Silent Night, Unholy Night

Christmas Eve 1956...

Early evening, maybe around 4:30 PM, sun setting...

Grandfather comes over, puts a different powder, a yellowish powder, in my mother's coffee while she's in the bathroom... She drank it, and her eyes look strange after a while... she hasn't fallen asleep, but she is also not awake... she's frighteningly different, eyes wide, dark, scary; slow moving, as if no one was inside... Lester isn't here, he's visiting someone sick?

GreatGram, Uncle Ray, and Mary Anne have arrived; checking me and my sister over and over again after making sure we were thoroughly clean... All the adults strangely subdued and quite, asking us over and over again to be obedient and quiet...

Grandpa and Ray go to the kitchen, and come back a few minutes later with two small cups and one large cup of warm brown liquid... make me, Peggy, and my mother drink them... it's not coffee, I know what coffee is... this is very bitter...

Driving to the Victorian in near-total silence; up the steps, across the porch, through the door and down the hallway to the stairs on the left... Down the stairs through the porno room, through the short hallway behind the shelf...

Stripping, all of us... Others waiting, handing out black, white, dark brown, and imperial purple robes - robes with hoods - which the adults put on... Grandpa Art and Greatgram wearing black, Mary Anne and Uncle Ray wearing imperial purple, the rest of the adults wearing the brown...

The white robes for me and my sister and mother... white robes, nothing underneath...

Grandpa and Ray quietly asking me and Peggy to be completely obedient, completely quiet... reminding us of the punishment that waits if we disobey... it's easy, I feel strange, numb, floating, skin is tingly...

The adults standing me and Peggy with mother between us before the main altar, side by side; then moving away from us... Mary Anne and Uncle Ray across the altar from us, Grandpa on her left, Greatgram on her right...

Greatgram speaks quietly... telling us how the Christian God is a weakling, how he doesn't care about people at all as proven by all the suffering in the world... How true it is that it is a world of survival of the fittest, eat or be eaten... How our ancestors were right to worship that which demonstrated that principle in fact and deed... mother nature, the earth mother, Gaia...

Grandpa steps next to me, anoints me with a mixture of heather and lamb's oil, removes my robe... steps over to my sister and does the same... Greatgram punctures a vein, draining blood into a yew bowl, and anoints me and then my sister with it - forehead, chin, heart, genitals, feet...

Grandfather walks mother forward, disrobing her as Greatgram hands the bowl to Mary Anne; Mary Anne anoints her too, and grandfather lays mother down on the altar, nude...

Grandpa makes us, makes me and Peggy kneel before the altar, points to mother and Chants, telling us mother is a symbol of Gaia... points at us and Chants that we are the fruit of the earth given to feed us all...

Picking me up, lays me between my mother's legs, anoints me with blood from the chalice - and lays me down on a smaller altar to the right and does the same with Peggy... lays her on a smaller altar to the left...

Grandpa stepping back, adults rapes us... each adult except Grandpa, Greatgram, and Mary Anne... Too weak, too numb to cry out, numbness, the pain distant, strange... seething inside though, pain and anger and hatred and rage held down deep inside, boxed in a secret cave deep within me where no one but me, no one but me, can feel it, because then Peggy would be hurt, hurt bad... Peggy cries quietly, softly in the far distance...

They're finishing, regrouping around the altar, around my mother, and Grandpa Chants again, telling that all things die and return to the earth... picking me up again, placing me between my mother's legs, and tells me to mate with her...

So very numb, so distant and echoing, I obey, it's like watching a movie while trying not to sleep... roaring like the ocean in my ears... , Grandpa picking me up, putting me down next to my sister... each male adult mating with mother, one by one... All the males, then Grandpa last...

Mary Anne quietly Chants dust to dust, birth to death, the cycle begins anew... lighting a five-pronged black candle... a candle like a human hand... all bowing their heads...

Time passes... Mary Anne snuffing the candle and Chanting go forth and do as you will... adults removing their robes, going down the small hallway... grandpa and Uncle Ray carrying mother... everyone gone but Mary Anne and me and Peggy...

Mary Anne comes to me, kneeling down and looking at me, soft soft voice telling me I did very well, that I can go far if I prove my worthiness... telling me I am the grandson of the high priest, and can become the next high priest if I can prove I am worthy... that I was born at a very special and powerful time... if I can prove that I'm not worthless like my real father who was a thief, traitor, and betrayer... soft soft voice asking me if I would like to be the high priest someday, replace Grandpa and do real magic... soft, soft voice distant, fuzzy...

Learn from them what they do, learn it well so Peggy and Danny don't get hurt,, hide my anger from them, do what they want, fool them... wait until I'm older, come back and do to them what they did to us... yes... oh yes...

Looking in her eyes, desperately hoping she cannot hear me thinking or see it somehow in my eyes...

Pulling me to her, hugging me gently and softly; standing, taking me and Peggy by the hand to the other room where we are cleaned up and dressed, waited on as if they were our servants...

We woke up in our own beds early Christmas morning - dressed, and went to my Grandmother's house for Christmas day. My mother complained of feeling woozy and not very well at all, but said we still had to go to my grandmother's house - that grandma would be very upset with us if we didn't go. Peggy and I knew not to say a word.

A few days later, my mother and stepfather drove to Bakersfield to see some friends, and dropped me and my sister off with my paternal grandparents for a visit.

I thought I could trust them, thought I could tell them, that they would call the police and protect us.

I was wrong, so very very wrong.

I told them what was done, how it was done. They both got very quiet, and then Grandma Davidson started muttering under her breath about manitous and witch doctors, making hand signs to ward away evil; and Grandpa Davidson making signs of cross, glaring at Grandma, telling her to abhor her witchcraft, her Indian magic, that magic is evil and of the devil.

Peggy remained silent, very silent, and Grandpa asked her if what I said was true, and Peggy said "oh no, oh no" - and Grandpa quietly, oh so very quietly reprimanded me for telling such horrible lies and listening to the devil. Then he made a phone call, An older man arrived in a little while, grandpa watched as the older man put me and Peggy in his car, watched as we drove off. We were taken to a church, a Southern Baptist church.

Grown-ups, several old men waiting for us there inside; had us kneel at the front, before the small altar. The old men, the elders all placed their hard, rough hands on us; their painful hands - and did an exorcism on me and Peggy; Exorcising the demons of lying and filth and sex from me; claiming protection for Peggy from such as I...

I finally learned then that what my real father had repeatedly taught me was true -

Depend on no one, trust no one.

Christmas 1956 - Silent Night, Unholy Night