A Brother's Journey
Chapter One
THAT WAS THEN ...
Daly City, California, 1970
In the beginning, life was fun, life was exciting, and life was
good. As a five-year-old, I was tender in age and yet I was cruel
and mean. I was happy to watch my brother as he was beaten or forced
to perform some disgusting punishment. It was exciting to watch. It
is horrifying to remember.
I WANTED TO BELIEVE that we were a middle-class family in a
middle-class San Francisco Bay Area suburb. The house was modest, as
were all the houses on Crestline Avenue. There were four or five
different styles of houses on the street. Each one was painted
differently, and yet there was a pattern on the street that reminds
me of the famous pastel houses of San Francisco's Rainbow Row. Our
house was bright pink. The outside trim was pink; even the concrete
steps were pink. Next door had a slightly different layout and was
painted in two tones of brown. As you walked down the street, the
colors of the houses would eventually repeat themselves to form a
pattern. Every family on the street had pride in their yards and ... read full excerpt from: A Brother's Journey: Surviving a Childhood of Abuse ebook
