Personal Declaration
Ayn Suzanne Pillsbury
The
first episode of violence I recall was the year I was in eighth grade.
That would have been in the autumn of 1988. Craig had taken us into the
family room, just the kids. Mom wasn’t there. Craig wanted to talk to us
about how incompetent Mom was. It was bad stuff about Mom. He was
trying to win our loyalty. So then Mom came home and came into the room
wanting to participate in the discussion. Craig was very angry and told
her he was having a private discussion with the kids and that she wasn’t
welcome.
Of course, being our mother, she believed the
contrary. None of us objected to her being there. Then he became very
loud and vituperative and became vocally and physically intimidating. He
wrestled Mom to the ground and was on top of her holding her down and
hitting her and so all of us kids were torn. We didn’t know what to do.
We wanted to get him off of her, so I picked up a bar bell which was
probably from 12 - 15 pounds and sort of tapped Craig with it on the
back, not really wanting to hurt him but wanting him to realize that we
didn’t approve of what he was doing. I don’t know how well it worked.
Eventually he got off her.
There was some discussion for a
while, Mom saying why she should be able to stay and Craig saying why
she should leave. Then Craig again became very angry and punched Mom in
the jaw, knocking her out cold. Of course she was standing so she fell
over and I thought she might have struck her head on the hearth stones.
So she hit the floor and we were all worried she was dead. She wasn’t
responding. Craig left her there. We ran and got some water and someone
felt her pulse. Then Scott and Edi and Justin went to call the police.
We stayed with Mom until she came around and the police came but Craig
wasn’t arrested because Mom told them not to arrest him.
Mom did
not hit Craig. Mom never hit Craig. Mom is the least violent person I
know. Craig never scrupled to use physical intimidation to get what he
wanted.
Craig called me either Sunday night or Monday after he
left Mom on January 23rd. I had been gone for the weekend. Craig called
me and told me that he was divorcing Mom. This was a great surprise to
me since we had just been on a family vacation over Christmas which was
happy and uneventful with the exception of the following violent
outburst by Craig.
I was on the laptop computer chatting with
someone on line. It was around 10:00 p.m. Each time I received a message
from the person I was chatting with it made a dinging sound. Craig was
trying to sleep in an adjacent room and yelled at me to get off the
computer because the noise was bothering him. I was in the process of
getting off and he yelled one more warning, I think, before coming out
just after I had gotten off, slamming the top of the computer down and
yelling at Mom who had come out in anticipation of his rage to try to
get me off the computer.
He yelled at her that it was her fault
because she hadn’t gotten me off the computer. He slammed her into the
wall. Mom had bruises for a while after that. And that was the last
violent episode I witnessed between my Mom and Craig.
To finish
the story of my conversation with Craig, Craig said to me that he had
first decided on a divorce three months before he actually told my Mom.
Which would put the date sometime in mid-October, roughly after my
brother Edi’s near-fatal motorcycle accident. I have a hard time
believing that the two are not related. He never represented to me that
he had given my Mom any warning. I know she would have mentioned it if
he had. When I asked him why he was doing this, he said that he didn’t
think he had made her happy in all the 14 years they were together. He
offered no real explanation. He never mentioned my Mom’s heroic rescue
of our finances or feeling grateful to her. That surprised me. He said
he didn’t care about the money and he wanted to make sure my mom was
provided for, that he could always go and make more money, so the money
was not an issue. He led me to believe that he still considered himself
to be our father.
Craig told me that the reason he didn’t tell
my mom he wanted to divorce her in person was that he was afraid she
would, “go for the knives” and hurt him. Nothing could be more
ridiculous than the idea of my mother being violent. I can’t remember
her ever so much as spanking me, much less trying to knife the husband
she loved. I told him not to be ridiculous, that there was only one
person who had ever been violent in their relationship. He grunted what
seemed an affirmation in response. It would take a monumental act of
intellectual dishonesty and denial for him to actually believe that.
He
went on to say that he intended to set up a trust fund for my
continuing education and that of my children. He ended the conversation
saying he hoped to talk to me soon, which he did.
In later
conversations I learned he was not assuming responsibility for the
divorce. He did not seem to believe that it warranted his personal
attention. He never expressed concern about my Mother’s physical health,
which had been failing recently, as he well knew. He expressed no
concern for her heart problems. His interest in the divorce was just for
himself.
When I talked to Mom she expressed concern about what
had happened. She said she still loved him and was worried about him and
didn’t know what to think. She was confused and hurt.
Craig has
also had a history of being violent with my sister Dawn, engaging in
inappropriate conflict with someone who was probably 12 - 14,
One
episode in particular I remember took place when we were returning from
a family trip. We were in LAX, walking into baggage claim. Craig asked
Dawn, who had her hands full, to carry Justin’s bag. Dawn, for obvious
reasons, didn’t want to. Craig became enraged. He charged Dawn who was
facing him at a dead standstill. She put up her hands to defend herself
from the 350 pounds of angry oncoming Craig. Somehow he managed in the
very brief moment of their contact to fall over, failing in what I
assume was an attempt to punish her for her assertion of personal
autonomy.
I recall people applauding, understandably, since you
have to wonder why a man of that size would take a running leap at his
daughter in a public place.
I have always been under the
impression that Craig was my father. He always introduced himself as my
father. Never as my step-father. He always said he had six kids.
Signed, June 1999
- Electronically -
