This Boy's Life: Jack’s Letter to Uncle Stephen

Dear Uncle Stephen,

I’m sure, as my mother mentioned, we left our home in Florida long ago to start a new life together, back when I was only ten. The journey has been rough on us, having to start over and over again due to a family friend who stalked his way to us in Salt Lake City and wouldn’t leave us alone. My mother eventually found a place for us to stay in Seattle and a job for herself. Everything in our lives at that point had been going well. We had been living with two other women and their children. My mother had found a job, and I was finally attending a normal school and making friends. Everything was going as planned.

This all changed when one of my mother’s friends, Marian, tried to set her up with a man to marry. She felt she needed somebody to look after us and be my father figure. We didn’t need this, though. We had been getting along just fine before, and I never needed anyone as a dad; we were fine as we were. But after much trial and error, she met Dwight. A hot-tempered man that seemed to suck up to my mother each time he came to our house, which became a regular occasion. They seemed to be getting along well, and Dwight even tried to kiss me. It didn’t work, though; I did not trust this man. Something didn’t sit right with me on how much fawning he was doing over my mother. But her friends kept pressuring her into it more and more until my mother gave him a chance. At some point, my mother insisted that I go and live with him and his family over the Thanksgiving break to try and get an impression of him. I didn’t feel I had much said in the situation, so I agreed.

Over the week, he would constantly single me out and subjugate me to harassment and bullying, forcing me to comply with him. He would make me work for hours for unnecessary reasons, ranging from if he needed me to do his work to spite me. Some of the labor was excruciating, and he forced me to sit there and watch with a grin on his face. Some of these things he would do ranged from moving unnecessary furniture around and making me hurt myself while forcing me to shuck chestnuts off the floor, which he purposefully knocked over. Even when my hands were bleeding and cut from cutting too long, he would sit there and belittle me for being so weak. He told me that if I ever told my mother any of this, I would be in a world of hurt, and he told me threats if I told her anything about my true experience there. So, I kept quiet and didn’t tell my mother anything that was going on. When she asked me about my time spent with them, I didn’t feel safe telling her that Dwight had been treating me wrong. He wouldn’t let me get away with telling her stuff like that and would constantly lie to her about it on his side of the story. Dwight made up these elaborate lies about how much fun we were having together as a family, which could be anything father than the truth. He also came up with other lies to my mother about what he was up to renovating and fixing the house-another agreement they had come up with for us to move in with them while she was away. Instead, he bumped around in their house all day and did not get one of those things completed, leaving most of it up to me. When it came time for her to ask for my consent for her and Dwight’s marriage, I felt too much fear for Dwight and was forced to say yes. I wasn’t uncertain of my and my mother’s safety if I told her no, and she refused him.

Things have only been getting worse since we moved in with him and his family. His mad and obsessive behavior makes the household a living nightmare. He is prone to lie and would often manipulate my mother and me into stuff we did not know of or consented to, often resulting in me or my mother getting mocked or threatened in some way and sometimes even cussed out. He has only made things with my mother more unbearable. Their fights increase in volume each night. Lately, I’ve been able to tell that her health has gone down, and I'm starting to get concerned for her well-being and my own. Dwight would constantly pick fights with us and bombard us with threats. Sometimes with words, sometimes with violence.  He wants my mother to himself and to his abuse while wanting to get rid of me in the process. He knows that we together would not result in him getting in the winning word, so he needs to separate us from each other. His family doesn’t seem like they are willing to help either. They stated his behavior was “normal” for him and were not subjugated to the brute of his abuse. So, they stayed apathetic. My mother and I are stuck together in this terrible place where we can’t escape and feel too afraid even to try. We’re afraid that if we leave, he will hunt us down and drag us back.

My mother is a proud woman and would not admit this to someone she lows when she’s worked so hard to get to this point.  She would have never sent you a letter regarding this out of her concern for you. But this has gotten too far, and I don’t know who else to turn to. In this letter, I ask for your help getting us out of here and to safety. You seemed like the best possible solution to our misery-being the last known family member of my mother who still cares enough to keep in contact with us. If you could only let us stay with you and your family while we get back on our feet in Paris, that would greatly help us out of this absurdity that we're stuck in. My mother, a skilled worker with years of experience as a stationary, could pick up a job as an assistant while I attend school and learn French together. We’ll be quiet as bugs, and you wouldn’t even notice we’re there. We will eventually repay your trouble and leave you alone to let you have peace with your family. We’ve had experience moving around like this on the run before; we can do it again with your help. We need a place to stay low while we get back onto our feet and start rebuilding our lives. My mother is a very capable woman, and I am a good adaption to new environments, so trust in us to have the ability to get back onto our feet. We won't have to rely on you forever, only for a little while.

It might be nice to reunite together as a family. It has been so long since you and your sister have seen each other, and I can’t even remember the last time I saw you or your family in person. We could act as a whole family again. Although things have been patchy in our family’s history, you and my mother always seem to rely on each other, even after all these years. If you let us lean on you for this moment, we will gladly help you in the future with anything you need. We could have each other’s back and live a perfectly reasonable life together. Only, though, if you agree to help us.

Please consider that spending more time here puts us in jeopardy of Dwight’s abuse. I’m unsure how much more we can take before it becomes too much.

Sincerely,

Jack