Sister of Silence: A Memoir (Appalachian Families Book 1)

Sister of Silence:

A memoir

by

New York Times Bestselling Author

Daleen Berry

Afterword by Kenneth V. Lanning

Former Supervisory Special Agent

FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit

Excerpt of the sequel, Shatter the Silence, is included in this version.

Copyright 2016 Daleen Berry

Revised Ebook Edition

Smashwords Ebook Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Nellie Bly Books

Morgantown, West Virginia

™

Nellie Bly Books

Morgantown, W.Va.

The names and identifying details of some characters in this book have been changed.

Copyright © 2016 by Daleen Berry

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form, except for brief quotes used specifically within critical articles and reviews.

Nellie Bly Books revised electronic edition 2016

Nellie Bly Books and design are registered trademarks.

A portion of this book was entered in the 2006 West Virginia Writer’s Competition under the title Summer 1968: West Virginia Roots.

NELLIE BLY BOOKS

Cover design by Megan Hagebush

Author photo by KateDavid Photography

Previously published paperback editions are available online at Nellie Bly Books.

To read more of Ms. Berry's work and to find her other books, please go to her Website.

DISCLAIMER

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information contained in this book, we assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any inconsistency herein. Any slights of people, places, or organizations are unintentional.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR

Nellie Bly Books can arrange for Ms. Berry to speak at your live event. Book excerpts can also be created to fit specific needs. For information or to book an event, please contact Nellie Bly Books at 304-906-5633, or email: contact@nellieblybooks.com.

Please support the author’s rights by purchasing only authorized editions, and don’t encourage piracy of copyrighted materials, which is illegal and punishable by law.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Praise for Sister of Silence

About the Author

Message from the Author

Chapter One: Pervasive

Chapter Two: Eddie

Chapter Three: Pop a Top

Chapter Four: Goodbye Daddy

Chapter Five: Gone With the Wind

Chapter Six: Pregnant at Sixteen

Chapter Seven: Shotgun Wedding

Chapter Eight: Sleeping With the Enemy

Chapter Nine: Cognitive Dissonance

Chapter Ten: Suicide Plan

Chapter Eleven: #WhyIStayed

Chapter Twelve: The Preston County Journal

Chapter Thirteen: Marital Counseling

Chapter Fourteen: Confessions

Chapter Fifteen: Empowered

Chapter Sixteen: One More Time

Chapter Seventeen: Runaways

Chapter Eighteen: If I Can’t Have You

Epilogue

Afterword

Discussion Guide

Recommended Reading

Acknowledgements

Excerpt to Sequel: Shatter the Silence

Daleen Berry’s Other Books

Nellie Bly Books can arrange for Ms. Berry to speak at your live event. Book excerpts can also be created to fit specific needs. For information or to book an event, contact Nellie Bly Books at 304-906-5633 or email: contact@nellieblybooks.com. Please support the author’s rights by purchasing only authorized editions, and don’t encourage piracy.

PRAISE FOR SISTER OF SILENCE

"Berry is an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.

—Kirkus Reviews

Strong prose…acute memory…disturbing story.

—5 stars, ForeWord Reviews

Almost never is an interview subject so open or so candid about the most intimate details of the most horrible moments of her life. Daleen is a very brave women and I hope her story will help other girls and women…Daleen you are a magnificent storyteller.

—Bob Edwards

Author of Voice in the Box: My Life in Radio

"In Sister of Silence, author Daleen Berry gently guides us through the dark corridors of her life, so that we can emerge in the light, as she has courageously done, with a sense of hope, authenticity and courage. Sister of Silence is a brave book, written from the heart. It’s a must read for the brave-hearted."

—Asra Q. Nomani

Author of Standing Alone: An American

Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam

"Sister of Silence is authentic, compelling and necessary."

—Richard Currey

Author of Fatal Light

For marketing purposes, nothing better can happen to a book than having it banned. A banned book is a sure sign that you’ve done something very right.

—Lee Maynard

Author of Crum

"Sister of Silence is wonderful! It’s an inspirational memoir from an amazing woman who helps us truly understand all the conflicting emotions and seemingly incongruous behaviors that anyone would experience when challenged by such a horrific situation. Daleen found strength in the face of overwhelming destructiveness to protect both her own future and that of her children—but the silence had to be broken first. What courage and resourcefulness her journey entailed. It’s a wake-up call for all of us to help end the silence!"

—Jacquelyn Campbell, PhD, RN, Johns Hopkins University

Author of Family Violence and Nursing Practice

A dramatic memoir told in a matter-of-fact, yet strikingly compelling, manner.

—Appalachian Heritage

Summer 2011 Issue

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DALEEN BERRY is a New York Times bestselling author in West Virginia. She has covered crime since 1988; won a first-place award for investigative journalism from the West Virginia Press Association; two second-place awards from the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association for her weekly newspaper column; and, as a student editor, she also led her staff to a record number of awards from the Society for Collegiate Journalists. In 2012, she received the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. An experienced speaker, Berry gave a TED talk based on Sister of Silence, and has appeared on Dateline, 20/20, 48 Hours, the TODAY Show, Lifetime, Discovery ID, the Dr. Phil Show, and Crime Watch Today, and been featured in Elle and People magazines. Sister of Silence was a first-place winner in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition, Appalachian Theme Category, and is featured on West Virginia University’s Appalachian Literature list.

DEDICATION

For my four sweet grapes,

because without you

there would be no story.

After Our Escape (circa July 1990)

Photo by Bruce Gurholt

Dear Reader,

The story you are about to read took me 20 years to tell. First I had to acknowledge what had happened, and then I had to work through the effects of that realization. Some of the depictions may be difficult to read, but know that in the telling of it—and my learning from it—healing began. I hope you’ll keep that in mind as you read Sister of Silence.

And if you recognize something in your own life or in the life of someone you know, I hope learning my story will help you take action. If that happens, then I know this account will extend far beyond my words here.

It’s been a challenging story to tell, and not one that can easily be told in a chronological way—which is something I’m much more accustomed to as a working journalist. What I discovered was that awakening, sometimes, comes in stages. And memories—the good ones and the painful ones—can come to the surface in bits and pieces, in different order, many times, the difficult ones having been carefully buried or transformed into something more palatable and easier to live with, hiding the truth within. So, this story is one that reads that way, from time to time, because what I share are glimpses into my life and what happened to me, but not on a nice orderly timeline.

At the end is the Afterword, written by Kenneth V. Lanning, former Supervisory Special Agent of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. I hope you’ll take time to read it, because it contains vital information about victimization. I am honored to have his words in this book.

Thank you for reading,

Daleen Berry

"The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause."

—Henri Bergson

Chapter One: Pervasive

My knuckles turned white as I clenched the crib rail. I looked down at my newborn, then leaned over and lifted the sleeping bundle and held it against my breast, feeling the softness of new skin as he pulled tiny legs up against his body. The small silky head turned, and I felt the whisper of his warm breath against the pillow my neck provided.

Cradling him lovingly, I slowly walked over to the open window, held out my arms, and let go.

You haven’t had any thoughts of harming yourself, have you? Or anyone else?

Back in 1984, Dr. Towson had said the unthinkable so calmly, as if it were a routine question. That had to be what it was. Me, hurt my baby? What kind of a mother would do that?

My throat seemed to close up so tight I couldn't have said the words even if I'd dared: Actually, yes, Doctor Towson, I am afraid to venture too close to any open windows while holding a baby in my arms.

Mrs. Leigh?

I looked into the well-meaning eyes of my family doctor and shrugged.

Nothing like that. No, I’m just tired, that’s all. I feel kind of blah. You know, like a black cloud’s hanging over me. That’s all.

Ashamed of my blatant lies, I offered some words of truth. I’m exhausted because my husband wants to have sex all the time. Do you think he might have an addiction?

My doctor, fresh out of medical school, only laughed. Men would have sex with a tree, if they could, he said.

He continued writing in my chart, then looked up with an understanding smile, as if he hadn't just blown off my concerns about Eddie.

I don’t really think you need an antidepressant. You just need some more help at home. Tell your husband to pitch in and give you a break now and then. Have an occasional glass of wine to help you relax. After all, you’re only twenty-two and you have four little ones to take care of, not to mention a house and a husband. It isn’t unreasonable to think you would need some help.

As always, my smile came easily, and I nodded. Of course that’s it. I’m sure you’re right.

He turned toward the door, but then looked back at me. Better yet, why don’t you hire a sitter and you and your husband go away for a long weekend?

Then he was gone.

The last long weekend had led to a fourth baby.

What if I'd told the truth? Since the birth of my first, that scene at the window had repeated itself in my mind, over and over again. The thought would come to me at the oddest moment, with such intensity I was sure I was going crazy.

What was wrong with me, that I would even consider such a thing?

The pervasive thoughts remained for many years, for the entire time my four children were too helpless to care for themselves, too innocent to protect themselves from a mother tormented by so many evil thoughts that, had she acted on them, would have instantly put an end to their lives. Yet I never told another human being about them. Ever. I was terrified of the consequences. Afraid they would lock me up in some place where medication turned the minds of crazy people to mush, leaving them defenseless against orderlies in starched coats and nurses with long needles and little pink and blue pills.

I remembered Dr. Towson’s suggestion to have a drink. But I never needed a glass of wine to get me through those mental minefields, when the wrong thought threatened to blow my world to smithereens; somehow I just did what I was supposed to, instead of killing us all. It was at night, when my husband came to me, that I needed the alcohol to drown out what happened whenever he touched me. And it was those times, all those perverse touches that made me feel like a tiny insect caught and held fast, being squished inside a little child’s clenched fist—it was those times that drove me to stand before my baby’s crib, waging a war within not to do the unthinkable.

Some people’s problems begin with a shot of whisky or a bottle of rum. Mine began before my birth, inside a beer can. And then another. And another. After I was born, it took me about seven years to realize my father’s drinking colored our family’s life in every possible way—the beer he consumed was more important than we were. By 1972, the beer had become a dangerous tool that transformed him from a sensitive, mild-mannered man into a monster.

I was fortunate. I witnessed it only once, in a scene that played out before me as a child. I locked it carefully away, where it stayed until it was released as a painful memory years later.

Mom had kept dinner waiting on the stove when Daddy didn’t come home. Again. I suspected she knew he was sitting at a beer joint somewhere, since she was always calling them to track him down. So after she packed us off to bed, leaving his dinner warming on the back burner, she went to sleep herself.

The screaming woke me up.

Get outta bed and make me sumpin’ that doesn’t taste like burnt toast! My father’s voice came from the room next to mine.

Dale, stop it. Please, you’re hurting me!

My mother’s cries.

Other noises, too, sounds of moving around, but I lay petrified, eyes closed, hardly daring to breathe.

I deserve sumpin’ better’n that crap downstairs, Daddy yelled. I work hard all day long and all I won’ is a halfway decent meal when I come home!

Though terrified, I had to see what was happening. I slid from beneath the heavy blankets and quilts that Mom had piled upon me and peeked around the corner of my bedroom door. Through the darkness, I could just make out my father’s hand, buried beneath the dark silky strands of my mother’s beautiful hair, as he pulled her toward the stairway. The echo of their voices moved along with them, past the faded, peeling wallpaper and out of my sight.

I tiptoed across the old and cracked Linoleum, and watched the breath that came from my mouth turn into a delicate mist, and slowly, stealthily, crept toward the stairwell on tiptoe, afraid a creaking floorboard would give me away. When I looked down, Mom was in front of my father, crying as he followed close behind her on the stairs, his hand clamped tightly around her arm. I don’t know what frightened me more—her crying, or the realization that she could slip and tumble down the steps any second.

When they had disappeared into the kitchen, I sat on a step, partway down. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. I sobbed softly, my face framed between the two ancient banister dowels my tiny hands gripped, my body trembling from fear as well as the frigid night air of our uninsulated brick home.

His yelling gradually grew softer and then stopped altogether. I could picture him sitting in the kitchen, eating whatever Mom had hastily whipped up, while she waited for him to finish so she could carry his dishes to the sink. I wanted to see for myself that she was all right, yet I was too afraid to go down the stairs. Still, I was determined not to return to my room. If he tried to hurt her again, I was going to make him stop. I didn’t know how, but I would do anything I could to protect Mom—Mom, who would hold me as I sobbed, thanks to yet another middle of the night ear infection, gently blowing her warm breath into my affected ear to ease the pain until we arrived at the hospital. At that moment I decided I would do whatever it took, even if that meant beating him off with my bare hands.

My toes turned numb as I sat there for what seemed like hours before my parents came into the living room, looking like they were at someone’s funeral. Both were sad and silent as they sat on the couch together, Daddy’s arm around my mother as he tried to comfort her.

My sobs had stopped, but in their place, a few hiccups remained, and I guess that’s what caused Mom to turn in my direction.

Daleen, what are you doing out of bed? It’s freezing in here and you’re going to be ill! Rising, she hurried up to me, and the next thing I knew, I was clinging to her as she carried me back down the stairs.

I want you to divorce him, I said as my tears began flowing again. I don’t want him to hurt you anymore.

Shh, there, it’s all right, she cooed. Your father didn’t hurt me. I’m fine.

By then we were on the couch and I was on her lap. When she whispered my words to my father, he tried to put his arm around me but I pulled away and clung even tighter to Mom. He leaned back heavily.

I’m so sorry, Neelad, he whispered, using the pet name he had given me.

There now, it’s all right. Everything’s fine now, Mom said.

I glanced his way. In the pale living room light, he did seem different. He no longer looked mean and frightening, like he had when I first woke up. He even smiled.

I’m sorry if I scared you, Honey. I didn’t mean to. His words were quiet and I could smell his horrible beer breath.

I buried my face against Mom again.

Will you be all right now? We’re coming to bed, and everything’ll be fine, I promise. As she spoke, she brushed the hair back from my eyes. I nodded and looked into her flushed face, her own stormy blue eyes rimmed with red.

I’m taking her back to bed, Dale, she told my father, who rose onto unsteady feet to follow us. Upstairs, Mom tucked me in with a kiss against my forehead. Remember, God will protect us, she whispered against my ear.

A few minutes later I heard them get into bed. Everything grew quiet, but I lay there praying in the dark, Please God, over and over again, let her divorce him.

Dad went to work in Washington, DC, soon afterward: I think he was ashamed of what he’d done that night. Maybe he was also afraid his drinking might lead to a repeat performance. I was happy when he left, knowing he wouldn’t hurt my mother anymore.

My prayer had been answered.

But I was nine and blissfully ignorant of how Dad’s void would be filled by someone else in my own life just four years later, a force that would change me forever.

Four years after Dad left us, I entered junior high, surrounded by unfamiliar faces now that school consolidation was becoming a national trend. Shy and subdued, I excelled academically and somehow found my place during the most difficult phase of adolescence. In my West Virginia History class, I was selected to enter the statewide Golden Horseshoe Contest. In English, I received regular praise for my essays and short stories. I was proud of my accomplishments, but not wanting to be noticed, I pretended they were no big deal.

Even though I tried not to draw attention to myself, sometimes I just couldn’t help it. The following year, more than anything else, I wanted to win the county spelling bee. As the winner for my school, I would compete against students from several other schools. I grilled myself over and over again. With my parents and two sisters in the audience one spring night, I was the only student standing when the last word was given out. I spelled it correctly—becoming the county winner, taking home a $50 savings bond, and having my photo in the local newspaper.

I felt a huge sense of achievement, and realized that with hard work and enough time, anything was possible. Because it was important to me, and I had been willing to give up my free time to get it, I won.

My parents were very proud of me, but I think Dad, who drove three hours from work to be there, was the proudest. He had always corrected our misspelled words and improper grammar, he’d taught us to play Scrabble, and he’d helped instill in his daughters that nothing was impossible.

You can succeed if you want something badly enough, and you can be whatever you want to be, Dad told me. Even though you’re a girl.

Dad was exceptional in countless ways, in spite of his many other failures—one being his drinking. It had always been the great divide between my parents, making him unreliable when it came time to send support money home. So after he moved to Martinsburg, West Virginia, an hour from his new job in Washington, DC, Mom found a job as a waitress to make ends meet. We still saw Dad, but only during a weekend here or there.

Which is how our baby sister was born in 1976. I was twelve, Carla nine, when Jackie arrived. She was adorable and I loved her dearly, especially when she began to coo and smile at me. Carla happily gave up her position as the youngest to dote on the new baby. I helped care for little Jackie when I had to, but I didn’t spend all my free time playing with her like Carla did. I thought a baby was just a necessary nuisance, the last thing on my busy mind. I couldn’t foresee having any babies of my own for a very long time—if ever.

Sometimes after Carla and I got home from school, Mom would take us all with her on the thirty-minute drive to the restaurant. While Mom worked, we would wander around the mall, pushing Jackie in her stroller. Most of the time, unless a diaper needed changing, all I had to do was oversee my siblings.

When the mall closed and Mom was busy cleaning her section in the restaurant, she’d bring us dessert and we’d eat at one of the tables, waiting until her shift ended. Those were some of my favorite times with my mother. Sure, her job interfered with our social life and school studies, but we did what we had to do. Carla, who excelled socially but not academically, didn’t mind running around the mall playing with Jackie and meeting up with friends while I did homework. I knew that, as the oldest, I had an obligation to make sure my mom could earn the income she desperately needed to pay the bills.

In those days my well-endowed neighbor teased me because I was a virgin, my breasts were barely there, and I hadn’t gotten my period yet. It was true: I was a skinny thirteen-year-old with a flat chest and beanpole legs. I wasn’t tall, but people said I was because I looked like a pencil. My best feature was my hair, falling long and straight like a waterfall past my waist, where it pooled against the floor whenever I sat cross-legged. I knew Eddie Leigh, a family friend, liked my hair, too, because he was always touching it.

The rapes never would have happened had Dad been there. I think that’s why I was such easy prey for Eddie. Our friendship began innocently, when I was just eight and he was fifteen. Eddie had been around since we first moved to West Virginia. Tall, all arms and legs, he walked so fast he looked like a moving cartwheel. Even though he wore a cocky attitude, I didn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been nice to me. Our families went on social outings together, and we often rode with Eddie’s family to Bible meetings. We’d play hide and seek in their backyard with other neighborhood children, and more than once I vaguely remember hiding in their dark barn with those black eyes staring at me from between the door’s wooden slats.

By the time I was eleven, Eddie began showing up at our house with a load of coal or firewood. Knowing Dad was gone and our finances were tight, he offered to drop some off. The first time, he took the gas money Mom gave him. But after that he always refused, gallantly telling Mom her fine cooking was payment enough. She really appreciated his help and was happy to let him join us for dinner.

The first time it happened, I was two years older. Still an underdeveloped gangly girl of thirteen. At twenty, Eddie stood six-foot-two and towered over me, and anyone who knew him said he wasn’t happy unless he was tinkering under the roof of his beloved green Ford truck, which you could hear coming from a mile away. He wasn’t much of a talker, unless it was about that truck, or some model he was building. Mostly he just smiled and acted charming, making coy comments that left me blushing. It wasn’t so much what he said as how he said it. He might comment about the weather, then look at me and ask Isn’t that right? with that grin on his face. He nicknamed me Legs, wearing that same grin. Told me his friend Rick said I had legs like Angie Dickinson, clear up to my armpits. That was one of the times I caught him watching me with an odd expression. I turned away, embarrassed, as if I’d done something wrong, and scared to death my parents would find out. I suspected they wouldn’t like it, if they did.

Children’s lives should be a mixture of fun and freedom from the pressures of adult life. Little about my life was either, unless you count the first few times I stayed with Eddie’s sister, Kim. At nineteen, she was wild and daring, with a goofy, offbeat sense of humor. Though five years younger than Kim, it seemed okay since I had known her and Eddie since we began going to Bible meetings together years earlier.

Kim was always finding some mischief to get into, almost always without her parents’ knowledge. One of the things she really liked was driving fast. I remember her racing along narrow country lanes in Eddie’s very first car, a blue Ford Falcon, her short black curls blowing across her face from the wind that whistled through the open windows.

Kim, slow down! I begged once, laughing.

You just hold on there. We’re gonna’ see what this car really has, Kim said with a grin, downshifting to take a sharp curve. That Eddie thinks he can drive. Well, I’ll show him I can make this thing go too!

I’d been a visitor in the Leigh home for years, and stayed overnight as a youngster. When I turned thirteen, Kim would come pick me up in that little car, and we’d fly the seven miles from my house, barely slowing for the curves. I was tossed from side to side, clutching the door handle while Kim tore the gear shifter from one gear to another as fast as any guy could, I thought, and the little car sped ever faster. Being with her made me feel less like a gangly adolescent and more like a sophisticated grownup.

And that’s how we ended up together that terrible night in early spring 1977 when I was in eighth grade.

How easily Kim had been able to talk Mom into letting me go to a sleepover with a girl five years my senior. Maybe if Mom had overheard our phone call the day before, some alarm bells might have gone off in her head. Maybe.

You'll never guess who likes you.

Kim was right, I didn't guess.

Eddie.

No way. A twenty-year old guy liked me?

He thinks you're really pretty.

Did he say that? I had to know. Or was she just speculating?

Kim just laughed and said, Come over tomorrow, I'll tell you more.

Yes, I’ll tell Mom I’ll finish my homework before I go to bed. Mom's one condition in letting me go with Kim. And of course Mom said I could go.

The air outside was warm and fragrant from the scent of new vegetation that surrounded their little house, making it seem like it sat in the middle of a large forest. The Leigh home reminded me a little of the witch’s cottage in Hansel and Gretel, minus the candy decorations and gingerbread trim. Eddie and his parents had bedrooms downstairs, but Kim slept in the attic. To get there, we had to walk right by Eddie’s bedroom. He wasn’t home from work yet but the door was open, and as I looked inside and saw everything neatly in its place, I couldn’t help but think: Eddie likes me!

In the privacy of Kim's room we laughed like innocent teenagers. She joked about her parents and mimicked their voices, making me roll on the bed clutching my stomach. We shared secrets, like the one she'd whispered over the phone.

Whenever I heard the sound of an occasional passing car through the open window screens I grew distracted, wondering if the next one would be Eddie’s. Then suddenly, the crunch of tires against gravel—I just knew it was him.

True to my promise to Mom, I’d left Kim in her attic room and had gone downstairs to do homework. Cross-legged in the spare room the Leighs had converted into an office, twirling my pencil, I tried to concentrate. But it was hard because now Eddie was home from work. Within minutes, The Beach Boys blasted from the stereo in his bedroom. He was just a few feet away on the other side of that wall . . .

He thinks you're pretty, Kim’s voice whispered again inside my head. He really likes you.

How could someone as worldly as Eddie be interested in a wallflower like me, a mere kid of thirteen? He had a real job; he paid his own way in the world, made his own decisions, and didn’t seem to have to account to his parents like Kim always did. He was an Adult.

I continued trying to focus on math, not Eddie, when I heard Kim bound down the stairs, then burst into the room, interrupting my thoughts. She urged me with an impish grin to follow her. I jumped off the chair and ran after her. She wandered into the room next door, Eddie's room, and plopped down on her brother’s bed.

Eddie sat on the floor, working on one of his many model cars. I stood, not sure what to do, until Kim patted the bed, indicating I should sit beside her. She started talking to Eddie, trying to say things that would get his attention and make him look up. I watched while he glued together the plastic model of a classic ‘64 Mustang he’d probably spent hours working on, bantering with Kim or softly singing along to the music.

Then, just as quickly as she’d breezed in, Kim breezed out again, leaving us alone together. I started to follow her but Eddie stopped me.

That grin again. His voice, soft and teasing. What’s your rush?

I sat down on the bed again, and after wiping the glue off his fingers, he stood and then sat next to me.

I struggled to say something, anything, before blurting out the first words that came to mind: Do you know anything about algebra?

I felt awkward and frozen, sitting on the edge of the bed like I might bolt at any moment, while trying to hide my nervousness. The question really wasn’t so odd, I told myself. I’d been turning to him more and more, in response to the questions he’d started asking me about my parents, how I