Gerard

Gran had a son named Gerard. We were in absolute awe of him; he was a grown up, and was very tall, terribly brave, and incredibly important in his job.

Gerard drove a motorcycle. Gran was very distressed by this, and we heard her speaking to Gramps about it several times. She was worried he would get hurt. Gerard was a fireman, and a policeman. He wasn't a policeman for very long, but he was a hero in our young eyes.

He was very stern and would sometimes be really sweet to us, but other times he would jerk us around roughly by our skinny arms, growling at us to behave. We were very afraid of Gerard, and any incident of this nature would make us cry uncontrollably.

One particular incident was on a winter day. Maureen and I were outside playing in the bitter cold, and wanted to come inside. Our teeth were chattering, and our toes were painfully cold. We stood at the back door, crying to come in, as Gran would not open the door. Suddenly the door flew open, and Gerard stood there, bigger than life. His face was red and angry. I will always remember how he looked, red faced, blue eyes standing out coldly, dark curly hair in need of a cut, as it was wild and out of control looking. I thought in my 8 year old way that he looked like a monster. I was terrified. Gerard was scary when he was angry, we never knew how far he would go. Maybe he would spank us! Given how painful the spankings were when Gran delivered them, they would have been so much worse if Gerard did it!
Gerard grabbed both Maureen and I by the arms, and dragged us inside. The basement door was open, and I could see all the way down the stairs, and the familiar unpleasant smell of packed dirt wafted up to us. Gerard growled at the two of us that we'd BETTER learn to behave, and furthermore, we'd BETTER keep the boys in line too. Maureen and I immediately started crying, and we were frozen to the spot. We were terrified that Gerard would throw us down the basement stairs, turn the light off, and we'd be trapped down there in the dark. We had no rational reason for thinking this, it just seemed like something he would do in proportion to his anger.

We huddled in the kitchen, still in our winter coats and mittens, and soon Sean showed up. He looked at us, concerned, and asked why we were crying. We were crying too hard to answer him, and even if we could, we were too frightened to tell him what happened. He kept asking us what happened, and we just cried harder. He gave up, frustrated, and told us to take off our winter clothes and put them away before we caught pneumonia. We knew what pneumonia was. Our brother Harlan had double bronchial pneumonia soon after he was born, and nearly died from it, so we quickly did what we were told.

Maureen and I went upstairs to our room and talked about Gerard and how scary he was. How we hadn't done anything wrong, yet he still yelled at us. We couldn't understand how he could be so nice sometimes, then so mean to us when we hadn't done anything wrong. We decided that he was on Gran's side and it was safer not to trust him. It was hard to figure out, why he would be so nice at times, but then so mean at others. He told everyone he met that we were good kids, yet treated us at times as if we were rotten from birth.