I never knew my father's father - he died when my father was a very young child - and my father's mother - she who would start the chain of strange events that would come to define my life - was a distant presence I only saw a few times.

My real grandparents were my mother's parents.

My earliest memory of my grandmother (whom I called Granny Honey for reasons no one remembers) involves a box of caramel coated popcorn. I was given the Cracker Jacks and left alone in my grandmother's living room while she and my mother adjourned to the kitchen for tea. Cracker Jacks contained, in addition to the popcorn, peanuts and a small toy.

I immediately dumped the entire contents of the box on my grandmother's new sofa, and proceeded t sift the peanuts and the prize out from the popcorn, like a miner panning for gold.

The next thing I remember is my mother scolding me and scooping up the popcorn, while my grandmother laughed merrily.

The strongest memory I have of my grandfather concerns peppermint Life Savers. My grandmother had forbidden my grandfather to spoil me with too much candy. So my grandfather would take me onto his lap and pretend to fall asleep. From beneath his lowered lashes he would watch my hand creep with the greatest of care into his shirt pocket and extract the entire roll of Life Savers. He would pretend to wake up, and would feign the greatest astonishment upon discovering that the candy was missing from his shirt pocket.

My grandmother was a beautiful if somewhat overbearing woman. She had an "English Rose" complexion, jet black hair and lashes, and huge brilliant blue eyes. She was petite and well-proportioned, and always appeared in public well-groomed.

My grandfather was crazy about her. He worshipped her and yet occasionally rebelled against her autocratic manner. When the Depression hit, my grandparents were newly-weds. Desperate for money, my grandmother utilized her Scottish childhood and began to make bootleg whiskey. I have always found this admirable and a little glamorous, despite my mother's later attempts to quell my image of my grandparents as a sort of Scottish Bonnie and Clyde.

My grandmother had had four miscarriages and four live births - my mother, her two sisters, and a brother.

My mother was exceptionally dependent on her parents. She was the obedient daughter all her life - until she met my father.

My father's childhood was seldom discussed when I was young. My brother and I knew damned little about him, aside from the fact that he had grown up in North Carolina and had served in the military. My father's past was elusive. He hated any discussions and avoided any questions about his youth.

Another snapshot of my father. He is so suave, a Cary Grant lookalike.

It's difficult to remember certain phases of my life. For many years, I never questioned why I could recall details of my kindergarten days yet could not remember the sixth grade. It is amazing how the human mind so effectively tries to protect itself. On a subconscious, I blocked out all the pain of my childhood. Even now, after eight years of psychotherapy, I still have nightmares. The nightmares are always by-products of suppression. I still wake up in a cold sweat, still terrified.

The trouble began when I was six years old. It was at that time that my parents bought a new house in Hazlewood.

Hazelwood was yet another New Jersey. Its most notable feature was the proximity of the Raritan bay. The Raritan bay was a body of water with an evil smell and a gray color. Oil spells, the red tide, and sundry floating pieces of garbage combined to make it utterly unfit to swim in. There were stiff fines for anyone caught taking shell fish from the area.

Hazlewood had a tiny boardwalk. Bumper cars, the Ferris Wheel, the little roller-coaster - all were in such a state of disrepair that to ride on any of them really was a cheap thrill, because there was really no way to ascertain whether or not one would get off alive.

I began attending the first grade at the Hazlewood elementary school. I recall that the hallways of the school were painted the drabbest shade of green imaginable. There was a persistent odor of chalk and of urine. The walls in the hallway were utilized to display the artwork of the students.

The classrooms were all basically uniform, 12 foot by 20 foot squares with coat closets in the back. Bookshelves lined each room beneath the windows. The other side was lined with corkboards for displaying projects or exceptional test papers.

When I entered the Hazelwood school, it was believed that I was "slow." The reasoning behind this was because I did not grasp the concept of reading. We were taught to read through the use of "Dick and Jane" readers, and even at that age it struck me that I didn't know anyone who talked the way Dick and Jane did. I remember that the books made a great deal over Jane's new hair ribbon.

"Jane! What a pretty hair ribbon."

Everyone I knew who had a brother spent more time arguing over which television show they would watch than they did discussing hair ribbons or talking about dogs named Spot that had a running compulsion.

The bookshelves contained books aside from the usual first grade reading material. The books there ranged from fourth grade to adult. I began to browse among the shelves during free periods, when you were permitted to do anything short of setting fire to the classroom.

It was during one of these "free periods" that I inadvertently began the process that was to isolate me from the mainstream, to set me apart from all the others.

I recall that I was intent upon a copy of a book called "Catcher in the Rye." I was so engrossed that I failed to notice that Mrs Boston, the teacher, was standing beside me.

"What are you doing with that book?"

"Reading it."

"Where did you get it from?"

"That shelf over there."

Mrs Boston studied my face for a moment.

"What's it about?"

"Some big boys at college."

She confiscated the book.

"Read something else."

The next book I can remember reading was "Jane Eyre." It was infinitely more interesting. I cried at Jane's awful time in the school with the nasty headmaster.

Several weeks after the incident with the book by Mr Salinger, Mrs Boston called me aside during the music period. She took me out of the classroom and led me to a dingy room that I later found out was the teachers' lounge.

A man with black horn-rimmed glasses was waiting there. He smiled at me. I wondered if I were in trouble.

"Beth, this is Mr Grady."

"Hi."

"Mr Grady wants to talk to you. I'll be back later."

Mr Grady was staring at me. I felt very uncomfortable.

"Sit down, Beth."

I sat on an uncomfortable wooden chair. My feet dangled over the edge.

"Beth, I understand that you like to read."

I nodded.

"Well, I would like you to read for me."

He opened a briefcase and took out a mimeographed sheet.

"Read this, and we'll talk about it later."

I took the sheet. Very boring, an account of feeding poultry.

"Are you done?"

" Yes."

"What was it about?"

"A boy named Bob who goes to live with his grandmother."

"Very good. And where does Bob's grandmother live?"

"On a farm."

"Are there any animals on the farm?"

"Chickens, and ducks and turkeys. He feeds them every morning."

Mr Grady was staring at me now.

" What happened to your hair?"

Startled, he felt the top of his head.

"Oh, I'm bald."

"Why?"

"Because my hair doesn't grow any more

"Oh, like my dad."

" Beth, I would like to come back here sometimes and have you read for me. Would that be alright?"

"I guess."

And so began my misery. It did not take the other kids very long to notice that I was regularly excused from art, or music, or gym.

One girl, Theresa, asked Mrs Boston why I was excused and no one else was.

"Because Beth is very special."

"Why?"

"Because she is very smart."

And so it began. On the playground, during lunch time, more and more of the kids began to taunt me.

" Bookworm, bookworm, smartypants, think ya know everything."

"Can't play kickball, can't do anything right."

" Bookworm, bookworm, weirdo."

It didn't take long for the physical abuse to follow.

First, the shoving in the halls when we were lined up to go home. Then it progressed to vicious kicks. I was the smallest, always the smallest and least able to defend myself.

It became quite the sport to attack me. Boys and girls alike began. Slaps, kicks - many times I was shoved down the concrete stairs that led out the back of the building to the asphalt of the playground. My knees were frequently scraped and bleeding, for these were the years before girls were allowed to wear slacks to school. My clothes were a focal point of attack. Instead of allowing me to wear the psychedelic jumpers, knee socks and straight hair in style then, my mother insisted in dressing me in frilly dresses with crinolines, lace trimmed ankle socks and curly hair.

My mother insisted that I set my hair in spongy pink rollers every night. I hated the curls because none of the other girls wore them. Long straight hair was in. My mother hated it, said it looked "sloppy."

The other fight I had with my mother was over her homemade clothes. My mother was far from an expert seamstress, and her homemade clothes looked it.

I desperately longed to grow taller, to have straight hair, fashionable clothes. My mother could never understand how her efforts made me the target of ridicule. It was bad enough being short, and being "smart." It was terrible to be lousy in sports and to wear odd clothes too.

I was greatly favored by the teachers. I was labeled as "exceptional." Therefore, I was automatically given more attention. My grades were the highest in every subject except mathematics. To this day, I detest numbers, except when it concerns money. I can figure the Interest charges on a credit card faster than a calculator. But mathematics for pleasure strikes me as bizarre, something totally foreign.

In addition to "bookworm", "weird" and "freak" I now found myself labeled "teacher's pet". I used to pray at the beginning of every term that the new teacher would not know who I was, would totally ignore me. The physical threats were getting worse. I frequently came home with bruises, scrapes and cuts. My mother constantly scolded me for not being "coordinated". I tried to explain that I was not well-liked. My mother, who had not been a particularly bright child, felt that there was something wrong with me.

"Why don"t you invite your friends home?"

"I don't have any friends.''

"Then you must not be very nice if they don't like you."

I never had the heart to tell my mother that the clothes she made me wear were ugly, made me stand out from the crowd. I never had the heart to tell her the kind of things that the neighborhood mothers said about her.

"My mother says your mother is stupid."

"That's a lie. I hope you go to the bad place."

My mother vainly pushed me to make friends. She insisted that I join the local Brownies troop.

The Brownies were just as bad, because the same little girls who

were in this junior division of the Girl Scouts were also in my

Sunday School class and church choir, as well as in school. Looking back now, I think my memories of the Brownies closely resemble impressions of the Hitler Youth.

The Brownies meetings were held every Saturday morning at the home of my chief tormentor. Her mother was of course oblivious to anything her daughter did to me. Considering that this girl, Sharon, was a good deal larger and, owing to three older brothers, a good deal tougher, going to her house was an ordeal I would beg my mother not to make me endure.

" But you've got to start getting out and meeting new people."

"They're the old people, Ma. The same kids."

"Well maybe they'll get to like you if they see you more."

Sharon was the leader of the pack. She waited for me every day after school. A group of other boys and girls would watch.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going home."

"You think you are."

I received a slap hard enough to make me stagger.

"Cry, Beth, come on, let's see ya cry."

A punch in the stomach. I dropped my books.

"We wanna see you cry."

Sometimes, people would spit on me. Other times, two or three would kick me. It definitely did not pay to be a gifted child in a blue-collar neighborhood.

Years later, when I was a $100-an-hour call girl, shopped in the best Manhattan stores, had fifty-dollar haircuts and smoked imported cigarettes, I ran into Sharon. I took a certain grim pleasure in noticing her blemished complexion, masculine clothes and fat figure.

"Hi Beth, remember me?"

"I beg your pardon, but I don't know you."

"Sure ya do, it's Sharon Daney from Hazelwood."

"Oh."

I smoothed the collar of my silk blouse.

"Still playing with little boys, Sharon?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because you look like you're still trying to be one of them."

I carried myself tall. Victory.

I infinitely preferred my books. I was a voracious reader, staggering home from the library on Saturdays with armload of books. I also preferred my pastels, and began doing simple still-lifes.

I thought that life was a pretty grim experience. Aside from my kid brother, I had little in the way of companionship. This suited me fine. Every Sunday, I would pray that my mother would forget that I was not popular and not very pretty. I prayed that my mother would just forget that I wasn't what she wanted, wasn't the pretty, popular daughter instead of the child she was so ashamed of. How did I know she was ashamed? By her telling me so. Not once or twice, but many times.

My mother was having her own problems. The tension at the dinner table was worse than ever. Meal times were living hells. My father would take his place at the head of the table.

"What the hell kind of slop is this, Marge?"

"It's minestrone."

"Are you tryin' to fuckin' poison me?"

"It's Italian. My sister Mary showed me how to make it."

"Yeah, your sister marries a goddamn Guinea and I get this shit."

My father picked up the soup and sent it sailing through the air. It crashed against the kitchen wall.

"Go to hell, you son of a bitch. If you gave me enough money instead of spending it on your filthy books, I could make some decent meals!"

"You're crazy, Marge. I fuckin' work all day and come home to your bullshit every night."

"Don't come home anymore, I don't care. All you do is watch your damn TV anyway."

"Go to hell, Marge."

My father left.

Often the battles got more brutal. My mother would wind up with black eyes, bloody lips.

I remember one night steak knives entered the fray.

"Jesus Christ, you fuckin' incinerated the steaks!"

"You said you like steaks well done."

"I said well done, not cremated! Why the hell can't you cook?"

"Why the hell can't you buy better meat?"

"Because I have to support your goddamn little bastards!"

"They take after their father!"

"No, your daughter is a psychopath - just like her mother!"

"At least she's not a whole like yours!"

My father rose, stalked to the other side of the table and yanked my mother out of her chair. She fell on the floor and tried to protect her face from the blows. My father punched her about the face and shoulders.

"Don't you say my mother was a whore! You're a goddamn whore! You'd fuck anybody if you thought you'd get out of working for a living! You bitch!"

My mother groped for something on the table to defend herself with. Her hand found the steak knife. She plunged it into

( transcription not yet complete )

editor's note: on stylistic grounds, I suspect that this is an early draft for the beginning of The Sword.

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