I remember the goon chasing me around his mom’s house. He was probably five or six. I must have been two, because this was before I was kidnapped by my drunken father. My mother had left me with her friend Ruby and her son. I can’t recall his name—just a faceless monster with the floppy brown bowl haircut so common in the late 70s.

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It was one day like so many others. One house like so many others. Back then, ugly fake wood paneling covered every wall. Green or yellow glass ashtrays sat heavy on chunky wooden coffee tables. Rotary phones with coiled cables hung on walls or rested by those ashtrays for long conversations and a good smoke. On this day, like so many others, in this house, like so many others, my mother left me.

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I don’t really remember her from that time. She was more of a concept; some pretty lady who was nice to me for a few minutes before leaving me for hours or days with someone who wasn’t. In pictures, she looks impossibly young. She had me when she was 17.

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A couple of years later, after being beaten nearly to death for the third time, she left my father and eastern Kentucky. She had just given birth to my little brother by a sheriff named Melvin. I don’t know what was in her mind then, only that she seemed sad a lot. Whatever it was, it ended with her leaving town. She told me we were going to see Mamaw, and I was excited. I loved my grandmother, even if she scared me sometimes. But when we arrived, my mother left me there. I can still see the blue Grand Prix kicking up dust and rocks as she sped away.

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It was probably a year later when she brought Casey, my little brother. I cried because I missed her desperately. When she left again, Mamaw beat me badly. She said I had to stop crying for my mom. “I’m your mom now!” she told me with each crack of an old miner’s belt.

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For months, I refused. Each time I slipped and said “Mamaw,” the belt, the switch, the house shoe, or the back of the hand would follow. My grandmother loved me, and I know what you’re thinking, but she did…she was just very bad at it. Learning love in the Appalachians, especially in her youth, usually came with cuts, bruises, and broken bones.

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While I learned to brace for belts and switches, Casey grew up in the same house but under a different set of rules. He was too young to remember our mother at all. To him, Mamaw was Mom. The youngest always received mercy in our family. He was a little demon to me; tap-dancing on my shinbones in his tiny work boots, stealing my toys, laughing as everyone doted on him. If I protested, I was scolded or beaten.

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The worst part was having to pick my own switch when I’d transgressed. Choose one too small, and she’d grow angrier. Too large, and I guaranteed myself more pain. Once, knowing her temper, I chose a strong, knobby branch. One that experience told me would whistle when swung. She would be pleased. To my surprise, she threw it down and stormed past me. For a moment, I thought I had been spared. She returned with a rose branch. Leaves still clung to it, a tiny bud at its tip. Before I could even turn around, she went to work like a threshing monster. 

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Those moments are etched permanently into my mind, just like the scars they left in my flesh. Time dilated, and I can still remember seeing my blood flying in slow motion like tiny rose petals, every time she reared back for another swing. When it ended, I was curled on the floor, torn with bloody gouges, with thorns still embedded in my back and legs. My little brother stood over me smiling.

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I hated him. I hated Mamaw. I hated my Papaw for doing nothing. I should have hated my mother for leaving me, but I couldn’t. 

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Years later, after myriad other brutalities, I stood with a knife, watching it gleam, pressing it into a roast to learn how much force it would take to escape. Obviously I didn’t go through with it. I reasoned life in Hell with the possibility of something better was still better than the finality of death.

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One day, Mamaw told me, “Roberta’s coming back. But you’re staying here with me. Don’t get any ideas. I’m your mommy. I’m the one who loves you. Not her.”

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Despite the darkness I was born into, I’ve known happiness: the birth of my first child, the love of women who cared for me, the miracle of finding one who wants forever with me. But I have never known a joy greater than the day my mother came back.

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I saw her as an angel, distant and penitent. A child’s love for their mother is the closest thing to the divine any of us may ever experience. Forgiveness was never a question. 

When I saw her again, she saw no difference between me and my brother. With her, everything would be fair. Alone with her for the first time, I wept for hours and she loved me anyway.