinking if I did get freaked out at some point, it would be easier to break up. That didn't happen though. I was finally able to be intimate with a woman, something I had resigned myself to think would never happen. We gave Jimmy a half-sister three years into our relationship. It was tricky, but Tamara got her ex to give up parental rights and I adopted Jimmy. Once the asshole realized he didn't have to pay child support any longer, he gladly signed away his rights. We had to put Jimmy into therapy for a little while, he still loved his dad, although the feeling wasn't mutual. In time, he grew to accept me and was willing to get adopted. We named our daughter Jillian. Jill, for short. I purposely used a different spelling than my sister's.

Next Up - “Introducing Jill Taft”