It Happened To Me: My Father Set Fire To My Mom’s Closet — With Me Inside The House — During A Drunken Rage

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Hello hello hello

There is so much to discuss (as always!) and I am going to be succinct (as never!):

1. As I finished doing my little editing to this piece just now, I got an alert that another one of you qualified for A FREE ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIPTION TO ALL THINGS AJPT by getting a few friends to sign up too. This time the incredible salesperson and do-gooder was my old wonderful AJPT friend, the kooky non-linear Freema Jade, which made my heart swell even more. I love how many of you have brought in new readers here, and I love that you are getting free-ness bestowed upon you for doing it. But when I announced this initiative, I didn’t realize how touched I would be every time another one of you completed the assignment. Thank you thank you for spreading the good word. That is what kept Sassy magazine alive when right-wing religious groups got us taken off 70% of our newsstands and caused us to lose almost all of our advertisers. I always picture Sassy readers bringing their copies in to school to show the magazine to their friends and tell them how to subscribe. And they did it and our circulation kept growing because of it. Without social media or even email. SO thank you all for taking this challenge again to keep AJPT going. We could never do any of this without you.

2. If you or friends are thinking of starting an all access subscription, this would be a great time to do it, because this week we have a story by the one and only Christina Kelly (speaking of Sassy magazine and speaking of my favorite writer). We also have the follow-up to this incredible story from Roberta about her sexual affair with her therapist. I think I got the most hatemail yet over ending the first installment where I did, so let me make it up to you this week with a sequel that will be so worth the wait. Plus we have other great stuff too (a fashion dare I am giddy about, upcoming advice from Rain Phoenix, the return of another of Jane magazine’s most popular columns, etc).

That was very not succinct. I’m sorry, and I love you and all of your annoying recurring behaviors also! Enjoy today’s It Happened To Me!

xox Jane

By Sherry Shahan

It must’ve been the summer of 1957.

I was eight years old—no more than fifty pounds, standing a head above the handlebars on my scooter. My brother Stevie was still in diapers.

Daddy had invited friends over for a few beers. Margaret and Bill brought their namby-pamby son Michael. His age wedged somewhere between my brother and me.

Mom had the late shift at Thrifty Drug Store. Save a Nickel. Save a Dime. Save at Thrifty’s Every Time. Daddy and his two friends sat at our kitchen table—cigarette burns on the Formica top— drinking Schlitz from a can, the beer that made Milwaukee famous. He somehow scored a case of it.

The kitchen window overlooked our side yard—a concrete slab corralled by a cinder block wall. Pat Boone wailed on the radio, “Ain’t That a Shame,” like he was blaming the world for tears falling like rain.

I ushered Michael into my bedroom. Stevie waddled behind us in drooping diapers. They played with TinkerToys, poking slotted sticks in spools. Then they seized my colored pencils.

Michael squinted like kids do when pretending to be tougher than they are, hollering Monsters! Invaders from Mars! He lunged at Stevie with royal blue.

The attack probably wasn’t that painful. But my brother howled before collapsing in my lap. “Shut up you big baby!” I hated being in charge of them—but instinctively knew keeping them quiet and away from the grownups was a matter of survival for us kids.

I didn’t have to be in the kitchen to know what was going on. I wondered, How long will the beer-drinkers happily neglect their children?

Michael’s mom staggered in first, fleshy in a cotton summer dress, holding a paper plate of fried bologna sandwiches. Wonder bread soaked up all the butter from the skillet. I liked to eat the middle of my sandwiches first, and then make rings from the crust.

Margaret smiled a lopsided smile, a quart of milk wedged in her armpit. Dixie cups in her apple bosom. That’s what Daddy called it, apple bosom, another tilted truth. “How ‘bout a picnic?” she asked.

“Okay.” I tossed crust rings at the boys. Instead of crying they opened their mouths like baby birds.

And here comes Daddy, chugging from an amber glass, sucking the life out of a Winston, insisting we have a sleepover in the grown-up bed. “A treat since we have company.”

An early family photo of me with my mom, dad, and baby brother.

I have blurry memories of the bedroom set my grandparents bought for our first-ever house: blondish wood with a matching dresser and nightstand. The lamp had an orange base like a woven basketball.

After finishing our sandwiches, my brother got a thick cloth diaper with yellow bear pins. He crawled into my parents’ double bed, falling into a sleep deep enough to erase his near-death experience by a colored pencil.

Michael took one side, hugging a pillow. Meanwhile, my doll Betsy Wetsy and I seized the side closest to the closet. I was shirtless, in my favorite romper, and socks with eyelet lace plucked from the sale bin at JCPenney.

“‘Come on, let’s fuck! Right here on the kitchen table,’ Daddy shouted at a family friend.”

I don’t believe Margaret and Bill, or even Daddy knew the events would unfold the way they did. His friends always tried to keep him in line but it rarely worked. He staggered in, obviously drunk so the party wasn’t likely to be over anytime soon. He tucked me in, only me, with foul booze breath. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

I wished for a window in the ceiling and stars and escape.

He padded the length of the bed, leaving the door open when he left. The doorway framed the kitchen table and the window beyond. I watched him circle Margaret, taunting her at the table.

The world tilted, going from drinking glass to looking glass. “Come on, Margaret. Let’s fuck! Right here on the kitchen table!”

I didn’t understand the words. But I knew they were bad and tried to make my mind go blank. It wasn’t just the slurred words—it was knowing he was that pathetic. I pitied him.

Margaret begged to be left alone, “Stop it, Frank. You’re drunk.”

Instead of rescuing his wife, Bill took his place in some bizarre pack-animal order.

He had a role but it wasn’t as pack leader. “Maggie, what’s the big deal? Just a little nooky.”

I chewed my lip, suffering with her, because Bill cared more about being Daddy’s buddy than protecting his wife. I looked off into a dim corner, trying to keep quiet and concentrating on catching my breath. Michael pretended to be asleep.

“Fuck me!” Daddy’s tone, mean and nasty. Unchecked, insane.

You’d have to be deaf not to hear it.

Margaret shook her head, her hair a hot, sweaty mess. “Knock it off!”

At that moment I thought, She could take him down, if she wanted to.

This kept up for another painful hour, and I wanted to wake my brother and get the heck out of there. All at once Daddy appeared at the door, moving into the bedroom in a way that clashed with the strange masklike look on his face.

My childhood home, where the fire happened:

In my eight-year-old understanding of the world, I believed he was going to whisk my brother off to his crib so everyone could go home to their own beds. But, he wasn’t about to give up on a good time.

“Where was Mom? Why hadn’t she come home from work to save us?”

He slid open the closet door and grabbed an armful of Mom’s clothes. Hangers struck the floor. Michael whimpered. I nudged him with my foot. “Shhhh.”

Daddy clutched skirts, blouses, wool sweaters, stumbling from the bedroom through the kitchen, slamming out the door to the patio. He called to Margaret and Bill. “Come on out!” They stuck to the kitchen chairs.

I didn’t realize what was happening until I crawled to the end of the bed. From there, I had a pretty good view through the kitchen window. Flames grew from cotton, linen, wool, and rayon. Would the wire hangers melt? Such a waste; all those marshmallows Daddy bought for a special treat, and now we’d have nothing to roast them with.

The fire smoked in oily clouds, smelling like gasoline and singed hair. It burned itself out slowly, but I couldn’t get away. I closed my eyes, clinging to Betsy Wetsy, drowning in a slow leaky way.

Here’s a pic of me with my dad later in life—after he got sober. (Which was much too late.)

Dear God, I prayed, because this was back when I still tried to make deals with him. Let him burn in the fire.