My first experience in jail was ushered in by Charles Manson’s cult’s brutal murder of actress Sharon Tate, the shock wave that was to rip me from the arms of my tiny Episcopal safe house. His hippy commune cast aspersions on every flower child in America. The Manson trail was underway by the fall of 1970 and highly publicized. My father’s legal mind carefully followed every unfolding detail.
My father’s habit, if he arrived home sober enough to walk, was to switch on the television in the family room and watch the news, taking commercial breaks to throw back a few swigs of vodka in the bedroom. He liked giving boisterous advice to people on television; reporters, attorney’s, baseball players, football coaches: Everyone was an idiot. I shouldn’t have taken it so personally when he included me among the hordes of brainless imbeciles around the globe. “What the hell do you know?” he’d say to the reporter on television, “My God Man, you don’t have enough evidence yet!” he’d shout to the prosecuting attorney giving a statement before the press.
One night during the Manson ordeal, I was lying on the shag carpet in the den, doing my social studies homework, twirling my freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil, trying to tune out my father’s nightly ranting to the news media. Apparently the Manson trial had been working on my father’s intoxicated state of mind, producing fear and apprehension. His delusions had convinced him that the Episcopal ArchBishop’s invitation for me to travel the country and tell the story about Jesus growing my leg with a group of flower-power Christians was a ruse to suck his youngest daughter in to a murderous cult.
“You’re not going,” he said emotionless.
“What?” I asked. My elbow slipped and the sharp point of my pencil pierced my developing breast, breaking the lead off in my chest.
“G**damn it, Violet! Don’t you ever think? Haven’t you been watching this Manson case? You’re not going off with some Jesus cult.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. You’d think he would have been grateful to get rid of me; after all he’d been working on it for the better part of fifteen years.
“The next thing I know, you’ll be in prison for murder and we couldn’t hold our heads up in this city.”
“Talk to the ArchBishop yourself,” I pleaded.
He raised himself out of his Lord-of-the-Manor chair. I recognized the look in his eye, the land he transversed nightly, the segue into rage before oblivion. His shadow teetered over my 90-pound frame seated on the floor. “You’re not going,” his voice slurred with authority. He was still sober enough to get in a good punch. I stayed down and silent.
My father dragged his dead leg down the hall to the bedroom to seal his decision with a big gulp of vodka from the bottle hidden under the skirted chair. His return to the den was announced by the sound of his 200-pound body ricocheting off the hallway walls. I was sure he was so drunk he had forgotten about the whole thing.
“You won’t be going back to that church, Violet,” he said, entering the den, his tongue thick with inebriation.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my heart beginning to race.
“That G**damn Charles Manson Jesus Freak subterfuge of a church.”
“It isn’t that!” I insisted, rising to my feet.
“You’re an idiot,” he said, “I know what goes on in this town. You think I don’t know?”
“So now I can’t go to church. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“You’ll do whatever I say,” he barked, dropping into his brown leather chair.
I rose my from position on the floor, my anger and fear growing. I moved toward him in defiance. “I will not stop going.”
His 6-foot frame rose to meet me, “You’ll do exactly as I say.”
I grabbed a chair from the game table to his left. Positioning it directly in front of him, I stepped into the seat, putting me eye level with the jolly green giant. “Oh, no, I won’t,” I said, staring into his glassy eyes.
He raised his right hand; and as it swung toward my face, I said, “If you ever hit me again I swear I’ll march myself down to juvenile hall and file a petition against you. I will ruin you.”
Sober enough to have some recognition of what I’d said, his hand paused in mid-air.
“Go ahead,” I said defiantly.
I could feel his alcoholic tobacco-stained breath on my face, hot with rage. His hand hovered close to my cheek. Locked in battle, we glared into each other’s eyes. Minutes passed. I braced myself for the blow. Suddenly my father turned and teetered out of the room. Still surfing the chair seat, adrenaline pumping, I watched as the wounded warrior thumped his way down the hall, stunned by the effectiveness of my preemptive strike.
Morning brought a new reality.
Freshly shaven, the smell of Old Spice wafted down the hall and into the kitchen. Meticulously groomed in his blue pin-striped suit and starched white shirt, my father was always best in the morning. You’d think the hangover from the night before would have done him in, but a few swigs before breakfast and he was righted to face the day.
“I’ll take Violet to school today,” he announced at the breakfast table.
My stomach flip-flopped.
“I’m walking as usual,” I said.
“Not today,” he replied.
Overcome with fear, I instantly began plotting my escape.
“We’ll leave in five minutes,” he announced.
Unable to swallow another bite, I stood, “Guess I’d better get my things.”
“Sit down,” he said in an authoritative voice.
My mother, frantically making lunches for her three ungrateful children, never noticed anything was awry.
I was a lamb being lead to slaughter as I slid into the passenger seat of my father’s Lincoln. We rode in silence for the first few blocks. As we approached the traffic light across from the school I said, “I can get out here.”
My father turned right, away from the school.
“Where are we going?” I asked. My question echoed in the void.